Hope & Dread, Episode 1: Introduction
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?
Guests: Deana Haggag, Mia Locks, Jay Sanders and The Rt Hon Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Michael Armitage, Chicken Thief, 2019, Oil on Lubugo bark cloth. 78 3/4 x 59 1/16 in. (200 x 150 cm) © Michael Armitage. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)
Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope & Dread. I’m Charlotte Burns.
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman. In this series we’ll be exploring power in art, and how it’s bound up with democracy, society and the wider world.
Charlotte Burns:
We’re going to meet the people who are making change and the people who are resisting change. And we’ll ask, who’s driving the wagon and who’s trying to seize the reins? And do you need to buckle up to ride out this journey?
Allan Schwartzman:
In our earlier podcast series, In Other Words, Charlotte and I plotted the rapid growth of the art market and the explosion of biennales and museums.
That explosion was charged by money, technology and, of course, shifts in taste and power.
Charlotte Burns:
In this series, we’ll explore the world that’s been created by that massive expansion.
What does it mean for artists, museum workers, writers, donors, the market, and the public?
We’ll ask what we’ve won and what we’ve lost; and we’ll ask if Growth and Progress go happily hand in hand, or if they’re another couple that split up and had to sell their collection.
Allan Schwartzman:
In each episode, we’ll explore a different realm in culture that’s undergoing seismic change.
Charlotte Burns:
We’ll talk to dozens of people — from artists to astrologers, museum directors and curators, to philanthropists and futurists — to get a handle on where we are, how we got here and where we’re going.
And, vitally, if we can move through feelings of dread to hope.
[Audio montage of interviewees answering the question: when you look ahead, what do you feel? Hope or dread?]
Charlotte Burns:
We didn’t do this alone. We asked three people to join us as editorial advisors.
Deana Haggag:
My name is Deana Haggag, and I am an arts administrator and funder.
Mia Locks:
My name is Mia Locks. I'm an independent curator and culture worker based in Los Angeles. I co-lead Museums Moving Forward, a data-driven initiative focused on accountability in the museum sector.
Jay Sanders:
My name is Jay Sanders. I'm a curator and the executive director of Artists Space in New York.
Allan Schwartzman:
These are three of the most exciting thinkers in art of our time and they’ve helped us navigate some of the thorny issues we’re facing, which extend well beyond the art world. We find ourselves at the beginning of massive epochal shifts and changing certainties — all this compounded and accelerated by this last year and a half of Covid when the world came to a screeching halt.
Charlotte Burns:
These are news stories that span governance, human rights, civil rights, history. They are very live, right now.
[Audio of newsreel montage]
Charlotte Burns:
So, what are the issues we’ll be confronting?
Deana Haggag:
Oftentimes, money is the largest marker of how much power someone holds. And I think that in our industry, more problems are made because of money than philanthropy can solve.
Mia Locks:
No one can seem to agree on what museums are for, and who they serve.
Jay Sanders:
Something on my mind a lot is how value is identified in the art world, and then how it comes to operate within the system of the art world. One thing that we are seeing in the way these episodes are structured is the unaddressed interplay of different forces in the art world, and how respective values, points of view, and desires are misaligned. So, I would hope in this series, we're sort of getting under the hood of these issues.
Allan Schwartzman:
This is exactly the moment to be having these conversations. One of the greatest challenges we face is an awareness gap. For some people, calls for change come as a shock to the system. Others say change is long overdue.
Power in art is shifting.
Charlotte Burns:
We’re at a real moment of reckoning.
As we’ve learned from putting this series together, issues surrounding monuments seep into discussions around museums: what they show, what they own, who works for them.
That then leads us to who’s at the top of those institutions, who funds them and how the market comes into play.
Everything is connected and, as you’ll hear, trying to make standalone episodes about just one topic is a real challenge — but one that we hope makes for a rich listening experience.
Mostly, though, it feels like high time we addressed these issues.
Allan Schwartzman:
What we’re really talking about is power and how it moves through, and shapes, our culture.
Deana Haggag:
When I started the show my understanding of power was that it all roots at the money flow, and I think so much of this show, for me, has continued to reinforce that.
I mean, I think there are people that are just left outside of entire flows of money, that don't get to make any decisions. And I think that no matter who we've spoken to on this show, if I trace it far enough, it always just comes back to a very small group of folks who have access to the largest pot of money, that controls 99.9% of the institutionalized art world we've come to understand.
And my other learning from this show is that there is a lot of interesting activity happening outside of those systems, or really incredible people working to try to make legible those systems, and build something that's a little bit separate. And that makes me very hopeful.
Allan Schwartzman:
And this itself is a recent shift, this configuration of power. When I started in the contemporary art world, there was no market — all the power was among artists and critics. Then the market started to develop into the one we have now and museums grew. Now we’re in a new phase in which we recognise that the public has grown too, and we’re also becoming increasingly aware that our systems have not adjusted in response to that broadening of the museum and who it serves.
