The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 14: Pope.L

What if we felt able to be more reckless? What if we weren’t afraid to make more mess? What if we all challenged our comfort? This time, Charlotte Burns talks to one of her personal heroes, the artist Pope.L. Probably best known for his public performance art or his crawls through city streets, Pope.L uses his body—literally —to ask questions about race and inequality. He’s risked his own safety and physicality for his work, and he isn’t finished yet. When Charlotte asks how messy he’d like to get, he replies: “Oh man, you know, like removing every wall in a space and just having no differentiated areas. That would be one way. The other one would probably be use of outside and inside. Don't make that a differentiation. Right. And then have them agree that we'll do the show in winter. That would be fun!”

Photo credit: Peyton Fulford

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I'm your host, Charlotte Burns, and this is a series all about the future. 

[Audio of guests]

My guest today is Pope L., the artist whose practice spans, well, almost everything, from performance to writings; from sculpture to wall works; to work in wood; work in ink to painterly works full of color to collage; assemblage; from works replete and full in every sense to a series literally called The Void (2007). 

Pope L. once described another artist as a rumor, and that's how Pope L. appeared to me. I don't know how I first knew of his work—perhaps the now legendary crawl series, maybe the picture of him posing in a Superman outfit—but the more you know about his work, the harder it becomes to capture, given the expansive nature of his practice which seems to hold and refer to all of life and all of death and everything in between.

Pope L., thank you so much for joining me today. 

Pope.L:

Yeah, I like that bit about referring to all of death. That's a good one. 

Charlotte Burns:

It feels like it does. The physicality of the work, the decay of the work, and we're gonna get into that. I've been thinking a lot about your work and about myths and about rumors and realizing that often I come up against this sense that I'm sort of ignorant in the face of it because I find much of it hard to grasp, which is my own sense of limitation. Often the moment I figure something out, a new possibility of understanding or a different layer appears in your work, but wriggling almost out of reach.

So I wanted to ask you about the audience perspective. How much an artist should reveal do you think? I also wanna ask about the artist's perspective, how much you know about the work when you imagine or create it, and how that shifts over time. So I've been thinking how useful or otherwise is ignorance in thinking about your work from your perspective and everyone else's?

Pope.L:

Well, ignorance is useful in that humans typically are coming from that place, whether it's intentional or not. I think we fool ourselves when we think or expect even that there's a fullness to our knowledge. I mean, there are always holes, ruptures, absences, but we create this fiction around knowledge.

That's as much of your question that I remember. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

It was a long one. 

For you, how useful is ignorance? I guess this is also kind of related to failure, which I know you've spoken about. Someone asked you during a walkthrough of your recent exhibition at 52 Walker, Impossible Failures (2023), how you got to the end results, and you said desperation, and you also said failure. And I was just thinking, how much do you know of your work when you are creating it? Is it that you have an idea you want to get towards? Do you have a physical sense of the manifestation because you work in so many different media?

Pope.L:

I say the most difficult media is probably people. Most interesting, most frustrating, perhaps. You know, there are all these consciousnesses that have to come together in order to create something. That's why I guess I'm interested in not just art performance but maybe more group activities like theater or filmmaking. But I guess I'm always coming from what I don't know. And if I have a big ‘don't know,’ that is provocative for me.

Charlotte Burns:

You are often referred to as a provocateur, but it seems much deeper than that. More about your capacity to hold several seemingly contradictory ideas at once and in a capacious, generous manner and then the discomfort that that works sometimes embodies and often produces in the viewer who is also often a participant. Most people find it hard to sit with discomfort, and in contrast, your practice seems predicated on your ability to sit deeply with discomfort, and you give viewers an encounter or a possibility of doing the same.

What if we were all able to do more of this? How do you do it? How might people do it? What might happen if we did?

Pope.L:

Well, usually, I find that you have to risk something, you have to give something up, and according to how generous you are, that's what you're gonna get back. The crawls required a lot. I had to give up my verticality. I had to give up my ability to protect myself. I had to give up expectation. I couldn't think about what the next five feet was going to be. If I did, if I started thinking that way, I never would've done it. I mean, there's no way. 

