← Stuff You Missed in History Class
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- [00:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
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- [00:27]
Holly Frey
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- [01:03]
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- [01:40]
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- [01:56]
Holly Frey
Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio. Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry.
- [02:09]
Tracy V. Wilson
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
- [02:11]
Holly Frey
We talked about the Uffizi Gallery.
- [02:14]
Tracy V. Wilson
Aha.
- [02:14]
Holly Frey
And a yucky bombing. And some paintings and painting restoration. Love all of it. Yeah, you know what? We only talked about a minimal amount. Cause he's not really germane to this one. What, Caravaggio?
- [02:27]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, only a little.
- [02:31]
Holly Frey
I love that man's work. But like, it was Sarah and deblina that did an episode on him, right? I think so. He was a lot. I mean, he was a lot. He had a temper. Just a temper temper. But what's really interesting about that, and as it relates to Bartolomeo Manfredi and other people that painted in the Caravagesque style, is that the Caravaggisti, his followers, couldn't really exist until after he had left Rome because he was apparently so cantankerous about people trying to paint like him that they probably all would have gotten in the crosshairs of his ire. And as we know, he was a physically violent man, so they couldn't have done it. I just think that's interesting.
- [03:18]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [03:19]
Holly Frey
Yeah. We were talking about at the end of that episode, Daniela Lippi, who did the amazing restoration on the Card Players, and in that interview that she gave with scala Archives In 2023, she made this statement. It was not particularly germane to this episode, but I really loved the mindset of it and I loved the message of it, because she said, like other professions, restoration is a field where one cannot or should not feel one has arrived. Each work of art is unique and must be treated as such, depending on its creation technique, its conservation conditions, and its problems. Intrinsic or due to external causes, Materials and methods of intervention are constantly evolving. Revolution refresher courses should be followed each year, both regarding the methods with the least environmental impact and above all, to ensure the health of the operator. And I was like, are you the best person on Earth? Like, she's just like, don't rest on your laurels. Don't ever get cocky. Keep learning. Yeah, keep taking care of yourself and the Earth. And I'm like, what a great bunch of messages in one quote. I was like, I really love her anyway. I just think that's amazing. She sounds amazing.
- [04:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [04:44]
Holly Frey
There is also. I didn't ever find any direct quotations of it, any direct reference to it, et cetera, but I really feel like it seems obvious. But I want to point it out that in the aftermath of the bombing, all of those issues they were having with bureaucracy keeping them from being able to, like, do basic updates to the museum kind of fell away. So they got this, like, post bureaucracy thing. That is exactly why they were able to become a model for how you recover a museum from a tragedy.
- [05:27]
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, wow.
- [05:28]
Holly Frey
When nobody's in the way anymore, and they're like, yes, of course. Do whatever it takes to save the museum and restore pieces, and suddenly the people who are actually like, the conservators, the director of the museum, when they're actually Driving the bus, decision wise. So, yeah, everything got super efficient and, like, super quick, but also very careful. I'm just like, this is one of those moments where you want to go. Do you see why sometimes bureaucracy is not great?
- [05:55]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right, right.
- [05:57]
Holly Frey
The people that are in charge of these things should actually be allowed to be in charge of these things. And who knows what that job is more than, like, some bureaucrat in Rome who didn't really understand how the museum ran or what it actually needed. I'm like, look how quickly they overcame these problems. I will say the Uffizi is still very crowded.
- [06:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [06:20]
Holly Frey
We didn't go when we went to Italy for history class. I see why.
- [06:27]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. That description of what it was like to, like, have to elbow your way through reminded me of when we did go to Versailles when we were in Paris.
- [06:42]
Holly Frey
Yeah.
- [06:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
That is the most crowded museum I have ever been to.
- [06:48]
Holly Frey
Yeah, it was pretty intense.
- [06:50]
Tracy V. Wilson
Really packed in there, shoulder to shoulder and kind of shuffling along in a mass, trying not to think about what would happen if there was an emergency and people needed to exit quickly.
- [07:03]
Holly Frey
Yeah. Yeah. The Uffizi is. I don't want to say it's as bad as Versailles, because it isn't, but it is a little like it in terms of how they have kind of tried to solve the problem of crowd control, which is that, you know how when you go to Versailles, you're on a track. Like, you can't be like, I want to go back to the hall of Mirrors. It's like, no, too bad. You go forward. That's. That's how it happens. And the Uffizi is kind of the same. There's nobody stopping you from backtracking, but there really is a path that they have laid out that they kind of tell you is the optimal path to take. And it's a little counterintuitive because you go all the way up and then back down to the second floor.
- [07:47]
Tracy V. Wilson
Okay.
