← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Exploring the Earliest Days of Photography at the Met
00:26:28
A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the earliest days of photography and the daguerreotype.
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Alison Stewart
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in soho. Oh, we were definitely live yesterday after our special all of It Listening Party with the cast of the Broadway musical Hell's Kitchen. They came to the WNYC Green space, performed five songs, and talked about bringing Alicia Keys music and story to the stage. If you didn't hear it, check it out. The audio and video are on our show page, which you can find@wnyc.org and don't forget to reserve your free tickets to our next event, the April get lit with all of It Book Club. We are reading Leila Lalamay's new book, the Dream Hotel. It's set in America, where even your dreams are under surveillance. I'll be in conversation with Layla on Tuesday, May 6 at 6pm at the New York Public Library. Tickets are free, but they tend to go quickly, so get yours today by heading to wnyc.org gets lit. That's in the future. Now let's get this hour started with another New York institution, the latest at the Met. It's been almost 200 years since the invention of photography in 1839. It probably would have been hard to imagine that one day we would all carry cameras around in our pockets. There aren't any selfies in this exhibit, but there are self portraits. And the exhibit takes time to focus on how photography helped shape America's understanding of the Civil War and of slavery. It's called the New American Photography 1839-1910. It includes more than 250 photographs from the earliest days of the medium. Many of these photos have never been seen by the public before. It's running on through The Met through July 20, and I'm joined now by the exhibit's curator, Jeff Rosenheim. Jeff, nice to have you in the studio.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Thank you for having me.
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Alison Stewart
And listeners, if you'd like to see some examples of the photographs we're going to be talking about, you can follow us on Instagram of it wnyc. So many of these photos have never been seen by the public before. How did you choose which photos to include?
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Jeff Rosenheim
It's a very good question. I think I just followed My eye and my heart. These are pictures that left the studios from the beginning of photography and went into the hands of the sitters. And they've been moving through space ever since then. And they were gathered over the last 50 years by a collector in Connecticut. I knew some of them, but I had this great opportunity right before COVID began to bring this collection to the museum. And we've been waiting for the right time to put them on the wall.
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Alison Stewart
When you don't know who took the photograph or what steps are taken to determine the photographer, does it matter?
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Jeff Rosenheim
It does matter, but this is a show that tempers what we know and what we don't know in equal. In equal way. And. And what I like is that when we don't know the maker, we try to figure out something about why the picture was made. What choices did the sitter have if it's a portrait, in how to present themselves? Do they look at the camera? Do they look away? How do they dress? Do they bring something from their work? Do they bring their children? Do they bring their pet? How do you represent yourself psychologically? It's very, very interesting. And then how do respond to it? That was the challenge.
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Alison Stewart
You learn a lot in this exhibit. You learn phrases and terms. Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. Tintypes were invented in the U.S. i learned. Would you explain the difference between those three?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Sure. So the first language that we have to learn about photography is this strange word, daguerreotype. So Louis Daguerre invented photography in France in the early 1830s, and that process came to the US in September of 1839. And the daguerreotype is simply a picture made using Daguerre's process. It's a sheet of copper with a silver surface on it, and it's made light sensitive. And when you left the studio, you left with the copper plate with your image on it. Oliver Wendell Holmes called it a mirror with a memory, because when you hold it in the wrong way, you see yourself, not the subject. An ambrotype is just the next development of format. In the silver image is on a sheet of glass. And a tintype, which is a misnomer, is a silver image on a sheet of iron, also called a ferrotype, but we call them, for whatever reason, tintypes. And there's no tin in it at all, but there's no enlarging. And the object that was in the camera is in the hands of the person who. Who had it made. Or if you were to acquire it, you Acquired it, but there's no negative. It's like a Polaroid. More than anything else.
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Alison Stewart
It's interesting because some of the photos in the exhibit are really tiny, some are much larger. What determined the scale of the photograph?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Sure, at the beginning, it was just a technically hard thing to make a picture any size. And it was much easier to start small because the amount of light that has to be put through the lens and onto the plate. At the beginning, it was tens of minutes long. And for a portrait, that's a hard. How many of us can sit still and not blink for tens of minutes? But eventually, by around 1860, it was down to a second or a fraction of a second, and the size did matter. It was harder to make larger size pictures. So at the beginning, things were not much larger than a sheet of paper at their largest, and often down to something half the size of most people's mobile phones. We are trained today to look at pictures on our phones, and they're small and we love them because we can hold them in our hands. Part of the problem with looking at the history of photography is that generally in museums, we can't hold them in our hands. But just like our phones, if we put a phone on the wall and kept someone two feet away, you wouldn't enjoy it so much. You want to hold it in your hand. So this was a handheld medium until after. Until about the Civil War time, so the 1860s.
