2019 was a year of protests and profound change. We look back on what happened, what our guests talked about and what our listeners most responded to. Tune in to hear Ian Alteveer (the Aaron I. Fleischman curator of Modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum), Julia Halperin (the executive editor of artnet News) and host Charlotte Burns review the year—and to hear snippets from our 2019 shows featuring museum directors Nicholas Serota (formerly Tate and now the head of Arts Council England), and Max Hollein (the Metropolitan Museum of Art); The New York Times co-chief art critic Roberta Smith; artists Catherine Opie, Mickalene Thomas, Derrick Adams and Nari Ward; architect David Adjaye; Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, and more.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-74-looking-back-at-2019/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Recorded live in Napa Valley at the Kramlich Residence—which was built by architects Herzog & De Meuron—this wide-ranging discussion about collecting and supporting art is with guests Pamela and Dick Kramlich, two of the world’s foremost patrons of video, new media and time-based art; Stuart Comer, chief curator of media and performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and artist Richard Mosse, together with host Charlotte Burns.
"We've got to buy masterpieces," Pamela says on today's episode, "or what I think will be the masterpieces of the future, and take care of them."
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Today’s podcast covers the top takeaways from the recent auction week in New York—and what this means for the market. Nicholas Maclean (of the London and New York dealership Eykyn Maclean) and Allan Schwartzman (co-founder of AAP) join host Charlotte Burns (editor of In Other Words) for our biannual auction edition.
For more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-71-auction-talk-with-allan-schwartzman-and-nicholas-maclean/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm
Tune in for this wide-ranging discussion with artist Catherine Opie, a tenured professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose internationally-exhibited art investigates the boom and bust of American life and the subtleties of human identity.
The artist—who famously carved the word “pervert” on her chest in 1994 as part of a work tackling the AIDS crisis and challenging ideas of deviancy—finds tenderness within stereotypes.
Opie discusses what it means to be radical today, and the importance of building communities that can bridge divisions within society, whether finding unity within museum boards or philosophy within the S&M community.
She talks to our host Charlotte Burns about her own success as an artist and her recognition of gender disparity within the art world, and the importance of representation. Opie tells us about her influences and talks about the shifting impact of social media on photography as an art form. She discusses her dream project and her optimism about the art world: “There's shitty books, there's shitty movies, there's shitty art,” she says. “And then there's all the pearls in-between that actually move people.”
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-73-catherine-opie/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
#69: Talking Power with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker and Artist Teresita Fernández
Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and MacArthur “genius” artist Teresita Fernández already had a long history of collaboration before coming together for this discussion with host Charlotte Burns about social justice, leadership, art, beauty—and power.
“The truth is that equity is not given. Power is not given. The history of power is always that it is taken,” Fernández says. “If you want your table to be diverse and inclusive, somebody’s going to have to get up.”
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-69-darren-walker-and-teresita-fernandez/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
The Museum of Modern Art reopens this month after a $450m expansion that has added more than 47,000 sq. ft and many new galleries that tell a different story of modern and contemporary art.
In this podcast, AAP co-founder Allan Schwartzman and In Other Words host Charlotte Burns review the radical rehang of the permanent collection.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-68-live-review-from-the-new-moma/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
This episode answers all of the questions you never knew you had about the objects associated with motherhood, from the unexpected stories behind some of the most ubiquitous designs (did you know that the incubator was inspired by a doctor's trip to the zoo?) to the histories revealed by these objects. For example, the popularity of the baby blanket tracks with the increased industrialization of birth in America over the past 70 years.
Joining our host Charlotte Burns are Amber Winick and Michelle Millar Fisher, the co-creators of “Designing Motherhood: A Century of Making and Unmaking Babies”, the forthcoming book and exhibition that investigate more than 100 designs that have shaped our understanding of parenthood in America over the past century.
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-67-designing-motherhood/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Only 11% of the art acquired by America’s top museums over the past decade was work made by women. And acquisitions have actually declined since 2009, according to a major new study “Women's Place in the Art World: Why Recent Advancements for Female Artists Are Largely an Illusion ” produced by In Other Words and artnet News.
