The Art World: What If…?!, Season 2, Episode 11: Allan Schwartzman
“The market is poised for a big fall, so it's more ‘when’, than ‘what if’,” says Allan Schwartzman, founder of the podcast. He’s back on the show to talk all about the state of the art market and the broader implications of its changing dynamics for the artists and for the cultural landscape at large. "Greatness doesn't grow at the same rate as a population does," says Allan. "Greatness is extremely rare. And right now we're at a moment where I think there's greater confusion than ever about what actually is going on in art and what will be seen as significant 20 or 30 years from now."
Transcript:
Charlotte Burns: Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?!, a podcast in which we imagine new futures. I’m your host Charlotte Burns.
[Audio of guests]
Well, what if indeed? That’s what Allan Schwartzman suggested we ask people and what led to this podcast series. Allan is back on the show in this episode, talking about the art market, about collecting, and about the broader implications of the changing dynamics of the industry for artists and the cultural landscape at large. Let’s dive in.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Hi Allan, good morning.
Allan Schwartzman: Good morning, Charlotte.
Charlotte Burns: So what if we meet again? Have another podcast interview?
[Laughter]
I think we're going to start with the market because we haven't had a lot of market chat in this season so far. So just a small question to start us off. What if the market is poised for a big fall? What do you think?
Allan Schwartzman: I think the market is poised for a big fall so it's more “what, when” than “what if.” How you measure, how you define a big fall is often misleading. In the years I've been involved in the art world, there have been very few moments but a few of them, where the market as a whole slowed down if it didn't virtually stop. Whether that happens or not, I choose not to speculate because that tends to happen only when there's a confluence of conditions both within art and business and the world. And by the way, I guess we are facing the possibility of such things but nonetheless, there are many different art markets, there are different artists, there are artists who perform badly at auction but whose exhibitions sell out at very healthy prices, so the art market is not necessarily revealed by published statistics.
We're in this very weird moment where you have a tremendous number of artists, probably more than ever, that have emerged over the last, let's say five or six years. Greatness doesn't grow at the same rate as a population does. Greatness is extremely rare. And right now we're at a moment where I think there's greater confusion than ever about what actually is going on in art and what is significant or what will be seen as significant 20, 30 years from now. So there is more of an appetite for acquiring, for consuming, than there is for really distinguishing individual artists.
And by the way, I think that's appropriate. I think we're at this very strange moment, which is, I would suspect, is the beginning of a great epochal shift. What art ends up being and how it functions in the world could be substantially different 50 years from now than it is today. So I think this is a period of spreading out rather than focusing in. Every type of art that is potentially compelling today, as soon as one interesting artist emerges, there are 50 interesting artists that emerge. The volume of producers is truly unprecedented. Since a great number of those people don't know of the ups and downs of an art market, but just know the ups of the last few years, I think that as things slow down, as certain artists who went from $20,000 to $2.5 million slip back, you'll see the commitment of collectors, in general, devolving even more rapidly than our confidence in art itself.
I think the contemporary market is inevitably poised for that kind of reduction. It grew at such an extensive rate because we were all successful in building this place as an industry. And in the process, what I've come to realize—and to me, this is like a big warning sign—is that as more money wants to collect art, the people involved become more thoughtful, more cautious, more conservative. So the market ends up concentrating on a few figures and others who had in previous years had very healthy, active careers fall off. The idea that something has first and foremost financial value is one of the consequences of this growth.
Charlotte Burns: What if there's just too many artists in the market? And a stat jumped out to me from Artnet's latest art Intelligence Report that 1,666 artists made their auction debuts last year at Christie's, Phillips, and Sotheby's and only 2.2 percent of them failed to find buyers. That just seems like so many artists to go into a market in a year in which people were talking a lot about slowing down. Can the system sustain that many artists coming in? And that's into auction. That's not even talking about the galleries around the world.
Allan Schwartzman: I think the market can sustain it if the market evolves into several different sub-communities of collectors. So if the market for attractive works that are credible but not really compelling or challenging grows and sustains itself, then there's a place for that. Thus far, there hasn't been a place for that.
