Just 2.3% of all purchases and gifts at 30 prominent US museums over the past ten years have been of work by African American artists, according to a joint investigation by In Other Words and artnet News.
Meanwhile, the total auction value of work by African American artists over the same period represents a mere 1.2% of global auction sales.
Working together in an unprecedented three-month partnership, Charlotte Burns (executive editor, In Other Words) and Julia Halperin (executive editor, artnet News) have captured and analyzed market and museum data which, coupled with conversations with more than 30 prominent curators, collectors, dealers, museum directors, academics and philanthropists, reveals that progress is much more recent—and benefits far fewer artists—than popularly perceived.
In today's podcast, they discuss the data and its implications with Allan Schwartzman (co-founder, Art Agency, Partners) and Valentino Carlotti (global head of business development at Sotheby’s; board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and previously of the Guggenheim and the Studio Museum in Harlem).
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-20-september-2018-podcast/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Joining us for our 38th episode is Jessica Morgan, the director of the Dia Art Foundation—that much beloved organization so associated with the great land artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Pilgrimage, place and change of pace are important aspects of any visit to Dia—which has 11 sites in places as diverse as Utah, Bridgehampton, Beacon, New Mexico and New York City.
Morgan talks to host Charlotte Burns about fundraising—since joining in 2015 she has launched a $78m capital campaign to renovate and expand Dia’s existing spaces, raising around $60m already. She also discusses the problems with judging museums’ success by attendance figures, and reveals her future plans for Dia.
Transcript:
http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-jessica-morgan/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Where is the great art being made in America today? In this episode, our guests Chrissie Iles (Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz curator at the Whitney Museum of American art), Carolyn Ramo (executive director, Artadia) and Hamza Walker (executive director, LAXART) join our host Charlotte Burns to discuss the subject.
They talk about art being made throughout the United States in places outside the major market hubs, as well as ways to broaden the lens through which we view contemporary art in this country. “We're currently in an extremely dynamic moment for emerging artists and for culture,” Iles says in conversation with our other guests, who talk about how collectors and curators might discover—and steward—the art of their region.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-art-across-america-with-chrissie-iles-carolyn-ramo-and-hamza-walker
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“By now, I’m kind of an opinion machine,” says Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic for The New York Times in this special podcast recording with our host Charlotte Burns.
“I would say all art that’s middling-to-great is a strike for freedom; is an expression of liberty,” Smith says. “It’s somebody asserting themselves in a new way. And that kind of newness, you can hear it in jazz, you can see it in painting. Most of us have the potential for newness.”
Smith, who says she once “really thought about becoming a dealer”, talks about art today and her writing. She discusses the ways in which criticism and the media have changed—though her role (“I want to help people see art and have a new appreciation of what they’re seeing”) has remained essentially the same. Since she began writing in 1972, the readers have been, she says, “the engine in my work”.
“Whatever gripes you have with the art world—and we all have them—it’s the most open it’s ever been,” she says. “I can't imagine writing in any other time than this, when there's this kind of explosion.”
For this and much more, tune in today.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-roberta-smith/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
The American artist Joel Shapiro has been pioneering new forms in sculpture for more than five decades. He joins our host Charlotte Burns today to talk more about his art and his influences; his hopes and motivations; and about what, for him, defines great art. “I'm not talking magical thinking—but some level of rapture or depression or some level of emotionality that is not matter of fact, and I think that that's what artists want,” he says. “So when you see something like that, I don't think it's so explicable.”
Shapiro, whose art has been exhibited widely around the world—from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York to a recent show at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur in Switzerland—discusses a range of topics, from investing his art with emotion to the importance of color. He talks about the artists who have inspired him and the works he himself has collected. Art, he says, “is a manifestation of the culture, so it's important. It shows you what's going on.”
For this, and much more, tune in today.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-joel-shapiro
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“Because Sylvio is courageous, I was able to buy more hamburgers to keep up my strength, and more paint to continue painting,” said artist Robert Ryman about collector Sylvio Perlstein, who was a patron of his at a time when few others were interested.
