Introducing this new documentary series exploring power in art, hosts Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman discuss the biggest challenges in the cultural world today. At a moment of epochal shifts and changing certainties, these are issues that extend well beyond the art world—from governments and human rights, to history and democracy.
Arguments around monuments are linked to debates about museums: what they show, what they own, who they employ. Who is at the top of these institutions, who funds them and how does the market come into play? Who’s driving the wagon and who’s trying to seize the reins? And do you need to buckle up to ride out the journey?
From acts of solidarity to new business models, many in the art world are teaming up during this pandemic to bolster the system and rethink its infrastructure. Joining us for today’s show are guests including financial journalist Felix Salmon; gallerists Sadie Coles of Sadie Coles HQ and Vanessa Carlos of Carlos/Ishikawa; artist Doron Langberg; culture and politics writer Marisa Mazria Katz; and nonprofit executives Carolyn Ramo of Artadia and Deana Haggag of United States Artists.
“We are all protecting our small castle or encampment and promoting our own content,” says Sadie Coles. “But actually, if you start reaching out to people, it is all about dialogue— and things develop from there.”
For more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-79-covid-19-second-podcast/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Will Covid-19—which is so far spreading unevenly in the US, hitting low-income or black communities the hardest—exacerbate the inequities in the art world? In our 78th episode, host Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman (co-founder of AAP and a chairman of Sotheby’s) discuss the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Can art itself provide solace during this period of grief and fear? And how will the art world and its market make it through?
Tune in.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-78-will-the-art-world-remain-resilient/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“Art is about ideas, transgression and transformation," says gallerist Sadie Coles, who founded her eponymous gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, in London's Mayfair neighborhood in 1997, and now has two spaces in the UK capital. "And art needs freedom."
In this wide-ranging podcast, recorded in London earlier in the year with host Charlotte Burns, Coles talks about everything from the nature of being an art dealer, to the sense of anxiety that has shaped both the market and art in this still-young century—and about the time she moonlighted to as a theatre critic to review a play starring Madonna as a ruthless art world operator.
Coles talks about changes in the gallery system. “Artists now have more power, and I think that's a healthy thing", she says. “The rules, whatever they may be, are in flux right now."
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-75-flux-and-freedom-with-sadie-coles/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Maureen Paley—a native New Yorker who was recently named one of the Evening Standard's most influential Londoners—has been called a "true pioneer of the East End" for her part in turning the neighborhood into a hub for art and culture.
She opened her gallery in 1984 and “it still remains alive and very vital," she tells host Charlotte Burns. "People like to think of art now as related to commerce and business, but I always saw it that it was related to a type of magic."
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-75-maureen-paley/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
This lively conversation with Stuart Shave and Sarah McCrory was recorded in London shortly before the UK exited Europe at the end of January. McCrory (inaugural director of the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in London, which opened in 2018) and Shave (founder of Stuart Shave Modern Art gallery in London) talk to host Charlotte Burns about a range of topics, from ”Google curating” to the environmental crisis; from the #MeToo movement to the cultural climate within the UK. The British art world has always been “in constant revival and renewal," McCrory says. “But I do worry about how we keep it a place for artists, and how we keep it a place for culture."
To hear more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-76-stuart-and-sarah/
Tune in for this behind-the-scenes talk between host Charlotte Burns and journalist Jori Finkel on the rise of the L.A. art scene. A California correspondent for The New York Times and The Art Newspaper, as well as author of the book It Speaks to Me: Art That Inspires Artists, Finkel talks about the artists who make the city unique and the real reason why it's become a major arts hub—and it predates Frieze L.A., the second edition of which is being staged this week.
This wide-ranging conversation covers topics from motherhood as "the last taboo in the art market" to why women artists aren't given more "blockbuster" shows, to the ethics of reporting on the art world. For this and much more, download the show today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-74-jori-finkel/
"In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
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.