Learn & Play

In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst’s media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media’s role in American life and politics.

Arts of the Monsoon, commissioned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, takes viewers on a journey into a unique corner of the world, the lands bordering the Indian Ocean, as it explores the connections between Zanzibar and Oman through the eyes of musicians, artists, and cultural experts.