Born in Belgium, Perlstein grew up in Rio de Janeiro, where his family moved when fleeing the Nazis in 1939. Perlstein bought his first work of art from a florist in Brazil; over the course of the next five decades, he would add more than 1,000 works to his collection by artists including Man Ray; Duchamp; Carl Andre; Diane Arbus; Hans Bellmer; Magritte Solowitz; Donald Judd; Hannah Kirk; Max Ernst; Bruce Nauman; Edward Shea; and Andy Warhol—to name just a few.
“For me, it was not even a collection. It was things that I saw, and I liked,” Perlstein says. “To tell you the truth, I never count them. I'm not well organized.”
A selection of works from the Perlstein collection is now on show at Hauser & Wirth, New York (“A Luta Continua”, until 27 June). Reflecting on the differences between the art world then and now, Perlstein tells host Charlotte Burns: “Today, it’s not so much art anymore; it’s a real business. At that time, you could easily acquire works from the artist because it was more about friendship.”
From exchanging diamonds for art with Man Ray to hanging out with artists in New York in the 1970s at the legendary Max's Kansas City, Perlstein talks about a life in art and his tastes (“ugly can be nice, too,” he says).
“What does it mean, art? Anything. You can make art from shoes, from a nice bag, from a hat— it's also art. Everything is art,” he says. “Buy what you like.”
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-sylvio-perlstein/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
"When people ask me how to describe the work or describe myself, I always just start by saying artist," says Glenn Kaino. "Everything stems from the art practice."
The visionary American conceptual artist's work has led him to become an off-Broadway producer, a performer, a magician, a social activist and the technological innovator who helped legalize the music download platform Napster.
A "horrible" trip to an art fair in 2008 caused Kaino to close his studio for a year, unhappy with "how much influence an overall, overriding economic system" was having on art making. He decided instead to "go hang out with a bunch of magicians and see what happens—because they know something about believing".
Magic is "why we do what we do, as artists", says Kaino, who went on to co-produce the off-Broadway magic show "In and Of Itself"—which is smashing box office records. Both magic and art are about belief for Kaino, who says: "Belief has always been at the core of the practice; it's really belief about the power of art."
One of his long-term collaborations is with the Olympian Tommie Smith, who famously accepted the gold medal for the 200m race in 1968 with his fist held aloft, in solidarity with the fight for human rights. "We, as beneficiaries of his sacrifice, can create systems that pay homage to—and also pay—him," Kaino says. "The art I know actually has tangible change, in that it makes people think in different ways or makes people engage in different ideas."
During today’s podcast, which was recorded in Los Angeles with Matthew Thompson (vice president of AAP in Los Angeles) and our host Charlotte Burns, Kaino talks about subjects as diverse as Jurassic Park; diversity in tech; partnering with actor and activist Jesse Williams; his interest in "connecting ecosystems that don’t normally have a chance to meet"; upcoming projects—and much more.
Tune in today.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-glenn-kaino/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Huge sums of money—more than $2.6bn—have been spent on Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art over the past two weeks in New York. On today’s podcast, Nicholas Maclean (of London and New York dealership Eykyn Maclean) and Allan Schwartzman (co-founder of AAP), discuss with our host Charlotte Burns (editor of In Other Words), what happened: what the surprises were; what trends we can detect; and what's going to happen next.
Here are some choice soundbites:
"It is a sign that the market is starved for broadening what it sees as valuable. This is a big triumph; this is a turning point in perception” — Allan Schwartzman
"I honestly thought that this could be the death knell for the Impressionist market. And then we saw it: that change between 2005 and 2008 was extraordinary” — Nicholas Maclean
"This question of identities seems to me to be a very American one. I think Americans, and perhaps the American market, are more open to approaching their own identities” — Charlotte Burns
"True collectors who will just look across the board and look at artists that tell the whole story are becoming rarer” — Nicholas Maclean
For this and more, tune in today.