Charlotte Burns: When you say credible, but not really challenging, you mean like for lack of a better term, like merchandise art?
Allan Schwartzman: I would say proficient art. We have a lot of proficient art around us. There's an oversaturation and sometimes if one of those artists happens to be especially remarkable, their work will always stand out. But oftentimes, it gets muddled.
Charlotte Burns: When we talk about the art funds, what you're talking about is a kind of abundance of money finding its way into art.
Allan Schwartzman: Yes.
Charlotte Burns: Is that something that's going to slow down? That's not necessarily about art, that's about broader economic structures.
Allan Schwartzman: Most will fail. The bottom line is that there simply isn't enough great art to go around. And if they raise a decent amount of money, and I don't think money is the challenge, I think there are billions and billions of dollars that are available for such kinds of investments, or playing with x percent of one's net worth. It creates total confusion about what's valuable and what's not and eventually when what an investor is buying does not match up in some way in significance and value with that which collectors and institutions are buying, then you have a real gap. And that gap is where a collapse is likely to happen.
The grammar version of it is that art itself gets degenerated. That art itself becomes less significant. It becomes a place for decor far more than for the brilliance of an individual to see things in a way that none of us could have imagined. That surprise us and always keep us going back for more because we can never fully understand it.
Charlotte Burns: Which version are you leaning towards yourself?
Allan Schwartzman: I'm always leaning toward the latter. That's why I'm involved in art. [Laughs] I maintain my faith in art and artists. I think it's always there. It's not lost on me that it may not entirely be there at the moment, but it emerges. As the world goes through its changes, I think you will see artists responding in kind and you'll see people who are motivated to become artists who might not have been at another time and where the greatness of the future of the present comes from as we see it in the future. I have no crystal ball.
Charlotte Burns: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about value. In her podcast recently, Barbara Gladstone said you can't really work out value yet, maybe for the eighties or maybe for the nineties, but it's too early for anything that came after that. So as an advisor, how do you think about what holds the test of time? If things are so confusing. What if we've gotten value wrong for the last 24 years? How do you think about that as you give advice to people?
Allan Schwartzman: In every decade that I've been involved in the art world, you could tell in the moment that artists were emerging, which ones were the most compelling of the time. In these last years, that's no longer the case. And that's where that endless population and endless optionality has become truly confusing. I could tell you, I shouldn't say I could tell you, I'm not going to tell you, but I could tell my clients which work I think is particularly interesting by younger artists emerging today. I could tell you which artists who emerged at the beginning of this century I find more compelling than others.
But what we've chosen to do is, I always believe in collecting young, regardless of one's budget, one's area of collecting. Take a small percentage of your budget and buy because supporting artists makes a huge difference. First of all, too often in recent years, the art market has become focused more on artworks than on the works of artists, and that can kill the whole cycle of creativity. So I think it's important if you're a member of this community in some way to be supporting artists period.
Some collectors who I work with are very interested in the new, but the majority of mature collectors that I've been working with are focusing more on re-examining their collections, identifying areas that they missed or they feel like they need to collect in greater depth because they're thinking about their collections as a whole and not as an assembly of many things.
Charlotte Burns: How about you? How do you think about your own collection?
Allan Schwartzman: Oh, I'm totally indiscreet in my own collection. I would never follow what I do as a collector if I were a client of mine. Certainly during Covid I became as acquisitive as everyone else just to the scale that I could afford to and I'm happy that I was. [Laughs] But there's a certain point in time where even I said, “I own too much, I need to slow down right now.” But I would say, I have no idea. I've probably, let me guess, that I've probably collected the work of 25 to 30 artists who have emerged in the last five or six years. If I look at any other decades since I've been involved in art, if I had the money then that I had now, I would never have bought that many artists. I just wouldn't have thought there were that many that were worthy. I think I would have collected three in a decade, five in a decade.
Charlotte Burns: So what's different?
Allan Schwartzman: The volume.
Charlotte Burns: There's more interesting artists?