Charlotte Burns:

How profoundly did that change you, those crawls?

Pope.L:

I think it made me more tired.

Charlotte Burns:

[Laughter]

I can imagine.

Pope.L:

Definitely that, yeah. 

Charlotte Burns:

Especially in the New York heat. 

Pope.L:

Yeah. I got kind of beat up. I screwed up my back. I did do that.

Charlotte Burns:

Permanently?

Pope.L:

Yeah, the vertebrae. Because when I was doing it, I had to have my back curved because I'm on my elbows. I did this military-style crawl, so you're constantly with your head up, and you're back in an arch. And I was doing other things at the time that probably didn't help. I was doing a very kind of physical theater at the time as well, and I was doing construction for a lot of it. I think the accumulation changed my body. 

Charlotte Burns:

How important is that physical discomfort to you? Because you've said things about stepping into a familial conversation around self-destruction, that you needed to step into it because you hadn't found yourself able to solve it.

And I wondered about that aspect of the kind of erosion of yourself or the possibility of that erosion of parts of yourself physically in order to get somewhere, and the limits of that endurance of duress.

Pope.L:

Yeah, I think it's like if someone had told me, “well, if you do this,” and I did talk to people, doctors, and stuff, but I was a bit stubborn, and when I go into some of these pieces that I know are gonna be problematic physically, I have to suspend judgment. Again, I cannot think about the next five feet. Now other people do that for me, you could say, like my mom or someone like that. When she was alive, you know, she'd check me basically, but I didn't tell her about a lot of the things I did so…and of course, you know, as an adult, you know, you have to make your own decisions. But I thought that for me, during the times I did the longer crawls, homelessness was a really big issue and that it, how would I do that in a way…it didn't match the scale of the problem, but it was, I wanted my commitment to be at the right scale, if you will. 

The shorter crawls, in the beginning, were what they were, but the sites were really important, like the Tompkins Square crawl [How Much is that Nigger in the Window a.k.a. Tompkins Square Crawl (1991)] was, was it two weeks or month after they had the riots there and they kicked everybody out of the park because they still had the blockades up and the cops were still patrolling. But that wasn't so much about length as it was about sight. But I think it was a scale thing when I…I did think about it. I didn't just do it, and it took X number of crawls to get to the longer ones. And I just wanna say here, because we're doing like a kind of a public thing that initially it was supposed to be a group crawl, but I couldn't get anybody to do them.

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

I didn't know that. I didn't know they were originally conceived that way. I thought they evolved into that.

Pope.L:

No, I was writing grants for them and going to see, you know, gatekeepers of performance programs. And I remember one time I went to a really interesting meeting where the person just said, “No, this is about you. It's not about anybody else but you,” and I said I didn't think of it that way. And they were doing public performance, but I think they're doing mostly objects and stuff like that. But I thought, you know, there's a different kind of way of dealing with the public and there's different kinds of ways of making monuments. They don't have to be the static thing. They can change all the time. And I thought this crawl idea and mass crawls, like the long crawls and the mass crawls, they were getting at an appropriate scale. 

Charlotte Burns:

They were getting towards a monumental. 

Pope.L:

Yeah, and you have to talk to people about it, you have to maybe adjust your scale to certain bodies, or you have to make certain kind of accommodations, like do you have to crawl the whole five miles? No, you crawl, but you can. If you have children, you can't require them to do the same thing as an 18-year-old. 

Charlotte Burns:

I've read that the group crawls, in some way, were kind of a mess. Like you had some kinds of men treating it like a competition or like a race. 

Pope.L:

Yes. Yes.

Charlotte Burns:

Or other people thinking that everything was about you when you were trying to situate it in the group, but that for you, it was really important to try to move that work into a group gesture. But that's really interesting because I had no idea that it began in that way. I thought it was something that evolved. 

