Verso: An Art History Podcast
Verso: An Art History Podcast explores the hidden stories behind famous and forgotten masterpieces, uncovering art heists, secret paintings, scandals, and more. Hosted by Emma Laramie, the show reveals the drama and unexpected connections between art and culture, changing how listeners see the world around them.
Episodes
King Tut and the Making of a Modern Obsession
How did a relatively unknown pharaoh become one of the most recognizable figures in the world—and help change what modernity looked like?When Howard Carter’s team discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, the West was already fascinated by ancient Egypt. But the tomb gave that fascination a new protagonist, a stream of astonishing photographs and the suspense of a story unfolding one sealed door at a
The Afterlife of Albert Barnes
Albert Barnes spent decades building an institution that was never supposed to become an ordinary museum. After his death, the collection stayed together—but the Foundation around it changed dramatically.This episode follows the battles over Barnes’s rules, the people who inherited them, and the eventual move from Merion to downtown Philadelphia. It asks a larger question: when we preserve a legac
Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky, and Who Really Invented Abstract Art
In 1914, Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky showed work in the same building in Malmö. He had five paintings in the grand galleries and a reviewer comparing them to bacteria. She had one conventional landscape in a women's section near the fire exit, and ten enormous abstract canvases she'd finished seven years earlier sitting somewhere else entirely.A century later, that coincidence has
John Singer Sargent, Madame X, and The Strap That Scandalized Paris
In 1884, John Singer Sargent unveiled a portrait at the Paris Salon that he was certain would make him the most celebrated painter in France. Instead, a single fallen shoulder strap turned into the scandal of the season, and the room laughed at both the artist and his sitter.The woman in the black dress was Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, a New Orleans–born Creole beauty who had spent nearly her
The Mystery of the Lost Amber Room
The Amber Room was an entire chamber made of carved amber, backed in gold, and once called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Prussia built it, gave it to Russia, and the Nazis looted it in 1941. In 1945 it vanished in the ruins of Königsberg and has never been found. For eighty years people have searched mines, lakes, bunkers, and shipwrecks for it. This is the story of what most likely happened to
The Art Thief and His Attic Full of Masterpieces
Stéphane Breitwieser stole more than 200 works of art from the museums of Europe, hid them in his mother's attic, and swore he was never a thief. No masks, no weapons, no ransom. Just a young couple in nice clothes, walking out in broad daylight with a fortune in Renaissance paintings, silver, and ivory.He called museums "prisons for art." He said he only stole for love, never money.
The Salon des Refusés: How Napoleon III Accidentally Opened the Door to Modern Art
In 1863, the Paris Salon rejected thousands of paintings, including Édouard Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and a nervous Napoleon III made a snap political decision: exhibit the rejects and let the public decide. The Salon des Refusés became the scandal of the season, and the laughingstock exhibition quietly set off a chain of rejections, refusals, and workarounds that led straight to the f
The Painter and the Guillotine
Jacques-Louis David painted Antoine and Marie Anne Lavoisier in 1788, in one of the most famous portraits of the 18th century. Six years later, Lavoisier was guillotined during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, and David, now a member of the Committee of General Security, helped run the machine that sent him there. This is the story of the painter, the chemist who founded modern chemist
When Bob Dylan Traded an Andy Warhol Painting for a Couch
In 1966, Bob Dylan left Andy Warhol's Factory with a silver Elvis painting tied to the roof of his car, then traded it for a couch. This episode follows that Double Elvis through the Factory, the supposed Dylan–Warhol rivalry, Edie Sedgwick, and a much stranger truth, all the way to its home at MoMA and a $27 million auction that proves Dylan should've kept it. A story about myth, fame, an
Whistler v. Ruskin: The Trial Over a Pot of Paint
In 1877, the most powerful art critic in Britain published a review calling the painter James McNeill Whistler a fraud. Whistler sued him for libel. What followed was a two-day trial in which paintings were held upside down, a jury of twelve people was asked to determine the future of art criticism, and the whole thing ended with a verdict of one farthing in damages.Ruskin and Whistler never met.
