An Art History Mystery, Part One (Ep. 490)

A locked museum. Five eccentric art teachers. One missing Salvador Dalí masterpiece.

In this special fiction-meets-art-history podcast, you’ll step into the MoMA after hours, where a professional development retreat turns into something much more sinister. What begins as an inspiring evening quickly spirals into chaos when Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory disappears.

Each teacher has their quirks, secrets, and possible motives:

• Delilah Rose – the bubbly Ms. Frizzle of the art room, all glitter glue and good intentions… but is she too innocent?

• Solomon Ochre – the arrogant competitor, desperate to showcase his talent and prove his importance.

• Amber Russell – indifferent, sarcastic, observant, and maybe secretly brilliant.

• Madison Periwinkle – the “artfluencer”, livestreaming for clout and sharing her entire teaching experience.

• Robert Celadon – the old school purist, obsessed with tradition, forgery, and art history.

When the painting vanishes, suspicion falls on them all. With quirky detectives, unreliable security, and tangled motives, this is more than a PD event—it’s a full-blown art heist mystery.

Listen now to experience a story blending art history, teaching art, and true-crime-style suspense.

Can you solve the mystery before the detectives do?

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

• • Join the Art of Ed Community
  • Check out the Community’s Halloween Costume Contest
  • How Mysteries Can Make Learning Exciting
  • 6 Creepy Artworks for Halloween
  • Art Teacher Horror Stories

Transcript

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education and this is An Art History Mystery.

Narrator:

In October of 2025, five art teachers were selected for two days and nights of intensive professional development in New York City, surrounded by some of the most important artworks ever created. They explored the work of Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Frida Kahlo, and more recent artists such as Ana Mendieta, Félix González Torres, and Carol Walker.

These five art teachers were granted something most people never experience, private and unlimited access to the Museum of Modern Art after hours. For two nights, they would study masterpieces, create their own, and reflect on the power of teaching art. Everything was going great, until a Salvador Dali masterpiece went missing.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

Lavender:

I’m Lavender Montgomery, one of the Gallery Directors here at the MoMA. Welcome, we are so excited to have you all here. I know you have been talking online for the past couple of months, but now that we are here in person, can we have everyone introduce themselves?

Delilah:

Hi! I’m Delilah Rose—Mrs. Rose to my kiddos—I teach K–5 art at Meadowlark Elementary in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This is my eighteenth year. And, oh my goodness, when I got that acceptance email, I squealed loud enough to scare the janitor.

I specialize in messy magic. Tempera, tissue paper, glue sticks, glitter—that’s my kingdom. I just believe every child deserves to feel creative, you know?

Coming to MoMA is like—oh wow—it’s like seeing the Sistine Chapel, but with better lighting. I’ve never even been to New York before. This is going to be life-changing!

Madison:

OMG Delilah, you’re like the real-life Miss Frizzle! I love EVERYTHING you’ve got happening here. Slay.

Madison Periwinkle here, so excited to be going live from MoMA! I teach at Redwood High in Portland, Oregon, but I’m also your friendly neighborhood artfluencer. @PeriArtClassroom, 94 thousand followers on Instagram, 338 thousand on TikTok, and half a million across all platforms.

I wanted to come to MoMA because it’s iconic. Warhol. Picasso. Matisse. I mean, come on, it’s the Super Bowl of art. And, let’s be honest . . . it’s amazing content.

Solomon:

Solomon Ochre. I teach advanced studio art and AP Art History at Bishop Arts Magnet, Austin, Texas. My students have taken national awards seven years in a row. My students work in series, we study contemporary trends, we push limits.

I did bring a few student portfolios—just my Gold Key winners and national finalists. I thought you all might be able to learn something from what I’m doing in my classroom.

MoMA reached out to say they wanted me to come here . . .

What’s that?

I mean, yes, I applied, of course. But I like to think I was already on their radar.

Amber:

Amber Russell. I teach middle school art at Northpoint Prep in Tempe, Arizona.  Seventh and eighth grade—basically I get paid to dodge glitter bombs and interpret anime sketches.

My specialty? Not yelling when someone dumps an entire box of markers into the sink.

But seriously, I lean into digital media—Photoshop basics, some animation. Stuff they can actually use.

