Smarthistory: art history as conversation

Smarthistory is a wonderfully simple concept: landmark artworks presented with conversational narration (sometimes audio, sometimes video) by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Sometimes they focus on a single work, as a professor would in a lecture; in other tracks, they stand in a murmur-filled gallery and comment on the hubbub around them. I have friends who sound just like Zucker and Harris when you get them talking about art - relishing the give and take of ideas; happily tossing out half-formed hypotheses about intent and context; gently mocking art cliches, curation cliches, and the (also often cliche) people passing through the gallery. And just as I would with my friends, I wanted to jump indignantly into the conversation, particularly when they started ripping on a museum-goer who was taking photos of both the paintings and the curation plaques (I do that too - it makes it easier to annotate paintings later), and questioning the general practice of photographing works that cost "only 45 cents" in the museum gift shop. First off, don't all art museums charge more than 45 cents for postcards these days? And who has space to store hundreds of postcards anyway? Whatever! (You can see they had me completely engaged).

I wish Smarthistory had existed when I lived hours from the nearest museum - it's like an emergency supplement of art appreciation for people who can't get to a real gallery. Kudos to Harris and Zucker.