Allan Schwartzman: At a certain point the market kept rising and the ante for entering into the market of a somewhat promising artist jumped quite quickly from a few thousand dollars to $40,000 and $50,000. That slowed down rapidly. So in the last number of years, prices have come down substantially. Some of that is an unfortunate consequence of the inability or the discomfort of certain younger galleries to ride a wave away with their artists within the market. But sometimes it means that there are more options out there. And so I think the market got more real in terms of young emerging artists. I think in the same way that nobody wants to be a museum director today, I don't think any young art dealer, at least one that I can identify, wants to be a Larry Gagosian of the future.
Charlotte Burns: That's such an interesting way of putting it. What do you think they want to do instead?
Allan Schwartzman: Not to denigrate Larry but to say that the idea of being a monolithic business, one that dominates a field, is just not in the DNA of this generation. At least so far, what I see are a lot of people who believe in art and they do what they do, but I don't see business plans. There's a different way of going about it.
Charlotte Burns: Less strategic? Less focused on the financial?
Allan Schwartzman: I see more of an inconsistency in the stables of many younger galleries. When Paula Cooper emerged, virtually every artist in her gallery was truly compelling in their own ways. Nowadays it's far more common that you see a few artists in a gallery that, at least that I find, truly compelling. So there's an unevenness in terms of the work, which in turn, results in a great vulnerability to the business itself.
There's always the threat that a very strong artist in a very young gallery gets sucked up by a major gallery. And oftentimes, the selectivity of a gallery, the connoisseurship of the gallery itself has a big impact on who the clients are who are coming in, to what extent a dealer is able to jump a price when it seems appropriate to demand to higher numbers than they had ever gone before.
Charlotte Burns: It seems like we've been in this moment of consolidation with the big galleries at the top, and their acquisitiveness as well in terms of taking on other artists and that massive growth of their stables. But there's a slight shift away from that now. There's a slightly gentler approach with some of those mega dealers to say, “We're not going to insist on being the only. Let's do things in tandem with smaller galleries.” Do you think that's sustainable, or do you think the natural dominance of those mega dealers will show through in the end?
Allan Schwartzman: I greatly hope that sustains. It's something that's been plaguing me for years now. How it is that artists get sucked up and get removed from the context of their own generation. If that's what the artist desires, then so be it. But, I think galleries at every financial level are important to this ecosystem if they're doing compelling work. One thing that happens when the market narrows down and consolidates into a few massive players is that on the one hand, the way of doing business becomes more corporate. On the other hand, the ability of one person of significance in that gallery to begin to see the benefit of doing things slightly differently is very possible. And that's exactly where we are at. How scalable is that? Not that scalable. What I'm interested to see is if the instances in which a “mega gallery” partners with a younger gallery for the representation of individual artists, if the artists they focus on indeed become the most compelling of their generation, or if it's just a somewhat random process.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: I wonder the extent to which artists feel their needs are being served. Obviously, some feel they are. We've been witnessing lots of artists creating their own models. There's been a lot of money in the market and some highly successful artists have been using the platform of their own success to create new vehicles often focused on helping other artists and so they've seen the gaps and they want to try and help create infrastructure to fill those gaps for other artists. You can name artists like Simone Leigh, Tavares Strachan...
Allan Schwartzman: Michael Armitage, Titus Kaphar, Kehinde Wiley.
Charlotte Burns: Julie Mehretu.
Allan Schwartzman: There are many other names and what you’re identifying is virtually all of these artists are artists of color, primarily Black, who early on in their success want to give back and it's very natural to artists who have struggled to enter into a world that seems inhospitable to them on their own terms, to then want to build opportunities for others. I remember visiting Titus several years ago at NXTHVN and he said that when he was at Yale [School of Art] taking various classes, he asked, “When am I going to learn about how to support myself as an artist?” And they said, “Oh, we don't teach that.” And he said, “I can't be an artist if I can't support myself.”
So here is an artist who in no way, ever compromised the art that he was making, but at the same time, he had to have an eye toward supporting himself because he had no other option. And so he chose to stay in New Haven. He chose the moment that he had money to create a community center that is probably one of the most vital artist residency and community business development models out there. This is truly compelling. I think the changes in power are a consequence of that and not the goal of that.
