From The Vault: Brilliant Exiles

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. In this episode we revisit our interview with curator Robyn Asleson about the National Portrait Gallery’s “Brilliant Exiles” exhibition, which opened in April. It features 60 trailblazing women, including the dancer, singer and spy Josephine Baker, as well as 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 until Feb. 23, 2025, so there's still time to catch it! See the portraits we discussed: Ada “Bricktop” Smith, by Carl Van Vechten Josephine Baker, by Stanislaus Julian Walery Gertrude Stein, by Pablo Picasso Sylvia Beach, by Paul-Émile Bécat Romaine Brooks, self-portrait

You can listen to From The Vault: Brilliant Exiles online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

From The Vault: Brilliant Exiles is an episode from PORTRAITS by Deborah Sisum.

This episode is 27:29 long.

This episode was published on Dec 3, 2024.

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