- [07:48]
Holly Frey
You work your way from the top down. And then if you're doing. If you have tickets to. To go into the Vasari Corridor, which we did. Oh, I'll tell you, I had a wild experience doing that one. And I don't want to put anybody on blast, but it was weird. Then you have to, like, kind of backtrack a little bit to get to the entry to the corridor. Cause it's over near. It's on the same floor as, like, what I was after, which was the Artemisia gentileschi.
- [08:15]
Tracy V. Wilson
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [08:16]
Holly Frey
Judas. Judas. Beheading. Holofernes. But even so it is. It is quite crowded, but not as bad as Versailles. And it is a beautiful museum on the inside in particular. Like, it's a cool building from the outside, but on the inside, like, the decor is, like, gorgeous.
- [08:32]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [08:33]
Holly Frey
And some of the rooms that you can see, black and white photos of the explosion. Like, they do not do the decor of those rooms justice. Pretending you're not looking at rubble. Like, the colors are, like, these beautiful candy colors, and they're absolutely gorgeous, and everything is just beautiful. Vasari Corridor.
- [08:51]
Tracy V. Wilson
Mm.
- [08:52]
Holly Frey
So this is another one where it's like, they only take a limited number of people. You have a guide in front of you and another at the back to kind of make sure nobody straggles. So your group kind of has to stay together. And the man that was in the front of our group that was doing the talking, and he's not talking a lot. He's not, like, pointing out art. He's just, like, basically stopping and saying, like, here's what we're doing next. Here's what we're doing next. Occasionally he'll stop and say, like, here's the room we're in, or whatever. But he had this very low, very resonant voice, and it was in a way that would not carry in all directions, so I couldn't hear him. Several of us couldn't hear or understand him because it was, like. Because it was so low, any of the plosives were kind of getting clipped out, and you just heard, like, this beautiful wave of sound. But I couldn't tell if he was giving us important information. And I had kind of leaned forward, and he had looked at me and said, do you? And I was like, what? You're a little hard to hear. Your voice is so resonant. But after that, like, I apparently flagged myself as the stupidest person on earth, because every time we stopped, he would talk to the group, and then he would come over to me and get in my face and go, did you understand? And I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm mortified. I was like, don, he thinks I'm the dumb. Dumb. It was a little weird. It was a little aggressive, but it was also very funny after the fact.
- [10:19]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah. This is why I've really come to love the little whisper devices that we have on. We've had on all of our trips that we've done for the podcast.
- [10:27]
Holly Frey
We don't have them for that. Yeah.
- [10:29]
Tracy V. Wilson
And I. I'm assuming that if they did have them for that, you would have used them, but, like, they're the little devices where the person guiding can talk at a typical volume. And ideally a little microphone picks it up and broadcast it to everybody else. And it's like we have had technical issues with them on different points on a number of trip, but, like, it still makes it so much easier to hear what is being said. And also without disrupting things for other people around who are not on your tour.
- [11:01]
Holly Frey
Yeah, yeah. In that case, there's nobody else around. Cause it's just your group in the corridor.
- [11:05]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right. I would also be very embarrassed.
- [11:08]
Holly Frey
I'm sure. After we left, he was like, man, that lady with the purple hair was as dumb as can be. Just the stupidest person I've ever encountered. Can't understand a word I said. It was just a. It was very funny. It was very funny after the fact. And then we had a lovely meal, and a waiter wanted to compare tattoos. It was great. It was the best. Yeah. The Uffizi is beautiful. I see why that was not a thing that got picked on our trip to do. Because it is very crowded. It's hard. There are some groups that go through there, but they are struggling. Like, it's hard to keep everybody together. And with a group this size of ours, it would have been very difficult. A little maddening, I think. So. I think that probably was what led to that decision. But I want to go back there a million times because it's beautiful. I mean, all of Florence is beautif. Florence is so walkable. There's so many cool things she can go visit without having to ever get in a car.
- [11:57]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
- [11:58]
Holly Frey
You know, we went to Michelangelo's Tomb. We went to. I think I mentioned before, we went to the Bargello, which was right across the street from where we stayed, which is an incredible museum. Just a million cool places that are gorgeous. And I really like Florence a bunch.
- [12:12]
Tracy V. Wilson
I love not having to get in a car.
- [12:14]
Holly Frey
I do, too. We also got a car service for every transfer we had to do while we were there, which was funny, cause in Rome, our hotel staff, which. Who were amazing, they had said like, do you need us to call you a car for? I think we had to go to the train station. We were like, no, no, no, we already have a car coming. And they were like, oh, what service did you use? And we told them, and they were like, did they overcharge you? And I was like, I don't even care. Because they take care of everything. They literally come into the hotel and get your bags and put them in the car for you. And like, oh, yeah. Worth every penny. It's the best. The best. Because I didn't want to figure it out. I have friends that are there right now who drove themselves from Florence to Rome, which sounds slightly terrifying to me.