I know that in 1992 you started doing those group works, and you said in 2019, when you did Conquest—which was a kind of blindfolded group crawl through downtown Manhattan—you said that it gave you a different vantage point or different sense of ownership of the work of who it belonged to.

Pope.L:

Yeah. It got out of hand. [Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Would you do it again? 

Pope.L:

That's a really good question. If I did, I mean, it was supposed to be in a different location. You know, working with New York City, it's kind of complicated, and I was working on two other projects almost simultaneously; the MoMA show [member: Pope.L, 1978-2001] and the Whitney [Museum of American Art] choir piece, [Pope.L: Choir (2019)]

So I had to see, okay, how can I adjust to scale again, somewhat about scale. You're dealing with a lot more people, a lot more feelings, a lot more ages. Actually we said we're gonna have to do it through demographics. You know, I don't want just 18-year-olds. I totally don't want 18-year-olds only. I want to have accommodations for older people. I wanna have accommodations for pregnant women, they were a few. And that takes a lot of collaborating, discussion, and compromising. I want it to be in the Bronx. maybe near my mother's house, but that was kind of selfish.But it ended up where it ended up and it's okay. This is a learning thing. So maybe the answer to your question, would I do it again, if I could do it in the Bronx? Yes. 

Charlotte Burns:

Why do you wanna do it in the Bronx? 

Pope.L:

Well, the Bronx is really open. There’s a really strong Hispanic population, working-class population, Black population. And like I said, for a long time my family lived there. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's also relatively flat. I remember that from running through it from the marathon.

Pope.L:

Oh, it's wide open space and there's lots of highways. And getting across a highway with like 150 people would be really an interesting problem to solve. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, absolutely.

It also speaks to this kind of tension that seems to be a feature of your work, which is between attracting and involving the audience and also potentially repelling them. 

[A white noise sound]

That was some audio from Pope.L’s work Dust Eater a.k.a. White Woman Eating A Donut (2007-2009/2022). That work was also on show in Impossible Failures, the exhibition at 52 Walker.

I was thinking of Vigilance a.k.a Dust Room (2023), the work you recently did at 52 Walker. It's an enclosed white cube with large air ducts coming out of each side that occupies most of the central space. In it you've captured dust particles that resulted from knocking a wall down, and there are these fans forcibly blowing the dust around and it feels slightly violent and chaotic but you can't touch it. There's a sense that you might, or it might touch you, but you can't touch it. And again, it seemed like this kind of force of repelling and attracting at the same time, something kind of magnetic, I guess in the true sense about the work. 

Is that that something you strive for?

Pope.L:

Maybe or I guess probably. I mean, humor sometimes will do that in my other work, like with the crawls where I'm doing something that's very strenuous, but I'm in this ridiculous suit. You know that in some ways some people don't think I should wear because for them, the icon of Superman belongs in white culture. For me to try to own it seems ridiculous, and people would tell me that as I crawled. They would remind me, “Dude, you can't do that.” I'm doing it.

Charlotte Burns:

Whereas for you, it was so personal and to your aunt. 

Pope.L:

Yeah but it's also tied to so many people find that icon, if not important, it's a memory tag. It's sutured itself into the culture in such a, an interesting way. I mean, superheroes, the desire to be beyond death through this vicarious deal. I find that interesting. But some people can own that freedom and some people can’t.

Charlotte Burns:

And some people will be reminded of that. 

Pope.L:

Yep. 

Charlotte Burns:

But what's interesting is thinking about rumor at the beginning, that's something you'd said about Chris Burden, that he existed for you as a rumor. And I realized that for me, I have an image of you standing chest puffed up in the Superman suit that has for me, replaced any other Superman. I can't think of any of the other actors. It's sort of superseded the Superman of the movies in a way.

Pope.L:

I never thought about it. Never thought about the crawls of the long, early, long one. Great right way crawl. Which was the Superman crawl. It's like a long-running TV show.

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

It is horizontal.

Pope.L:

Yes. That's how we started. Yes.

