Susan Stamberg

Credit Doby Photography / NPR

Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is special correspondent for NPR.

Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program, and has won every major award in broadcasting. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. An NPR "founding mother," Stamberg has been on staff since the network began in 1971.

Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered for 14 years. She then hosted Weekend Edition Sunday, and now serves as guest host of NPR's Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday, in addition to reporting on cultural issues for Morning Edition.

One of the most popular broadcasters in public radio, Stamberg is well known for her conversational style, intelligence, and knack for finding an interesting story. Her interviewing has been called "fresh," "friendly, down-to-earth," and (by novelist E.L. Doctorow) "the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio." Her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Dave Brubeck, and Luciano Pavarotti.

Prior to joining NPR, she served as producer, program director, and general manager of NPR Member Station WAMU-FM/Washington, DC. Stamberg is the author of two books, and co-editor of a third. Talk: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, chronicles her two decades with NPR. Her first book, Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book, was published in 1982 by Pantheon. Stamberg also co-edited The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road, published in 1992 by W. W. Norton. That collection grew out of a series of stories Stamberg commissioned for Weekend Edition Sunday.

In addition to her Hall of Fame inductions, other recognitions include the Armstrong and duPont Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ohio State University's Golden Anniversary Director's Award, and the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.

A native of New York City, Stamberg earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees including a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College, Yale University, and has served on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award Foundation and the National Arts Journalism Program based at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Stamberg has hosted a number of series on PBS, moderated three Fred Rogers television specials for adults, served as commentator, guest or co-host on various commercial TV programs, and appeared as a narrator in performance with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her voice appeared on Broadway in the Wendy Wasserstein play An American Daughter.

Ravi Shankar, Who Brought Eastern Music To Western Legends, Dies

Credit David Redfern / Redferns

Ravi Shankar circa 1960 in the U.K.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Wed December 12, 2012 7:40 am

2:23 am

Mon December 10, 2012

Hopper's Lonely Figures Find Some Friends In Paris

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Credit The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection / Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Hopper is well-known in the U.S. for paintings such as Nighthawks (1942) — pensive, lonely portraits of people sitting together yet alone. He was less well-known in France, but an exhibit of his work at the Grand Palais has drawn impressive crowds.

Credit Columbus Museum of Art/Howald Fund

Edward and Josephine Hopper met as young students in art school in New York and married in 1924. Josephine was his only female model, and posed for his 1952 work, Morning Sun.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Mon December 10, 2012 10:07 am

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Earlier this summer, I looked for Edward Hopper's Morning Sun at its home in the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. In the painting, a woman sits on a bed with her knees up, gazing out a window. She's bare, but for a short pink slip. The iconic Hopper is a must-see, but on the day I visited, it was on loan to an exhibition in Madrid.

4:00 am

Thu November 29, 2012

Leslie Caron: Dancing From WWII Paris To Hollywood

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Credit Baron/Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Leslie Caron starred in a 1953 production of La Belle au Bois Dormant, or Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by Roland Petit. Caron trained with the Conservatoire de Paris before joining Petit's company, Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées.

Credit Lionel Bonaventure / AFP/Getty Images

Leslie Caron, shown here in her Paris apartment in 2010, has appeared in more than 40 films.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Thu November 29, 2012 8:40 am

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In the 1950s, the moviegoing world fell in love with a young French ballerina and actress named Leslie Caron. She brightened the silver screen in musical films like 1958's Gigi, where she played a young courtesan-in-training who befriends a rich, handsome suitor in 1900s Paris.

2:28 am

Tue September 25, 2012

Print-Inspired Art: All The News That's Fit To Paint

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Credit Gerard Vuilleumier / The Alfredo Ramos Martinez Research Project, Reproduced by Permission

Alfredo Ramos Martinez painted Head of a Nun, tempera on newspaper, in 1934.

Credit James Franklin / The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' untitled 1991 work consists of a stack of papers, each with a tiny excerpt from The New York Times printed in the center. Visitors are invited to take a piece of paper from the work home with them.

Credit 2012 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS)

In his 1912 collage Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass, Pablo Picasso included a fragment of the French paper Le Journal.

Credit National Gallery of Art

Marine Hugonnier's 2005 work, Art for Modern Architecture (Homage to Ellsworth Kelly), makes a collage of a week's worth of front pages and cutouts from an art book.

Credit Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York, Copyright Jim Hodges

In The Good News, Jim Hodges covers the Aug. 6, 2008, edition of a newspaper published in Amman, Jordan, in 24-carat gold.

Credit Courtesy of National Gallery of Art

In his 1970 work Untitled (Diver), Paul Thek uses acrylic on newspaper. The newspaper buckles under the paint, making waves beneath the diver.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Tue September 25, 2012 11:00 am

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The print newspaper industry may be struggling, but newsprint is alive and well on the walls of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The show is called "Shock of the News" — and it examines a century's worth of interaction between artists and the journals of their day.

