Art Scoping

Episode 88: Nine Minutes of Indictments and Timely Warnings: The Declaration of Independence

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 19:00:00 -0400

We are bracing ourselves, this Independence Day, for the next assault on our lives and freedoms by a craven Republican Party and a Supreme Court dominated by intolerant ideologues. I didn’t find solace when reading the Declaration of Independence aloud in this episode, as my late father Quentin did year after year on the 4th. Instead I found haunting predictions of attempted tyranny in our age by Trump and his obsequious followers, now being methodically revealed by the January 6th Committee.

While following the bipartisan Committee’s efforts and dogged reporting by journalists, the words of our Founders rebuking George III resonate loudly: “a long train of abuses and usurpations…evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism…He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance….He has refused to pass laws for the accommodation of large districts of people….He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual…obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither….He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices…He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power….For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world….He has excited domestic insurrections among us….”

Flames of despotism and jingoism have proliferated since 2016: "America First". The tariffs. The Muslim ban. The Texas State Legislature’s “special sessions”. The Wall. Voter suppression. The packing of the Supreme Court with religious zealots invoking long-discarded features of 18th century life as the basis for 21st century rights of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. Stripping the rights of women to make choices about their bodies. Outlawing the real history of slavery and race relations in public schools. Threats to subject gay and transgender people to criminal penalties, and to outlaw birth control. Gun laws which have unleashed a river of unimaginably destructive weapons easily obtained by individual citizens harboring irrational fears--no longer single-load muskets intended for the common defense. Trump's consideration of martial law and his willingness to authorize the military to shoot BLM protestors.

And the “Green Bay Sweep”. The Declaration’s final paragraph indicting King George cites the “excitement of domestic insurrections among us”.

Celebration is not on the minds of many of us these days, but instead the last sentence of the Declaration is what we have this July 4th: “And for the support of this Declaration…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Vote. For every office, in every election. To do otherwise is to dishonor the sacrifice of countless lives, and to risk extinguishing the American experiment.

Episode 87: A Literary Landmark in Honor of Maxwell Anderson

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 15:00:00 -0400

It's been a while since the last episode of Art Scoping--it will hereafter follow no set schedule, but episodes will pop up here and there.

This episode is a recorded tribute to my late grandfather Maxwell Anderson--playwright, lyricist, author, and journalist. I delivered it on March 24, 2022 at an event on the campus of the University of North Dakota, marking the unveiling of the first literary landmark in the state.

Episode 86: Notes on the ROAD Project in Barbados

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:00:00 -0500

A short episode in which you’ll hear about the basics of a new endeavor announced by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados. Called the ROAD Project (Reclaiming our Atlantic Destiny), it includes a massive digitization project, the creation of a memorial to enslaved people by Adjaye Associates, and the planning for a new heritage district to incorporate a museum and archives, performing arts venues, and associated amenities. Stay tuned to the Barbados Government Information Service to follow this compelling project.

Episode 85: Audu Maikori

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 09:00:00 -0500

A special episode recorded in Barbados with attorney, activist, and music producer Audu Maikori. Attending the island nation’s rebirth as a parliamentary republic, and assisting with ambitious plans to build a heritage district, we cover that momentous transition and his encounter this past week with another prince, the Prince of Wales, his roots as a member of the Ham royal family of the Nok people, the quest for restitution of its looted heritage, and the need for a suitable Museum to receive it. A social activist who was arrested for alleged incitement to violence, he prevailed in court and was awarded damages against the Governor of Kaduna State and the Nigerian police force. His work as a music producer has taken him in multiple directions, from discovering new talent and seeing artists reach millions of listeners globally, to combating piracy and helping develop copyright protections in Nigeria, to serving as a judge in the first season of Nigerian Idol. Erudite, generous, and philosophical, he opens the door to greater understanding of several issues facing one of the world’s most populous nations, brimming with possibilities.

Episode 84: Min Jung Kim

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 10:00:00 -0500

Min Jung Kim took the helm of the Saint Louis Art Museum a few weeks ago, and we hear her first thoughts about her new city, post-pandemic audiences, economic impact studies, major exhibitions, the value of free general admission, the cultural district including the museum, and how she spent her first few days on the job getting to know the building and everyone from curators to art handlers and guards.

Episode 83: Mark Cavagnero

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 08:00:00 -0500

Architect Mark Cavagnero shares anecdotes about his formation working for Edward Larrabee Barnes, his personal experience with Marcel Breuer’s body of work, and insights about the competing issues facing architects designing and building cultural facilities. He touches on his designs for the Walker Art Center, the Oakland Museum of California, and his hopes for the downstream effects of the new infrastructure legislation signed into law by President Biden.

Episode 82: Nora Burnett Abrams

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 08:00:00 -0500

Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art is led by Nora Burnett Abrams, who takes us through the situation on the ground in an oasis of free expression and adventure in the Western United States. We cover a lot of ground, including her recent leasing of a satellite space, the challenges and opportunities of being a non-collecting institution, her views on NFTs and their likely reshaping of the art world, a novel program allowing local residents to borrow works by artists from a free-standing collection, and how peer institutions share new ideas and best practices.

Episode 81: Jim Friedlander

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 07:00:00 -0500

Travel! This week we speak with Jim Friedlander, President of The Museum Travel Alliance & Arrangements Abroad Inc. And learn about post-pandemic cultural experiences awaiting the (well-heeled) traveler. From air travel to seafaring to luxury trains, Jim shares developments with trips to places ranging from Cuba to Central Asia. Put your feet up and have a vicarious sampling of adventures abroad.