Charlotte Burns:

I was gonna talk to you about death, just a nice light topic. That's how we started, we just mentioned it again with Superman. This idea of moving beyond death. Your art seems so often to remind one of the limitations of our existence. There's a lot that phrase, or there's a lot that's under duress, from flags to your body to the contamination of water in the Flint pieces [Flint Water (2017)]or even in Choir.

Do you think about death in your practice? Do you think about death in your life? How much of that sense of the inevitable existential collapse is part of the work?

Pope.L:

In some ways, I think doing the work is a denial of thinking about it because I'm so busy. I keep busy. I was looking on my refrigerator today and there's a picture of my family…it's a long time ago. It's a while ago. Maybe 20 years, maybe more. Anyway, I looked at that picture and I started counting how many people were still alive, and only one of them is, me. My brother is still alive. He wasn't in the picture at the time. Literally, he was out and about. But everybody in that picture who took that picture that day is gone.

Charlotte Burns:

How does that feel when you sort of sit with that?

Pope.L:

Well, the funny thing is, I'm looking at this picture and partly it's up there for my son so that he, he met most of these folks, you know, at one time. But he's very young, so his memory is not too sharp. So maybe that's one reason to have it. But it's funny, I didn't, like I said, sometimes I keep busy, so I don't think about death, and I guess a lot of us deal with it that way or you'd sort of do it maybe poetically or some circuitous mode. But when I saw it and I said, well, hadn't I noticed it before? I mean, I noticed it, but it didn't really hit me until I started counting.

Charlotte Burns:

So for you, is art a way of, for you personally, reaching beyond that staking a claim to something ideally beyond that?

Pope.L:

I don't think I'm that brave. I think that it's inevitable that you're going to, well that you're on this journey, right? And we all know how the journey's going to end. Not exactly. Of course. And I think it's a nibbling away at this large thing and it's ridiculous, you know? It's kind of funny in a way, people, but it's really nibbling. It's like your little mouse. Life is this huge piece of cheese and I think all mice are probably like this. People are, their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, and so they just nibble away, nibble away, nibble away, nibble away, nibble, nibble. 

Charlotte Burns:

You talked about your work, you were asked by MoMA about how readings of the earlier crawl pieces might change given current and ongoing conversations about the violence done to Black bodies. And you said, “The answer is always the same, survival. Because the history that created the problem is the same. How to unencumber oneself from an institutionalized past that has marked one before one is even in the world.” And you've talked about this feeling the way you do. You've said not just because you're inside a Black male body, but because of the people before and around you who have these bodies designed for you. It's a way to survive by discarding yourself like you're someone else's condom in your own pocket, which you described as a mix of righteous stubbornness and poignancy in that denial.

There's something there about what you said about generations looking at a family photograph, looking about people before you and bodies. You just mentioned your son. Has your thinking around the body shifted?

Pope.L:

I think, you know, when I was younger, I was thinking about this the other day and thinking how I did some of the things that I decided to do. I mean, I always thought about them. I've been reckless, I suppose. But typically, I do think about these things before I do them, and I plan them to the degree that you can control it. But then at a certain point, you have to come to the conclusion. I've done my research. This is as much as I can know now. What do I do now? Do I commit or do I not commit? And when I was younger, I must admit that I thought less, but I always did think there were a lot of people I grew up with, you know, in the street, in the neighborhood. My thought process was much deeper than many of the people I knew. Some of these people would kill people or hurt people very badly. There's no big depth between, “I'm a kill you motherfucker" and killing them. So I was a fucking philosopher compared to these people. But you know, some people might say, oh, it's reckless, but they maybe hadn't met the folks I grew up.

Charlotte Burns:

Did you ever feel reckless? Do you feel reckless? 

Pope.L:

I've been accused of it, you know and like I've said before, when I tell the story about doing crawls, especially this, well, the solos and my mother advised me that perhaps I was giving up the wrong message like that I wanted to hurt myself and that I really needed to rethink that and I did change some things in how arranged them or performed them. I mean, it's just certain point I realized when I was planning crawls, am I gonna fucking do this or not? I don't know everything. I can't know everything. Let's give it a shot. Oh, and it got interesting real quick so that I didn't expect.

