Art history has of late been more art and less history. University enrollment in pre-contemporary art is dwindling, and cost-intensive mega-exhibitions of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are stilled as the pandemic roars on. For perspective we turn to one of the world’s leading experts in 19th century painting, Dr. George T.M. Shackelford , Deputy Director of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum . He shares anecdotes about our shared summer as interns at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after we g...
Sep 13, 2020
For truth-telling in the world of finance, we turn to Lola C. West, co-founder and partner of WestFuller Advisors , a boutique investment advisory firm in New York City that builds legacies of wealth for individuals, families and institutions. A trustee of Souls Grown Deep Community Partnership and Foundation , she shares insights on the intersections among social change, culture, and finance, and the alleviation of poverty in the Deep South, and lets us into the rarefied world of investing—leav...
Sep 06, 2020
We’re lucky to have a chance to hear from Arnold Lehman , senior adviser to the chairman of Phillips auction house, and director emeritus of the Brooklyn Museum . We dive straight into some very timely topics, including the slow pace of change in art museums grappling with their responsibilities in furthering racial and social justice, how media coverage influences the field, if and how New York will bounce back after the pandemic recedes, and his forthcoming book on the exhibition Sensation . W...
Aug 30, 2020
We take a step outside into the world of horticulture, and then back into art museums, safely masked, for a conversation with Dr. Carrie Rebora Barratt, CEO and William C. Steere Sr. President of The New York Botanical Garden , and previously deputy director for collections and administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . We cover a lot of ground, from how cultural institutions began in New York City starting in 1870, to the social responsibilities of all kinds of cultural institutions, ch...
Aug 23, 2020
Art museum directors are challenged as never before, confronting the pandemic, demands for social and racial justice, low morale among staff who have survived layoffs, and evaporated earned revenue. The woman of the hour to sort it all out is Dr. Elizabeth Easton , former chair of the Department of European Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum, the first elected president of the Association of Art Museum Curators , and Co-Founder and current Director of the Center for Curatorial Leaders...
Aug 16, 2020
It’s safe to assume that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is unaware that America’s oldest treaty is with Morocco, the first nation to recognize the fledging United States in December 1777. The breadth of American ignorance about Islamic history, art, and culture is unfathomable, but fortunately we have Dr. Sabiha Al Khemir joining this episode, sharing details of her journey from Tunisia to a PhD from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, to becoming the fo...
Aug 10, 2020
Many of America’s art museums have been the target of blunt criticism for over a year, first for accepting funds derived from pharmaceutical manufacturers, fossil fuel companies, and arms merchants, and more recently for employment practices disadvantageous to people of color. While there is no single remedy for alleged shortcomings in governance and management, one option is available for these institutions to align their practices with stated values. An estimated $58 billion is under the manag...
Aug 02, 2020
What can museums do to earn trust in their stated commitment to racial justice? For answers we turn to Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture . And hear about her childhood home in Atlanta, a hub for civil rights advocates from Julian Bond to Stokely Carmichael. A life spent leading cultural institutions devoted to African American creativity and history. Along the way we’re treated to richly textured anecdotes about her times wit...
Jul 26, 2020
America is unique in harboring a sizable population of the scientifically disinclined—or more bluntly, climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. Riding to the rescue on a motorcycle is our guest Dr. Julian Siggers . the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology since 2012, and the newly appointed president and CEO of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History . We delve into how, after receiving a PhD in human prehistory, he became the host of a ser...
Jul 19, 2020
Graphic identities abound in our media-saturated world—and in this episode we turn to a globally-renowned expert and practitioner to help us understand how he goes about inventing the typefaces, logos, and brand identities of leading art museums including the Guggenheim and the Whitney, the Barnes Foundation , and countless other cultural and commercial clients over many years. Abbott Miller has been a partner at Pentagram since 1999, and he has created multiple award-winning solutions worldwide...
Jul 12, 2020
Designing museums and concert halls demands a blend of experience, talent, and vision. Richard Olcott, Design Partner at Ennead Architects in New York City, brings the right blend and a sense of play to a serious profession. In this episode we learn about whether, in the face of the pandemic, clients are still lining up (they are), museums will return to business as usual (they won’t), and how the Spanish Flu of 1918 was central to the birth of modernism and the International Style of architectu...
Jul 05, 2020
What do James Brown’s album Sex Machine and the Renaissance sculptor Donatello have to do with protecting the art of our time? Find out in this wide-ranging conversation with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, the Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art , and for over a decade the Founding Director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums. For nineteen years she served as Chief Conservator of The Menil Collec...
Jun 28, 2020
An archaeologist who today digs on the northern coast of Turkey at the site of Sinop , Prof. Alexander Bauer of Queens College-CUNY reflects on ancient examples of sculptural desecration, and paints a vivid picture of the daily life of a scholar in a sun-drenched archaeological site revealing 4,000 year-old finds with trowel and brush in hand. We hear about the mechanics of archaeology as so-called controlled destruction, leading-edge technology in service of uncovering the past, the promise of ...
