Hello, and welcome. I’m Diane Tucker. The first time I visited an art museum I was seven years old. I said to my grandmother, “I want to live here!” We were inside the Detroit Institute of Arts, surrounded by Diego Rivera’s masterpiece, The Detroit Industry Murals — frescoes full of people, nature, and technology. I saw a palatial staircase at the far end of this colorful, courtyard gallery and imagined it led to my bedroom.
As the years went by I became less comfortable in art museums. I began to think of them as dazzling but intimidating, like a Gothic cathedral. I still feel that way, even though I’ve led nearly 300 gallery talks at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
All the same, I keep coming back, especially for the stories.
For years I’ve earned a living writing and producing stories — about the greening of Henry Ford’s iconic River Rouge Plant (Discovery Channel), about a grandmother fighting ISIS (National Geographic Explorer), about America’s historic 2008 presidential election (Huffington Post). So when the head of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab told me a big advantage we humans have over computers is our ability to tell stories, I knew he was right, even though I know zero about computer coding.
Great paintings tell stories. I hope you enjoy these….
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