Sir Peter Bazalgette has had a long and productive career in the arts. He is currently non-executive chairman of ITV, where we meet for a wide-ranging conversation. Peter has been Chairman of English National Opera and Chair of Arts Council England (2012 until 2016). He is currently The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and author of The Empathy Instinct: How to Create a More Civil Society (2017). We talk about the future of the BBC (he is one of the most influential men in...

  Censorship of the arts is on the increase: both that imposed from above, by the state, but also from below, with artists calling for works to be taken down from display. This episode of Behind the Scenes of the Museum brings together three experts – Julia Farrington, Associate Arts Producer at Index on Censorship, artists mentor Manick Govinda, and the art critic JJ Charlesworth – to discuss the significant cases, and analyse what is going on: what is new (as compared to the old style Mary...

  Tiffany visits the Tenement Museum in New York with its President, Kevin Jennings. Located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the museum is formed from two historical tenement buildings, which were home to an estimated 15,000 immigrants from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011. Starting in 97 Orchard street, they discuss the aims of the Tenement Museum: is it political?; does and should the museum take sides?; the history of immigration policy; the...

Tiffany Jenkins goes to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to talk to its director Luke Syson, art historian Jill Burke and Michael Savage (aka Grumpy Art Historian) about Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia, and rehanging paintings in the age of #MeToo.   ► ART WORK DISCUSSED  John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs  Raphael’s Lucretia Sandro Botticelli's The Story of Lucretia  Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia Titian's Rape of Europa  Nicholas Poussin  I Modi - The Sixteen Pleasures   ► ...

Vera Worth was a good looking shop girl from Bristol, who followed fashion with a passion. In the 1930s, after marrying John, she scrimped and saved to buy a glamorous gown fit for a film star, and wore it to an important company dinner dance. The knockout dress and its jacket were designed by flamboyant designer to the stars, Elsa Schiaparelli. Photographs of Vera in the dress (available on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @behindthemuseum) show her looking fabulous, beaming; onlookers are...

Tiffany and Fiammetta Rocco, culture correspondent at The Economist, visit the Africa Museum in Brussels, which reopened at the end of 2018 after a 5 year renovation. They tour the museum with its Director-General, Guido Gryseels, and assess its attempts to come to terms with a horrific past.  The Africa Museum (officially called the Royal Museum for Central Africa) grew out of the Brussels International Exposition of 1897. The Colonial Pavilion, located at King Leopold II of Belgium’s...

Tiffany is joined by the art critic and TV documentary maker, Waldemar Januszczak, the writer Michael Savage (Grumpy Art Historian), and the ex-museum director, Tom Freudenheim (Old Fart Thoughts On Museums) to discuss and disagree over whether arts sponsorship should be ethical.  They reflect on the significance of the decision taken in March 2019 by the National Portrait Gallery and the Sackler Trust not to proceeded with a £1m donation, questioning to what extent we are seeing a tipping...

In this episode Tiffany talks to Jill Burke, a prize-winning researcher in Italian Renaissance art history, senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and associate editor of Renaissance Studies, about the Renaissance Nude.  They talk about the hidden influences and impact of the Renaissance nude upon the social and political reality of Italy – why did representations of the nude proliferate in this period? What kind of society produced them? What did they mean? What was the difference...

  The Maqdala Treasures and the Sarr-Savoy Report on Repatriation Tiffany talks to the director of the V&A in London, Tristram Hunt, about who owns culture and what to do with looted objects. They take a close look at a stunning gold crown, seized by the British Army during the 1868 Abyssinian Expedition (modern day Ethiopia), and discuss President Macron’s commissioned Sarr-Savoy report on returning African artefacts acquired in the colonial era.     ► PICTURES: INSTAGRAM -...

Introducing 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum', in which Tiffany Jenkins, talks to key figures about the big ideas rocking the cultural world, charting the trends and dissecting the controversies.  Hosted by Tiffany Jenkins. Produced by Jac Phillimore. Twitter: @behindthemuseum  Instagram: @behindthemuseum Website: https://tiffanyjenkinsinfo.com Music:  Signature tune:  Nick Vander Black Kopal - Galaxy I https://nickvander.bandcamp.com/   ► Additional music by: Ross Bugden • Follow Ross Bugden...