Our June episode goes back in time to SFMOMA's Countdown Celebration, the final days before the museum closed to begin our expansion project. While the museum was bustling with round-the-clock programming and events, we caught up with artists, makers, visitors, volunteers, and staff members to talk about the celebration and what they would miss during closure. First up, installation manager Brandon Larson sheds some light on what it takes to pack up an art collection. Next, artist Desirée Holman reflects on organizing the closing processional that led everyone out of the building one last time. SFMOMA will reopen in 2016.

Each SFMOMA Artcast brings you illuminating audio and video interviews with artists, curators, and visitors as they respond to the works on view and in the museum's collection.

To learn more, visit: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/podcast/artcast_158

Artcast Episode: Goodbye Botta

Hidden Kitchens - Atomic Wine

West coast-based radio production duo, the Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) have developed one of the most distinctive signatures in broadcasting. They're one-off features and ambitious series projects - such as the Twin Towers Sonic Memorial Project, Lost and Found Sound and Hidden Kitchens - have become part of the regular diet on NPR's All Things Considered and in countless syndicated forms.

The second part of this two-part series brings urbane Davia and motherly Nikki out from behind their microphones for a self-penned radio portrait that offers a rare glimpse into the world of the Kitchen Sisters.

First broadcast 26th February 2009 BBC World Service
Produced by Alan Hall

What's Cooking: Episode 2 - Town Mouse, Country Mouse

In the early 1950s, at the same time legendary record producer Sam Phillips was making recordings of the pageants and events happening in Memphis' white community—across town, R.A. Coleman, an African American photographer, was making recordings of the black community—weddings, church choirs, nightclubs and dance halls.

Electronic Memories: R.A. Coleman's Memphis

Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about them.  Amy Tan's mother was serenaded by them as she lay in state.  Jessica Mitford's memorial procession was led by them. And more than 300 Chinese families a year hire the Green Street Mortuary Band to give their loved ones a proper and musical send-off through the streets of Chinatown.The band traces its roots back to 1911 and the Cathay Chinese Boys Band, the first marching group in Chinatown.

The Green Street Mortuary Band, made up of mostly Italians playing Christian hymns and dirges, accompanies traditional Chinese funeral processions through the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown. Tubas, gongs, firecrackers and spirit money tossed in the air, ward off evil spirits and carry on a tradition that dates back to 1911.

16 - The Green Street Mortuary Band

After a debilitating accident, Eddie McCoy took his passion for local history and a scavenged cassette recorder from a trash can and began taping his town, from the oldest citizen on down—hidden stories of slavery times, sharecropping, the civil rights era and more in Oxford, North Carolina.

A Man Tapes his Town: The Unrelenting Oral Histories of Eddie McCoy

April 1993: A small village in Sicily prepares for the first visit of 78-year-old baseball legend Joe DiMaggio to the town where his parents were born and raised. Flags are strung, feasts prepared, nearly the entire annual budget of the town is spent preparing for the homecoming of the Yankee Clipper. Hundreds gather at the airport in Palermo waiting to greet their "native son." But he never comes.

Waiting for Joe DiMaggio

Stories from The Hidden World of Girls with host Tina Fey: Nigerian writer Chris Abani tells about his English-born mother enlisting him at age 8 to be her translator in Nigeria as she travels door to door through the villages teaching women the Billings Ovulation Method of birth control. Plus stories from singer/actress Janelle Monae, science fiction writer Pat Cadigan, Estonian activist Tiina Urm and her "Let's Do It Campaign" and more stories about girls and the women they become.

The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey

WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts. The first all-girl radio station in the nation. From our Peabody Award winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound. 

WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts

The World's Champion One-handed Pool Player. "It just got in your blood like a man on dope, or drinking whiskey, you gotta have it. I'd die if I didn't get to play every day a little bit. The football shot, I'll show you that in a minute..." Ernie Morgan traveled the pool halls of America shooting exhibition pool nightly, telling his life story. 

The Legend of Ernest Morgan

Founded in 1998, Falling Tree Productions is one of the world’s leading radio production companies.

We craft features and documentaries for BBC Radio in the UK, the BBC World Service and stations across Europe, North America and Australia. Our programmes have been aired on podcasts such as 99% Invisible, Radiolab, The Truth, Unfictional, This American Life and Third Ear and won awards at the Prix Italia, Prix Europa, Third Coast International Audio Festival, Prix Bohemia and the Radio Academy Awards amongst others.

SFMOMA is dedicated to making the art of our time a vital and meaningful part of public life. For that reason we assemble unparalleled collections, create exhilarating exhibitions, and develop engaging public programs. In all of these endeavors, we are guided by our enduring commitment to fostering creativity and embracing new ways of seeing the world.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia podcast network. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes: http://apple.co/1FsFSsm or on your favorite podcast app.

The Kitchen Sisters, Peabody Award winning radio producers Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, chronicle the hidden parts of history, the traditions and rituals people carry with them from one country to another, across one generation to the next. Stories of sonic pioneers, local kitchen visionaries, neighborhood heros, groundbreaking girls and path-finding women—people with a mission, a purpose, a story to tell. 

Our productions include the duPont-Columbia Award winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, the Peabody Award winning NPR series Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project, The Hidden World of Girls, and The Making Of... {What people make in the Bay Area and why}, along with hundreds of other stories for public media.

Building Community through Story Telling


New tracks tagged #Kitchen Sisters