On Art

The Creative Act

A Way of Being

By: Rick Rubin
Narrated by: Rick Rubin
Length: 5 hours 44 minutes

“The Creative Act by Rick Rubin is a wise and inspiring discussion of what it means to be an artist, a maker. He emphasizes that creativity is a way of being in the world - open, attentive, accepting of awe. And makes the case that each of us has a unique vantage onto the world and that expressing how life looks and feels to us is worth... Read more

The Story of Art Without Men

By: Katy Hessel
Narrated by: Katy Hessel
Length: 10 hours 44 minutes

The story of art as it's never been told before, from the Renaissance to the present day.

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?

Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering... Read more

Your Brain on Art

How the Arts Transform Us

By: Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross
Narrated by: Ellyn Jameson
Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts—and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities.

“This book blew my mind!”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times... Read more

Thunderclap

A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death

By: Laura Cumming
Narrated by: Laura Cumming
Length: 7 hours 39 minutes

Named a Best Book of 2023 So Far by the New Yorker!

New York Times bestselling author and art critic Laura Cumming reveals the fascinating, little-known story of the Thunderclap—the massive explosion at a gunpowder store in Holland that killed Carel Fabritius, renowned painter of The Goldfinch and nearly killed Johannes Vermeer, painter of Girl... Read more

Kiki Man Ray

Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris

By: Mark Braude
Narrated by: Karen Cass
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse captivated as a nightclub performer, sold out gallery showings of her paintings, starred in Surrealist films, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Her best-selling memoir—featuring an introduction by Ernest Hemingway—made front-page news in France and was... Read more

Ninth Street Women

Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art

By: Mary Gabriel
Narrated by: Lisa Stathoplos
Length: 39 hours 14 minutes

Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).

Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic,... Read more

Fierce Poise

Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York

By: Alexander Nemerov
Narrated by: Alison Fraser
Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

A National Book Critics Circle finalist • One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year

A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York

“The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen Frankenthaler in Fierce Poise is that it reads like one of... Read more

The Art Thief

A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

By: Michael Finkel
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Michael Finkel
Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

“The Art Thief tells the true story of the world's most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. In this gripping portrait of obsession, love, and crime, you will read all about Stéphane's heists and how he amassed a collection of art in his mother's attic, worth an estimated two billion dollars. And no, that was not a mistype - an estimated two... Read more

The Lonely City

Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

By: Olivia Laing
Narrated by: Susan Lyons
Length: 9 hours 55 minutes

An expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir, and biography on the subject of loneliness told through the lives of six iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. The... Read more

Funny Weather

Art in an Emergency

By: Olivia Laing
Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

"One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction" (Harper's Bazaar) explores the role of art in the tumultuous twenty-first century.

In the age of Trump and Brexit, every crisis is instantly overridden by the next. The turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Olivia... Read more

The Glass Hotel

A novel

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Dylan Moore
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

“This is not a trite story of redemption. It ends with a reunion, perhaps the only meaningful kind of reunion, though it changes nothing. There are dozens of kinds of heartbreak, and none of them are mended in any conventional way. Characters who seemed cruel and characters who seemed incorruptible turn out, in dozens of ways, to be more alike... Read more

The Baby on the Fire Escape

Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

By: Julie Phillips
Narrated by: Marnye Young
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers.

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses... Read more

Self-Portrait

By: Celia Paul
Narrated by: Rachel Bavidge
Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

A rich, penetrating memoir about the author's relationship with a flawed but influential figure—the painter Lucian Freud—and the satisfactions and struggles of a life lived through art.

One of Britain's most important contemporary painters, Celia Paul has written a reflective, intimate memoir of her life as an artist. Self-Portrait tells the... Read more

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful

How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

By: Jack Lowery
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Length: 14 hours 9 minutes

The story of art collective Gran Fury—which fought back during the AIDS crisis through direct action and community-made propaganda—offers lessons in love and grief.

In the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was annihilating queer people, intravenous drug users, and communities of color in America, and disinformation about the disease ran rampant. Out... Read more

How Creativity Rules the World

The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold

By: Maria Brito
Narrated by: Maria Brito
Length: 9 hours 21 minutes

Axiom Business Book Award Winner in Entrepreneurship Category  Read by the author.Learn to make creativity work for your career.Anyone, regardless of who you are or what you do, can cultivate the habits, actions, and attitudes that inspire creativity and innovation.There has never been a more crucial time than now to develop your creativity and... Read more

Leonora in the Morning Light

By: Michaela Carter
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Fiona Hardingham, Jacques Roy & Michaela Carter
Length: 12 hours 49 minutes

*One of Oprah Daily’s Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels That Will Sweep You Away*

“Michaela Carter’s training as a poet and painter shines through from the first page of this vivid, gorgeous novel based on the lives of Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst. Told with all the wild magic and mystery of the Surrealists themselves, Leonora in... Read more

Impossible Views of the World

By: Lucy Ives
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
Length: 9 hours 2 minutes

A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker's disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever


Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan's renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit... Read more

This Is What I Know About Art

Pocket Change Collective

By: Kimberly Drew
Narrated by: Kimberly Drew
Length: 1 hour 3 minutes

"Drew's experience teaches us to embrace what we are afraid of and be true to ourselves. She uses her passion to change the art world and invites us to join her."--Janelle Monáe, award-winning singer, actress, and producer

"Powerful and compelling, this book gives us the courage to discover our own journeys into art."--Hans Ulrich Obrist,... Read more

Black Futures

By: Kimberly Drew & Jenna Wortham
Narrated by: Kimberly Drew, Kevin R. Free, Dominic Hoffman, Robin Miles, Adenrele Ojo, Bahni Turpin & Jenna Wortham
Length: 11 hours 10 minutes

An archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony
A luminous map to navigate an opaque and disorienting present
An infinite geography of possible futures

What does it mean to be Black and alive right now?

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to... Read more

You Are an Artist

Assignments to Spark Creation

By: Sarah Urist Green
Narrated by: Sarah Urist Green
Length: 5 hours 43 minutes

“There are more than 50 creative prompts for the artist (or artist at heart) to explore. Take the title of this book as affirmation, and get started.” —Fast Company

More than 50 assignments, ideas, and prompts to expand your world and help you make outstanding new things to put into it

Curator Sarah Urist Green left her office in the basement of... Read more