When established, the Cincinnati Art Museum was revolutionary. Public art collections were rare in 1886, especially in areas as far west as Cincinnati.
More than a century later, the museum has birthed another novel idea: Art Palace, a podcast that brings together a roster of local voices — actors, musicians, dancers, writers, scientists, curators and more — to view visual art in the museum through many distinct perspectives.
The museum joins two other cultural institutions that have also expanded Cincinnati’s cultural offerings through podcasting: the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the Mercantile Library.
Produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum, Art Palace is hosted twice a month by Russell Ihrig, the museum’s assistant director of interpretive programming.
An episode could be a conversation with Cincinnati Shakespeare Company actor Jeremy Dubin about a painting of a scene from Hamlet, or with Cincinnati Ballet’s Director of Education Julie Sunderland about the dancers in the museum’s Degas sculptures.
Art Palace developed from a series of conversations Ihrig hosted last year during 30 Americans, a museum exhibit about race, gender and historical identity.
“The idea was that we could get into more charged issues and have conversations around topics in the show,” he says.
When the exhibit ended, Ihrig wanted to keep engaging people to talk about art and move the discussions beyond the galleries. He saw that podcasting was a way to reach more people. “I wanted to create something that could be serious, but also casual and fun,” Ihrig says. “I joked there would be no Baroque music in the podcast, which is ironic because the podcast theme song actually is Baroque, but it’s kind of a Hip Hop take on Baroque.”
Art Palace’s scope is as wide as the museum’s collection, which gives Ihrig myriad ways to connect with local artists. A recent show featured soprano Catalina Cuervo, who sang the leading role in the Cincinnati Opera’s performance of Frida.
Cuervo studied everything she could find about painter Frida Kahlo to prepare for her role. For the podcast, she discussed the museum’s online exhibition of its photos of Kahlo in the 1940s, originally taken by Cincinnatian Bernard Silberstein. “The light of this picture is absolute perfection, because the focus is her face,” Cuervo says of one of those images in Episode 20.
“You see two things that people who are familiar with Frida see,” she tells Art Palace listeners. “Her gaze is very straight. Who is standing there? What is she looking at? The other thing is the little pout she did with her mouth — you see it in all of her portraits — that’s both very sensual and strong.”
Art Palace has featured astronomer Dean Regas of the Cincinnati Observatory, Ramona Toussaint of the Society for the Preservation of Music Hall, recording artist Daniel Martin Moore and editor of The Cincinnati Anthology Zan McQuade, each talking about a different piece in the museum.
“I like to do shows with people who have a different perspective, who see things I don’t,” Ihrig says. “Someone made choices about each piece of art that’s been created. Why did they make those choices? That’s what I want to explore.”
Instead of visual art, the two aforementioned literary institutions — the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the Mercantile Library — bring books and writing to podcasting.
Kurt Dinan, the Library Foundation’s current writer-in-residence, hosts Inside the Writer’s Head. From the MakerSpace studio at the Main Library, he interviews local and national writers about their craft.
“I love talking to authors about their process and discussing the strategies and tools they use,” Dinan says. “I want listeners to understand that this is something they can do. The podcast is a great way to show that.”
Novelists and short story writers John Mantooth, Jessica Strawser and Mindy McGinnis have shared insights on Inside the Writer’s Head.
“Many people in the Cincinnati area want to write a novel,” Dinan says. “It’s really eye-opening when they hear about the labor that goes into a manuscript — writing, rewriting, editing and revising again. That’s what comes out in the podcast, hearing authors be real about the craft.”
The longest-running cultural podcast in town, with 55 episodes on file, is the Mercantile Library’s The 12th Story. Produced by the Mercantile Library’s Business and Membership Manager Chris Messick, the show is recorded on the 12th floor of the Mercantile Building on Walnut Street downtown.
Many episodes of The 12th Story are a public book club, a discussion among three or four readers about works ranging from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. Others feature interpretive readings — actor Landon Hawkins recently read from the library’s new poetry and translations acquisitions.
This year, The 12th Story launched its Founders Series to interview heads of local startup companies about their entrepreneurial journey and the books they read.
“Our library was founded by merchants and clerks who wanted to better themselves, but who didn’t have access to higher education,” Messick says. “We’ve started a series to talk to people in the startup community, people who might have been in that group of merchants if they had been around in 1835.”
Though the Cincinnati arts podcast audience is small — each institution has about 200 listeners per show — it is growing.
“The first episode of Inside the Writer’s Head this season had over 1,100 listeners, and several episodes have reached 500,” says Angela Hursh of the public library’s marketing department.
But podcasting is more than numbers, she adds.
“Although we don’t have millions of listeners, the people who are listening are very engaged,” she says. “You can’t get any more intimate than being in somebody’s ear for 20 or 30 minutes. It’s like having a personal conversation.”
Free podcasts ART PALACE, INSIDE THE WRITER’S HEAD and THE 12TH STORY are available on SoundCloud and iTunes and at each institution’s website (cincinnatiartmuseum.org, cincinnatilibrary.org, mercantilelibrary.com).
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 6, 2017.