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Alison Stewart
Who were photographers when it first started?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Right. I know, you asked me, how do I know who made them and how? We know. So often the photographer left their mark on the velvet pad, in a cased photograph or in a paper print photograph. On the back of the card or even on the bottom edge of the card mount would be their name. They would brand their materials because they wanted business. This was a profession, was a psychologically interesting profession, because as the country was maturing and people started moving to the States, one of the new occupations was photographer. And so they wanted it to be known. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been lost. And so I would say the vast majority of the pictures, even the best ones, we don't know who made them. We may one day be able to find out. Someone might have a picture with a similar subject, and we know the name of the studio, but we have to be content, at least for now, in that unknowingness, and we have to accept it. And that's interesting.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Jess Rosenheim, curator of the exhibit the New American Photography 1839-1910. It's on view at the Metropolitan Museum of art through July 20th. When did it become an artistic pursuit? Photography?
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Jeff Rosenheim
So excellent question. For some, at the very beginning, the moment they picked up the camera, they felt like they had something to say with the camera and that those photographs for them were works of art. Others felt that they were responding to the subject or something in nature that they felt needed to be described. A flood scene. You know, we have the same thing. You know, citizen journalists today use our phones, these very smart devices that we carry around and document things. But some people are better at it than others. And those people, let's call them artists.
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Alison Stewart
When was it used? When was photography used as a political tool?
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Jeff Rosenheim
From the beginning. So I mean, politics with a small P. From the beginning, but just good example. When Lincoln was running for the executive office, he was not well known on the East Coast. He was a Midwestern lawyer. And when he came to New York, he sat for his picture and he said that the picture that was made in Matthew Brady's studio on Broadway, not so far from here, not so far from where we're recording this session, that that picture became known because the camera, the picture allowed people to see this person. And there were campaign buttons for the 1860 election. So that's the sort of capital P, the lower case P. How did it get used in a political way? Is pictures of things that maybe needed to change or things that were being used to promote different ideas. And I see that as a kind of political gesture. So, for example, for example, Yosemite photographs were made by an artist named Carlton Watkins and others in our show. And one of the. Those pictures were brought east from California and presented in Congress to promote the idea of saving the land from its destruction from timbering and mineral extraction. And those photographs are beautifully made pictures of an Eden that some people wanted to save. And the idea of the national parks movement during the Civil War, Lincoln protected that land from any violation. And that is the beginning of the conservation movement. And that is something that the camera can do.
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Alison Stewart
Photography played out a huge part of the Civil War. We see it in several ways. We see photographs of soldiers that were meant to be sent home to their families. How and where were these photos taken?
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Jeff Rosenheim
So photographers followed the armies north and south. They were. The soldiers often got their uniforms and posed for pictures on their way to the front. The pictures were made either by itinerants following the armies or by brick and mortar studios in various towns in Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania and were sent home. It's a very interesting story. Many of the Pictures in our exhibition were made to be seen and collected. That is when we begin to have the collecting of photography. In the late 1850s and during the Civil War. It's the crucible of American history. And everyone who serv survived and those families of those soldiers that did not realized that this was the marker of American culture. The fight to end slavery and the fight to recreate the Union was something that everyone felt. And the photographic legacy of that helped the nation mature. It helped the nation understand psychologically, physically, politically, emotionally and visually what had happened and how much effort it took to rebuild the nation as a better, safer, more equitable place.
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Alison Stewart
The photos document the horror of slavery. There's a very famous photo of an enslaved man with a very scarred back.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Horrible picture.
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Alison Stewart
How can we tell these photos were meant to promote abolitionism?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Right. So the circulation of pictures during the war and in the immediate years thereafter, the abolitionists who were fighting to create a groundswell of support for the war effort and to create. To make change. So those pictures were published in our show in Harper's in 1863. They circulated as wood cuts and as physical silver print objects. The one that you mentioned is one of the hardest pictures to look at. That individual had escaped bondage in Mississippi and made his way into a Union encampment in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And when he wanted to join the Union effort, he wanted to be a soldier, to fight for his brothers and sisters, to fight for freedom, to end slavery. He had a physical and he removed his shirt, thus showing his back, and it was made in the Union encampment and it was sent all across the country. That is powerful advocacy for change.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Jeff Rosenheim, curator of the exhibit the new American Photography, 1839-1910. It's on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of art through July 20th. We'll have more with Jeff after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Jeff Rosenheim. He's curator of the exhibit the new American Photography, 1839-1910. It's on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of art through July 20th. For folks who are checking it out on our Instagram, I'm going to get you to comment on a couple of the pictures I have here. My producer says, guy with chicken.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
Do you know who that is?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
All right, tell us about the guy with chicken.