Episode 80: Teresa Eyring

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 08:00:00 -0400

The next time you go to the theater, there may be no intermissions. That’s just one of the changes awaiting us in a post-pandemic world seeking to reassure audiences concerned about their health. Teresa Eyring is Executive Director and CEO of Theatre Communications Group (TCG) since 2007 and walks us through how the performing arts are adapting to this new world, including anemic ticket sales and shortages in working capital. Asking artists during the shutdown what they want to change yielded new ideas about collective leadership, holistic support, hybrids of live and virtual programming, and how to promote artists as problem solvers. We learn about the next in-person gatherings, TCG’s dedication to DEAI, recent transformative 7-figure grants, professional development opportunities, the surprising vitality of TCG’s publishing ventures, and many other facets of the world of theater.

Episode 79: Tony Ellwood

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Museum leaders in the U.S. are at an inflection point, with disgruntled staff, missteps in reaching DEAI, pandemic-related disruptions, and board disaffection. But in Australia, long accustomed to honoring indigenous peoples, we hear from an upbeat Tony Ellwood, director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Generous government support, public affection for his museum’s mission, collegiality with other leaders, the business community’s embrace, and all the sunny optimism we have come to expect from Australians.

Episode 78: Anthony Meier

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Renowned art dealer Anthony Meier, who is currently president of the Art Dealers Association of America, is back from Basel, and gives us an insider’s view of the state of art fairs, the upcoming ADAA fair in New York, his San Francisco gallery’s adaptation to the pandemic, private sale competition with auction houses, how he identifies new artists to represent, the museum and arts scene in the Bay Area, the uncertain future of major exhibitions, and his recent discussions with the Treasury Department about upcoming anti-money laundering legislation.

Episode 77: Mark Lamster

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 09:00:00 -0400

Candor is a precious commodity in the cultural world. So often it’s just easier to keep your true feelings to yourself so as not to foreclose opportunity or risk ostracism. Candor is not in short supply for Mark Lamster, the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, among other perches in the academy. In this episode he calls out some of the legitimate societal pressures facing architects and architecture today, projects and firms that warrant his accolades, the waning authority of the Pritzker Prize—the so-called Nobel Prize of architecture—the Nazi past of architect Philip Johnson and his quest for redemption, and several other facets of the field.

Episode 76: Bahia Ramos

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Today’s arts philanthropy is being guided by new voices. Bahia Ramos shares her approach to funding, beginning with the fact that she collects art as a form of advocacy. A Brooklynite, she is director of arts at The Wallace Foundation, where she has sought to respond to the needs of artists and arts organizations of color during the pandemic. Part of a new $53 million grant initiative to develop the capacity of arts organizations of color is to develop a clear understanding of future needs. Before arriving at Wallace, Bahia served as program director of the arts for the Knight Foundation, where she led the organization’s strategy for a $35 million annual investment in arts funding across the country. She addresses the need for greater transparency in grantmaking, new alternatives to non-profit management, how the Biden administration has served the needs of arts organizations during the pandemic, and much else.

Episode 75: Jill Medvedow

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Social activism and museum directing---ICA Boston director Jill Medvedow manages to leaven her professional responsibilities with a conscience, and teaches us much in the process. We delve into her stewardship of the 2022 US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, featuring artist Simone Leigh--and we learn why and how she put the ICA Watershed together, her selection as the subject of an MIT case study about how she aligned stakeholders to realize the ICA Boston by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, her optimistic predictions about progressive values being embraced by museums, the pressures of the art market, ICA Boston’s emergence as a collecting institution, and forthcoming exhibitions this autumn.

Episode 74: Dorothy Kosinski

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Global in outlook and experience, Dr. Dorothy Kosinski has since 2008 directed the storied Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. We are treated to her insights into how radically the art museum field has changed over the last year and a half, her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion years before it became the norm, her views on the kind of training and background required for directing museums today, and her prior experience as a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, buoyed by the peerless generosity of trustee, collector, and patron Margaret McDermott. We learn a little about her interests after a planned exit from the Phillips at the end of 2022, and reminisce along the way.

Episode 73: Brooke Kamin Rapaport

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Public art is as challenging and rewarding as it sounds. Subject to the opinions of all, from passersby to art critics, there is ample room for debate about each and every installation. In our first episode this fall, we turn to Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Chief Curator since 2013. With a distinguished curatorial career in museums, she took on the exciting opportunity to commission works for one of New York City’s most prominent settings for creativity, and we cover lots of terrain in how that works.

Episode 72: Patricia Marx

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 16:00:00 -0400

The last word goes to Patricia Marx. A staff writer for The New Yorker, she’s the unofficial voice of New York City, and was apparently seconded briefly to the Montana State Tourism Board. We are rewarded with her colorful travelogue of a recent trip to a friend’s ranch in or near Yellowstone (wholly unclear which), and her deep and abiding gratitude for the lockdown’s inducement of uninterrupted reading. We hear tales of literary betrayals, creative uses of empty office towers, NYC’s resilience and hermetic worldview, her appreciation of noise and pollution, Governor Cuomo’s situation, the ‘stars’ of the Republican Party, the likely tenor of the upcoming Met Ball, her love of masks, the fate of theater, the virtues of getting to places early, her appreciation of just waiting for things, a brief jury duty experience, adventures with hoarding, and antidotes to writer’s block. It’s our last episode of the summer—we’ll return refreshed and presumably re-vaccinated after Labor Day.

