“Art might be older than language itself. That is where images are, where people began to give shape to ideas and to needs and to fears and to powers.” — Dr. Al Akers

Guest: Dr. Al Akers, Professor of Art History at Georgetown University, specializing in late medieval and Northern Renaissance art.

In this debut episode, host Kate Evans sits down with Dr. Al Akers to explore why art history matters, not just as a record of the past, but as a living, evolving conversation that shapes how we understand faith, identity, power, and the present day.

Dr. Akers walks us through his unexpected path from high school painter to Georgetown professor, unpacks the hidden symbolism in iconic Renaissance works, and explains how images have always been used to persuade, inspire, and even manipulate.

Topics covered:

• How Dr. Akers came to study Northern Renaissance art at the University of Pennsylvania, inspired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and renowned critic-professor Leo Steinberg

• The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) — how the mirror at the center of the painting reflects two additional figures, effectively including the viewer (and the painter himself) in the scene across 600 years

• How digital access has democratized art history but also flattened the experience — smoothing over the physical, material reality of individual works

• A deep dive into Roger van der Weyden’s Madonna and Child, where Dr. Akers noticed the Christ child is not playing with a book but paging backward toward the Old Testament — a subtle theological statement invisible in reproductions but clear when seen in person in Madrid

• The role of art in persuasion and propaganda, from Northern Renaissance printed imagery during the Protestant Reformation to contemporary federal architecture policy

• Dr. Akers’ research methodology: always starting with the image itself and reading it the way one reads literature — thinking with another mind

• If he could travel back in time, he’d want to witness the private conversation between an artist and a patron — the unrecorded back-and-forth about meaning and intention

• Modern imaging technology (X-ray, chemical analysis) now reveals underdrawings and material decisions never meant to be seen