Charlotte Burns: What do you mean?
Allan Schwartzman: What I mean is this: simply for each of these artists, a very natural thing to do, to reach out into the community, whether it's into the community of the neighborhood, or the community of artists, in order to make things easier for them than it was for others.
Charlotte Burns: Do you think some of that's about the way that culture is seen? I'm thinking here of an interview, with another guest this season, Laura Raicovich. She wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, I think it was called, “If you want to save culture, think of it like highways, [To Save Museums, Treat Them Like Highways]” arguing that earmarking even 0.5 percent of a bipartisan federal bill in 2021 that allocated $1.2 trillion to national infrastructure projects over five years would mean sending $6 billion towards cultural organizations across America. And so it's a financial argument that she's making, but it's also a philosophical one saying culture shouldn't be seen as a rarefied thing over there, it's part of an infrastructure.
Allan Schwartzman: So art has never been central to this country, the United States. In fact, it was often seen more as a threat than an enrichment. It certainly has been very easy to demonize art politically. We saw this throughout the ‘80s with the AIDS crisis and politicians seizing opportunities to slash budgets for the arts because I think because there's just simply too much freedom there. I believe that artists know best what artists need. Ultimately, knowing that artists can support what they believe in and hopefully that that money can over time could be mobilized in more effective ways is one of the great powers moving forward. It's certainly where I've been focusing my work. I continue, of course, to work with collectors and that part of the business grows, but the area that I'm focusing on the most is on advisory work for artists’ foundations, for artists in creating legacy building, and artists at different stages of their careers. Not in competition with galleries at all, but as a complement to it. I would say that part of that is a consequence of corporate growth. It's inevitable that when there is a strong market for certain kinds of art that the galleries become far more transactional. But also, as there's been more money earned by artists, there are more needs of artists and that really hadn't been addressed by the system. So looking to the future and recognizing that the population of artists multiplied in the ‘60s with the baby boomer generation and also recognizing that the oldest of the baby boomers are in their seventies and eighties. There's a lot of meaningful art out there and substantial wealth that has not been planned as well as it could be, if at all, and that certainly has not been looked at as a population rather than a world of individuals.
Charlotte Burns: It's really interesting what you say because I remember a million years ago when I was the US news editor at The Art Newspaper writing about this new and growing industry called artists’ estates, and foundations. And there'd been a report by the Aspen Institute and I was recently looking at the figures for that. It was published in 2015 so almost a decade ago. The value then was around $7.5 billion which is around $10 billion today if adjusted for inflation. And obviously, the number of artist-endowed philanthropies, as in the number of organizations, has grown exponentially since then, and the value of the assets they hold has grown. There is no equivalent cultural artist-endowed philanthropy in any other country in the world like that. It's really an American phenomenon. It's to do with the privately held wealth. It's to do with the culture of philanthropy in America. And it's tied totally to what you're talking about the boomer generation and the phenomenon of that market moment coming together.
Allan Schwartzman: Setting aside the last decade in which we've indicated there's been a massive growth in the artist population, and we're not quite sure where that shakes out, but even for artists prior to that, there aren't enough museums in the world or collectors in the current market to absorb all of that art. And so legacy planning isn't just thinking about what your ambitions and goals are. It's also about envisioning how to create alternatives that can that can absorb a lot of great art that isn't necessarily what the market is actively seeking or what museums are actively showing. It's about recognizing that artists are stronger together than apart.
Charlotte Burns: So what if philanthropy weren't so feudal?
Allan Schwartzman: I think that will change. There are so many weird inefficiencies when you look at art. I think what we need are more people to be steering such wealth into recognizing you can be on the board of the Museum of Modern Art and you can give it as much money as you want, but you can also put 10 percent of that amount and give it to other kinds of organizations and cultural startups that are the promise of the future. So I think it's about connecting more than anything.
