Trevor Schoonmaker, Sarah Beetham

Episode No. 456 features museum director Trevor Schoonmaker and art historian Sarah Beetham.

Schoonmaker, the director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, joins host Tyler Green to discuss how art museums engage America's history. The Nasher, of which Schoonmaker was the chief curator before becoming director earlier this year, is a sector-leader in addressing under-represented histories in its collecting, exhibition and programming practices.

Beetham is an assistant professor of art history at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She came onto the program in May 2019 to discuss art and its relationship to monuments and memorials in the United States. Beetham's forthcoming book on the subject is titled “Monumental Crisis: Accident, Vandalism and the Civil War Citizen Soldier.” It will examine how monuments have become central to a range of American discourses in the decades since the Civil War.