Episode 71: Stephanie Stebich

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 18:00:00 -0400

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is the flagship museum for our nation’s art, and Stephanie Stebich, its Margaret and Terry Stent Director, has led it since 2017. We touch on the two new museums recently authorized by Congress that will join the Smithsonian’s other 19 museums, why SAAM successfully attracts a large number of repeat visitors, the importance of creating a sense of connection and community for museum visitors, balancing local audiences with those from far away, how governance works with the unique membership of the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, SAAM's deep collection of work by African American artists and a preview of two upcoming exhibitions drawn from this collection, changes to how museums do business as a result of the pandemic, how she has prepared for a new directorship, her views on deaccessioning, and much more.

Episode 70: John Rossant

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 10:00:00 -0400

John Rossant is a globe-trotting polymath, an evangelist for thoughtful urban and transportation design, and author with Stephen Baker ofHop, Skip, Go: How the Mobility Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives. As Executive Chairman of PublicisLive he produced, among other things, the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos (yielding an address book with mobile numbers of the privileged and of potentates in far-flung capitals). He reprises facets of a career spent evaluating and influencing our options in improving civic life, cities, and mobility, and sheds light on what to expect in innovative transportation solutions.

Episode 69: Jill Deupi

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 22:00:00 -0400

Museum directors rely on lawyers to help their institutions address sometimes thorny issues. What if your museum’s director is a lawyer herself? Listen to the thoughtful approach of Dr. Jill Deupi to her job as the Beaux Arts Director and Chief Curator of the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum. Her doctorate in art history and facility with several languages add up not just to an impressive résumé but also wide-ranging interests and insights. We cover the distinctive features of university museums, discuss issues of importance to the field as a whole, Miami’s appetite for culture, and much else.

Episode 68: Susan Edwards

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 17:00:00 -0400

#Nashville is hot. Much larger than Atlanta, its metro population is surging, and this vitality is reflected in multiple ways. In this episode we hear from Susan Edwards, the director of its Frist Art Museum since 2004, and learn about the institution’s origins in an Art Deco post office and its trajectory to become of the South’s most vital museums, along with the city’s philanthropic culture, its stubborn identity as a democratic stronghold in a reliably Republican state, the challenges it met and addressed throughout 2020 to today, and the arc of her career—up to and including recent certification in art crime training. Equipped with a doctorate in art history and a knighthood conferred by the French Republic, she has flourished in a cultural milieu best known for a sister organization called the Grand Old Opry—and brought diversity and distinction to Tennessee without a hint of pretension.

Episode 67: Andrew Walker

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 16:00:00 -0400

Texas! We head to Fort Worth and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art to hear from its director, Dr. Andrew Walker. We touch on the wealth of arts institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and why the Carter, like most museums in the metro area, is free. We consider the Carter’s enormous photography collection, including the work of indigenous photographers, how the Carter has been transformed since the death of Ruth Carter Stevenson in both governance and management, the museum’s re-engagement with living artists and its broadened audience, the fluid definitions of what is American in American art, increasing the diversity of the collection, exhibitions, and audiences, current and future exhibitions, and how temporary experiences are challenging permanent collection orthodoxies.

Episode 66: Randall Suffolk

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 08:00:00 -0400

Museums across the U.S. are striving to reboot---addressing historic underrepresentation of people of color in board and staff leadership, collections, exhibitions and programs, and audience. Few have achieved what Atlanta’s High Museum has under director Randall Suffolk. In this episode we delve into the steps he took beginning in 2015 to take an already significant institution and turn its attention to what are today eagerly sought points of distinction. We cover his efforts to listen to prospective visitors, lower admissions fees, change the exhibition calendar and collection focus, and de-emphasize blockbusters--and how he brought his board and staff along to embrace changes in a bid to earn credibility. A recent study attests to the progress made over the last few years.

Episode 65: Tracy Roberts

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 16:00:00 -0400

Many Americans are pining for a return to Europe—and to Italy in particular. In this episode we check in with Californian-born ex-pat Tracy Roberts, Co-Founder and Vice-President of LoveItaly, dedicated to the preservation and appreciation of Italy’s unique cultural heritage. She has made Rome her home for decades, and we get an on-the-ground report about life there as the pandemic recedes, how museums have fared over the last year and a half, the mechanics of state-sponsored and commercial cultural patronage, along with updates on a series of projects addressing the conservation needs of museums, monuments, and churches.

Episode 64: J. Nicholas Cameron

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 11:00:00 -0400

A fan of “This Old House”? Then listen to Nick Cameron’s accounts of what it was like to oversee the care and updating of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s two million square feet, its fourteen-acre roof, and the whole exterior and grounds. As the former Manager of Operations and then Vice President for Construction at the Met for over two decades, Nick’s MBA came in handy while replacing antiquated procedures and systems, completing more than $850 million of construction, and navigating a sea of competing interests (and egos) to make the Museum into the modern facility we all enjoy today. Join this consummate back-of-the-house tour and your next visit to 82nd Street will be all the richer. Extra points if you can guess what Met staff used to call a “cheese”.

Episode 63: David Resnicow

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 10:00:00 -0400

As arts organizations make post-pandemic plans, they are struggling to find the right balance between optimism and the realities of reduced staff, revenue, and relevance. Enter strategy and communications guru David Resnicow, whose eponymous firm has for decades pulled arts organizations out of controversy, tilted institutional missions and rhetoric away from self-congratulation, and advised boards and staff on ways to privilege substance, ethics, and civic impact over empty spectacles, ticket sales and vanity.

Episode 62: Peter Dorman

Sat, 29 May 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Imagine being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs as easily as the back of a cereal box. This week we turn to Dr. Peter Dorman, one of the world’s most accomplished Egyptologists, to shed light on his background and training, his time as a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Tutankhamun exhibition, and his path from a naval officer in the Pacific to a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, to his years in Luxor, and then as a university president in Beirut, and now a scholar affiliated with two universities. We spare you the mummies and turn instead to epigraphy and philology—as well as his training with AK-47s and evasive driving skills to elude capture.

