Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time

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Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time

Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time

Creator: The Met

Stories of the materials used in making art are often as thought-provoking and illuminating as the objects themselves. From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Immaterial examines the materials of art and what they can reveal about history and humanity. Each episode looks at a single material: paper, cl...

EN-US United States Arts & Culture

Recent Episodes

19 episodes
Time: Keeping Digital Art Alive

Time: Keeping Digital Art Alive

How do art conservators save video art from obsolescence?
If a painting on canvas rips or a marble sculpture shatters to pieces, art conservator...

2024-09-09 20:00:00 2234
Wood: The Most Musical Tree in the World

Wood: The Most Musical Tree in the World

How did one tree become a world-famous tonewood for guitars?
Deep in the forests of Belize, a wood importer from Florida discovered a rare tree...

2024-08-26 20:00:00 2476
Trash: The Archaeology of Rubbish

Trash: The Archaeology of Rubbish

An archaeologist and an artist walk into a dump… 
For most of us, we throw our garbage to the curb, and it disappears from our lives. But to som...

2024-08-12 20:00:00 2098
Chia: Beyond Superfoods and Infomercials

Chia: Beyond Superfoods and Infomercials

What can the tiny chia seed reveal about the history of oil painting?
For centuries, one of the most prized mediums of art at museums like the M...

2024-07-29 20:00:00 2651
Blankets and Quilts: Threads of Identity

Blankets and Quilts: Threads of Identity

What happens when our most intimate possessions end up in art museums?
Blankets comfort and keep us warm. They accompany us through our lives. T...

2024-07-15 20:00:00 2437
Space, Part 2: Behind the Scenes at The Met

Space, Part 2: Behind the Scenes at The Met

What is hidden in the 'empty' spaces of an art museum?
The Met is more than a museum of art. It is a city unto itself: population 2,000, with a...

2024-07-01 20:00:00 2319
Space, Part 1: Giving Form to a Feeling

Space, Part 1: Giving Form to a Feeling

How does an artist give presence to absence?
Bronze, wood, paint, and stone—classic materials for art making. But what if you're trying and stru...

2024-06-17 20:00:00 1976
Stone: Making and Breaking Legacies

Stone: Making and Breaking Legacies

What happens when the unbreakable breaks?
Throughout art museums around the world, you’ll find ancient stone statues of rulers and marble monume...

2024-06-03 20:00:00 2571
Introducing: Immaterial Season 2

Introducing: Immaterial Season 2

What is hiding in the material choices of artists and makers?
Immaterial, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s marquee podcast, is back with eight m...

2024-05-21 00:00:00 170
Bonus Episode: Tarot

Bonus Episode: Tarot

Grab a cup of tea and join us for a bonus episode on tarot. We learn about the cards from their patrician origins to the present day, when tarot is be...

2022-09-13 20:00:00 1570
Metals, Part Two

Metals, Part Two

In the second part of our alchemical journey, we meet what ancient philosophers called the “noble” metals: mercury, silver, and gold. How did a ninete...

2022-08-30 20:00:00 2973
Metals, Part One

Metals, Part One

Philosophers and scientists have tried for millennia to crack the code of alchemy: the art of turning lead into gold. But alchemy goes much deeper tha...

2022-08-16 20:00:00 3408
Linen

Linen

Take a spin through The Met and you’ll find thousands of items made from linen. From a 3,500 year old sheet from Ancient Egypt, to a Giorgio Armani su...

2022-08-02 20:00:00 2648
Jade

Jade

Deep in the riverbeds of Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island, you’ll find a stone that’s as hard as steel and as green as the first breath of the eart...

2022-07-19 20:00:00 2462
Shells

Shells

It all begins with a sea creature—a snail called a conch—and the mathematically perfect spiral it transforms into a home, which we humans then put to...

2022-07-05 20:00:00 2382
Clay

Clay

In seventeenth-century Europe, some of the wealthiest women in the world were doing something strange with the ceramic jars in their curiosity cabinet...

2022-06-21 20:00:00 2973
Concrete

Concrete

Concrete is full of contradictions. First it’s dust, then liquid, then hard as stone. It’s both rough and smooth, it’s modern and ancient, it can pres...

2022-06-07 20:00:00 2225
Paper

Paper

Valentines, comic books, cigarette cards and more—all of these objects can be meaningful, but what does it mean to house them in a museum? Paper holds...

2022-05-24 23:17:15 2315
Introducing: Immaterial

Introducing: Immaterial

Introducing Immaterial, a brand new podcast from The Met. Hosted by poet Camille T. Dungy, Immaterial examines the materials of art and what they can...

2022-05-08 08:31:45 234
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