"Questions and the search for answers, and the appreciation of beauty, and then wanting to share it with other people, to go look at it closely together. Then you realize you've got something that can feed you for the rest of your life as a career." - Emily Pegues, curator, National Gallery of Art.

Museum curators are an intimidating species. Those experts with their degrees. How could they possibly remember what it was like to walk into a museum for the first time and feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of history on display? How could they imagine what it’s like to be a visitor who doesn’t care about a landscape with cows? After all, we’re not born knowing the stories these paintings tell, or how to seek them out.

In the second episode in our series, we’re going to explore how a long look into an artwork can inadvertently engage another sense: hearing. Hearing the stories that a painting can tell. And the curators at the National Gallery are here to help. Help put us in the best possible position to receive these stories; help us listen to what these paintings are saying to us. And how to imagine these stories moving through the centuries, embracing us the way they once embraced them for the first time, and making them want to do what they do.

Learn more.

See the images.

Music Used:

The Blue Dot Sessions, “Gentle Son,” “Pinky,” “Origami Guitar,” “Arizona Moon,” “Tangeudo,” “The Melt,” “Lina My Queen,” “Brer Rhetta,” “Georgia Overdrive”