Episode 61: Alan Salz

Sat, 22 May 2021 21:00:00 -0400

One of the leading dealers in Old Master paintings and 19th century art is Alan Salz, director and head of paintings and drawings at Didier Aaron. We grapple with contemporary art’s domination of the art market, and come out with a note of optimism about interest in pictures from the past. Along the way we touch on the TEFAF art fair, the attribution of the Salvator Mundi to Leonardo da Vinci, what stops him in his tracks, the challenges of establishing authenticity and assessing condition, the downside of selling to art museums versus private collectors, the short-sightedness of runaway deaccessions, training in connoisseurship, and other topics.

Episode 60: Sarah C. Bancroft

Sat, 15 May 2021 12:00:00 -0400

“A $7 Billion Philanthropic Force.” That’s an artnet headline describing artist-endowed foundations, and this episode sheds light on the leader of not one but two of them. Sarah C. Bancroft is Executive Director of the James Rosenquist Foundation and President of the Board of Directors of The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. She discusses her reliance on the Aspen Institute’s Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative, led by Christine Vincent, as well as recounting the core activities of these organizations, which include promoting research, exhibitions, and conservation of works by 20th and 21st century artists. We touch on copyright abuse, forgeries, and other concerns of AEFs, and are favored with her unique insights into the oeuvres, practices, and personalities of both Rosenquist and Diebenkorn.

Episode 59: Vishakha N. Desai

Thu, 06 May 2021 17:00:00 -0400

We check in with Dr. Vishakha Desai about her soon-to-be-released new book, World as Family: A Journey of Multi-Rooted Belongings (Columbia University Press). It’s part memoir, part exhortation to connect across borders, both geographical and attitudinal. Our conversation ranges from the pandemic’s hold over India to her beginnings in the museum field, the need for Americans to tolerate ambiguity, cultural appropriation, globalism v. nationalism, restitution of cultural heritage, the sunset of the ‘universal museum’, and other pressing issues of our time.

Episode 58: Thoughts on Deaccessioning

Sat, 01 May 2021 10:00:00 -0400

If after all the ink spilled on the topic of #deaccessioning, you’re still unclear what the fuss is about, here’s a short summary of the concerns of most art museum directors, excerpted from a presentation I recently made to the Federal Bar Association. We go back to the landmark decision in 1993 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to restrict the proceeds of art sales to buying new art, the softening of its stance in 2019, and the temporary lifting of restrictions against the use of deaccessioning proceeds by the Association of Art Museum Directors. We recap the swirling external forces bearing down on art museums today regarding the monetization of collections, and I close with the hope that art museums won’t discard obligations to preserving our shared cultural heritage and will instead turn to philanthropy to address pressing needs from DEI to operating shortfalls.

Episode 57: Dany Khosrovani

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Dany Khosrovani tells the truth—truth in branding, marketing, and advertising. Founder in 2017 of The DKG Perspective, a consultancy for CEOs who are at crossroads, she previously spent decades at leading agencies including J. Walter Thompson, Bates Worldwide and Young & Rubicam, and her clients were top-tier companies. Oxford-trained, she shares a fresh and candid assessment of the need for a moral framework for museums, leadership challenges in the face of mounting public criticism of questionable business practices, shortcomings in addressing racial injustice, and the current wave of stated corporate concerns about issues like voter suppression. We touch on the “brands” of the UK and the US, and advice for museum directors and for corporate leaders, peppered with insights won over a brilliant career.

Episode 56: Michael Shnayerson

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 17:00:00 -0400

In this episode we turn to an accomplished chronicler of our times. Michael Shnayerson is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects, including “Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art,” which lays bare secrets of the largest unregulated financial market in the world. His wide-ranging interests have taken him into multiple facets of the 20th century—including laboratories combating disease, Harry Belafonte’s recollections, a political dynasty, and most recently a page-turner about the notorious gangster Bugsy Siegel. He’s not done with the art world—we learn about a current collaboration with Alec Baldwin to delve into spectacular tales of modern art forgeries.

Episode 55: Nina Diefenbach

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 18:00:00 -0400

Raising money to support the arts is demanding in the best of times—let alone during a pandemic, and when so many are focused on social and racial justice. Our guest Nina Diefenbach is Senior Vice President and Deputy Director for Advancement at @The_Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. A century ago, Dr. Barnes had an abiding commitment to supporting his African American employees and students at @LincolnUofPA, the nation's first degree-granting #HBCU, and we learn how the Barnes has adapted to the last year’s many challenges along with facets of its exceptional offerings.

Episode 54: Dinah Casson

Sun, 04 Apr 2021 11:00:00 -0400

Museum directors and curators get the credit when exhibitions or collections open, but what about the museum designers? Look no further. We turn to one of the world’s leading exhibition designers, Dinah Casson. Her design partnership with Roger Mann since 1984, called Casson Mann, has completed high-profile assignments in the UK, US, Russia, Italy and the Middle East. We dip into her new book, titled Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, published by Lund Humphries, and learn about assignments from a proposed UNESCO museum of world heritage outside Turin, under the aegis of AEA Consulting, to the British galleries of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, to the Lascaux Cave in Montignac in the Dordogne.