Robert Mapplethorpe and the Corcoran: The Imperfect Moment
In 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art canceled a Robert Mapplethorpe photography exhibition to protect the NEA from a congressional culture war. The decision backfired spectacularly, triggering mass resignations, donor defections, and a chilling effect on American arts institutions that lasted decades. The Corcoran never fully recovered. It closed in 2014, its $2 billion collection given away for f
The Disappearance of Agnes Martin
In the summer of 1967, Agnes Martin walked into a New York gallery, handed over her brushes, her canvases, and her stretchers, and asked the dealer to give them away to young artists. Then she got in a truck and left. She would not make another painting for four and a half years.The art world didn't know what to make of it. But then, the art world had never quite known what to make of Agnes Ma
Han van Meegeren: The Last Vermeer
In 1945, Dutch painter Han van Meegeren was arrested for selling a stolen Vermeer to Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering. His defense: he hadn't sold a Vermeer at all. He'd painted it himself.This episode tells the full story of the twentieth century's most audacious art forger — and the story most people don't know. Van Meegeren didn't just fool the art world's greatest expe
How Michelangelo's David Became Everybody's Symbol
Michelangelo's David was commissioned for a cathedral buttress 150 feet off the ground. But it quickly became one of the most potent political symbols in all of art history.In this episode, we trace the full political life of the most famous sculpture in the Western world: from the abandoned block of marble that sat in a Florentine courtyard for thirty-five years, to the placement debate that
Bernini vs Borromini, Part II - What Winning Actually Costs
TW: Discussions of suicideIn Part Two of our deep dive into the Bernini and Borromini rivalry, the stakes get personal. With a new pope in power and Bernini in disgrace, Borromini finally had what he'd spent a decade working toward: the commissions, the recognition, and the satisfaction of having been right all along. It didn't last. What followed was a slow, painful unraveling — a series
Bernini vs Borromini, Part I - The Rivalry that Shaped Rome
In 17th century Rome, architecture wasn't just art, it was power. The Catholic Church was fighting to reassert its authority over a changing world, and the artists who could build something transcendent enough to make people believe were the most valuable people in the city. Two men defined that moment more than anyone else: Gianlorenzo Bernini, the charming, theatrical papal favorite who unde
Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Made Vincent van Gogh Immortal
You know Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers. Starry nights. The guy who cut off his ear. One of the most famous artists in history.But you probably don't know Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the woman who made him famous.When Jo's husband Theo died in 1891 after just twenty-one months of marriage, she was left with a baby, no income, and hundreds of paintings that critics called "nearly vulgar." S
KILL LIES ALL: Tony Shafrazi and the Vandalism of Guernica
In February 1974, a young artist named Tony Shafrazi walked into the Museum of Modern Art, pulled out a can of cherry-red spray paint, and wrote "KILL LIES ALL" across Picasso's Guernica—the most famous antiwar painting in the worldHis act made headlines, exactly as he'd planned. But was it protest or publicity stunt? Political intervention or narcissistic vandalism? And how did
The Mark Rothko Estate Trial: The Art World's Own Little Watergate
Content Warning: Discussion of suicideIn 1970, Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko was found dead in his New York studio, leaving behind nearly 800 paintings worth millions. Within weeks, his executors—including his trusted accountant Bernard Reis—had signed contracts turning over his entire life's work to the Marlborough Gallery under terms that would shock the art world.What followed
The Ghent Altarpiece, Part III - The Toothache That Saved the Ghent Altarpiece
Adolf Hitler believed the Ghent Altarpiece contained a coded map to supernatural relics that would grant him power. He and Hermann Göring competed to possess it. They built a state-of-the-art storage facility a mile underground in an Austrian salt mine to house it alongside 6,577 other stolen paintings—works by Michelangelo, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens, and, most importantly, Van Eyck.Then, in Apri
The Ghent Altarpiece, Part II - The Theft No One Wanted to Solve
On April 11, 1934, The Righteous Judges and Saint John the Baptist panels from the Ghent Altarpiece vanished from Saint Bavo Cathedral. The investigation was bungled from the start—police arrived late, didn't seal the scene, took no photographs. Then came thirteen ransom letters from someone signed "D.U.A." who seemed hurt that the bishop wouldn't cooperate with his "gentlem
The Ghent Altarpiece, Part I - The Art of Protection
In 1432, Jan and Hubert van Eyck completed a painting so revolutionary it changed art forever. The Ghent Altarpiece introduced techniques no one had seen before—translucent oil glazes, luminous depth, obsessive detail. It was made for one chapel in one Belgian city. But because it was so brilliant, everyone else decided they deserved it too.Over the next six centuries, the Ghent Altarpiece became
MoMA, The CIA, and the Weaponization of Abstract Expressionism
Jackson Pollock died in a car crash in 1956, two years before his painting Number 12 was crated up and shipped to Basel to start its run in of the most important American art exhibitions of the decade. He never knew his work would be used to fight a war. He never knew the CIA was involved. He never got to say no.This is the story of how Abstract Expressionism became a weapon in the Cold War, deplo
Elizabeth Siddal and the Tragic Fate of Ophelia
Elizabeth Siddal was the face of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—the model for John Everett Millais's iconic Ophelia painting and the lover of Dante Gabriel Rossetti for ten years before they married. But was she a victim of a toxic relationship, a talented artist erased by history, or something more complicated?This episode explores her life as a model and artist in Victorian England, her deca
The Theft That Made the Mona Lisa Famous (and Nearly Destroyed Picasso)
On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. What followed wasn't just the greatest art heist of all time—it was a scandal that destroyed friendships, exposed the hypocrisy of the avant-garde, and transformed a Renaissance portrait into the most famous painting in the world.This is the story of Vincenzo Peruggia, the Italian glazer who walked out of the museum with the painting
Verso | Official Trailer
Verso: Stories from the Back of the CanvasThe theft that changed everything. The sale that rewrote the rules. The friendship that ended a movement.Host Emma Laramie uncovers the stories the art world forgot—or never told in the first place. Each episode reveals what really happened behind a masterpiece, a movement, or a moment that shaped art history.Because the human story is always more interest
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