In our fourth episode, 'Money and the Museum' your hosts Alice Acland and Tash Waddell discuss the history, social politics and discourses around money and art and its manifestation in museum spaces. We talk about how blockbuster exhibitions can be a useful scholarly impetus but also how the 'spectacle' of the modern exhibition can sometimes be prioritised at the expense of other facets of artist's work. We discuss the museum gift shop (of which we are both big fans!) and the future of the exhibition as a tourist destination in the age of Covid-19. 

The Medium of the Museum is a conversation twice a month which examines the responsibilities of museums and galleries in modern society through a lens of history, culture and thematic insights.

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Our recommendations
The National Gallery tour of the exhibition 'Artemisia' (£8 to watch the film)
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/artemisia-curator-led-exhibition-film

BBC 4, 'Inside Museums, Episode 4' (Katy Hessel of the Great Women Artists and 'Artemisia' curator Letizia Treves tour the exhibition) (Free to watch)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ng7w

Links for further reading

'What Makes a Blockbuster Exhibition', Google Arts and Culture
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/what-makes-a-blockbuster-exhibition-royal-academy-of-arts/YAUxkfQOWgoe3Q?hl=en

'Blockbuster Exhibitions Reimagined Online', ArtFund
https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/more-to-see-and-do/features/how-to-stay-connected-to-museums-online-10-june-24-june-2020

S.J. Freedberg, Gervase Jackston-Stops and Richard E. Spear, 'On "Art History and the 'Blockbuster' Exhibition"'
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3051024?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

'Future of the Blockbuster' Talk by the Association for Art History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4XA6fQxj3U&t=3121s


Many thanks to Immy Patron for creating our podcast graphic and Theo Young-Smith for our jingle!