- [12:56]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [12:57]
Holly Frey
Just because it's a hard drive. Italian driving practices are not the same as here. Like the attitude about driving. So my hat is off to my friend who drove that, but it's cool. The last thing I actually wanted to say, which kind of hit my heart in all of this. There's a unique thing that had me thinking about Bartolomeo Manfredi, which is that we don't know much about his life, as we said at the top of the episode. And reading about the way his work had to be pieced together by Lippi and Hirty made me think about the way his life has had to be pieced together by biographers. And I was like, what a weird parallel that his art got destroyed in this way. Just as the same way records of his life have not survived or whatever. And we've had to. We're just trying to, like, put together who we think he was and what exactly this art should look like. And I don't know. It just struck me as interesting. Yeah, art. Talk about it forever. I have a problem. I do not wish to seek treatment for my art addiction. I'll go stand and cry in a museum all day long. I'm sure everybody in Italy thinks I have emotional stability issues because I cry at art like nobody's business.
- [14:18]
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- [15:05]
Holly Frey
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- [15:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
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- [17:53]
Holly Frey
I got to talk to Leslie. IWERKS this week. You did a dream. Yay, A dream. I mean, I really. She is somebody whose work I have admired so much. We talked a lot about her various documentaries. The one that she did about her grandfather, that was her first film about Iwerks, was like. The first time I saw it, I was just blown away by how good it was. So I'm not surprised. She mentioned in that interview how other people were also blown away. And it went from kind of a small project to a bigger project, which I think is terrific. This is funny because we talked a lot when we were talking about our Haunted Mansion episodes. In those episodes, we talked a lot about how difficult the opening of Disneyland was and how right. Right up to the last minute they were working and some of the work was, you know, literally being finished while people were walking through the gates and how the asphalt hadn't solidified yet. And it's one thing to talk about all of that, but then to see all of the video that was shot was amazing and terrifying. I mean, it literally, like, if you are a person who is deadline driven and. And, you know, like a project management type person, it's gotta be so scary because it's. It's all just. There's a shocking amount of working on vibes. Right. We didn't. We didn't talk about it in my interview very much with Leslie because there was only so much time. But, like, one of the things that really jumped out to me was that, I mean, we did talk about how there were only like 10% of the plans in place when they started on the park. But one of the things that jumped out to me, and they talk about it in the film that comes up in the discussion, is that they weren't always working off of specific plans in some cases. Right. There was a lot of here's what I want. And then the incredibly talented and skilled workman would just kind of be like, all right, I guess we'll figure out how to make that.
- [20:00]
Tracy V. Wilson
They'd make it do.
- [20:02]
Holly Frey
There wasn't a lot of documentation of how they were doing it because they were making it up as they went along, which sounds slapdash, but also like, these are people who were very dedicated to it, very hardworking. You can tell in that footage, like, some of those people are just really busting out work at an incredible rate and an incredible level of quality. But it was just like, this could never happen again.
- [20:28]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right? Right.
- [20:29]
Holly Frey
Or the odds are very long.
- [20:31]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
- [20:31]
Holly Frey
To put enough money behind a project like that where you're kind of Just trusting the people involved, but also, like, bearing the burden of if it's a failure, it's all on you. Like, nobody. Very few people would be willing to do such a thing. It's astonishing. Kind of inspiring. One of the other things that I really did like about it, about this film, and I hope everybody watches it, because it's just an eye opener in a variety of ways about, you know, what projects like that take, like, dream projects. But it really does not pull punches about the fact that, like, everybody was not happy all the time, and everybody was not, like, Walt is the best. Some people were like, walt is riding us way too hard. We don't know what we're doing. We're exhausted and freaking out now. They did pull it off. So.
- [21:24]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
- [21:25]
Holly Frey
There's always that thing. There's. You'll hear, like, both sides of that coin sometimes if you do a lot of reading of. Of Disney history and parks history in particular, that, like, on the one hand, there are people who are like, you know, Walt would just see things in people, and he would trust that they could do what he needed them to do. And so he would ask them to do it even if they didn't believe they could, which is kind of a great thing in some ways. Right. But then this also shows the people going, we don't. We're so tired. We don't know what we're doing.
- [21:56]
Tracy V. Wilson
Please let us rest.
- [21:57]
Holly Frey
We're asking so much all the time.
