Art is something you look at, so a podcast about it sounds like a contradiction. It isn't. The best art podcasts work because the story behind a painting travels well in audio. This list gathers six shows for artists and art lovers alike. They span studio business coaching, contemporary art talks, women's art history, odd art history, and weekly art news. Each pick earns its place the same way. It runs a clear format no other show copies. It has a real run of named guests, and a live feed you can start today. Shows coasting on a famous host alone did not make the cut.
1. Savvy Painter: Art Business Coaching
Antrese Wood spent her early career art directing video games for the Walt Disney Company before she left to paint full time. She and her husband then moved to Argentina. There she spent two years driving from the jungles to the glaciers. She painted her way through all 23 provinces for a project called A Portrait of Argentina. The Kickstarter funded venture sold close to 200 paintings. In March 2014, while still living in Buenos Aires, Wood launched Savvy Painter. She wanted to document what she was learning about building a life in fine art.
More than a decade and 350+ episodes later, the show still centers on artist interviews. Painters walk through their process, their setbacks and how their studio practice runs day to day. Between guests, Wood shares her own take on art business, covering pricing strategy, gallery relationships and marketing plans. Whole episodes are also dedicated to helping painters sell art online, from building an email list to running a virtual open studio. Wood now paints and teaches from Mammoth Lakes, California. She also runs a coaching community called Growth Studio. Fun fact: Prints of Wood's Portrait of Argentina paintings are still sold as fine art prints through her personal website.
2. Talk Art: Contemporary Art Talks
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament had already been friends for a decade when they launched Talk Art in October 2018. Tovey is an actor, and off screen he has built a personal collection of around 300 works of contemporary art. Diament runs the Carl Freedman Gallery and Counter Editions. Counter Editions produces modern art prints by artists including Tracey Emin and David Shrigley. Before working in galleries, he spent time performing in the electro pop band Temposhark.
Artist interviews on the podcast have invited guests like Jeff Koons, Elton John, Grayson Perry and Lena Dunham. Tovey and Diament usually anchor an episode on one piece of contemporary artwork the guest made, owns or cannot stop thinking about. Ilex Press published a companion book of their favorite conversations in 2023. Fun fact: Talk Art has recorded live episodes on location. One was staged inside the Serpentine Pavilion, another inside the Stone Island store in Soho.
3. The Great Women Artists: Women Artists History
Katy Hessel studied art history at University College London, and by her own account, the course covered almost no women artists. In 2015 she walked through an art fair and could not find any women represented. That pushed her to start an Instagram account called The Great Women Artists. By 2019 the project had grown enough for Hessel to turn it into a podcast under the same name.
The podcast has produced more than 160 artist interviews with painters, sculptors and curators. Hessel's art history degree carries into her side work too. She has made BBC documentaries on Artemisia Gentileschi and given guest lectures at the National Gallery and Tate. Guests span painters, photographers and installation artists, giving listeners a detailed look into the world of visual art. Hessel's 2022 book, The Story of Art Without Men, grew from these conversations. It became a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, later named Waterstones Book of the Year. The show runs alongside her other work on contemporary art. That includes Museums Without Men, an audio guide series she launched in museums such as the Met and Tate Britain. Fun fact: Hessel has also run an annual artist residency for women at the Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy.
4. ArtCurious: Odd Art History
Jennifer Dasal was curator of modern and contemporary art at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. She launched ArtCurious there in 2016. Dasal holds an art history degree from the University of California, Davis, followed by a master's from the University of Notre Dame. Each episode picks one strange or overlooked story. Topics run from forged Mona Lisas to the theory that a Victorian painter moonlighted as Jack the Ripper.
One favorite episode covers the CIA's secret funding of Abstract Expressionist painters during the Cold War. Dasal has said the story was new to her when she began researching it. That same appetite carried into her 2020 book, also titled ArtCurious. It also shaped The Club, her 2025 book about American women artists who crossed the Atlantic during the Belle Époque. Dasal treats visual art the way a mystery writer treats a crime scene. She hunts for the overlooked detail that changes the whole story. Fun fact: Dasal narrated the audiobook for The Club herself.
5. The Week in Art: Weekly Art News
The Week in Art began on 15 September 2017 under a different name, The Art Newspaper Weekly. It later settled into its current title as the flagship podcast of The Art Newspaper. Ben Luke hosts. He spent years as an art critic at the London Evening Standard from 2009 to 2024. He is now a contributing editor at the paper. In 2020 Luke also launched a companion series, A Brush With, dedicated to long interviews with individual artists.
Each Friday episode works through the week's biggest stories. Those range from museum acquisitions and heritage disputes to fresh numbers on the global art market. It often cites reports like the Art Basel and UBS survey. Luke also keeps a running thread on current exhibitions. One episode might walk through contemporary art shows alongside old master retrospectives. The show has built an impressive following across visual art circles in more than 100 countries. Fun fact: The Week in Art won Best Special Interest Podcast at the 2021 Publisher Podcast Awards.
6. Art Juice: Practical Artist Talk
Louise Fletcher is an abstract painter in North Yorkshire. Alice Sheridan is an abstract landscape painter in London. The two started Art Juice together in 2019. Fletcher had spent years in a corporate career before turning to painting full time. The podcast grew from conversations the two were already having about the practical side of an artist's life. Sheridan also coaches and teaches other painters alongside her own studio practice.
The pair worked through the everyday mechanics of art business. They covered pricing work, writing an artist statement and handling a slow month in the studio. Whole episodes were devoted to helping listeners sell art online. That ran from setting up a newsletter to deciding how much time social media posts deserved. Guests joined occasionally too, including muralist Daren Todd and coach Sally-Anne Ashley. The show's back catalog is a great resource for anyone building a career in fine art and needing peer to peer advice. Fun fact: Fletcher's own paintings once grew out of a two-year project. It drew on Ted Hughes's poetry and the Yorkshire landscapes behind it, released alongside a 200 page coffee table book.
So the only question left is which itch you want scratched first. If you make art and worry about money, start with Savvy Painter or Art Juice. If you would rather be told a strange true story, open ArtCurious. Want the field's news in one sitting each week? The Week in Art has you covered. Pick the one that fits your next commute, and press play before you talk yourself out of it.