This story is part of a longer interview recorded for the Rosin the Bow project. www.rosinthebow.org. Here Stephen Ackert, the recently retired curator of music for the National Gallery of Art and Bruno Nasta, a professional violinist who helps organize the music concert series that takes place inside the National Gallery, talk about a painting by the Italian 16th century artist Michelangelo Anselmi that shows the Greek god Apollo competing in an early fiddle contest of sorts.

Rosin the Bow explores the many roles the violin family of instruments play in the world today through a series of public radio programs, podcasts, and a comprehensive oral history archived by the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. Traveling throughout the United States and other parts of the world, storyteller, fiddler, and award-winning radio journalist Joe McHugh and his wife Paula McHugh seek out interviews with violin makers, dealers, restorers, auctioneers, tone wood producers, insurance agents, museum curators, rosin makers, bow hair importers, string manufacturers—even police officers who have played a part in recovering stolen violins. The McHughs also interview gifted musicians who perform a variety of musical genres from classical and folk to jazz and rock.

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