Paris in the early 1900s was a magnet for convention-defying American women. It offered a delicious taste of freedom, which they used to explode the gender norms of their day, and to explore new kinds of art, literature, dance and design. In the process, they became arbiters of modernism.

This episode, we raise the curtain on the National Portrait Gallery’s <a href="https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/brilliant-exiles" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Brilliant Exiles” </a>exhibition with curator <a href="https://npg.si.edu/staff/robyn-asleson" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Robyn Asleson</a>. It features 60 trailblazing women, including the dancer, singer and spy Josephine Baker, and the bookshop owner Sylvia Beach, who took a chance on James Joyce. Also in the lineup: Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith, whose bustling nightclub became a hub for American jazz musicians, and Romaine Brooks, the painter who reinvented herself, and then reinvented herself again.

The exhibition runs from April 26, 2024, to February 23, 2025.

See the portraits we discussed:

<a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.90.85?destination=edan-search/default_search%3Fedan_local%3D1%26edan_q%3Dada%252Bbricktop" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ada “Bricktop” Smith, by Carl Van Vechten</a>

<a href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.95.105?destination=edan-search/default_search%3Fpage%3D1%26edan_local%3D1%26edan_q%3Djosephine%252Bbaker" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Josephine Baker, by Stanislaus Julian Walery</a>

<a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488221" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gertrude Stein, by Pablo Picasso</a>

<a href="https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/ulysses/sylvia-beach" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sylvia Beach, by Paul-Émile Bécat</a>

<a href="https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/brooks" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Romaine Brooks, self-portrait</a>

Podurama

Home

Trending

Personal

Your Podcasts

New Episodes

My Files

Favourite Episodes

Tags (Folders)

Recently Played

Bookmarks

Followed Playlists

Brilliant Exiles

PORTRAITS

AI Chapters

AI Insights

Reviews