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Jeff Rosenheim
So it's an occupational portrait of a young man with freckles. It's a daguerreotype it's about the size, maybe it's about 3 inches tall. It has unbelievable resolution. And this individual decided to pose, perhaps for his very first likeness, first work of art in the photographic realm. And he chose to photograph himself to be seen with clearly his favorite rooster. And any of us who have actually tried to hold a chicken, it's very hard unless that chicken has grown up with you. And I have a feeling that the chicken is so calm and is standing there and he really knows how to hold it. It's a fascinating portrait, and I don't know anything about it. I don't know when it was made. I don't know where it was made. I know it was made around 1850, but it's this. It's the residue of a relationship between a man and a common barnyard animal. But they clearly are friends. That comes through in the picture.
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Alison Stewart
There's also this picture of African American woman wearing sort of a beautiful hat. Yes, there's a lot to this picture.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Tell us about the history of it.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yes. So this is a picture about the same size, a little over 3 inches. It's also a daguerreotype. And a black woman is posing for her own likeness wearing a tignon, which is the name, a French kind of word to describe a headscarf. And it's been beautifully hand colored. Just like the rooster is hand colored, the tignon has this beautiful brown green color. She is looking directly at the camera. In Louisiana, in the Spanish colonial period and the French colonial period, free women of color had to wrap their hair to distinguish them from enslaved women. And this was to punish them in a certain sense. And yet these women turned what was a bitter reality and law into this beautiful piece of fashion. And she owns it. And it's just an extraordinary object. We don't know that it was made in Louisiana, but it seems likely. And I think it's one of the stunning pictures in this collection. And it's a masterpiece.
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Alison Stewart
You mentioned adding color. When did color come into it?
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Jeff Rosenheim
So we didn't have color photography until the first decade of the 20th century, so soon after photography's birth. By the mid 18, let's say about 1845, sitters asked to have a little bit of rouge added to their cheeks and a little bit of coloring on their. Their couture. And so photography is added by hand onto the surface of the picture. And that's true all the way through from 1839 or early 1840s all the way through the end of the century. We didn't have color until the autochrome process, which is the first decade of the 20th century.
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Alison Stewart
One female photographer is featured in the exhibit. Alice Austin, who's right, from Staten Island. What was special about her work?
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Jeff Rosenheim
So Alice Austin grew up in Staten island and she documented her lives. She took a camera everywhere. She made thousands of pictures in Staten island of her community, of her friends and family, of her lovers. And she also worked in upstate New York. And this is a picture made on Lake Mahopac in Putnam county, so just about 16 miles north of the city. What I love it is the relaxing scene of figures on a summer day. It's a landscape with the water in the background. And what we know about Alice Austin is. Well, not enough people know about Alice Austin and her achievement, but it's been collected by the Staten Island Historical Society. And there's going to be a new book out by my first boss in New York City. I'm going to throw it to her. Bonnie Okelson, who I work with at the museum in the city of New York, is about to publish a book in June and you should have her on your show like that.
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Alison Stewart
He booked us a cinema. Gotta love it. Were female photographers frequent?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yeah. So as we've mentioned, most of the pictures are by unknown makers. So maybe we have many, many more. There are about three or four known women artists in this exhibition, but every studio was often operated by men and women. And the women generally used initials to describe their names for reasons that same in authors. Women authors in the 19th century generally, or even earlier, had to hide their identity to be published in photography. It was slightly different, but women were very much colorists in co owners of studios. And there was a good number of women makers as the century progressed. And as a professor, I know that the majority of the students studying photography, at least in the US are women. It is an empowering field of practice.
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Alison Stewart
I wanted to ask you about the exhibit because I went last Saturday and it was packed. People were loving it. And I love that there's a little bit of interactivity.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yes, there is.
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Alison Stewart
Explain to folks what they can do.