Charlotte Burns: There was a recent report by UBS that predicts that $5.2 trillion is expected to be passed from around a thousand American baby boomer billionaires to their children over the next 20 years. It's known as the “great wealth transfer,” but all the signs are that the next generation is not that interested in cultural philanthropy. And so there's also a question of this generational disconnect. So it's not just a philanthropy. Dealers talk about this a lot. They say that the next gen just isn't collecting in the same way. Are you experiencing that within your business. Do you see things differently?
Allan Schwartzman: I don't see that differently amongst my clientele. I think that's a particularly American phenomenon. The vast majority of new collectors, which are indeed the bulk of the population of collectors in this country, tend to collect contemporary art. And when they collect contemporary art, it becomes this passion that takes up all day Saturday and sometimes parts of Sunday. And so you have lots of children who were raised feeling second to the art. [Laughs] And so you see that acted out when parents die. However, there are many families of multigenerational collecting where the art is seen as central to the family and the family's identity and legacy. I've been approached recently by such families where the children are looking to find their way within culture because whether or not what their parents collected was meaningful to them, the idea of culture and supporting it is central. So again, I think it's about access. A lot of very wealthy people who have to give away money and there are a few outlets through which they can begin to think in an innovative way about that. We certainly have seen a few people emerge from the worlds of massive wealth who are thinking differently about it. And that hopefully has influence over others. There's a lot more room in which to grow, but it's needed. If museums, who are the repositories of these things, are starting to become much more select about what it is that they accept, then, you need alternatives.
Charlotte Burns: There was always this sense too that there might be an endless boom. If you think back to the beginning of this century, there were areas of new wealth emerging and optimism around what that might look like, and this sense that culture could be a sort of ambassador for democratic values around the globe. And I don't think anybody believes that anymore. It's been this global expansion in the market and museums and biennials, this entire international thing going on for the last couple of decades. And it feels like that's already coming to a different phase in the cycle. There aren't going to be museums all over China that can take all the art. That feels clear already. Do you agree that phase is over? Where do you think we are in that cycle?
Allan Schwartzman: I think we are still in a cycle where countries of newer wealth, so to speak, are building the most ambitious infrastructures for the arts. You see this a lot in the Middle East. And there, art is seen as central to globalization, toward building bridges between cultures that otherwise have been untrusting of one another. And already you can see it having made a difference. And it will continue to make a difference. There are just so many countries that can emerge that are going to pour massive amounts of wealth into building great museums and the most innovative buildings of our time. But there are individuals who have the wealth of small nations. And I do see case by case an openness to find something that someone can do culturally that can last and that is a reflection of their values. I think we're going to be finding more such models where an individual more often than not an artist, recognizes that they can make a difference in their communities in the same way that someone else made a difference for them when they were younger, but through the arts. It's the part of the museum crisis we face here today that wasn't considered more thoroughly until it's starting to be considered now, which is the extent to which a museum is a central civic center.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Allan, that brings us perfectly on to Yoko Ono. The idea that one person can be the change in the world. I know you wanted to talk about Yoko. Shall we?
Allan Schwartzman: Yes. Absolutely. I was in London a few weeks ago for the opening [of a Yoko Ono retrospective at the Tate.] Yoko Ono is a complicated figure within culture of the last, let's say, 60, 70 years. She is extremely well known to the extent that very few artists are. This is a woman of significant power and presence in the world that grew massively when she developed a relationship with John Lennon. So here's a woman who arrives in New York in the late 1950s, early 1960s, she's going back and forth to Japan. If one looks at the art this is a woman who was central to the Fluxus movement and to the avant-garde in New York and what I would think of as the last generation of the avant-garde in New York. And she was one of the critical figures. She had no money, but she supported performances of some of the most innovative musicians of our time. If you look at the early work from let's say the early ‘60s, through just about 1970, you see a massive amount of work that's innovative in almost every way. I mean, she made conceptual paintings before there was a term for conceptual art. She envisioned an entire ecosystem or world of imagination when she created Grapefruit, which is a book in which she wrote out instructions, many of which have been realized in actual artworks and many of which have not. But in that, you see a kind of treatise of a universe of imagination.
