This week on Woman-Stirred Radio, at 4:15 (eastern), Merry Gangemi interviews art historian Ben Binstock, author of the book Vermeer's Family Secrets, an exploration of the life and work of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer, best known for his iconic painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.Vermeer was relatively unknown until the he was "discovered" in the mid-nineteenth century. Vermeer's Family Secrets details the painter's complex technical achievements by tracing sources and influences.
Vermeer's Family Secrets is the first painting-by-painting, year-by-year study and analysis of the artist's oeuvre, integrating Vermeer's relationship to his wife and her family with his development as an painter with the profound technical influences of his predecessors, Rembrandt and Carel Fabritius.
Binstock reveals through research and scholarship that Vermeer's daughter Maria was both his apprentice and his successor and that at least seven paintings, originally thought to be Vermeer's, were actually painted by Maria.
Benjamin Binstock holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. He has studied in Aix-en-Provence, Berkley, CA, Berlin, and Amsterdam. He was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the American Academy in Berlin. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and CUNY. Binstock is presently teaching at Cooper Union in Manhattan.
Then, at 5:00, JD Glass returns to Woman-Stirred Radio to talk about her new novel, X, set in an accelerated cyberpunk world of love, betrayal, and political intrigue.What is fascinating about X is its implications in the broader context of gender and power within queer culture. It is an intense and chilling schema of where the soul of America has gone in this post-9/11 world.
A Lambda Literary nominee, JD Glass is the author of American Goth, Punk and Zen, Red Light, and Punk Like Me. JD Glass lives in Staten island, and when she's not writing or surfing, she's playing music with her band, Life Underwater, or doing her job as an EMT in New York City.
Woman-Stirred Radio broadcasts live on WGDR (91.1 fm) and online at wgdr.org every Thursday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. (eastern), with interviews, music, and guest commentaries from bi-activist Jan Steckel, British writer Nicki Hastie, and lesbian literary historian and poet, Julie R. Enszer.
Woman-Stirred Radio is funded in part by the Samara Foundation of Vermont, a non-profit, Burlington-based foundation that seeks to improve the quality of life for Vermont's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered citizens. Click on the link to find out more about Samara Foundation and its programs.