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Jeff Rosenheim
One section of the show is of what we call a stereograph. And a stereograph is a pair of images that were made starting in the 1850s and all the way through until now. If you make a pair of pictures that are made the same distance that our eyes are apart and you swap the prints, what was on the right? You place it on the left. On the left, on the right. And when you look at it through a binocular viewing device, you get three dimensionality. It was the beginning of armchair traveling and in a sort of sense, a proto cinematic experience. It's a very much of a virtual reality experience. So we talk about these things today. What's great about the stereo viewers is that all of our guests, all of the visitors, will be able to see these pictures in three dimensions. And people are loving it. And I love it because I think it's not been presented in most museum shows. And I really wanted it to be part of this because the language of photography has changed over time, but nothing today is new. It has a precedent in the 19th century, and this exhibition, I think, allows us to understand that.
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Alison Stewart
Jeff, I want to get your opinion about this. Some things never change. People will take pictures of their pets.
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Jeff Rosenheim
True, of course.
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Alison Stewart
Lots of pictures of pets in the show.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Many, many, many. One, because people love their animals, and two, because at least for dogs, no cats in the show, I'm sorry to say, but dogslept a lot. And for photography, where we have a long exposure time, it's a perfect subject.
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Alison Stewart
Well, one of our producers, Jordan, was obsessed with the squirrel.
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Jeff Rosenheim
The man with the. Oh, my gosh, I forgot the squirrel.
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Alison Stewart
Could you please explain the man with the squirrel? It's been.
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Jeff Rosenheim
I cannot explain the man with the squirrel. All I can tell you is that there are two squirrels in the show. Two different photographs made in different processes of squirrels. It turns out that I had to research this, that people kept pet squirrels, and especially in the 19th century, evidently they're loving the one of the man with the squirrel on his shoulder. It's a little tiny string like you would wrap newspapers in. And there it is. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I couldn't wait to put it on the wall. Thank you for bringing it up. I will say this. The other picture of the squirrel is. The squirrel is sitting on a studio table eating some acorns. Now, that was not an easy picture to be made. Not that any picture is easy to be made, except for today, where it's made whether we want it to want it to be made or not. But it was very interesting to try to photograph, you know, wild animals. Squirrels, essentially a wild animal, although people kept them as pets.
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Alison Stewart
Glad you answered that.
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Jeff Rosenheim
Sorry, I couldn't tell why. The why is the great thing.
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Alison Stewart
You gave us a good reason. People kept pept. Squirrels, kept pet squirrels. When did photography start to become accessible to more people?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Yeah, that's a very good question. So at the beginning, it was somewhat technically complicated. So daguerreotypes and ambrotypes and even a little bit tintypes. In the 1840s, 50s and 60s, you had to learn, you had to be trained. It was hard, but by the 1870s and 80s, it had become ubiquitous. Enough camera vision was built in. You couldn't be literate like today. You can't be literate today unless you know how to make and exchange pictures. I mean, it's just the way it is. Same thing happened in the mid 19th century, but by the late 1880s when Kodak introduced the. The Kodak. When George Eastman introduced the Kodak, basically it put photography in the hands of the amateur. And the amateur exchange of process, technique and pictures defined the late 19th century. Our show ends in 1910. It had to stop somewhere. This collection, that's the latest picture in the collection. But there's a through line from the late 1880s all the way through until the digital era that things didn't change that much. And if I had to say, I hope what most visitors will realize is that photography hasn't gotten any better. There was great photography from day one. Those earliest pictures from the 1840s are extraordinarily beautiful, sharp, filled with pathos and meaning and ambiguities, just like pictures are today.
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Alison Stewart
Is there one part of the exhibit you'd like people to spend an extra few minutes?
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Jeff Rosenheim
Well, so you mentioned tintypes. We didn't invent photography here. The Americans didn't invent photography in the 19th century. It was invented in England and France, but we took it on as our own. And when the tintype is invented, it's a peculiarly wonderful medium. It's inexpensive. It's its language. It has its own poetics. And tintypes are generally not respected in the field of photography. Paper print photography and daguerreotypes and a little bit of ambrotypes. Tintypes were basically something that you did not see in a fine art museum. I love these pictures. That's where the squirrels are. And there are also many, many individuals who had otherwise not been able to afford their own likenesses. It's a very equitable. The tintype is a very equitable medium. So basically, we see things that do not appear in any of the other formats. And so I kind of very, very taken by that. But I love the earliest photographs and I love the beautiful stereographs and. And the paper prints go with the tintypes.
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Alison Stewart
He said tintypes first. My guest is Jeff Rosenheim, curator of the exhibit the New ART American Photography, 1839-1910. It's on view at the Met through July 20th. Thank you for coming to the studio.
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Jeff Rosenheim
It's my great pleasure. Thank you. This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.