And part of what I have come to realize and respect about the work is that the work's very rigorous on the one hand, but it's very open and generous and expansive in the most abstract ways, but ways that are very accessible and not encumbered by complicated language.
Then she moves to London, marries John Lennon, gets derided for, “destroying the Beatles,” which isn't an accurate description of that part of history. She becomes the catalyst for some of the largest cultural events in the world. And this is such activities as the bed-ins or work related to music that's related to work that she herself created with the word “imagine.” And it's all in response to the Vietnam War, and it's a call for peace, and it has a power that I don't know any artist has had since.
So here's an artist who spans from the most rigorous but generously spirited part of the avant-garde into the most accessible, highest-level link within pop culture, and that's a massive arc of involvement that I don't think has ever been recognized. This exhibition at the Tate—which is in London—this is the first exhibition I've seen that spans her entire production from early to most recent, while at the same time showing a clear throughline in her spirit and how she rose to speak to a larger world through the audience that she had greater access to. She's certainly the most under-celebrated artist of massive impact of the post-war period, as far as I'm concerned.
One of the beauties of that show is that it ends with a recording of a performance at the Sydney Opera House on her 80th birthday, which is one of the most radical performances I've ever seen. Very difficult to envision the avant-garde which one associates with youth with someone of such advanced years.
Charlotte Burns: What if you rethink someone who's just been in the background of your life forever? Everybody feels like they know Yoko Ono, and then the more you dig into it, the more you feel she's an artist whose innovations have just been in plain sight and either misunderstood or credited otherwise, whether it's the concept as a material or advertising as a medium or light and space or performances, carrying scissors, inviting the world to interact with her and all of this before she even met Lennon, let alone imagination manifestation and everything that speaks so much to a TikTok generation.
Allan Schwartzman: It’s this confluence of the radical and of a most generous spirit in the most expansive form. So there's this beautiful accessibility and openness to her work. It's work that you feel can be meaningful anytime, anywhere. And we'll take on meaning within the context in which it's displayed.
Charlotte Burns: It's interesting because it's been so reduced and flattened often. If I'd encountered her work in an art context before, it was almost sentimental and twee, and it's annoying, actually, to understand that I'd grasped it in that way, that I'd absorbed it in that way. When you understand actually how complex the simplicity is what's so radical about it. The instruction to Imagine is what's so generous and amazing about it. What if our best artists are in plain sight? What if we can imagine the world?
Allan Schwartzman: Exactly. And also, not feeling the need to respond to criticism, the market, or anything. She just stayed very contained within herself and continued to do what she did. But when you start to learn about her biography, some of this becomes that much more touching and meaningful. The idea of imagining the sky was something that came to her when she was very young, right after World War II when Japan was destroyed. Some of it comes out of brutal realities that she had a natural way to transform or to contain or understand, through her imagination. And an imagination that was always in words.
Charlotte Burns: She was born into nobility and wealth and then woke in the middle of the night to firebombing of the Allied forces when Tokyo was firebombed. And went to a shelter, they left, they were evacuated, and that was exactly what you're referring to when her and her brother would lie and imagine. She said they would read menus in the sky of the food they would eat. And to go from that to the life she leads is so miraculous and strange. But also, she did mostly rise above it, but there are a few funny notes in there correcting people when credit was always given to other people and there are a few moments where there are letters in the archives of, “Actually when I did this avant-garde performance, I would like you to know that I did it five years before this other person.”
Allan Schwartzman: Well, she was subject to a massive amount of sexism and racism. But she could live with it. Somehow it didn't define who she was. It didn't direct her in particular ways. She just remained steadfast to her own sensibility.
Charlotte Burns: I’m sure it impacted her.
Allan Schwartzman: Going back to your question about are we living in a great time for young artists? I think that a vast amount of the work that I've been seeing of younger artists suggests to me that they don't know what their sensibilities are. I think they're making ahead of conceiving or envisioning. And maybe that's our time. Maybe this is a time in which imagination is less vital. I hope not.
