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Dr. Doug Roble, the Creative Director of Software at Digital Domain, the multiple Academy Award-winning visual effects studio in Venice, California, talks about the history of special effects in filmmaking and explains the art and science of creating them.   

Dr. Sarah Henry, chief curator of the Museum of the City of New York, and Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt’s senior curator of contemporary design, discuss the results of our contest to find the top 10 objects that tell the story of New York. 

Sculptor Will Ryman discusses his exhibition of new site-specific works at the Paul Kasmin Galleries in Chelsea, Anyone and No One, on view February 16—March 24. Formerly a playwright whose work was largely influenced by Absurdist philosophy, Ryman's works incorporate autobiographical, spiritual and art historical references.

Curators Keith Christiansen and Andrea Bayer discuss the exhibition "The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini," on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 18. It celebrates Italian 15th-century portraiture, bringing together approximately 160 works by Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Pisanello, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, and Antonello da Messina, and includes painting, manuscript illumination, marble sculpture and bronze medals. 

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, talks about selecting100 man-made artifacts that each provide an intimate glimpse of an important turning point in human civilization. The 100-episode BBC series A History of the World in 100 Objects, and its companion book, A History of the World in 100 Objects, stretches back two million years and covers the globe. From the very first hand axe to the ubiquitous credit card, each item tells a story, and together they relate the larger history of mankind.

Starting Tuesday, January 10, the Leonard Lopate Show will be airing the BBC series A History of the World in 100 Objects, an object a day for 100 days.

Bob Gill talks about his 60-year career in graphic design, from his first revolutionary designs and illustrations of the early 1960s to the design of his recent children's books. One of the founders in 1962 of the legendary design studio Fletcher/Forbes/Gill (forerunner of today's Pentagram studio), Gill went on to found the Designers and Art Directors Association (D&AD). His book Bob Gill, So Far is a collection of his work.

Curator John Guy discusses “Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100-1900,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition includes some 220 works selected according to identifiable hands and named artists, dispelling the notion of anonymity in Indian art. The high points of artistic innovation in the history of Indian painting are demonstrated through works by 40 of the greatest Indian painters, some of whom are identified for the first time.

Architect Edward Durell Stone was both celebrated and scorned, and led a life that was both triumphant and embittered. Among his iconic projects are The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. His son, Hicks Stone, discusses the controversial figure in 20th-century architecture, and his new biography, Edward Durell Stone: A Son's Untold Story of a Legendary Architect.

Navina Haidar, curator in the department of Islamic Art, talks about the Metropolitan Museum’s new renovated Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia. The greatly enlarged, freshly conceived, and renovated galleries house the museum’s collection of Islamic art—one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of this material in the world.

Curator Leah Dickerman discusses the murals and career of Diego Rivera. “Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art” is on view at MoMA through May 14. The exhibition features murals, which are up to six feet by eight feet in size and weigh as much as 1,000 pounds, made of frescoed plaster, concrete, and steel. There are also three working drawings, a “portable mural” made in 1930, and smaller prints, watercolors, and drawings.

While interviewing Brooklyn's Pratt Institute professor Kit White, author of 101 Things to Learn in Art School, The Brian Lehrer Show asked listeners what they learned in art school. Check out some of the best tweets from the conversation here.

Bill Jersey, co-director of the documentary “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” talks about the film—a look into the private world of the Renaissance-style studio that Charles and Ray Eames conceived in a warehouse in Venice Beach, California, where design history was born. “The Eames Era,” began in the optimistic flush of American victory during World War II, and the global impact of the Eames aesthetic continues today. “Eames: The Architect and the Painter” opens November 18 at the IFC Center.

The co-founders of Full Spectrum, Brian Tate and Danny Simmons, talk about their collaboration with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to co-produce Curate NYC, a contest for artists whose winners exhibit their work at locations throughout the city.

Writer and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg discusses creating the beloved childrens books The Polar Express, Jumanji, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, the Sweetest Fig, and The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, among others. His latest books are Queen of the Falls and The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales, an inspired collection of short stories by a cast of best-selling storytellers, based on the illustrations in his The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Daniel Clowes and Seth talk about their work as cartoonists and illustrators. Clowes created the iconic comic book series Eightball and of the graphic novels Wilson, Ghost World, David Boring, and Ice Haven; and his latest book is The Death-Ray. Seth is the cartoonist of is the cartoonist of Clyde Fans; Wimbledon Green; George Sprott; and Vernacular Drawings; among others, and his latest is The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, the companion to Wimbledon Green.

Eve Sussman, director of  “whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir,” and Jeff Wood, her lead actor and collaborator, talk about the film. “whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir” delivers a changing narrative—culled from 3,000 clips, 80 voice-overs and 150 pieces of music—that runs forever and never plays the same way twice. It follows the observations and surveillance of a geophysicist named Holz—the character is controlled by the city and the factory he is working in, and course of the story is controlled by the machine that edits the film. “whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir,” is being shown at Cristin Tierney Gallery, 546 West 29th Street.

Art Spiegelman revisits his Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, published 25 years ago. In MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus, edited and based on interviews by Hillary Chute, he probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process. MetaMaus includes a DVD with audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a trove of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches.

Edmund de Waal, a world-famous ceramicist who inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke. He describes his quest to find out who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. The Hare with Amber Eyes is part-memoir and part detective story of his discovery both the story of the netsuke and of his family over five generations.

Master caricaturist/portraitist Drew Friedman talks about his craft and his Borscht Belt heroes. Even More Old Jewish Comedians, the third and final installment of his series, includes figures like Olive Oyl voice Mae Questel, Ed Sullivan show regular Jean Carroll, stand-up comedian and "Law & Order: SVU" detective Richard Belzer,  "Welcome Back, Kotter"’s Gabe Kaplan, and other and pop culture legends.

Kay Takeda, Director, Grants & Services, at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which was displaced from the World Trade Center after 9/11, and Nadine Robinson, a 2001 LMCC artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center, discusses the program InSite: Art + Commemoration, ten artistic responses to mark the ten-year anniversary of September 11—on view online through October 11.