The Metropolitan Museum of Art Launches Season Two of Immaterial

Hosted by poet Camille T. Dungy, the popular podcast returns with unexpected stories of art with guests including architect Frida Escobedo, writer Robert Macfarlane, and artists from Gee’s Bend, Alabama

(New York, June 4, 2024)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the premiere of the second season of its narrative nonfiction podcast, Immaterial. Each of the eight new episodes, which will be released biweekly starting today, centers on an individual material found in art across cultures and reveals its meaning through intimate and emotional stories told by makers, writers, and scholars. The materials in focus this season range from the traditional, like stone and wood, to the more unexpected, like space and trash, and the new season also features a compelling lineup of guests—including architect Frida Escobedo, mountaineer and writer Robert Macfarlane, and artists from Gee’s Bend, Alabama—along with the returning host, celebrated poet and writer Camille T. Dungy (Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden). As it did in its first season, Immaterial draws out the complexities of how histories are told through art and creativity. All episodes will be available free on The Met’s website and on demand across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher, or wherever podcasts are available.
 
Immaterial was created and produced by The Met in collaboration with Magnificent Noise. 
 
"We're excited to unveil a second season of the popular podcast Immaterial, which will take us on a whole new journey through personal narratives and an array of intriguing subjects," said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. "Forging connections across time and culture, these eight episodes will take listeners to unexpected areas of the Museum, deep within the collection, and celebrate the intertwining of art, creativity, and the world around us."
 
Season two begins with “Stone: Making and Breaking Legacies,” which explores what happens when a seemingly enduring material like stone breaks. Along with writer and mountaineer Robert Macfarlane, Met curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art Sarah Graff, and scholar Erhan Tamur, this episode features Museum conservator Carolyn Ricardelli, who, together with her team, spent 10 years putting together the broken pieces of one of The Met’s most famous Renaissance marble statues, Tullio Lombardo's Adam. Another episode in the season is “Space: Behind the Scenes at The Met,” which takes listeners into the inner sanctum of the Museum, to unknown spaces, with Met scientists, conservators, security guards, and architect Frida Escobedo. Throughout the series, Immaterial confronts difficult subjects facing today’s museums, such as cultural property, colonial histories, and issues of equity.

“It has been fascinating to look more closely at materials most of us interact with every day,” said Dungy. “Chia, that little seed that plumps up my morning energy smoothies, for example, also happens to be fueling a new way of thinking about fine art. And while I know that one person’s trash is another's treasure, before working on this season's episodes I hadn't spent much time considering how important trash piles have long been to the history of art. I'm really excited to be thinking differently about materials this season—from time to space to trash to seed oil, the materials we explore this season have me looking at the world in new ways.”
 
Released biweekly through the end of the summer, the latest episodes in Immaterial will reveal surprising narratives and offer a whole new slate of materials with which to dive into art and creativity. Season One—which was recommended by the Guardian and New York Magazine—is still available to stream on The Met’s website and wherever podcasts are available and features fascinating stories such as how Museum conservators race against time to make objects like valentines, comic books, and baseball cards last.
 
Immaterial is made possible by Dasha Zhukova Niarchos. Additional support is provided by the Zodiac Fund.

About Camille T. Dungy
Dungy is the author of the book-length narrative Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. She has also written four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, and edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University and her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.
 
About The Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens—businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day—who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Today, The Met displays tens of thousands of objects covering 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since its founding, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

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June 4, 2024

Contact:
Communications@metmuseum.org

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