Encore Episode: Finding Unicorns

The Object

Tickets are going fast for our next exclusive live taping of The Object podcast on October 30 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, with special guest Chan Poling (The Suburbs, The New Standards), fun quizzes, curator conversation, and of course storytelling—all about the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby and the art of the Jazz Age. Tickets are absolutely FREE but you do need to have them. Go to the Tickets page at Artsmia.org and get yours today!

And now, today's episode:

Artists have captured unicorns for thousands of years, and for most of that time people thought they were both magical and real. What can an imaginary creature tell us about ourselves? What did we lose when we stopped believing? And why do we still love them anyway?

You can see unicorns in art through the ages in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, including a "millefleurs" tapestry from the late Middle Ages, a remarkable 1555 engraving of "A King Pursued by a Unicorn" by Jean Duvet, and Albrecht Dürer's "Abuction on a Unicorn" from 1516.

Thanks to Natalie Lawrence and Marguerite Ragnow for sharing their expertise on this episode.

Lawrence is a freelance writer with a PhD from the University of Cambridge on exotic monsters in early modern Europe. Check out her new book, Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings.

Ragnow is a historian and curator of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota, a collection about trade and exploration, featuring rare books, maps, and manuscripts. She is working on a book about unicorns.