My guest is Jennifer Dasal, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art. She’s also the host of the ArtCurious podcast. In each episode of ArtCurious, Jennifer sheds light on some of the most unexpected, mysterious, and, well, curious stories in art history. And she does so in a way that is not only unique but also, as Salon.com put it, “non-boring”.

As anyone who works at a museum knows, different visitors have different levels of interest in the work you do and the objects you collect. Think of the teenager who is tagging along with their parents, or the person just trying to impress a first date by taking them to a museum. To them, your galleries are just filled with old… stuff. How do you engage those people with the stories behind the stuff? Well, Jennifer understands those people because, as she told me, she used to be one of them.

I asked Jennifer where her story ideas come from, how much work goes into an episode, and, what would the mission statement be if her podcast were a museum?

*FULL TRANSCRIPT*

NICK: Hi, and welcome to What’s On, the Cuberis Podcast. I’m Nick Faber.

My guest today is Jennifer Dasal, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art. She’s also the host of the ArtCurious podcast.

You know, we like to joke around at Cuberis about how boring the word “Content” is. It feels sterile, devoid of humanity, obligatory. But what we really mean when we talk about your museum’s content -- your blogs, your digital stories, your podcasts -- is storytelling. Every object in your museum's collection has a story, or sometimes, usually, many stories. Especially when you look at them through the perspective of different people, like your educators, or your curators, or even you visitors. Technology has made it easier than ever to produce “content”. The difficult part is deciding which stories to tell, and how to tell them.

In each episode of her podcast, ArtCurious, Jennifer Dasal sheds light on some of the most unexpected, mysterious, and, well, curious stories in art history. And she does so in a way that is not only unique -- with humor and the type of intrigue you would expect from a true crime podcast -- but also, as Salon.com put it, “non-boring”.

As anyone who works at a museum knows, different visitors have different levels of interest in the work you do and the objects you collect. Think of the teenager who is tagging along with their parents, or the person just trying to impress a first date by taking them to a museum. To them, your galleries are just filled with old… stuff. How do you engage those people with the stories behind the stuff? Well, Jennifer understands those people because, as she told me, she used to be one of them. And that’s where we’ll pick up the conversation.

JENNIFER: So one of the reasons I started the podcast was actually because I used to be somebody who did not like art, at all. It wasn't something that I grew up being exposed to. We had art class in my school when I was growing up, in elementary school, but I didn't find it interesting. It wasn't something that happened frequently. It was extremely occasionally that we would have a class. And for me, it was all pretty torturous because I didn't feel like I had any artistic skill, nor did I know anything about the art that I was supposed to be looking at and enjoying. So I grew up thinking art was pretty boring.

Fast-forward about twenty years, and suddenly I'm an art history major. Long story short, I discovered that art was actually not boring when you have the right teacher telling you about it and giving you the right cool stories behind it. And I was so excited, that that sensation of learning and having a teacher who was really inspiring to me always stuck with me.

And even now, in my day job as a curator, I feel like I run into two groups of people. And the first group of people are the people who say I'm at the museum all the tim...