Death of an Artist

In February 2024, celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they choose to die together? And what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them?

In season 3 of Death of an Artist, journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael’s letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael’s friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers’ deaths and the final words they left behind.

Listen back to season 2, where Katy Hessel offers an inside look at how Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, changed everything about the landscape of modern art. And in season 1, host Helen Molesworth revisits the artist Ana Mendieta’s death and the trial that followed—interrogating both the silence and the protest that have accompanied her story ever since.

Death of an Artist Season 1 is a co-production between Pushkin Industries, Somethin’ Else, and Sony Music Entertainment.

Death of an Artist Season 2 is a co-production between Pushkin Industries and Samizdat Audio.

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Episoder(21)

Episode 3: The Collector

1942. Midtown. Peggy Guggenheim arrives, opens a gallery and gives hungry artists hope.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

31 Mai 202433min

Episode 2: Inner Rhythm

1936. Brooklyn. A young Lee Krasner leaves home and starts to create a kind of art America has never seen before.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

24 Mai 202429min

Episode 1: Crash

1956. Paris. An artist named Lee Krasner learns that her husband is dead. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

17 Mai 202421min

Death of an Artist Season 2: Krasner and Pollock

On May 17th, Death of an Artist returns with an all new season hosted by Katy Hessel about the woman who made the modern art world: Lee Krasner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3 Mai 20243min

An Epilogue: Live from A.I.R. Gallery

A live audience and curator Patricia Margarita Hernandez join Helen at the A.I.R. gallery in this epilogue to the series. The conversation moves from generational shifts in the artworld to Helen’s own...

20 Des 202231min

The Numbers

In the wake of the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements, art museums began publicly touting their dedication to diversity. In this episode, we hear from two arts journalists about whether there are...

4 Nov 202222min

Episode 6: The Reckoning

Today, Carl Andre lives in the same apartment where Ana fell to her death. Helen investigates and grapples with what his not guilty verdict means and chips away at the silence the art world has used t...

21 Okt 202242min

Episode 5: The Silencing

Carl Andre is acquitted. Decades later, the art world remains divided about his innocence. In order to protect Carl, the art world maintained a strict separation between the art and the artist and use...

14 Okt 202240min