The report found that there has been no progress in museum acquisitions, and that just 14% of exhibitions were of work by female artists.
The auction market for work by women doubled, but still only represents 2% of the global total—with just five female artists (Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O'Keeffe and Agnes Martin) accounting for 40.7% of that total.
Discussing the report with host Charlotte Burns are guests Julia Halperin (executive editor, artnet News), Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels (director, Jack Shainman Gallery) and William N. Goetzmann (professor and faculty director of the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management).
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-66-women-data-study/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
A year after taking the reins of one of the world’s largest and most important art institutions, Max Hollein joins host Charlotte Burns to discuss the future of the Metropolitan Museum.
Hollein discusses the distinct role he believes the Met can play in terms of contemporary art, and gives an update on recently-stalled plans for a $600m Modern and contemporary wing—part of more than $1bn the museum is slated to spend on renovations and expansions.
In a week in which the Met returned to Egypt an ancient gilded coffin that had been the centerpiece of the exhibition “Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin”—but which prosecutors deemed to have been looted, Hollein talks about how the Met is tackling the fraught issue of cultural repatriation. He talks about the museum as a platform for debates: from the morality of where money comes from to diversity in programing and governance.
For this and much more—including what success looks like to Hollein—tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-64-max-hollein/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“I realized that more interesting things happen when I could do away with notions of quality and taste,” says Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director of the New Museum in New York and director of the Trussardi Foundation in Milan.
Gioni—who The New York Times called a "biennale veteran" by the time he was 38—says this thinking freed him up to stage exhibitions that moved away from treating art like “the isolated masterpiece”. He talks to host Charlotte Burns about the collapse of the alternative art, music and publishing scenes in the 1990s and about the potential of social mobility within the art world.
Massimiliano’s latest show, “Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and the Object in the Work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, Evens”, is on view until 29 September at the Museo Jumex in Mexico City.
To hear more, tune in now.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-63-massimiliamo/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-63-massimiliamo/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Who gets to define culture, and who gets to create it? Who decides what's in and what's out, what's valuable and what's worthless? In a live panel discussion moderated by Charlotte Burns and organized in collaboration with Sotheby's and the Aspen Ideas Festival, our guests Roberta Smith (The New York Times co-chief art), Michael Govan (CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and Derrick Adams (a visual and performance artist) examine how society forms a consensus about which objects and stories we save, and which we discard—and, ultimately, who controls culture today.
To hear more from the live panel, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-63-live-from-aspen/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Welcome to our Venice Biennale special, which we recorded live in Italy last month. Returning to his roots as an art critic for our first ever review show, Allan Schwartzman joins host Charlotte Burns to take you on a tour through the art on view in the floating city, both in the Biennale and beyond.
"We do live in interesting times—but do we live in times of interesting art?", Schwartzman asks at the start of the show. Tune in to find out.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-62-live-review-of-the-venice-biennale/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Sir David Adjaye is the architect behind some of the most interesting buildings of our times, from national museums to social housing. He has described the fraught political process of designing the prize-winning National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in Washington, D.C. in 2016, as eight years of pain. But “these buildings are long overdue,” Adjaye says, “There’s a language they need to bring, which is about the reality rather than the fiction of nation imagery.”
In this podcast with Amy Cappellazzo (co-founder of AAP and a chairman of Sotheby's) and host Charlotte Burns (executive editor, In Other Words), Adjaye—who has designed the forthcoming expansion of the Studio Museum as well as the plans for the National Cathedral of Ghana—talks about how space can change the way we think about our own histories. “We’ve all been numbed into never dealing with big questions,” he says, asking: “Then what the hell are we all doing here?”
For this and more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-61-remaking-the-imagination-with-architect-david-adjaye/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“I really felt ten years ago that there was a huge opportunity for me at different levels in the art world,” says David Zwirner, whose eponymous gallery opened in New York more than 25 years ago, has since expanded to London and Hong Kong and is increasingly focusing on its online strategy. “Of course, expansion fuels expansion,” he says. “At the same time, I think there's a huge risk. There's definitely a ‘too big’ possible.”