Why am I here? Free trip. Free wine. PD hours. Duh.

Robert:

Robert Celadon. I teach Drawing, Oil Painting, and Art History at Fairmont Collegiate in Providence, Rhode Island. I’ve been teaching for… well, longer than most of you have been alive. And I still believe in traditional artmaking, the value of history, and the genius of the Renaissance.

My specialty is discipline. Craft. The lost art of technical skill. Art forgery and art heists are of interest to me. I’m currently researching how The Scream was stolen twice, less than 10 years apart.

I came to MoMA because it’s sacred ground. And if I can contribute to meaningful conversations here . . . it will be well worth the time.

Narrator:

The first stop was Gallery 2: Self-Representation and Identity. In front of Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, the teachers were invited to sit, reflect, and respond to the painting:

Lavender:

This is obviously a very powerful work. I’d like you to look, and think, and write about this question: “What parts of yourself do you teach through art? And how do your students respond?’”

Delilah:

I teach kids that it’s okay to be messy. That sadness and joy can live in the same drawing. Frida shows that. She’s not afraid of being… complicated.

Solomon:

I tell my students—don’t just paint your face. Paint your conflict. Kahlo didn’t just paint what she saw. She painted what she endured.

Madison:

I ask my students to show their aesthetic truth. It might be their wardrobe, their hair, their voice.

Identity isn’t fixed—it’s curated.

Amber:

My kids mostly draw themselves as dragons. Or sad anime characters. And both are, like, totally valid.

Robert:

This portrait? It’s honest. Raw. Symbolic. And it reminds me—art should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed. I quote that often.

Narrator:

The conversation continued a while longer before the teachers moved on to another powerful work, this one from Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Lavender:

Next, we will visit Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). This is a poignant, meaningful remembrance of the artist’s partner. A shimmering pile of wrapped candies, each piece a memory.

Our activity will be to write a moment of joy from your teaching life on a slip of colored paper, and add it to our growing installation.

Madison:

Omg this is so beautiful. I’m captioning this: ‘Teaching is giving part of yourself away, one sweet moment at a time.’ Ugh, I love that. Hashtag powerful hashtag poignant.

Robert:

It’s conceptual. But still compelling. I respect it.

I wrote about the first time a student mixed ultramarine and burnt sienna and called it ‘stormlight.’ That was a moment.”

Delilah:

[Quietly emotional] It’s a very, very powerful piece.

Solomon:

I wrote about the first time a student’s portfolio was accepted to RISD. She cried. I didn’t. But I was . . . proud.

Amber:

I don’t know if I have those moments of joy or whatever. I wrote: ‘When no one ate the modeling clay this year.’ That counts, right?

Narrator:

Then, in Gallery 4—where The Persistence of Memory usually hung—they were given fifteen minutes to create a surrealist sketch. Prompt: ‘What do your teaching challenges look like in a dream?’”

Delilah:

I drew a kid riding a giant glue stick like a horse through a field of exploding glitter. It’s maybe more accurate than I’d like to admit.

Solomon:

Mine is a staircase that leads to a blank canvas that never fills. You keep climbing. The canvas keeps growing. I assume you can pick up on the metaphor.

Amber:

Solomon is an artist for sure. His skill is like, out of this world. That staircase to the blank canvas was honestly one of the best drawings I’ve ever seen. Mine is just me screaming while TikToks play on loop in a hallway made of Chromebooks.

Robert:

I drew a Renaissance studio—upside down—with modern distractions swarming around it. Phones. Emojis. Vapes. Noise. Tablets. Earbuds. Hormones. The joys of post-pandemic teaching.

Madison:

I sketched a ring light floating over an ocean made of brushstrokes. There’s a giant ‘like’ button in the sky. That’s not not how it feels for me sometimes.”

Robert:

But I appreciate that we have some time with this incredible painting. When you talk about the epitome of Surrealism, or the masterpieces of the 20th century, this painting has to be part of the conversation. I can’t even put into words how we should value a work like this.

Amber:

Robert keeps talking about how this painting is “irreplaceable”, and I just get Beyoncé stuck in my head.

[sing-songy] “To the left, to the left . . . everything you own in a box to the left”

Madison:

I snuck a selfie with the melting clocks and it is doing NUMBERS. It’s a painting that everyone knows, even if you don’t know about art, so the likes are rolling in.

