About the Audio Guide
Curious how European Paintings relate to contemporary concerns like family, relationships, class and identity? Listen to Met experts share their observations and respond to questions from viewers like you, including a psychoanalyst, food historian, photographer and poet. Paintings can be personal…what’s your take?
Playlist
5000. Introduction
Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800
NARRATOR:
Hello, and welcome to the European Paintings galleries.
In this Audio Guide, you’re invited to "look again" at some of The Met's much-loved masterpieces and discover...what’s compelling about them today?
[MONTAGE]
DR. ORNA GURALNIK:
It made me laugh a lot, this painting. It's just like, wild.
PRIYANCA RAO:
This painting really reminds me of my childhood.
RABBI SAMANTHA FRANK:
It's an image that maybe reinforces stereotypes, and it doesn't challenge you.
WOLOHOJIAN:
It's very much the way today you often have a registry when you get married and fill a household with wonderful things.
TIFFANY RACCO:
...even though it plays to a certain shock value, it likely wasn’t seen as bizarre per se.
NARRATOR:
You’ll hear ideas from Met curators and experts. And how they respond to questions and observations from visitors like you.
[MONTAGE]
LINDA CIVITELLO:
I'm a food historian.
JIM NATAL:
I’m a poet.
ORNA GURALNIK:
I am a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst.
BETHANY PASTORIAL:
I’m an equine photographer.
NARRATOR:
We all look through unique lenses. What appears? For some, it’s ideas about family and relationships. Others question how they present class or identity.
JIM NATAL:
You know, being human is still being human, whether you’re in the 1600s or in the 2000s.
NARRATOR:
Paintings can be personal, and these galleries hold endless perspectives across time. What’s yours?
This Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
- 5000. Introduction
- 5058. Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
- 5178. The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment
- 5079. Venus and Cupid
- 5075. Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
- 5179. The Harvesters
- 5238. Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
- 5237. A Bouquet of Flowers
- 5181. Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
- 5031. Merrymakers at Shrovetide
- 5224. The Annunciation
- 5162. Madonna and Child
- 5198. The Musicians
- 5874. View of Toledo
- 5026. Wolf and Fox Hunt
- 5104. The Fortune Teller
- 5180. Juan de Pareja
- 5235. Cottage Children
- 5019. Self-Portrait with Two Pupils
- 5020. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) and His Wife (Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze, 1758-1836)
- 5236. Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792)
Playlist
Contributors
Stephanie Archangel
Stephanie Archangel has been a curator in the History Department of the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands since 2016. She is co-author and co-creator of the exhibition Slavery (2021), The 80 Years of War (2018), and Here. Black in Rembrandt's Time (2020), on the depiction of people of African descent in European art of the 17th century. She has served on advisory boards at CODART, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Barron Bass (Narrator)
Barron B. Bass is a multi-disciplinary artist from Greenburgh, NY, with a career in theatre, TV, and voice-over. Barron was honored to appear among esteemed colleagues on the audio guide for The Met exhibition Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina. Having grown up amongst Pan-African communities throughout Westchester, he deems it a privilege to give voice to stories that help raise awareness about the greatness of black and brown peoples all over the world. Barron earned a BFA from Rutgers University in the MGSA program.
Linda Civitello
Linda Civitello is the author of the award-winning books Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight That Revolutionized Cooking, and Cuisine & Culture: A History of Food and People, which is used to teach food history in culinary schools. She is currently writing an article on food and racism; and a book entitled Food and Film from Prohibition to James Bond. Linda holds a B.A. degree from Vassar and a Ph.D. from UCLA.
Adam Eaker
Adam Eaker is an associate curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Met where he curated the exhibitions In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met and The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. Adam studied art history at Yale University and Columbia University, where he received his PhD in 2016. He is a specialist in Northern European and British painting of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries and the author of Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture, published in 2022.
Rabbi Samantha Frank
Rabbi Frank is a teacher and convener of community who serves Sanctuary NY, the Jewish Community Project, and formerly led Jewish educational programming at the 92nd Street Y. She is currently a Rabbinic Fellow at Temple Micah and contributed to Prophetic Voices: Renewing and Reimagining Haftarah. She is also co-creator of the Jewish educational resource, @Modern_Ritual on Instagram and at www.modernritual.org.
Kathy Calley Galitz
Kathryn Calley Galitz is an art historian and educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She is also the author of The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings and the forthcoming How to Read Portraits.
Dr. Orna Guralnik
Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is on the faculty of NYU postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis, and writes and teaches on the intersection of politics, dissociation and psychoanalysis. She is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies in Gender & Sexuality. She is the therapist on the Showtime documentary series Couples Therapy.
Photo credit: Sean McGing/Courtesy of SHOWTIME
Laura Hodges
Laura Hodges is an award-winning interior designer with a boutique firm in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area. She holds an interior design degree from the New York School of Interior Design and LEED accreditation for practicing sustainable design.
Annette Lareau
Annette Lareau is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the award-winning books Unequal Childhoods, Home Advantage, and Listening to People. She is the co-author, with Blair Sackett, of We Thought It Would be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America from the University of California Press. Based on new research, she is currently writing a book on wealthy families.
Jim Natal
Jim Natal is the author of the chapbook Étude in the Form of a Crow and five full-length poetry collections including Spare Room: Haibun Variations and Memory and Rain. His work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. A multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee and a literary presenter, he is co-founder of Conflux Press.
Alasdair Nicolson
Alasdair Nicolson is an award-winning composer, conductor, musician and festival director. He has written for numerous leading orchestras, ensembles, and opera companies including the English National Opera, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Nicolson is currently Festival Director for St Magnus International Festival.
Bethany Pastorial
Bethany Pastorial is a nationally published equine photographer specializing in commercial and fine art photography for equestrian businesses, horse owners and enthusiasts. Bethany also serves as a board member for the off-track Thoroughbred organization After the Races, founding member of the , and is an Industry Partner with the ASPCA Right Horse program.
David Pullins
David Pullins is an associate curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Met. David studied art history at Columbia University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 2016. At The Met, he co-curated the exhibition Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter, and he is responsible for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French, Italian and Spanish painting.
Tiffany Racco
Tiffany Racco is a research associate in the Department of European Paintings at The Met. Tiffany studied art history at the University of Delaware, where she received her PhD in 2017. She is a specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting. She joined The Met in 2021.
Priyanca Rao
Priyanca Rao is a wedding and documentary photographer in New York whose work has been featured in numerous publications. She received formal training in fashion design at the London College of Fashion and has been working in the photography and fashion design industry since 2003.
Dr. Shannen Dee Williams
Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of Dayton. She is the author of the award-winning Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle. A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Dr. Williams authored the award-winning column, “The Griot’s Cross,” published by the Catholic News Service from 2020 to 2022.
Stephan Wolohojian
Stephan Wolohojian is the John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge in the Department of European Paintings at The Met. Stephan received his PhD from Harvard University and has been a curator in the department since 2015. At The Met, he curated the focus exhibition Velázquez Portraits: Truth in Painting.