In conversation with Allan Schwartzman (co-founder of AAP and a chairman of Sotheby's) and our host Charlotte Burns (executive editor, In Other Words), Zwirner discusses the future of the business and the state of the market—and talks about what he is looking for in the next generation of artists.
For more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-60-david-zwirner/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Andy Warhol is one of the best-known—but perhaps least understood—artists of the 20th century. “Warhol shifted the paradigm. He shifted the conversation. That's why we're still grappling with him. Love him or hate him,” says Donna De Salvo, the senior curator and deputy director for International Initiatives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who recently organized the blockbuster exhibition "Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again" (on show now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 2 September).
Beyond the glamour of the celebrity and consumerism so often associated with Warhol, there is something destabilizing about his work, says Dominique Lévy, the co-founder of Lévy Gorvy—which is showing “Warhol Women” in New York (until 15 June). “If you spend enough time in front of a Warhol painting, little by little it unnerves you,” Lévy says.
When people fetishize the trophy of the Marilyn, they're missing a certain point of the way that Warhol is constantly disrupting,” De Salvo says: “Whether it's the off registration of the screen, through the color, through the scale, the multiplicity of images. He's not about a fixed image. He's actually quite the opposite and that gets to issues of identity.”
Together with host Charlotte Burns, Lévy and De Salvo discuss the radical aspects of Warhol's work, discussing how much of it is still undervalued and under-appreciated—particularly drawings from the 1950s and works from the 1970s and 1980s. “He reinvents himself and becomes more and more conceptual, and more and more relevant,” Lévy says.
“His project ends because he dies,” De Salvo says: "He was just getting going again." Ultimately, she says, Warhol “reflected these twin American desires, which are at odds: our desire to innovate and our desire to conform.”
For this and more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-60-warhols-women/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Today’s podcast is a lively one, taking in authorship and authority, productivity and capital in conversation with Alistair Hudson (director of The Whitworth and Manchester Galleries), Bernadine Bröcker Wieder (CEO and co-founder of the Vastari Group, a platform connecting museums, private collectors and other exhibition organizers) and our host Charlotte Burns.
Taking different approaches, Hudson and Bröcker Wieder are both interested in what a more equitable art world would look like and both are invested in community and collaboration.
The dialogue on democracy, community, tech and collaboration closes with a call for openness. “I see a big role for institutions reclaiming this territory of culture,” Hudson says: “How we shape and create our culture as being above and beyond politics and economics.”
Tune in today for more.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-55-bernadine-and-alistair/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Paula Cooper Gallery has survived and thrived in a mercurial art world for more than five decades. On today’s show, the legendary dealer talks about the history and future of her gallery together with Steven Henry, who has been the gallery director for more than two decades, Allan Schwartzman, co-founder of Art Agency, Partners, and host Charlotte Burns.
Known for her eye, Cooper has represented some of the most important international contemporary artists of the past half-century. “Artists will give her the best shows, the best work,” says Henry. The gallery has remained a leader of the pack throughout the past 50 years, despite seismic shifts in the art world and market. Nowadays, “it’s this huge international money world,” says Cooper, who also discusses new styles of collecting and the impact of politics on the art world.
She also talks about the future: “I really have to think about not being here, now at this point," she says. Ultimately, the legacy of the gallery will be the artists it has supported, she says: “The gallery will be forgotten. It’s the artists who survive.”
For this and more, tune in today to In Other Words.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-58-paula-cooper-and-steve-henry/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“As an artist I feel like it’s my role to bring that moment of history—that moment of doubt, frustration, of fear—into the present,” says Nari Ward in conversation with fellow artist Derrick Adams on this episode of In Other Words.
Ward is the subject of a major retrospective at the New Museum (“Nari Ward: We The People” until 26 May)—which spans 25 years of his work and has been heralded as “persistent and liberating” by The New York Times. The sculptor—who has been called an accumulation artist for his often large-scale work involving discarded material—has lived and worked in Harlem since the beginning of his career and uses the neighborhood as source and inspiration.