- [21:58]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [21:59]
Holly Frey
Just interesting. Also, what a good bit of fortune that he did hire camera crews to document the entire thing. But then all that footage until this. Well, one of Leslie's earlier projects uses some of it. But that footage just sat around for decades, unused. And now, like, we finally all get to watch these people carve teeny little lines in various pieces of faux, you know, European brickwork and stuff. And it's just. I could watch that stuff all day long. I could watch it all day long. It's fascinating. And now the parks are everywhere and huge and entire giant teams and.
- [22:41]
Tracy V. Wilson
And building codes.
- [22:44]
Holly Frey
Building codes. Building codes. I. I did have a wonder, and I don't want to speculate too much because I don't know. But for anybody in our audience that doesn't know who isn't a giant Star wars nerd like myself, it has been in the news. The Disneyland's approach to Galaxy's Edge, which is the Star wars section of Disneyland, is changing a little bit in terms of, like, what on the Star wars timeline can be in the park.
- [23:12]
Tracy V. Wilson
Okay.
- [23:12]
Holly Frey
And one of the Things that happened in that changeover. And I won't get into that because that is a whole discussion. Listen, there's a lot of. I've talked about it a lot, very publicly. But one of the things that happened is that Oga's Cantina closed. Closed there in Disneyland for a while and then reopened. And we were all like, I wonder, is it getting a makeover? Is this changing? There were some speculation on my part, certainly, and others about things in the cantina. I'm trying to talk about this generally without getting in the weeds. Hard for me. Cause I'm like, everybody knows this. They don't. I understand. I'm the weirdo. But we thought there were things that were gonna have to change within the cantina to address this shift in, like, how they were managing timeline. But in fact, like, Brian and I were out there at the beginning of April, which was after it had reopened, and we went and we didn't notice anything. It seemed if there are changes, they're subtle. But it made me wonder if some of that wasn't circling back. I did have a point to code. I don't think anyone was ever not to code. But I do think there were. There were elements of their infrastructure that might have needed updating in terms of, like, their electrical and stuff. Not necessarily because there's any danger, but just to meet the needs of, like, modern machinery that gets used in places like that.
- [24:31]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right.
- [24:31]
Holly Frey
Anyway, that's strictly speculation on my part. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm guessing. I'm playing a guessing game. So don't anybody think I just told you some big piece of secret.
- [24:41]
Tracy V. Wilson
Right?
- [24:41]
Holly Frey
I didn't. But I sure love OGAs, and I love Disneyland and Disney World. Disney World is our close one. So it feels like home to me. Disneyland feels like an adventure, even though it's a much smaller footprint and easier to traverse. You know, we've talked about this as well. Like, if you're in Disney World, it's four parks. It's huge. You have to bus between the parks. If you're gonna go to more than one park in a day. Disneyland, you just walk back and forth across the plaza. If you want to go to the other. It feels so tidy to me in that regard. Both fun, both great. Different adventures.
- [25:23]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah.
- [25:24]
Holly Frey
Pros and cons, right? I like the bubble of the big property. I like knowing that I am in Disney at all times. Whereas, like, in Anaheim, you can just walk out on the street and you're just in Anaheim. Less bubbly. All good. All good. In any case, if this is your weekend coming up, I hope that you get time to go to an amusement park to watch a movie you like, maybe watch a good documentary. I know one to recommend or just, you know, engage with whatever ignites your creativity or your imagination or your inner spark or just makes you feel peaceful. That is also valuable. I hope that you get time to hang and relax even if you don't have time off the next couple days. I still hope you get time to hang and relax and that you do something really nice and maybe a little indulgent for yourself. Because that's the good stuff. That's what life is about. Find your joy wherever you can. We will be back on Monday with a brand new episode. We will also be back tomorrow with a classic.
- [26:35]
Tracy V. Wilson
Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [26:49]
Holly Frey
Wouldn't it be great to never buy gas again? EVs are as easy to charge as your phone and they are a perfect addition to your everyday life. Most people are only driving about 40 miles a day and most EVs can handle 200 to 400 miles of RA on a charge. And there are hundreds of EV models available today, so there's something perfect for every lifestyle and budget. I drive an ev. I've had it for a couple of years. It's my favorite car I've ever owned. It is so fun to drive. The pickup is incredible. It's super agile and it is easy to maintain. The way forward is electric. Learn more@electricforall.org brought to you in part by Vital Farms.
- [27:27]
Tracy V. Wilson
I love eggs. I turn to them all the time as a quick and easy way to start a meal. And Vital Farms eggs are brought by hens that have access to fresh air and sunshine and you can actually look up on the carton and see the farm that those eggs came from. Vital Farms is also a certified B corporation with a purpose to improve the lives of people, animals and the planet through food. Look for the black egg carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more. Vital Good Eggs no shortcuts did you
- [27:57]
Holly Frey
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- [28:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
This is an I heart podcast, guaranteed human.