Transcript link:
http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-auction-analysis/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
“There’s no goal to being an artist—you keep doing it and then, in theory, one dies,” says Carroll Dunham, who Allan Schwartzman describes as one of the greatest painters of the past 40 years.
Art is a “kind of lustful driving forwards” for Dunham, who has moved from abstraction to figuration over the course of his varied career. Works from his “Wrestlers” series are currently on show at Gladstone Gallery in New York (until 16 June). “I wanted to try to find a male equivalent to the women that I had been drawing and painting, which I had thought of as being rather primeval in some way,” Dunham says. “They are naked white guys beating the crap out of each other. I’m not claiming any special relevance or meaning for these things. They just allow me to keep making paintings.”
Dunham talks to Schwartzman and host Charlotte Burns about how his life and work—and the broader art community—have changed since moving from the bustle of New York, where he spent his early career, to the solitude of rural Connecticut.
Known for his incisive writing about other artists’ work, Dunham discusses how this exercise has helped his practice. The essays included in the recently published Into Words: The Selected Writings of Carroll Dunham (2017) represented "a diagram of my issues with myself and things I was grappling with in my own work”, he says.
For this, and much more, tune in today.
Transcript link:
http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-carroll-dunham/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
One of the most talked about exhibitions this year, “Outliers and American Vanguard Art”, closes next week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (13 May), after which it will travel to the High Museum in Atlanta and then to LACMA.
Our guest today is Lynne Cooke, the senior curator of special projects at the NGA who spent five years researching the exhibition. Talking to our host Charlotte Burns, Cooke says much of the art on show was made by people on the peripheries, often in marginalized positions because of their gender, race, class or age. “A great deal was made by African-American artists. Their work is simply not entered into the circuits and orbits of the contemporary art world for lack of opportunity, for lack of education, for lack of money. As I said: class, race.”
The exhibition comprises around 270 works by more than 80 artists and focuses on periods of social, political, economic and cultural upheaval in the United States, during which times the boundaries between the avant-garde and the outliers—self-taught, marginalized, Outsider artists—became more porous.
One of the most thoughtful curators working today, Cooke talks to us about her experience preparing the show, which “called into question a whole set of ideas about creativity and the basis on which innovation and originality and exploration take place”.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-lynne-cooke/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
This week we bring you a special episode from Hong Kong, where we staged our first ever live In Other Words event on 29 March, a panel discussion on "The Future of The Museum”. Our guests included Michael Govan, director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Doryun Chong, deputy director and chief curator, M+ in Hong Kong; and Allan Schwartzman. The panel was introduced by Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby’s Asia and moderated by Charlotte Burns.
Joining us remotely was Budi Tek, the founder of the Yuz Museum and Foundation, Shanghai, who broke the news of an unprecedented collaboration between Yuz and LACMA. This opened a discussion about the increasing willingness of museum directors and private patrons to collaborate and share. Our panelists also spoke about where innovation is taking place geographically; about cultural norms and how they manifest differently region to region; and about new technologies, such as augmented reality, and how they might impact museums and exhibition making. These are, of course, just a few of the topics covered. Tune in for the rest.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-the-future-of-the-museum-2/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Almost two million people so far have visited the blockbuster exhibition “David Bowie Is”, on show now at the Brooklyn Museum (until 15 July).
The exhibition was masterminded by Geoffrey Marsh, the director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) theater and performing arts department. He has organized several other major “immersive” exhibitions, harnessing state-of-the-art audio and visuals to tell narratives in new ways, such as “You Say You Want A Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970” (2016-17) and “Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains” (2017).
He joins our host Charlotte Burns in London to talk about combing through Bowie’s collection to tell the story of how this music legend evolved.
Marsh also talks about how new technologies—specifically augmented reality—are about to change the ways in which exhibitions are curated and experienced, as well as the role of the museum itself.