Art is the perfect medium for exploring such complicated subjects as gentrification, power and the AIDS crisis, Ward says: “It should challenge, consume, maybe even disrupt—and then it should also figure out, because it is art. It is artifice. It is a safe space to consider those different moments.”Adams is the subject of two concurrent exhibitions on show in New York right now (“Derrick Adams: Interior Life” at Luxembourg & Dayan and “Derrick Adams: New Icons” at Mary Boone Gallery). “I thought that successful art was about penetrating the world with images that you want people to see,” he says to host Charlotte Burns. “I want to give viewers other options of looking at black American culture”, he says, especially the normalcy of “what people were doing as a break.”
Together, Ward and Adams discuss all the big stuff: from God and spirituality in art, to the power and purpose of making art. They talk real estate and repression, and discuss the power of imagination and moral compassion.
Tune in to In Other Words today for this and much more.
Transcript:
https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-56-nari-ward-and-derrick-adams/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Our world and the ways in which we perceive and understand it are both shaped and reflected by art. This is especially true when it comes to nations and the stories they tell of themselves. Focusing on American identity, this podcast was recorded during a live panel discussion between Lauren Haynes (curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas), Paul Anthony Smith (artist), Antwaun Sargent (critic) and host Charlotte Burns at The Armory Show in New York earlier this month.
From the question of whether there are “American” artists today to what it means to consider oneself American; from representation within museums to how morality is dealt with in US culture, our guests ask how institutions, and the art world at large, are working to foster a more expansive narrative.
Tune in today to hear more.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-55-armory/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Ian Cheng wants to change the way you think. “I really want to make art that taps into some part of a viewer’s neurology and gets them into a different state,” Cheng says to host Charlotte Burns during this In Other Words podcast. The wide-ranging conversation covers topics from the freedom afforded humans by AI, to the genius of The Real Housewives television show.
Cheng creates art with a nervous system: his practice often involves computer simulations that resemble video games—albeit ones that play themselves. His current exhibition “BOB: Bag of Beliefs” centers around an AI lifeform whose evolution is shaped by viewers who can make offerings—both poisonous and benign—to BOB via an app. Cheng has created his own form of art; a work that is mesmerizing and surprisingly moving (at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York until 23 March).
“It’s a funny time we live in,” says Cheng, who studied both cognitive science and art. He wants his work to tap into our limbic systems (“the most easily triggered and exploitable” part of the brain) with the goal of making us “feel safe enough to be explorative, to be open-minded, to be conscientious”.
Following in the footsteps of artists and storytellers across the centuries, Cheng is spinning tales that might better help us understand our world, using cutting-edge technology to do so.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-ian-chengs-guide-to-worlding/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
In the words of the Los Angeles Times, the artist Mickalene Thomas “is to contemporary painting what Daft Punk is to music: acclaimed as one of the more original remix artists working today.” Her genre-busting work takes many forms, and grapples with bodies and their desires, with power, equity and identity. In today’s episode, she talks about community and collaboration—both essential to her practice—in a conversation with her partner and muse, the art consultant Racquel Chevremont, the cultural critic Antwaun Sargent and Charlotte Burns, the host of In Other Words.
Thomas and Chevremont recently launched “Deux Femme Noires”, an organization focused on mentoring emerging artists of color. “The more of us that come up, the better," Chevremont says "We want the room to be filled with us.”
Thomas was studying to be a lawyer when a chance encounter with the photographs of Carrie Mae Weems inspired her to change direction and become an artist herself. “Whatever that power is, or mystery one may feel when they’re excited by or inspired by particular art—I knew that’s what I wanted to do with images," Thomas says. "And I knew I wanted to create that space for others.”
Tune in for more from the artist, the muse and the writer in today's episode.
