MoMA’s podcast reveals the secret pursuits of modern artists
The Secret Lives of Artists is a new audio series exploring the unexpected talents and obsessions of the twentieth century's most celebrated figures. From abstract painters who ran for political office to composers moonlighting as television personalities, each episode uncovers the parallel lives that shaped their creative visions.
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The Museum of Modern Art has launched The Secret Lives of Artists, a podcast series that peels back the carefully curated public personas of twentieth century creative luminaries to reveal the obsessions, experiments and parallel vocations that consumed them behind closed doors. Each episode functions as a biographical portrait in sound, moving beyond the studio and concert hall to ask what artists did when no one was watching, and what those hidden pursuits might tell us about their formal work.
The series draws from MoMA’s extraordinary archive to animate the lives of figures whose contributions to modern art are assured, yet whose broader interests have been overlooked or forgotten. A painter known for abstract compositions also harboured political ambitions, running for office in New York. A woman whose role as a public garden gatekeeper defined her days painted her visions at night, channelling landscape and dream into private canvases. An avant garde composer appeared on television as a mushroom expert, bringing the same rigorous attention to taxonomy that governed his musical compositions.
These aren’t footnotes or trivia to be filed away. The podcast suggests something more integral: that the secret lives reveal the whole artist, the intellectual curiosity and restless energy that drove their most celebrated innovations. A passion for mycology, for urban planning, for political philosophy or botanical precision informs how we might understand their formal artistic output, the choices they made and the boundaries they refused to respect.
The series demonstrates MoMA’s commitment to deepening engagement with its collection through audio storytelling, making the lives of modern masters accessible to anyone with the curiosity to listen. Each episode expands the conversation beyond canvas and score, inviting audiences to consider how an artist’s obsessions, both public and private, constitute the full measure of their legacy.
The Secret Lives of Artists is available to stream wherever podcasts are found, with new episodes released on a regular schedule through the Museum of Modern Art’s audio platform.
Imagery courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art (@themuseumofmodernart).