The Center's Studio Podcast

Winners of the Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize, Gonzalo and Susana Silva speak about their new exhibition, Instrumentos de silencio (Instruments of Silence). The 15-piece show at Sargent's Daughters gallery in New York (and later traveling to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California) plays with ideas of musical instruments and history, but also the ways that invading Europeans subjugated and tandemized Andean populat...

It’s like a true crime podcast, but it’s about art. An heirloom masterpiece is created, mutilated, inherited, then lost--one of the most important objects in a rich culture’s history. Over a century later, a frantic search ensues, not unlike a manhunt, with a deadline fast approaching and a forthcoming, major exhibition hanging in the balance. Can it be recovered in time?

Scholars Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë He...

Taiwanese Australian filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu tells about a new book project and screenplay, '93 Castrol which is the fast-paced story of siblings, a stolen race car, and a search for redemption from self-described low-lifery. The discussion of this limited edition artists book contains something even bigger--an emerging artist discovering identity, voice, and a newfound sense of authenticity. 

Music: "Please Only Tell Me G...

Lisa Hess moved to New York at the age of 16 and a year later was asked to join the company of the New York City Ballet. That began an adventure with some of the great choreographers and dancers of the century, in a golden age of dance in America. Hess worked with the legendary George Balanchine in his final decade of life, frequently with Jerome Robbins, and others. In this extended oral history episode, Lisa Hess Jones captures a...

After an emerging-artist blitz of 26 New York exhibitions in just 7 years, the award-winning visual artist Valerie Atkisson de Moura hit a wall. Adrift and depressed in a new home, she received a medical diagnosis of an incurable disease and discovered that her mother had the same disease but had kept it secret from the family. Then, in a horrible year, her mother died, Valerie was hit by a car and suffered head trauma that changed...

The exhibition The Delicate Ties That Bind explores the precariousness of post-pandemic existence and assesses the complex and often fragile relationships that shape our lives now. Curated by Megan Knobloch Geilman, these threads make up the nature of our reality and serve as metaphors for both a tattered society and the essential connections between us. In this interview, the curator describes the process of putting together this ...

A landmark exhibition spanning the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marks a milestone in the culture's artistic output and appreciation. The 121-work exhibition, Work and Wonder: 200 Years of Latter-day Saint Art, is curated by Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë Hebdon. They join in this wide-ranging conversation about the show's five years of development and the four themes that e...

The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what ...

The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what ...

The young nonprofit organization, Inspired Arts League, is the focus of this interview with its founder Brittany Scott and executive producer Ellen Wheeler. It’s a fascinating model: invite global artists who are already accomplished to be members and give them as a group, through workshops and collaboration, tools to more effectively tell stories and inspire hope in the world through art. Scott and Wheeler announce their inaugural...

In this interview with Rachel Helps, Wikipedian-in-Residence at the BYU Library, researcher and author Helps explains her work refining, creating, correcting, and researching Wikipedia pages that relate to the unrivaled collection of Mormon Studies volumes at the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University. The conversation includes interesting finds and experiences covering eight years of work and hundreds of articles. Helps ...

Brett Peterson is Director, Exhibition Media and Interactives at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is at the forefront of engaging audiences and making exhibitions memorable by the creation of accompanying original, responsive digital media. In this episode Peterson describes the shifting expectation of visitors regarding technology. He tries  to find new ways to evoke emotions and heighten works on display,...

Artist Collin Bradford makes video, sound, photography, sculpture, and other media. In this interview, the incoming art department chair at Brigham Young University discusses his work, how art speaks directly to the brain through the senses, and his work as a reflection of concerns about the future. His video installation, A Burning Hope (2021) is part of the museum exhibition, Materializing Mormonism: Trajectories in Contemporary ...

This episode with composer S. Andrew Lloyd celebrates the world premiere of his song cycle, Amaranthine, which was written for and performed by international opera star Rachel Willis-Sørensen at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, April 9, 2024. The composer discusses how he came to write the prize-winning work and his emotional response to hearing it for the first time. Amaranthine is the first composition to appear from The Ariel B...