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Produced in partnership with Frieze Los Angeles, this live recording is a conversation with major Californian institutional leaders Naima J. Keith (Deputy Director, California African American Museum), Michael Govan (CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Andrew Perchuk, (Deputy Director, Getty Research Institute), Megan Steinman (Director, The Underground Museum), moderated by our host Charlotte Burns.
Taking as a starting point the research published by In Other Words and artnet News, which examined the representation of African American artists in US museums and the international market, our panelists talk about the ways in which they are working to broaden the canon, and think specifically about local communities.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-frieze-la/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
The man credited with reinventing the museum and changing British culture, Sir Nicholas Serota joins us for a special extended episode of In Other Words.
Now Chair of Arts Council England, Serota was the director of Tate for 28 years. More than anybody else, he helped shift attitudes in Britain, making the country more comfortable with contemporary art while he oversaw the growth of Tate both physically and in terms of reputation and ambition. Once a small institution, Tate became a phenomenon and the best attended museum of Modern art in the world.
Serota began his career in the 1980s during a period in which the country’s politics were isolationist and there was a “certain paranoia about continental Europe and artists from Europe”. By the early 2000s, the country had become more international and open, and the arts were flourishing as London established itself as a creative and economic hub.
Recorded on the day of a historic defeat in the government’s “meaningful vote” on Brexit, Serota discusses the current climate with our host Charlotte Burns: “Some things don’t change. And human nature is one of those. People feel challenged by difference.”
While he himself is “always regarded as being right in the center of the establishment… I still have a sense of what it means to be an outsider,” Serota says. “I will continue to believe that international exchange of all kinds is valuable.”
He discusses running one of the world’s largest museums—including why he never left for an American museum—and talks about the challenges facing institutional leaders today: “Whatever the difficulties were in the late ‘80s, it’s become even more difficult to run these big institutions now than it was then.”
For this, and much more, tune in now.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-nicholas-serota/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
From ticketing scandals and the implications of Brexit, to a major £35m museum renovation, this episode of In Other Words features a frank conversation with Nicholas Cullinan, the director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, on a broad range of topics.
Cullinan discusses a recent attendance crisis at the museum, when faulty counters reported that visitor figures had fallen by 35% between 2017 and 2018. While the numbers were proven to be wildly inaccurate, the museum was blasted in the media, which suggested its contemporary program was out of touch with the public. In this episode, Cullinan counters some of the criticism: “Basically, you’re saying that we and possibly other British museums shouldn’t program contemporary artists or women artists if they don’t reach a huge audience. I disagree with that fundamentally.”
Cullinan talks to host Charlotte Burns about the implications of judging a museum’s success solely on attendance, a metric that is “both helpful and vital but should not be the only thing,” he says. “The key thing—in a way, the only thing that matters—is the integrity and the quality with which you do those projects. If we were doing exhibitions that we didn’t believe in, or were bad or shoddy or slapdash, that would be a concern.”
Although the museum’s “entire remit is to serve the public”, it is 70% privately funded. Cullinan, who has worked within both American and British museums, talks about issues of funding in each country and ways to be innovative.
Recorded in London during a moment of acute political uncertainty, Cullinan discusses what it is like to manage a national museum in times of turmoil. “I will really fight for the things I believe in and support them. I wouldn’t just abandon the ship,” he says.
“You have to have the courage of your conviction. Things are changing around us rapidly and radically, and people have very opposing views. But what we represent, and what we should communicate, is both a timeless and very positive message about British identity,” he says. “It’s very important to hold on to that. So, in a way, we’re doubling down right now.”
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-popular-or-populist-a-conversation-with-nicholas-cullinan/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“Being an artist was a great excuse for anything you wanted to do that was ‘different’,” says the artist, photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons, whose work is the subject of a major retrospective survey on show now at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (until 27 January).
In this episode, she talks to host Charlotte Burns about everything from Internet culture to egalitarian art and the concept of magical thinking. Simmons’s tableaus, which are often created with dolls, explore memory, sexuality and artifice and she discusses what it was (and is) like working in a male-dominated industry.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-laurie-simmons/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.