The Best Art History Podcasts (and Who Each One Is For)
Start with The Lonely Palette if you want one artwork per episode, The Great Women Artists for interviews, and ArtCurious for the strange stories. The rest depends on how you like your art history served.
How this list was made
We listened for storytelling, not credentials. A good art podcast makes you see a painting through your earbuds, which is harder than it sounds.
For each show you get the format, the tone, and who it is actually for.
The Lonely Palette: one painting at a time
Tamar Avishai picks one artwork per episode and starts by asking museum visitors to describe it cold, which is funnier and more useful than any lecture.
Episodes run about twenty minutes and need zero background. It is the closest thing in audio to what we do in writing.
Who it is for: complete beginners, and anyone who thinks they hate audio guides.
The Great Women Artists: the missing half of the story
Katy Hessel interviews curators, writers, and artists about the women most textbooks skipped, from Artemisia Gentileschi to painters working today.
The tone is warm and quick, and every episode leaves you with a name you want to look up.
Who it is for: anyone who noticed the usual lists are almost all men.
ArtCurious: the strange stories
Jennifer Dasal built the show on one idea: art history is far weirder than school made it sound. Fakes, thefts, rivalries, and an early episode on the mysteries of Van Gogh’s death.
The back catalog is the draw here. It is bingeable the way true crime is bingeable.
Who it is for: listeners who came for gossip and stayed for the paintings.
A brush with...: artists on what made them
Ben Luke of The Art Newspaper asks living artists the same deep questions: which artworks shaped you, what music do you work to, what does art do.
Long, slow, and generous. You learn the whole canon sideways, through the eyes of people who use it.
Who it is for: patient listeners who want depth over speed.
The Week in Art: keeping up
Also from The Art Newspaper, this is the news show: exhibitions, auctions, museum politics, discoveries.
Who it is for: anyone who wants to follow the art world as it happens rather than study its past.
Talk Art: enthusiasm, industrial quantities
Actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament interview artists, musicians, and actors who collect. The tone is two friends who cannot believe their luck.
Who it is for: contemporary art fans, and people who like their culture with celebrities in it.
If you prefer reading to listening
A podcast fills a commute. A newsletter fills the two minutes of coffee before the day starts, and you can stare at the painting while you read.
That is what we make: one painting per story, told for its strangest details, free for 130,000 readers. And when a show sends you down a rabbit hole, our art history timeline and our guide on how to learn art history will catch you.
Questions readers ask
What is the best art history podcast for beginners?
The Lonely Palette. One artwork per episode, twenty minutes, no background needed.
Which art podcast should I binge first?
ArtCurious. The back catalog of strange stories works in any order, like a good anthology.
Are there podcasts about women artists?
Yes, The Great Women Artists by Katy Hessel is entirely devoted to them, both historical and living.
Do I need to see the artworks while listening?
It helps. Most shows post the works on their websites, so save the episode art for when you are off the treadmill.