Charlotte Burns: What art is, what you said at the beginning of this, I think is shifting but again to your point about Yoko, that's exactly what she was saying, way back when, that it wasn't necessarily a material thing. As John Lennon climbed up on a ladder, looked through a magnifying glass, and saw the word “yes” on a ceiling. What if we could see old artists in new ways?
Allan Schwartzman: What if we could occupy our imaginations with what art can be that it isn't currently? What if we can begin to create a framework for understanding that can make sense of and embrace that which by which we might not otherwise be moved?
[Musical Interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Allan, do you have any ‘what ifs’ of your own?
Allan Schwartzman: What if, and I don't think this is an “if” so much as a “when,” but what if curators become more empowered by the institutions they work with to develop their own views of art and culture and what is vital today, rather than to present best examples of artists who have gained the financial support that it takes to drive their exhibitions forward?
Charlotte Burns: Do you think that's possible? Do you think that can happen?
Allan Schwartzman: Yes. Yes, I think it's inevitable. Actually, I do. I think, first of all, the cost of blockbusters has gone up so dramatically that sometimes they're not the revenue generators that they were deemed to be. But I think all the critique that's gone on over the last number of years about institutions and gaps between, let's say audience and institution amongst many other gaps. I think we're seeing it.
Look at Crystal Bridges [Museum of American Art]. This is a museum that could have been one very rich person's folly. And yet, they have been more innovative and more responsive to areas of need within the world of culture than most museums could ever think of being. I have great hopes for The Lucas Museum [Museum of Narrative Art]. That initially sounded like it was going to be a place where the Norman Rockwell’s of the world were collected and now you have one of the most thoughtful people in our field as director and also one as curator who are really delving very deeply and profoundly into what innovation means.
So I do think that you just need one or two people to believe in your idea in order to fund it. But there's a lot more people out there who maybe they don't start their own institutions, but they sit on the boards of others. I think it's about shifting values and therefore finding equal or greater meaning than that measured primarily by the financial side.
But do I have a ‘what if?’ You've asked me this before. And I came up with this phrase, “what if” for this series and I do not have a what if. I didn't have it then and I don’t have it now.
Charlotte Burns: But that's the one. That was your one. That’s a big enough one. [Laughs]
Allan Schwartzman: I'm too pragmatic to have a ‘what if.’ I just go ahead and start doing things. And little stays in the realm of ‘what if.’
Charlotte Burns: Do you have a ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night? I like asking people this question because I'm fascinated by who's “No, I'm, I never get a bad nights’ sleep.”
Allan Schwartzman: Oh, this is probably very mundane, but what keeps me up at night is all the things that I didn't do that day that I was supposed to do. It's all about the backlog.
Charlotte Burns: Yeah. What's the ‘what if’ that gets you up in the morning, Allan?
Allan Schwartzman: I have to say, since I was 19 I've been working full-time in the art field and it began at a time when there was no market for young artists. I get up every day to continue doing what I'm doing because it's fulfilling to me. It's fulfilling and inspiring and it keeps me going. Again, it's a rather mundane answer to a very big question.
Charlotte Burns: I don't think so. I think it's great.
So we meet again, Allan, on the podcast. I'm sure it won't be the last.
Allan Schwartzman: Thank you.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: My huge thanks as always to Allan. And, if you enjoyed our conversation please check out some of this season’s other highlights including the amazing singer/songwriter Alice Smith, the artist Alvaro Barrington, the philanthropist Jarl Mohn, and the art dealer Barbara Gladstone. They’re all in our back catalogue.
Next time we’ll be talking to Karen Patterson, the executive director of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts.
Karen Patterson: Money is a tool that the US speaks, and it is very effective. But there are so many other tools at our disposal, and so I think about the ripple effect of the funding, absolutely. But I think about the ripple effect of the ethos and the ethics in a more creative way, cause I think about how people mostly remember Ruth will eventually be her ethics and her ethos over the generations.
Charlotte Burns: Such a great conversation to come. Join us next time on The Art World: What If…?!
This podcast is brought to you by Art&, the editorial platform created by Schwartzman&. The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Follow the show on social media at @artand_media.