FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Art Bytes Offers Casual, Accessible Conversations with Artists, Collectors and More

Kansas City, MO. Sept. 25, 2024–The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has announced the launch date of Friday, Oct. 4 for its newest podcast series. Art Bytes episodes are geared toward listeners who have an interest in art but don’t necessarily know a great deal about it. Each standalone episode takes the listener behind the art on the walls and into the fascinating stories of how artists work, how art is made, and how the world of art is filled with diversity.

“The Nelson-Atkins is constantly exploring creative ways to provide access to some of the most interesting voices in the art world today,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “Art Bytes is a complementary continuation of the museum’s audio content strategy that began with the award-winning podcast A Frame of Mind. This is an immediately accessible way to tell interesting stories through an organic and fun conversation.”

Five of the 20-minute Art Bytes episodes drop on Oct. 4. Following that initial launch, a new episode will drop the first Friday of most every month. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kathleen Leighton, Media Relations & Production Manager, with the technical assistance of Ricky Anderson, Lead Videographer.

“Having been a broadcast journalist for several decades, I’m always surprised and delighted by the interesting stories we are able to tell at the museum,” Leighton said. “We have terrific access in the art world to a wide variety of people. We wanted to bring conversations with some of them to a broad audience who wouldn’t need special knowledge to find them fun and engaging.”

The first five episodes include a conversation with comedian Cheech Marin- formerly of Cheech and Chong- who has collected art for years and whose collection is now housed in a Southern California museum. Marin visited the Nelson-Atkins to see the exhibition A Layered Presence / Una presencia estratificada, which featured the work of 22 area artists with ties to Latin America.

The exhibition was a delightful surprise to Marin, who was so impressed that he added to his collection by purchasing one of the works by Israel Alejandro García García. Mojado No. 1 explores the immigrant experience, drawing from the artist’s practice of collecting images, objects, and stories from underrepresented diasporic communities.

Other voices that will be heard on the initial episodes of Art Bytes include Elias Crespin, the Venezuelan artist who began his career as an engineer and now creates massive, magical sculptures; Samantha Koslow of Christie’s Auction House at Rockefeller Plaza, who offers a peek behind the scenes of a high end art auction; art therapist Sherri Jacobs, who explains how making art can actually reduce sadness, anger and frustration; and Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Senior Curator of European Arts, who discusses the public fascination with immersive art experiences.

Art Bytes is the second podcast offering of the Nelson-Atkins. A Frame of Mind launched in 2022 as a five-part podcast featuring stories that explored issues such as race, representation, identity, and belonging through personal histories and encounters with the museum. The second season of A Frame of Mind will drop in early 2025.