Episode 53: Nina Del Rio

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:00:00 -0400

We check in with Nina Del Rio, Vice Chairman, Americas, at Sotheby’s, for an inside look at how the art market performed during the past year. She concurs with recent assessments of a drop in market volume, but contends that the bottom line wasn’t as affected as all might assume. We delve into how objects make their way into private sales versus auctions, a farewell to printed auction catalogues, a surprising prediction about the future of glamorous in-person evening sales, the impact of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in the art market, museums’ reassessments about mission affecting their participation in the market, and how AAMD’s loosened deaccessioning guidelines has revealed a deep divide among museum leaders regarding the disposition of funds realized from art sales. She also notes an increasing appetite among private collectors to be the stewards of their own holdings--or to insist on restrictions prohibiting deaccessioning.

Episode 52: Jerrilynn Dodds

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 10:00:00 -0400

There are endlessly conflicting views about cultural authority these days. For perspective we need an enlightened scholar to sort it out--and find her in Sarah Lawrence College Professor Jerrilynn Dodds. From the inapposite definitions of Islamic and “Western” art and architecture permeating our language, to the decolonization of the curriculum, we touch on Spain’s medieval history, the mythology of a common European identity, the misguided trope of American ‘exceptionalism’, why Hagia Sophia’s return to its function as a mosque should surprise or offend no one (she exuberantly dresses me down for singling it out as a political gesture), the social activism of today’s youth, her favorite state-sponsored architecture, and other kernels of good-humored wisdom. You’ll be amply rewarded, with no tuition bill to follow.

Episode 51: Franklin Sirmans

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 11:00:00 -0500

Miami is a harbinger of changing demographics in the United States, and we’re lucky to have as today’s guest Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our conversation ranges from PAMM’s navigation of the pandemic to the impact of Black Lives Matter on art museums, the need for staff and boards to reflect a museum’s community, the representation of indigenous people in museum programming, reservations about deaccessioning as a path to diversifying collections, the shifting priorities of collection-building versus offering temporary experiences, and the stereotype of Miami and L.A. as sybaritic settings for culture.

Episode 50: Charles Saumarez Smith

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 20:00:00 -0500

We head to the UK to hear from Sir Charles Saumarez Smith about his new book The Art Museum in Modern Times. Former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Royal Academy, he reflects on contests of authority bearing down on museum leaders, ranging from the influence of private wealth, to restitution claims, the assault on the canon of art history, and the failure of museums to address the legacy of slavery and prevailing discrimination. He discusses the preparation of future directors, purging endowments of investments in regressive industries, challenges to the primacy of permanent collections, the ‘anti-woke’ agenda of Boris Johnson’s government, the dearth of educational collaboration among museums online, the ascendancy of a commercial paradigm over public access, and his hopes for the future of museums.

Episode 49: Bruce Mau

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 17:00:00 -0500

Bruce Mau is a globally renowned problem-solver. In this episode we touch on some of his past and upcoming achievements, including a new documentary about his extraordinary influence in the design sector and beyond, to have its world premiere at the upcoming SXSW. We discuss his insights in Designing for the Five Senses, his new book MC24, his childhood in Canada, the origins of his landmark exhibition and publication Massive Change, memorable experiences of working with globally renowned leaders and innovators, and his thoughts on design practices and life as the pandemic recedes.

Episode 48: Lisa D. Freiman

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 13:00:00 -0500

Dr. Lisa Freiman reflects on the recent forced resignation of the chief executive of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (for now clinging to the nickname @newfields) along with her major exhibition of the work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, her role as Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion in the 2011 Venice Biennale, which presented new works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Alfredo Jaar’s extraordinary Park of the Laments in the 100-acre sculpture park she devised, and a recent project she curated at the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health. Candid, insightful, and passionate, she addresses the institutional culture of art museums and encourages more resolve in tackling persistent discrimination and resistance to change.

Episode 47: Brian Ferriso

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 17:00:00 -0500

It's hard to run a museum at any time, let alone during a pandemic. In this episode we glean some wisdom from Brian Ferriso, long-serving director of the Portland Art Museum. We cover the recent spate of deaccessioning among museums, the quest for updated thinking about museum goals, his focus on contributed versus earned income, the need for strategy in making new acquisitions, some exhibitions that have resonated with his audience, and the particulars of running a museum in the Pacific Northwest, including obligations to the pursuit of social justice.

Episode 46: Veronica Roberts

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 09:00:00 -0500

Art museum directors are caught up in competing travails, from financial shortfalls to racial reckoning to ill-advised deaccessioning. But talented curators across the U.S. are still managing to bring artistic talent to the fore, and Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, is among the museum field’s most imaginative, capable, and humane. We retrace her steps at the leading museums in New York to her adopted state of Texas, with detours to artists’ studios, including those of Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, and Diedrick Brackens. And we touch on her use of Instagram to champion emerging artists as well as flora, fauna, and architecture.

Episode 45: Robert J. Stein

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 12:00:00 -0500

The digitally inclined will feast on this conversation with Robert Stein, among the art world’s most insightful and accomplished protagonists, who has conjured up and implemented innovative practices affecting museumgoers around the globe, both online and in person. We caught up with him during his first month as the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer, and covered a host of topics, from virtual museum experiences during the pandemic to new research in the field, consulting enterprises offered by museums, online experiments that bore fruit, and a prediction about post-pandemic in-person conferences.