Jun 21, 2020
Across the former Confederate states and around Europe, statues are being pulled down by cranes and crowds, as protests about symbols of racism and hate blanket the globe in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For some context we turn to Dr. Victoria S. Reed, Sadler Curator for Provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . She is one of a handful of full-time curators in the U.S. tasked with researching the ownership history of objects offered to and in the museum’s collections—and is an expert...
Jun 14, 2020
We turn to an artist for insight in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons shares powerful observations and draws us into her unique worldview, leavened in her Nigerian roots, her years in Cuba, and her life today as Professor of Fine Arts and Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. She has participated in the biennials of Venice, Dakar, and Johannesburg, in Documenta 14, and in multiple other major exhibitions worldwide, with works ...
Jun 07, 2020
Why don’t American artists have the same rights as artists in Europe? This week we speak with Janet Hicks, Vice President and Director of Licensing of the Artists Rights Society , or ARS. We discuss what protections are in and not in current U.S. copyright law, the kinds of uses ARS licenses for reproduction, the premise of so-called moral rights, a prospective resale royalty that would compensate artists for works sold by later owners, why artists—unlike collectors--don’t get to deduct the fair...
May 31, 2020
Who’s responsible for the promulgation of human knowledge? If you answered Wikipedia, think again. Our guest this week is Jennifer Crewe, director of Columbia University Press , and immediate past president of the 150-member Association of University Presses . The first woman director of an Ivy League university press, she reveals the business model of academic publishing, trends in book-buying during the pandemic, the politics of subsidizing the public face of research, digital platforms, and m...
May 24, 2020
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden provides a critical platform for contemporary artists in America’s capital. Leading the Hirshhorn since 2014, Dr. Melissa Chiu joins the podcast, sharing details about her early years in Australia, directing the Asia Society Museum in New York, the future expansion of the Hirshhorn, the likely fate of global art programming in the wake of the pandemic, performance art in an age of social distancing, and the U.S. model of cultural patronage.
May 17, 2020
Venture into the back room of one of New York’s most closely followed art galleries in this week’s episode. David Lewis, the principal and director of David Lewis Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, shares his optimistic views on the roiling art market, reveals the fault lines among auction houses, mega-galleries, and the rest of the art world, and provides an indispensable primer on the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of contemporary art since the 1970s (bring a dictionary)....
May 10, 2020
Award-winning novelist April Reynolds Mosolino joins the podcast, discussing growing up in South Dallas, her first novel titled Knee-Deep in Wonder (Henry Holt and Co.), and her responsibilities as the Michele Tolela Myers Chair in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. We delve into many topics, including life in New York City during the pandemic, the heroism of today’s previously unsung heroes risking illness in the service industry, and her forthcoming publications, including a second novel, The ...
May 03, 2020
In a free-wheeling conversation with unrivaled legal expert Professor Stephen Urice, we consider multiple topics: Legal tussles in the art market unfolding as a result of the pandemic, tugs-of-war over antiquities and Nazi loot, museum staff layoffs, artist-endowed foundations, art authentication, artists’ rights, and single-donor art museums, a.k.a. private museums. It’s a crash course in art law—fasten your seat belts.
Apr 26, 2020
Dr. Michael Shapiro, emeritus director of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, is today Senior Advisor for Museums and Private Collections at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. A specialist in 19th and 20th century painting and sculpture, he joins us to evaluate the pandemic’s effect on the art world, review his career as a professor, curator, director, and now art market expert, and shed light on challenges facing the leaders of the nation’s preeminent museums.
Apr 20, 2020
The Art Assignment is a weekly PBS Digital Studios production by Sarah Urist Green, which has attracted over 23 million views since its debut. The series premiered in 2014 with episodes introducing us all to emerging and established artists, each of whom shares an assignment related to their approach to art. These episodes serve as open calls for makers across the globe, and thousands of artworks have been created and shared in response to the assignments. Sarah’s new book is titled You Are an A...
Apr 12, 2020
We head to Paris in this episode to hear from Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation since February 2019, as well as a program officer of the Foundation’s parent organization, the Souls Grown Deep Community Partnership, which supports the communities that gave rise to the 160 artists represented in its collection.
Apr 05, 2020
At a time when keeping your distance can be life-saving, we hear from Risa Puno , a well-known installation artist and sculptor who creates large-scale public artworks that address social issues—and involve close interaction. Her insights about human behavior and our need to connect offer hope for better days ahead.
Mar 29, 2020
Dr. Julia Marciari-Alexander is the Andrea B. and John H. Laporte Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. In this episode she opens the director’s office door and shares insights about her career, the museum she directs, and her thoughts about a wide range of issues, from collecting to creating a welcoming public experience.
Mar 24, 2020
Adrian Ellis is the founder of AEA Consulting and the Global Cultural Districts Network. There is no more informed voice to help us all understand some of the dynamics roiling the cultural world in light of COVID-19.
Mar 22, 2020
Mar 08, 2020
