Why'd They Put That In A Museum?

About Why'd They Put That In A Museum?

Art. Objects. Museums. Ideas. Questions. What happens when you put things on display and invite people in to look? Have you ever seen art on display and wondered, “Why’d they put that in a museum?” Museum curator Sarah Lees and author Beth Bacon start each conversation with one item, in one specific museum. We explore the object, its history, and the cultural ideas surrounding it. In the end, that object takes on new meaning as listeners discover the fascinating reasons it ended up in a museum.

Publisher

Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Jan 2025

Latest episode

17 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

22 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Oct 2026

   Acrobats Leaping over a Bull

   Beth Bacon and curator Sarah Lees are back for season three of “Why’d They Put That in a Museum?” This episode focuses on a listener request that traces back to an archeological site on the island of Crete from way back in 1900. When British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans excavated the site at Knossos, he invited an artist named Emile Gilliéron (and Gilliéron’s son) to document what they found using watercolors. “Acrobats Leaping over a Bull” is Gilliéron’s depiction of a Bronze age wall pain...

2. 

   22 Nov 2025

   Jackson Pollock

   In this final episode of Season 2, hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees discuss their ongoing topic, “Why did they put that in a museum?” by focusing on an artist who is frequently the subject of this question: Jackson Pollock. They examine his masterpiece 'One: Number 31, 1950' which can be found in New York's Museum of Modern Art. They talk about Pollocks techniques and the community he was part of. They muse about abstract art and its common misconceptions. Sarah explains that Pollock's u...

3. 

   15 Nov 2025

   Maman, or giant spider, by Louise Bourgeois

   Is bigger better when it comes to art? That’s one of the questions that Sarah Lees and Beth Bacon ponder in their discussion of the life and work of Louise Bourgeois. In this episode of Why'd They Put That in a Museum?, hosts Beth Bacon and Sarah Lees focus on the sculpture Maman, an enormous metal sculpture of a spider. Bourgeois was in her 70s and 80’s when she increased the scale of her art and around that time, her work began to command significant attention in the contemporary art world....

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 23 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

34

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.