2:25 am

Mon August 20, 2012

Hopper's Pensive Lady In Pink Travels The World

Credit Columbus Museum of Art/Howald Fund

Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine N. Hopper, served as his model for 1952's Morning Sun.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 12:50 pm

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It's one of the ultimate images of summer: a woman in a short, pink slip sits on a bed, her knees pulled up to her chest, gazing out a window. Her hair is tucked back into a bun. Her bare arms rest lightly on her bare legs.

Edward Hopper painted her in 1952 for a work called Morning Sun. The picture has been widely reproduced for decades. But on a recent visit to its home at the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio, it was nowhere to be found.

4:53 am

Sat August 4, 2012

India's Blackout A Reminder Of How Far We've Come

Credit Channi Anand / AP

A girl prepares a meal by candlelight in Jammu, India, during the massive blackout last week.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Sun August 5, 2012 10:43 am

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This week, the world's largest democracy experienced the world's largest power outage. Nearly 700 million — that's more than half a billion — Indians were said to have been without power Tuesday. No air conditioning. No traffic lights. No metro system.

Most of the power is back now, but the outage had resonance for me from the long-ago years when I lived in New Delhi and experienced power failures almost as regularly as I did steaming cups of dark, sweet Indian tea.

2:00 am

Thu May 17, 2012

A Museum Visit For Art Lovers With Alzheimer's

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Credit The Kreeger Museum

Students and seniors discussed Claude Monet's Sunset at Pourville during a recent visit to the Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C.

Credit Staff photo / Courtesy of the Kreeger Museum

The Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C., was once the residence of David Kreeger, former GEICO chairman, and his wife, Carmen Kreeger. It was designed in 1967 by Philip Johnson. The Kreeger is one of several museums in the country that have a special program designed for people with Alzheimer's.

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Thu May 17, 2012 5:58 am

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Many art lovers feel completely in the moment when they stroll through the galleries of a museum. That feeling was particularly true on a recent morning at the Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C. The Kreeger runs a special program for people with Alzheimer's — seniors, their caregivers and middle school students are paired together to enjoy the art and one another's company.

1:18 am

Thu May 3, 2012

Colorful Visions At African-American Art Exhibit

Credit Gene Young / American Art Museum

By Susan Stamberg

Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 9:50 am

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The African-American experience is reflected, right now, on the walls of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Exuberant dancing in Chicago. Laundry on a line in the nation's capital. A girl smiling out from her father's warm jacket — all captured in photographs, paintings and sculptures from the 1920s through the 1990s.

2:37 am

Fri March 2, 2012

In 'Ocean Park,' Gentle Portraits Of California Light

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Credit The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn / Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art

Richard Diebenkorn's 1975 work Ocean Park #79, features pastel blues, lavenders and aquas — and thin strips of deep red and green at the top to draw the viewer's gaze upward.

Credit Colin C. McRae /

Over the course of more than 20 years, Richard Diebenkorn created 145 paintings for his Ocean Park series. Nearly 80 of those works created between 1967 and 1988 are on display at the Orange County Museum of Art in Southern California. Diebenkorn, pictured above in 1982, died in 1993.

Credit The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn / Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery

Diebenkorn's studio sat on a hillside; he looked out and up at the geometry of the hill, and how the streets crossed one another. Above, his 1969 oil painting Ocean Park #24.

Credit Leo Holub /

Diebenkorn and many other artists flocked to Ocean Park in the late 1960s — rent in the then-derelict area was cheap. He's pictured above in his Ocean Park studio in Santa Monica in 1984.

Credit The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn

Diebenkorn played music in his studio while he painted — he loved Bach and Mozart — and it's reflected in his composition of colors. "I really do see them as kind of music," says curator Sarah Bancroft. Above, Diebenkorn's 1984 work, Untitled #26 — gouache, acrylic and crayon on joined paper.

By Susan Stamberg

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In the late 1960s, while America was in turmoil over the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, a painter in Santa Monica, Calif., was creating a series of tranquil, glowing canvases that made his reputation and transfixed art lovers. Those works — the Ocean Park series — are now on view at the Orange County Museum of Art, about an hour's drive from the place where they were painted.

11:01 pm

Thu February 23, 2012

The Extraordinary, Ordinary Life Of Alexander Payne

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Credit Tiziana Fabi / AFP/Getty Images

Alexander Payne's The Descendants has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editor and Best Actor. Payne co-wrote and directed the film, which stars George Clooney as an indifferent dad struggling to raise two daughters.

Credit Merie Wallace / Fox Searchlight

Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer left alone with his two girls after his wife falls into a coma.

Credit Cindy Carpien / NPR

Life is a "collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments," Payne says. "We just need to pay attention to them all." Above, Payne stops at a farmers market near his home in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Credit Cindy Carpien / NPR

Payne heads off for a luncheon at the American Film Institute during what he says is an atypically busy week leading up to the Oscars.

By Susan Stamberg

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Alexander Payne watches a movie every day — or tries to, anyway. Lately, the writer and director of The Descendants has been busy going to nomination and awards dinners, in advance of Sunday's Oscar night — when the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay prizes could be his.

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12:00 am

Wed December 12, 2012