Charlotte Burns:
We’re going to bring you viewpoints from inside those different systems. We’ll talk to museum boards and directors about how they’re handling calls for change that are coming internally from staff, and externally from a public demanding to see more of itself within the museum.
A revealing part of the series will involve talking to trustees, people who have typically held real power but many of whom now sense a world spinning out of their control.
Mia Locks:
Museums are undergoing a major identity crisis — possibly the biggest identity crisis since their formation — and we're seeing this play out in the form of protests from artists and activists, from a series of open calls, and letters from staff. We're seeing it in turnover at the top; we're seeing board members, directors, chief curators. Ultimately, a lot of this is really stemming from a culture of fear, and a total dissolution of trust.
And I'm extraordinarily grateful to all of the individuals who've donated to museums, that I've personally benefited from a lot of those generous contributions. But, I think the thing that people are really afraid to say is that the model as it exists right now, isn't serving our missions.
Charlotte Burns:
So, we’ll ask the question: if the model isn’t working, do we just need new museums? Or can we reform the old ones for new use?
Allan Schwartzman:
Well, this sounds like a controversial question but, actually, we’re seeing new museums all over the country and all over the world.
What the museum is and who it is for is the greatest cultural battleground of this moment of awakening.
Charlotte Burns:
It’s not only museums: it’s public spaces; it’s monuments.
It is the fight over who controls the cultural narrative of nations.
We’ll speak to artists and curators grappling with how to repurpose monuments that celebrate the lives of people that would have denied their humanity. We’ll hear from politicians about what happens when governments stipulate what culture should be — and we’ll even hear from one former secretary of state who’s changed his mind on a controversial subject.
The Rt Hon Lord Vaizey of Didcot:
I think the debate has really moved on. I think I would support the return of the Elgin Marbles now, and I think I was probably wrong.
Allan Schwartzman:
Wait, did I hear that correctly? Was that a career politician saying he was wrong about one of the major issues in politics in the UK today?
Charlotte Burns:
Well, as we’ll discover in this show, one of the areas of hope is the human capacity for change.
We occasionally found a real chasm between perception and reality. Often, our own — we’ll be honest about that.
A case in point, I thought Portland and Oregon were all about hipster coffee shops, knitted hats and yoga mats, but I was ignorant about the fact that it was the only state to join the union that stipulated “whites only” — something that shapes not only the art and cultural scene there today but, moreover, the lives of people who are dealing with these legacies.
[Audio of newsreel montage]
Charlotte Burns:
This series is less about blame and punishment than about the systems we inherited from our ancestors and how we grapple with that now. But, for a lot of people, change feels personal.
Deana Haggag:
I think people are afraid to say that their feelings are hurt. And I don't want to sound so soft about that, but I feel like there are too many people in a position of power who try to find structural justifications for the critique against them, rather than just for one second be able to admit safely that their feelings are just hurt.
Charlotte Burns:
What we found while making this series, and what we hope you’ll discover from listening, is that so much of this flows from history and who’s written it — our collective stories.
These aren’t dusty conversations; they’re loud arguments about what it is that we value today.
Allan Schwartzman:
Does the art world and its market truly recognize and reward bold thinking and fresh ideas? Or, to what extent have the sharp edges of true creativity been smoothed over by money?
Jay Sanders:
Another word I was thinking about was “reward,” and how contemporary art expresses and even markets so much formal and intellectual radicality — but the reward system really does so strongly reinforce this given set of power relations.
Charlotte Burns:
We’ll talk to artists about how they deal with this. Many artists are using their own platforms to create what they see as much needed changes.
Today, some artists have more control than ever before. We’ll go into why, and we’ll ask them what they’re doing with that power.
Allan Schwartzman:
It’s impossible to talk about contemporary art and artists without talking about the market, which has become the dominant force in art today. The bigger the stakes, the more conservative the market becomes. And we’ll ask about what impact that’s having, and how it’s shaping the art we see, the culture we value and the importance of art — whether it continues to be central to our culture, or if it drifts off into its own market.
Charlotte Burns:
What are people afraid to talk about? Well, a lot.
We’ll go into that, but we’re not going to dwell on the dread. This show is about dealing with that discomfort and celebrating some solutions.
Deana Haggag:
I think everything that's been happening over the past year has made me feel more hopeful that people, perhaps, do want to live in the same world, and don't know how to arrive there.
Allan Schwartzman:
So, please join us as we begin that journey. One that, like every quest, could be summed up as being about Hope & Dread.
Charlotte Burns:
Our second episode, “American History, Axed”, is available now. Tune in again next Wednesday for our episode on “Controlling Culture” and, meanwhile, follow us on social media @artand_media or #HopeAndDread, and tell us what you think.
Please follow us on Social Media:
• Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/artand_media/
• Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/artand.schwartzmanmedia
• Twitter:
https://twitter.com/artand_media
• Linkedin:
Podcast Art: Michael Armitage, ‘Chicken Thief’, 2019, Oil on Lubugo bark cloth, 78 3/4” x 59 1/16” (200 x 150 cm), © Michael Armitage. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)
