David Krasnow

Like Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian author whose writing has brought her country's history to global audiences. She tells Kurt why Achebe has played such a large role in her work. Produced by Studio 360's David Krasnow and

Trenton Doyle Hancock paints strange imaginary worlds, and traces this impulse to his action-figure-obsessed childhood. Studio 360’s David Krasnow caught up with the artist at his show at the James Cohan Gallery.

New York, NY —

Were you obsessed with comic books and action figures when you were a kid? collected GI Joes? Read every issue of Iron Man, or more arty offerings from Heavy Metal? Trenton Doyle Hancock never grew out of his obsession. It's informed the work of this ...

Belarus is called the last dictatorship in Europe. The government censors the arts, so performance troupe Free Theatre Belarus performs secretly, in converted houses, to avoid arrest. American playwright Aaron Landsman went to visit the group in Minsk, and learned what theater is really all about. Produced ...

The Pop artist James Rosenquist captures the hyperbright, supersaturated colors of commercial culture in his paintings. No surprise, then, that he started his career as a billboard painter. Kurt and Rosenquist tour a retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York -- the paintings ...

We trace the ballad of John Henry back to its origins - a cautionary tale about working too hard.

The story of John Henry has come to represent the heroic struggle of men and women against encroaching technology, and the loss of jobs. In our series on American Icons, Studio 360's David Krasnow traced the ballad of John Henry back to its origins - a cautionary ...

His work isn't made to last — some of it will start falling apart when the tide comes in, or the sun rises — but the artist Andy Goldsworthy has passionate admirers who find incredible depth in his work. Studio 360's Ave Carrillo, and ...

Andy Warhol started painting Campbell's soup cans around the same time he was painting Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. For him, Campbell's was a "star" just like any movie pinup, and he made thousands over the course of his career. Warhol told people he painted soup because he ate it ...

Sophie Matisse is a New York artist who has been reproducing masterpieces by great painters like Vermeer, da Vinci, Velasquez, and even by her great grandfather Henry Matisse. But her reproductions leave out the crucial people and objects that are supposed to be the focus of our ...

Margaret Leng Tan, a virtuoso of the grand piano, takes Schroeder's place at the plastic one. Produced by David Krasnow.

The soup cans are probably the most recognizable images in American art, and Warhol intended it that way. He borrowed the Campbell's brand fame to help make his own; he appeared in Time in 1962 as part of the Pop revolution that was remaking art — destroying the serious, sublime ...

D. J. Waldie loves the suburbs. He was born in one of the tract houses manufactured by the thousands in Lakewood, California. He lives there still, and today works for the city. His book Holy Land is a strange and beautiful mix of personal memoir and suburban ...

Composer Armando Bayolo had two great epiphanies in his musical life — John Williams' Star Wars score, and a long, dense, Minimalist piece using hammers by Louis Andriessen, the Steve Reich of the Netherlands. Produced by David Krasnow.

Sophie Matisse is a New York artist who has been reproducing masterpieces by great painters like Vermeer, da Vinci, Velasquez, and even by her great grandfather Henry Matisse. But her reproductions leave out the crucial people and objects that are supposed to be the focus of our attention. Studio 360's ...

A profile of the experimental composer who built her career on what she calls "deep listening." Produced by David Krasnow.

In August, Studio 360 asked listeners to send us mail art. And you responded with fantastic enthusiasm. Streams of amazing things poured in through the mail drop from all around the world — a piece of toast, a coconut, a lump of clay, envelopes big, small, glittery, fragile, sturdy and ...

When he was a young musician, Chas Smith had zero interest in country music, and had never really paid attention to the painstakingly slow, textured flow of sounds that come from the pedal steel guitar. He recently told Studio 360's David Krasnow how an accident of faith and ...

In August, Studio 360 asked listeners to send us mail art. And you responded with fantastic enthusiasm. Streams of amazing things poured in through the mail drop from all around the world — a piece of toast, a coconut, a lump of clay, envelopes big, small, glittery, fragile, sturdy and ...

The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a playful, evasive manner of speech. Some call this spin, others poetry. When musician Phil Kline ran across a collection of Rumsfeld quotes, he was so taken with the rhetoric that he composed music to accompany the text. In his Three ...