Caro Fowler and Christophe Koné examine the relationship between fashion and the museum, asking what is gained—and lost—when garments become museum objects. Their conversation explores the history of fashion exhibitions, the transformation of couture into cultural heritage, the decline of home sewing and pattern culture, and the changing relationship between clothing, the body, and materiality. Moving between the Met's new fashion galleries, archival practices, and contemporary museum displays, they consider how museums shape the ways we understand fashion as both a historical artifact and a living cultural practice.

In this episode, Caro Fowler and former RAP fellow Sora Han revisit Édouard Glissant's Poetics of Relation and his frequently invoked concept of "the right to opacity." Beginning with Glissant's dedication to the murdered Jamaican poet Michael Smith, they explore the relationship between poetry, sound, and performance, asking what becomes possible when we return to foundational texts with fresh eyes and ears.

After visiting Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caro Fowler emerged with a transformed understanding of Raphael. In this episode, she speaks with curator Carmen Bambach about the exhibition’s moving reframing of Raphael’s Madonna and Child paintings through the lens of maternal and infant mortality in Renaissance Italy. Together they explore the role of biography in art history, Raphael’s extraordinary drawings, and what becomes visible when we take the female body seriously—not as an object of desire, but as a force that makes life, art, and the world itself.