Monocle on Culture
Robert Bound and guests explore what’s new in art, film, books, and media. Expect lively discussions, in-depth interviews, and expert insights.
Latest Episodes
How do you write a column?
We ask columnists Simon Kuper, Tim Dowling and Tabatha Southey how they approach the tricky art of column writing. How do you choose your subject? How do you keep it amusing? And how do you make your own experiences relevant to your audience? Plus we go back to school with…
Top draw
Rob Bound analyses the results of ‘The Art Newspaper’ exhibition and its museum-attendance survey for 2014 to find out which institutions come out on top around the world. Is it the masters or the contemporaries who are pulling in the crowds?
What gets washed up?
Culture is trawling the shores of Britain, Brazil and beyond this week to ask ‘What gets washed up?’ We examine ancient objects that tell tales of London’s past and track the authors of messages in bottles, plus we find out how a rubber duck can help you find a man…
How do you write about fashion?
This week Rob Bound asks writer Charlie Porter, chief fashion critic at the ‘New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman and online style guru Nick Wooster how to write about fashion.
Play it again
We go crate-digging with ‘Times’ rock and pop critic Will Hodgkinson, and Matt Sullivan, co-founder of record label Light in the Attic, who tell us how you find a lost record and then get it rereleased. We also discover a few of our own – from exotica in Portland to…
Font of knowledge
This week we ask, ‘how do you talk about design?’ Answering are ‘Helvetica’ director Gary Hustwit, the writer and Design Museum founder Stephen Bayley and Moma’s director of merchandising. Contains: typefaces, cars, singing shop tills.
Is everyone a curator?
We look into the use – and misuse – of that much-thrown around word “curator”; can a shop window be curated like a fine-art gallery can be? We speak to art experts, writers and delve in to the murky world of PR to try and pick out who the curator…
Picture this
Karen Krizanovich recaps this year’s Oscars, we judge books by their covers at the Book Illustration Competition 2015, discover a video store that’s trying to digitise forgotten VHS tapes, investigate Hanoi’s forgotten ’60s rock’n’roll scene, and there’s live music from Oslo’s Carmen Villain. Plus, we head to Borja in Spain…
And the nominees are…
We meet the editors and designers responsible for ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Oscar nominations, in Toronto we see a play that’s been an unlikely hit, and hear from a centre in Portland hoping to boost the city’s arts scene. Plus, we take a tour of ‘Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as…
Groovy Bob
A visit to Pace Gallery’s wonderful new show about notorious 1960s art dealer Robert Fraser, we hear from artist John Gerrard about the physical side of the internet, head to Festival sur le Niger music festival in Mali and Megaphono in Ottawa, and Milwaukee’s Field Report play a live session.