Episode 44: Susan Taylor

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:00:00 -0500

Museum directors are juggling more than ever before, and few as ably as Susan M. Taylor, the Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art since 2010. We retrace the beginning of her tenure, five years after Hurricane Katrina, and fast forward to the city’s appeal to international visitors, her 6 ½-acre expansion of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, increased appointments of women museum directors, how she has addressed challenges in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the need to balance art history with the art of our time, and her tenure as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Episode 43: Rich Cherry

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:00:00 -0500

So you’re up all night, wondering: Should I build an art museum? Before you hire an architect, best to start by calling Rich Cherry, Managing Partner at Museum Operations. He’s served as an executive director, COO, deputy director, CTO and CIO at several leading organizations, from the Albright-Knox to the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC), and designed and built new museums and non-profits from the ground up, including the Broad Art Museum and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He’s also co-chair of MuseWeb, the largest museum innovation and technology conference in the world, with about 800 attendees from more than 40 countries each year. We cover the real sources of museum revenue, retrofitting old buildings to limit their carbon footprint and load them up with connectivity, running private v. public museums, working with starchitects vs. architects, innocent (read unfounded) assumptions in the boardroom, how museum expansions sometimes make as much (aka as little) sense as building sports stadiums, and the challenges of coaxing museums to share data and technological innovations.

Episode 42: Jaime Michael Wolf

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 21:00:00 -0500

Nostalgic for a nation of laws, not of men? In eager anticipation of a Justice Department dedicated to something other than xenophobia and the promotion of imperial rule, we turn to intellectual property guru Jaime Michael Wolf, an attorney who sorts out claims and counter-claims involving publishers, artists and their estates, designers and even chefs. We cover social media’s damnation of memory issued to the soon-to-be-evicted tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, how copyright is adapting to everything from the Internet to tattoos, a clear definition of Fair Use, Justice Souter’s opinion in support of 2 Live Crew, which yielded the legal principle of “transformativeness”, a new small claims court in the Copyright Office, solutions to the proliferation of cybersquatting, phony Apple stores in China, and much more. After listening, you’ll be ready for the first post-pandemic cocktail party to show off newly acquired knowledge about IP and the arts.

Episode 41: A Look Back at 2020

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 16:00:00 -0500

“Be kind rewind” is what video rental stores used to implore their customers before VHS tapes were returned. Since the end of the year is finally here, we’re replaying memorable snippets from some of 2020’s guests on the podcast, along with some thoughts about the arts in the United States, as massive quantities of sage are being readied for cleansing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and while we’re all lining up for a vaccine. With sincere thanks to all our guests, here’s to a new start in January.

Episode 40: Christiane Paul

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 16:00:00 -0500

Art comes in all shapes and sizes--and sometimes it shows up on your screen. To separate the digital wheat from the chaff we turn to one of the world’s leading authorities in the field, Christiane Paul, author of Digital Art (Thames & Hudson), now in its 3rd edition. Prof. Paul is Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York, and Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She conceived and has for two decades overseen both the Whitney’s artport website and its new media exhibitions, beginning with Data Dynamics in 2001. Her talk at Tate last year provides a concise history of the field. We dive into the origins of digital art, preserving Net Art, museum collaborations, augmented reality, collecting versus licensing content, how artists navigate the commercial colonization of the Web, and the complex boundaries between acts of protest and anti-social hacking.

Episode 39: Brad W. Brinegar

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 17:00:00 -0500

Many museums have emulated commercial attractions over the last generation—and now find themselves struggling back to life during the pandemic with reduced buzz, attendance, and contributions. For solutions we go to the source: a top advertising expert, Brad Brinegar, Chairman of McKinney, to help get their messaging aligned with these exceptional circumstances. He is predictably averse to thinking of museums as commercial preserves, and instead prescribes clever ways of reaching audiences, drawing on his studies in anthropology, as well as sharing wisdom about how empathy motivates consumer behavior. We cover effective advertising, including the Sherwin-Williams Emerald Paint campaign, how McKinney is going about achieving greater diversity in his sector, tv spots that went viral on the web, why art and art history can’t catch a break on television, how streaming services are challenging his field, and along the way remember shared experiences at the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth’s humor magazine, whose alumni range from Theodor Seuss Geisel to Budd Schulberg, Buck Henry, Robert Reich, and Mindy Kaling.

Episode 38: Tess Davis

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 14:00:00 -0500

You might think that COVID-19 has slowed everything to a near halt. That’s not the case with the looting of archaeological sites and proliferating sales of stolen objects online. For insight we turn to Tess Davis, Executive Director of The Antiquities Coalition, which battles cultural racketeering and the illicit trade in ancient art and artifacts. Founded by Deborah Lehr, who serves as Chairman of its Board of Directors, The Antiquities Coalition also seeks to improve law and policy, foster diplomatic cooperation, and advance proven solutions with public and private partners internationally. Tess Davis is a lawyer and archaeologist by training, and has been affiliated with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, at the University of Glasgow, and previously worked for the nongovernmental organization Heritage Watch in Cambodia, first as Project Coordinator, and finally Assistant Director. We cover a lot of ground: How looters are taking advantage of sites left unmonitored during the pandemic, the illicit trade’s use of Facebook to fence stolen art, how U.S. law actually protects criminal conduct in the art market, the degree to which terrorist networks sponsor the looting and sale of artifacts, and a new program highlighting the “Ten Most Wanted Antiquities” worldwide.

Episode 37: Michael Brand

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 21:00:00 -0500

We voyage across the Pacific to Sydney, to speak with Dr. Michael Brand, director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. We explore his outspoken commitment to indigenous art and artists, the massive and environmentally sensitive expansion of his museum well underway, his views on public support of the arts in both Australia and the U.S., and the challenges of restitution of art with disputed title—from his days as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum to today. He shares his experience in curating a major exhibition of contemporary art that was installed during the pandemic, intended to demystify the field and the process of collecting major works beginning in the late 1960s. We get a little insight into Sydney’s place in the cultural firmament, as distinct from Canberra and Melbourne, and follow his thinking about larger responsibilities facing the directors of the world’s leading museums.

