Woven Histories: Inside the Frieze Masters Podcast Series
Photo Credits: Frieze
Frieze Masters’ Woven Histories podcast series unfolds as a thoughtful meditation on how history is constructed, remembered and reinterpreted. Presented in collaboration with dunhill, the seven-episode series captures live conversations recorded at Frieze Masters, bringing together artists, curators and cultural thinkers who challenge linear narratives and invite deeper reflection on art’s enduring power. Each episode acts as a thread, weaving personal memory, cultural legacy and artistic inquiry into a richer historical fabric.
At the heart of the series is curator Arturo Galansino, Director General of Palazzo Strozzi, who hosts the episodes with a sensitivity shaped by his role in the 2025 Frieze Masters Talks programme. Filmed in Florence for an intimate profile with dunhill, Galansino frames each conversation as a meeting point between past and present, revealing how curatorial vision can open new pathways through art history without erasing its complexities.
The opening episode, Confessions in the Museum, sets an emotional and disarming tone. Artist Tracey Emin and British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan speak candidly about their personal relationships with art, touching on class, illness and the courage required to speak honestly within institutional spaces. Their exchange reminds listeners that museums are not neutral containers, but living sites shaped by human vulnerability and conviction.
Historical dialogue deepens in Mark Rothko and Fra Angelico, where Christopher Rothko and curator Carl Strehlke trace unexpected affinities between abstract expressionism and Italian Renaissance spirituality. By positioning Rothko within a longer continuum of sacred visual experience, the episode reframes abstraction as an emotional and philosophical inheritance rather than a rupture from the past.
Other episodes widen the lens further. Black Atlas examines the power of Black imagery with Edward George and Matthew Harle, revealing how images can speak beyond their makers’ intentions. In The Last Mughals, William Dalrymple challenges colonial narratives by exploring Mughal art, poetry and politics, foregrounding cultural resilience in the face of imperial disruption. Together, these conversations insist on history as contested, layered and alive.
Fashion and form come into focus in Fashion As Art and Twisted Classic. Curators Émilie Hammen and Elizabeth Way unpack fashion’s shifting cultural status, while Glenn Brown reflects on collecting and distorting Old Master works to create new meanings. The series concludes with Sculpting as a New Humanism, where Antony Gormley considers sculpture as a means of reconnecting the human body to space, matter and shared experience.
Woven Histories sits alongside Frieze’s wider commitment to responsible cultural practice. As an Active Member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, Frieze aligns its storytelling with environmental sustainability, reinforcing the idea that rethinking history also means rethinking how art is produced, presented and preserved. The result is a podcast series that does more than look back, it asks how we might listen differently moving forward.