He also discusses his dream exhibition: “a show so powerful that probably 10% of people would walk out because they hated it. For the other 90%, it would have had a very profound effect. I know it’s possible,” Marsh says. Pointing out that most people can remember seeing their first dinosaur skeleton in museums, he believes there is “something hardwired into us about profound visual experiences which, in a weird way, I think we may have lost in museums and galleries.” That sense of curiosity and wonder is something Marsh is working to bring back as we enter what he calls a “golden age of museums being able to engage with completely new publics in different ways”.
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
The gallerists Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan specialize in cutting-edge Contemporary art and overlooked 20th-century art. They have in common with AAP co-founder Allan Schwartzman a passion for postwar Italian art and, during this podcast, the trio discuss the market for art from this period.
They also discuss this current moment as one of real transition in the broader market, during which time tastes and demand are shifting. During the conversation, moderated by host Charlotte Burns, Luxembourg & Dayan speak about the difference between their London and New York businesses (Europe sells and America buys) and what impact Brexit might have. They talk about ugliness and struggle in art; the fall of Empires; their own personal obsessions—art and food.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-daniella-luxembourg-amalia-dayan/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Jerry Saltz, perhaps the most well-known art writer working today, has been the senior art critic of New York magazine since 2006. During this interview with our host Charlotte Burns, which was recorded in the downtown offices of New York magazine, Saltz talks about a range of topics: from how he approaches viewing and reviewing art, to what he calls the “ass-holeness” of his social media persona.
Before becoming a critic, Saltz was an artist and a long-distance truck driver, and he discusses the benefits of being a late-bloomer. He defines what great art means to him and describes a recent exhibition of work by an artist who could be the “strongest to emerge this century in America." We are, he says, “living in a crisis and it’s time to look at the art of the present. I want to see what artists say now.”
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-jerry-saltz/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
From fetching beer for Joseph Beuys to the implications of Brexit and new borders, the Austrian art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac talks frankly about a range of topics in a conversation with our host Charlotte Burns, including the dangers of becoming too corporate; plans for his own collection; and his expectations for the art market in 2018.
Recorded in London, where Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac recently opened a fifth space (there are four others across Salzburg and Paris), Ropac shares his views on topics including the emerging art centres in the Middle East and China; the vibrancy of the Paris art scene; the pervasiveness of art fairs; and the importance of maintaining the trust of his artists.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-thaddaeus-ropac/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
During his 31 years as the exhibitions secretary at London’s Royal Academy, Sir Norman Rosenthal staged groundbreaking exhibitions of art including the legendary show, “A New Spirit in Painting” (1981), which brought artists such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz to broader recognition.
"Art is entertainment, but entertainment in the best sense of the word," he says in our latest podcast, speaking to host Charlotte Burns. “Museums, in the end, are like cupboards. And with the contents of the cupboards you have to try and make beautiful things—exhibitions that can tell with genuine artifacts aspects of the great story of art and human civilization.”
Since leaving the RA in 2008, Rosenthal has organized exhibitions and written essays for a number of organizations such as Gagosian, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (“If you're freelance, you are a kind of whore—but you can choose your clients," he says).
No stranger to controversy, Rosenthal talks us through his views on restitution and commerce ("the best dealers are nearly always ahead of the best curator. You name a curator who's really made a really serious decision about "the future”, he says) and tells us where he finds great art today.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-norman-rosenthal/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Whether hauling ice from the Arctic, partnering with SpaceX or training as a deep-sea diver, the artist Tavares Strachan works on an ambitious scale—often at the cutting edge of technology. He largely operates beyond the gallery model, instead relying on patrons, partnerships and collaborations to create innovative works of art.
The Bahamian-born artist, who was recently appointed to the MIT and RISD boards, is interested in overlooked or forgotten histories and “operating in a state of play”. His work ranges from multimedia installations to large-scale earthworks and is often an exercise in creative problem solving. Speaking to our host Charlotte Burns, he says: “If there's a way that art can actually affect the way we think about the world, it is forcing us to think about the gray, about where we overlap and how we're actually the same. If we spend more time focusing on that as an exercise, we may be able to move some immovable ideas.”