Episode 36: Alexander Bernstein

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Arts advocacy takes many forms. In this episode we hear from Alexander Bernstein, president of Artful Learning, and Vice President and Treasurer of The Leonard Bernstein Office. Alex has long championed arts-infused instruction in schools from Florida to Oregon. He comes to the cause naturally; the son of legendary composer, conductor, educator, and humanitarian Leonard Bernstein, Alex is active in extending his father’s legacy, sharing responsibility with his sisters Jamie and Nina in introducing a new generation to extraordinary, wide-ranging contributions across music and related disciplines through public speaking, advocacy, and multiple media platforms. We touch on the state of arts in education, the pandemic’s challenges for musicians, centennial homages to Bernstein including over 6000 events worldwide, and upcoming projects spearheaded by Steven Spielberg and Bradley Cooper.

Episode 35: Petra Slinkard

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 09:00:00 -0500

Discerning museum curators today explore the fashion arts with an eye towards social and political lessons alongside an appreciation of design bravura. This episode’s guest, Petra Slinkard, is a leading voice in the new generation of scholars rethinking how to represent her discipline in compelling and timely displays. As the Director of Curatorial Affairs and The Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, she presides over massive holdings, dating back to the end of the 18th century, when sea captains returned from far-flung ports with evidence of other cultures. Holdings today updated with new acquisitions she discovers on Instagram. You’ll hear her candid thoughts about women designers only now being properly acknowledged, genderless fashion, the unsung heroes of textile conservation, public responsibilities in curating, mannequins in paintings galleries, and insights into how her field is ever-changing.

Episode 34: Evan Beard

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 17:00:00 -0400

Curious about who keeps the art market functioning in the midst of a global shutdown? For answers we turn to Evan Beard, the Global Art Services Executive with U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Evan leads the Bank’s outreach to private and institutional collectors, and shares insights into market trends, the Middle East art market, the genteel world of art lending, considerations when opening a private museum, how auction houses cajole collectors, the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, and the impact of installation art and transitory art experiences on collecting. If you’re a collector or just wondering how those billions of dollars of investments race around the globe, this episode is not to be missed.

Episode 33: John Walsh

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 18:00:00 -0400

The J. Paul Getty Museum, the world’s wealthiest, was shaped under the steady hand of Dr. John Walsh, a renowned scholar of Dutch art. In this episode we glean a bit about his work as a curator and director, and dive into topical matters: Museums during the pandemic, commercialization of exhibitions, his role as a witness defending Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center’s exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and its then director at a trial accusing them of promoting obscenity, decades-long neglect of advancing racial equity in museums, due diligence when researching antiquities collections, advice for new directors, and a brief preview of his forthcoming lectures on Rembrandt.

Episode 32: Sarah Wynter

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 13:00:00 -0400

We are binging on shows over streaming platforms as never before during the pandemic. In this episode we turn to award-winning actress Sarah Wynter to learn how the film and television industry has navigated COVID-19, beginning with the March 2020 diagnosis of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in Sarah’s native Australia. We hear about shooting around shower curtains, love scenes with mannequins, how actors are staying in touch with fans and each other, cultural differences between Australia and the States, her reflections on playing the character Kate Warner opposite Kiefer Sutherland in 24, televised portrayals of terrorism, and her dedication to protecting people from gun violence through the organization Moms Demand Action. Follow her on Twitter and on Instagram.

Episode 31: James H. Duff

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 16:00:00 -0400

The headlines are everywhere: Multiple museums are today selling artworks to cope with financial challenges brought on by the pandemic. In this episode, the past chair of the Professional Issues Committee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, James H. Duff, shares why and how AAMD arrived at restrictions on “deaccessioning” decades ago, and the impact of AAMD’s April 2020 resolution relaxing those restrictions. We discuss why so much art is typically in storage, and consider potential threats, including a mandate to capitalize collections—putting their fair market value on museum balance sheets—and the risk that private collectors will be discouraged from donating artworks to museums that might sell them to cover operating costs. Or the possibility that cash contributions to museums will decline once capitalized art collections are fungible—transforming the image of a museum from that of an educational institution to an entity with suddenly liquid holdings valued in millions or even billions of dollars.

Episode 30: Danielle Quisenberry

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 20:00:00 -0400

Isolation is an unwanted obligation for everyone as long as the pandemic lasts, but for voice actors, it’s the preferred state of being year-round. In this episode we venture (virtually) into the recording booth at ButtonsNY, an approved recording facility that meets the Covid-19 Protection Guidelines of SAG/AFTRA, to speak with award-winning interdisciplinary performing artist and voiceover artist Danielle Quisenberry. We learn how she helps film and stage actors adapt to the rigors of voiceover work given the realities of shuttered cinemas and theaters, common misperceptions about the discipline, secrets of the craft, her training of talent at Edge Studio, and interdisciplinary projects she’s completed and those on the horizon. She’s coached multiple audiobook narrators, including the pseudonymous performer found here.

Episode 29: Aaron Betsky

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 15:00:00 -0400

What can we predict about post-pandemic urban planning? For answers we turn to Aaron Betsky, director of Virginia Tech's School of Architecture + Design, and a widely published critic on art, architecture and design. We touch on the required adaptation of office buildings, prescient predictions he made two decades ago, the need to focus on ‘upcycling’, or repurposing building stock, expanded use of post offices, the need to rethink museum design, and urgent concerns bearing down on designers due to economic and racial disparity, climate change, and other pressures.

