Making Objects Speak

Portable Audio Guides for Teaching With Visual Culture in the Humanities

Making Objects Speak offers 12 free downloadable audio-tours of museums and historic neighborhoods in New York City. Designed to enrich college courses in the humanities, these interactive podcasts invite thoughtful examination of cultural artifacts. By illuminating historical contexts, they bring the past to life.

The Ancient World: 900 B.C.E. - 400 C.E.

The World of Homer, The Odyssey (Metropolitan Museum)
The World of Homer, The Iliad ( Metropolitan Museum)
The World of Augustus and Virgil (Metropolitan Museum)

The Middle Ages: 1100-1500

“And pilgrimes were they alle”: The Cloisters and the World of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (The Cloisters)

Global Encounters: 1400-1830

The Afro-European Encounter in Africa (Metropolitan Museum)
A Global Appetite: Food History as World History from 1500 to 1800 (Metropolitan Museum)
Converging Cultures: Latin America 1520-1830 (Brooklyn Museum)
Encounter with the Past: The Renaissance and the Ancients (Metropolitan Museum)

The Modern World: 1800-present

Civil War Stories (New-York Historical Society)
Immigrant New York: A Walking Tour of the Lower East Side (Lower East Side)
Harlem Crossroads (Harlem)
“Make-it New”: Modernist Visions (Museum of Modern Art)