Do you think they’ll let me go live with a Dali in the background?

Solomon:

I wish more people could just spend time with the paintings in front of them. No photos, no selfies. Just contemplation. I think everyone gets more out of their visit to the museum that way.

Robert:

The interesting thing, to me, is the ability to be so close to these works. After the Gardner Museum Heist, and so many thefts,  you would think museums would take their security more seriously! Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Matisse all have works that are still missing! Yet they think a few security cameras and a minimum wage guard will protect this priceless collection.

Narrator:

As the evening wound down, the teachers were free to explore the museum.

Delilah:

I need to see van Gogh, Starry Night is my favorite! Did you know I have a puzzle of that painting? My students love it so much!

Amber:

Can I come with you? I’d like to have a lighter discussion for a little while.

Madison:

Hey besties! I’m inside the MoMA and it’s totally empty. I could live here. What paintings do you want to see?

Robert:

Solomon, are you interested in coming with me and sketching some of the sculptures up on the 5th floor?

Solomon:

Of course! I love Brancusi, and Duchamp as well.

Robert:

Agreed. And, I feel like we are both deserving of some time alone with a masterpiece.

Narrator:

Amber is the first to leave.

Delilah sticks around longer because, hey, it’s the MoMA. And who knows when she’ll ever get the chance to come here again.

Madison wraps up the livestream and heads for the exit as well.

Robert, satisfied with his sketches, begins heading to a show.

Solomon wants to see some lithographs before he goes, so he makes his way down the stairs.

Narrator:

But just after 9:00 p.m., something changed.

Lavender:

I was cleaning up our supplies for the evening, and as I turned the corner, my heart stopped. The Persistence of Memory–the Dali painting we JUST talked about–it was missing!

Narrator:

The realization came slowly. As unbelievable as it may be, one of the teachers HAD to be the thief. But which one of them would do such a thing? And how did they do it?

Lavender:

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what was going on. But as soon as my head cleared, I notified security.

Security:

Uhhhhhhhh, My name is Burg Phillips. It’s short for Burgundy, but everyone just calls me Burg. I’ve been working overnight security at the MoMA for . . . like . . . 7 or 8 weeks now? Might be the longest I’ve had a job, to be honest.

Lavender:

I radioed Burg and they called the police immediately. Burg is, to put it generously, not the best as a security guard. But I can trust them to at least make a phone call.

Security:

I mean . . . I guess I didn’t call them like RIGHT then. But I did call!

[phone ringing]

[911, what’s your emergency?]

Security:

Umm, Lavender told me that a painting is missing. This is Burg from the MoMA, by the way.

[911: You’re at the MoMA? Which painting is missing?]

Security:

Ohhhhh. Oh! I don’t know which one. I guess I didn’t ask. Do you want me to ask?

[911: No, please stay on the line with me. But I need you to lock the doors and make sure no one leaves]

————-

Kelly:

My name is Kelly Green, This is my brother, Forrest. We are both detectives in the 17th precinct in Manhattan.

Forrest:

We got a phone call at 9:03 p.m., about a painting that had gone missing. We would later find out it was one of the most famous paintings in the entire collection.

Kelly:

We told them to keep everyone in place, and we headed straight over.

Lavender:

Detectives, thank you so much for coming so quickly. We had five teachers here, but Madison, Amber, and Robert are already gone.

Narrator:

NEXT TIME, on An Art History Mystery:

Forrest:

8:49 p.m., the Dalí confirmed on the wall. By 8:57, it was gone. In that eight-minute window… every one of you gave us a different story.

Robert:

I knew that painting wasn’t safe. I told them about the Gardner Museum Heist–I told them! But of course they didn’t listen!

Amber:

This is kind of giving murder mystery party . . . but it’s real.

Madison:

If I were going to do it, it’d be for art’s sake. Like, performance art. Temporary. Disruptive. Bold.

But I didn’t. Obviously.

Solomon:

I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done a better job at lifting that painting. But no. I didn’t steal it.

Kelly:

Five art teachers. Five stories. But when you place the evidence together, everything becomes clear.

Narrator:

Make sure you subscribe to Art Ed Radio so you don’t miss next week’s thrilling conclusion of An Art History Mystery.