Pushkin, Hey, Bad Women, listen, Nurse Hallie here. We're working hard on the new season of Bad Women coming October eleventh, But in the meantime, I wanted to share a new true crime podcast from Pushkin. I think you're going to love it. It's called Death of an Artist. Anna Mendietta was on her way to the top of the art world when she fell thirty four stories to her death
on September eighth, nineteen eighty five. She was in the prime of her life and gaining recognition for her genre bending performance art while living with her husband, the famous sculptor Carl Andrea. From the outside, it looked like a romance for the ages between two incredibly talented and fascinating people, but Mendietta and Andrea's inner circle saw something very different.
Mendy at his untimely death caused a rift in the art world, one that pit women against men, feminists against non feminists, and a new generation against the old god. On Death of an Artist, critically acclaimed curator Helen Molesworth revisits Mendieta's death, the trial that followed, and both the protest and silence that have accompanied this story ever since. Here's the preview. You can follow Anna's story by searching for a death of an artist wherever you get your podcasts.
We've arrived at the threshold of our terrible story Sunday, September eighth, nineteen eighty five, a mere nine months after their wedding. There's a lot we don't know about that evening. Here are a few things we know for certain. We know that Anna never moved her things as she had planned to. We know that the unhappy couple spent the evening at Carl's place, an apartment on the thirty fourth floor of a relatively new luxury high rise in Greenwich Village.
That night, like New Yorkers everywhere, they ordered Chinese food and watched TV. Then, sometime after five am, a passerby on the street below heard a woman's scream, no, no, No. A moment later, there was a sound like an explosion on the roof of the deli below Carl's apartment. Anna had fallen from above. Carl called five twenty nine am.
We don't have the tape of that call. After the verdict, the whole trial record, including the call, was sealed, but a reporter who heard it played at trial said Carl. Andre's voice was distressed that he wailed and that his explanation was interrupted with cries and moans. We've asked voice actors to read parts of the transcript of the nine one one call Police Worth Emergency, Yes, my wife has
committed suicide, saying my wife has committed suicide. Carl gives the address his phone number and says they're on the thirty fourth floor. The operator asks what happened exactly? Yeah, Well, what happened was we had a my wife is an artist and I'm an artist, and we had a chorl about the fact that I was more exposed to the public than she wasn't She went to the bedroom and I went after her, and she went out of the window. So she jumped out of the window. How long ago
did this happen? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. It wasn't I don't know. They talked for several more seconds, did it and recently? Did it happen just now? Oh, it happened just now. I mean, I can't I can't tell you the building and yeah, I don't know, it's it's I can't, I can't help you. I can't help you. In September of nineteen eighty five, I was a sophomore in college in Albany, New York. I had already walked on top of one
of carl Andre's sculptures. They were installed in nearly every museum in the country. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you how much I love them. I was completely turned on by their taboo breaking fuck you energy. The severity of his metal plates lying on the floor in a simple checkerboard pattern almost struck me as punk in my younger Brasher years. I didn't learn about Anna Mendietta until years after her death, when I was well into graduate school, and even then I learned about her from
a fellow student, not through any of my professors. I was trained by art historians who believe the prime directive was to separate the life of the artist from their work. This meant no one ever said that Carl Andre was married to Anna Mendietta, much less that he was accused of murdering her. Topped that off with the fact that Anna Mendietta was a Cuban immigrant showing at a feminist gallery working with blood, making work that summoned the idea
of the Earth goddess. Nothing could have been less cool. In my philosophically inclined education the privileged theory over feeling. But during the first two decades of the twenty first century, the world changed a lot and fast, and I think I did too. If I had a son, he looked like Trebon. That this moment and where we are right now is a resurgence from where the civil rights movement
left up. President Trump is defending a temporary travel band for seven Muslim majority countries as a monument of life supprise. Thousands of women are using two words on social media to identify themselves as survivors of sexual harassment and assault. Today it's hashtag me too. I found myself thinking about Anna because she did go on to become a free to call a like figure, more powerful after her death
than before, larger than life, revered. Scores of artists, mostly women, studied her, reenacted her performances, paid homage to her with their own work. They make pilgrimages to the important sites of her life Havana, Iowa City, Rome, Greenwich Village. And over the years I came to love Anna Mendieta's art because it felt so urgent, so relevant, because politics did
start to feel personal and identity does matter. But could I love Mendietta's work while also still being a fan of Carl Andre's sculptures, or did I have to choose sides? It felt like the only way to answer that question was by asking another what really happened the night Anna died? I wondered what we might be able to learn if we returned to her story. When we first started making this podcast, I assumed folks would want to talk about what happened between Anna and Carl Man. Was I wrong?