Episode 28: Cynthia Schneider

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 18:00:00 -0400

This episode has us bouncing from Harvard to Washington to the Netherlands to Mali, led there by Dr. Cynthia Schneider, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. She began her career with a PhD from Harvard in Dutch art, serving as Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, then a professor of art history at Georgetown University for two decades, during which she was appointed Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands by President Clinton, followed by her appointment as a Distinguished Professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. In addition to her teaching duties there, she is Co-Director of three endeavors: the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, MOST Resource; and Timbuktu Renaissance. Her recent and very candid assessments of the Trump administration’s diplomatic blunders are required reading.

Episode 27: George Shackelford

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 20:00:00 -0400

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 graduated from Dartmouth, along with details about reopening the Kimbell, how training in art history is faring, his experience with debunking a would-be masterpiece, the urgency of recruiting students of color to the museum profession, and upcoming shows in Fort Worth.

Episode 26: Lola C. West

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 16:00:00 -0400

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—leavened with the determination of a woman seeking a more progressive America.

Episode 25: Arnold Lehman

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 16:00:00 -0400

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. We even pull back the curtain to discuss the nominating committees of art museum boards—and close with the moving account of his enduring attachment to a particular work of art.

Episode 24: Carrie Rebora Barratt

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 20:00:00 -0400

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, changing visitor experiences in compromised spaces, the disappearance of tourism, prevailing approaches to American art history, and her star turn a few years ago as a guest of the Colbert Report.

Episode 23: Elizabeth Easton

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 Leadership, who is preparing a new wave of hires to tackle these and other challenges. Our wide-ranging conversation includes the different challenges facing contemporary and encyclopedic museums, trends in scholarship, how boards think about hiring—and firing—directors, the search firms that elevate some candidates above others, and likely shifts in the articulation of art museum missions.

Episode 22: Sabiha Al Khemir

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 founding director of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. As a curator who has shaped and contributed to multiple exhibitions presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Dallas Museum of Art, and elsewhere, she is a writer, novelist, illustrator, and producer, and today serves as consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology.

Episode 21: Laura Callanan

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 06:00:00 -0400

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 management of cultural institutions in the United States. The founder of Upstart Co-Lab, Laura Callanan, joins the podcast, offering concrete advice on how mission-aligned investing can set cultural organizations onto a better path, putting their resources to work in furtherance of progressive goals, while not sacrificing financial return.

Episode 20: Kinshasha Holman Conwill

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 with Congressman John Lewis, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, and many others, her hopes that younger people will drive social change, displays in the NMAAHC that move her--and concrete advice on how museums can move from stated intentions to true equity and inclusion.

Episode 19: Julian Siggers

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 06:00:00 -0400

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 series on the Discovery Channel and made his way into museums. He discusses the life of an archaeologist, ethical concerns facing museums, the impact of data science, how schooling differs between the UK and the US, why trade in dinosaur bones isn’t regulated, and multiple other topics.

Episode 18: Abbott Miller

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 06:00:00 -0400

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. You’ll learn about the influences of his training at Cooper Union, the lasting impact of the Bauhaus in his field, the emotional underpinnings of the typefaces we take for granted, and his opinion of the graphic identities of the two competing presidential campaigns.

Episode 17: Richard Olcott

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 06:00:00 -0400

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 architecture (wait, what?). We discuss digital tools, the blight of ‘supertalls’ casting shadows across New York’s Central Park, indoor vertical gardens and other moves towards sustainability, whether ‘open office’ designs are doomed, and multiple other topics.

Episode 16: Carol Mancusi-Ungaro

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 09:00:00 -0400

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 Collection in Houston, Texas, where she founded the Artists Documentation Program, consisting of interviews with artists about the technical nature of their art. The consummate artist whisperer, she has pioneered new forms of conservation treatment, is an influential mentor for the field, and presides over the care of a globally renowned collection of modern and contemporary art.

Episode 15: Alexander Bauer

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 well-preserved shipwrecks 2,000 meters below the surface of the mysterious Black Sea, and George Orwell’s sage assessments of the power of history in determining the future. Close observers will detect evidence of his exuberant young sons Finnegan, Felix, and Alex in the background, and all listeners will be repaid for time spent listening to his candid assessment of the future of archaeology.

Episode 14: Victoria S. Reed

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 08:00:00 -0400

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 in sorting out the evidence informing legal, ethical, and moral claims on artworks. We discuss collections built from colonial plunder abroad, Nazi loot, objects caught up in the illicit trade in the U.S., and what it will mean for museums to decolonize both their holdings and their attitudes.

Episode 13: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 by her in over 30 museums, ranging from the Museum of Modern Art to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Episode 12: Janet Hicks

Sun, 31 May 2020 06:00:00 -0400

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 market value of their works if they donate them to museums, and how that might change, the state of artist-endowed foundations, and how film and television rights to show artworks are negotiated.

Episode 11: Jennifer Crewe

Sun, 24 May 2020 07:00:00 -0400

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 much else.

Episode 10: Melissa Chiu

Sun, 17 May 2020 08:00:00 -0400

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.

Episode 9: David Lewis

Sun, 10 May 2020 13:11:39 -0400

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).

Episode 8: April Reynolds Mosolino

Sun, 03 May 2020 18:09:43 -0400

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 Preacher King.

Episode 7: Stephen Urice

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 07:52:11 -0400

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.

Episode 6: Michael Shapiro

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 20:08:42 -0400

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.

Episode 5: Sarah Urist Green

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 18:09:56 -0400

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 Artist, published by Penguin Random House.

Episode 4: Raina Lampkins-Fielder

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:54 -0400

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.

Episode 3: Risa Puno

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 08:32:13 -0400

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.

Episode 2: Julia Marciari-Alexander

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 19:42:51 -0400

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.

Episode 1: Adrian Ellis

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 18:09:25 -0400

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.

Introduction - Setting the Focus

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 10:44:24 -0400