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-tavares-strachan/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
”In the particular political moment in which we live, the question of authority and voice has become increasingly important,” says Glenn Lowry, director of MoMA. ”Who has the right to speak for whom? How do we imagine someone else's voice?”
In this wide-ranging conversation, Lowry describes the museum as a crucible during a ”very flammable moment” and talks about the role of culture today. He discusses technology at the museum and the value of thinking slowly. Talking with host Charlotte Burns, Lowry covers various topics including MoMA’s expansion, the possibilities of closer institutional collaboration, the importance of anxiety—and lots more besides.
Transcript: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-22-transcript-glenn-lowry/
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
“We're in a moment where we are all paying attention to what's going on in the headlines. Many artists are thinking about what kind of world their work is entering into, and how to respond to or deal with the times we live in,” says Christopher Y. Lew, co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, who talks about his travels across America researching emerging art for the biennial.
For a transcript of the show, click here: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-21-transcript-christopher-y-lew-talks-emerging-art/
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
Artist Walter Robinson immortalizes appetites and desires in his work, painting beer, blue jeans and burgers, magazine models and pulpy paperback romances. Known as the founding editor of Artnet magazine, where he worked from 1996 until 2012, Robinson has been a habitual chronicler of the New York art world. He first flirted with success as an artist in the 1980s, making nurse paintings before Richard Prince and spin paintings before Damien Hirst. But, then, he stopped making art. Over the past few years he has returned to painting and, today, we talk to him about his many lives.
For a transcript of the show, click here: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-20-transcript-walter-robinson/
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
From "Poor Art" to politics in art, in this wide-ranging conversation between curator and art historian Germano Celant and Allan Schwartzman address topics including the ways in which the American art market has defined art history; how they work with artists to realize wildly ambitious projects; the difficulties in determining whether works are authentic; corruption in art; and rewriting the history of art. For this, and much more, tune in today.
For a transcript, click here: bit.ly/IOWEp19
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
The art industry is changing rapidly and, in this episode, Tad Smith (president and CEO of Sotheby's) and Allan Schwartzman discuss how they respond to the challenges and opportunities that this presents. Bringing different perspectives to the conversation, they discuss how to create change and foster innovation.
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
For a transcript, click here: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-18-transcript-tad-smith-allan-schwartzman/
“The strength of two people together is enormous. That's why, all over the world, people and creatures are divided into two.” Artists Gilbert & George have been creating "Art for All" since they met as students in the 1960s. “In the old days, when we were socially involved with artists, they always would tell you they're always nervous of what to do next. We never had that problem. We were always really ready for whatever,” say the inimitable duo during this lively discussion about their work, their habits and their artistic philosophies.
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
For a full transcript, click here: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-17-transcript-gilbert-george/
“Romare Bearden was asked in a 1972 interview with Camille Billops how he would define black art, and he said that black art is the art that black artists do,” says Tate's Zoe Whitley. "If someone were to say: 'What is white art?' you might say the Italian Renaissance, but you could equally say the German Renaissance, Rembrandt or English painting. Black art is as varied as that.”
Joining us in London to discuss contemporary African art are Zoe Whitley, the curator and writer Osei Bonsu, and Sotheby's Hannah O’Leary. In a broad-ranging conversation, we cover the challenges of bringing more recognition to artists who have lived or worked on the Continent or been part of its diaspora.
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.
For a full transcript, click here: http://www.artagencypartners.com/episode-16-transcript-contemporary-african-art/
A literature professor and Fulbright scholar turned investment banker, 90-year old Herbert Lust has one of the leading collections of works by artists including Alberto Giacometti, Robert Indiana and Hans Bellmer, among others.
Lust, who in 1969 wrote one of the first books about art collecting as an investment, talks to our host Charlotte Burns about his extraordinary life, discussing his friendships with artists and passing along some advice for collectors.
“Robert Indiana: Works from the Collection of Herbert Lust” is on show at S|2 Gallery from 8 September until 6 October
"In Other Words" is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby's, produced by Audiation.fm.