Charlotte Burns:

You didn't expect it to be so interesting? Or you didn't think five feet ahead, I guess.

Pope.L:

No, I didn't. I didn't. No, I didn't. I didn't.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you feel proud of those works now when you think about them? Do you feel pride in your work?

Pope.L:

I don't know. I feel tired when I'm thinking about doing them. I understand better now, my mother's worry like if my son had said, “Okay, Dad, I'm gonna crawl in your shoes,” I’d say, “Wait, look, we should talk about this.” I know what it can do to you and I know it can happen. In a way, by doing them, I was researching them. So, but of course he wouldn't listen probably.

Charlotte Burns:

Such as the nature of generational shift.

Pope.L:

Yes. Yeah. And you know, and at a certain point, I'd have to ask myself, “Are you being a hypocrite?” He needs to find out, but it'd be horrible. I’d say, “Don't tell me.” I'll do to him what I did to my mother. Just don't tell me. Just don't tell me. Tell me after you're done.

Charlotte Burns:

So ignorance is bliss in that scenario.

Pope.L:

In some ways, yeah, in some ways. In some ways.

Charlotte Burns:

If you were gonna do a monument now, what would you do? Would you create something like a performance like that? Would you create something physical and vast and permanent?

Pope.L:

Actually, I'm working on something like that now. I was asked to work this project that's barring decommissioned confederate monuments. 

Charlotte Burns:

Oh, Hamza [Walker]’s show. 

Pope.L:

Yeah, exactly and I'm involved with that and again, it's one of these journeys. You know, I had a monument that I could mess with and change— so many of them, you can't change, you have to give them back, which is really curious, you know, what are they gonna do with all these things? Just put them in storage and pay for the storage forever? But anyway, I guess it's sort of like radioactivity. So I lost my monument, he told me two weeks ago or a month ago. So I don't have a monument anymore. I'm sort of in the show, but I'm not in the show. 

Charlotte Burns:

Did they take it back? Did they change their mind? 

Pope.L:

I guess the people who were going to lend it, because myself and Kara Walker, we could physically change ours, but most of them you can’t. That's the agreement. You can borrow them, but you can't physically change them but now I don't have one.

Charlotte Burns:

 Guess that is changing in real time the way you think about the show.

Pope.L:

Well, it's again, you know, one of these things like working with Hamza is always, is, it's always gonna be an interesting journey anyway. But I wasn't surprised in a way because if it actually forced me to be, to get real about it more and I realized, well, not having a monument might be a good thing. And then I found out they have these thing called crumbs. Crumbs are like the bolts that secure the monument, things like that. Or they have very wrapping wire or these cast iron straps or something like that and people make them into trophies, at least I've seen a couple. There'll be this bolt and it'll be on this, like a trophy base pedestal and then it'll have like what monument it's from and things like that. A little history and you can buy these people, collect them.

Charlotte Burns:

Did you get to pick your monument? There’s so many.

Pope.L:

Yes, but you know, I think what is only 200 of them are around. No, I have been decommissioned? Is that the number out of 800? Something like that. They are hard to come by. They're so radioactive, lending them is a whole issue. So this show is supposed to happen this year? Yes. But now it's been pushed, so we can really do it. So I might get my monument back, but in a way I don't want it because I had to actually think about this crumb thing. 

So I have this idea I'm gonna do with the crumbs and because, you know, these monuments are more about verticality, and I said, I wanna do something more horizontal. 

Charlotte Burns:

And also, so much of your work is about the productive lack, I think you've called it, whether that's documentation around performance, whether that's the void, holes. That sounds like an interesting continuation.

Pope.L:

The thing about these crumbs is that I know they're mostly probably cast iron, maybe, I'm not sure, bronze and I was thinking somehow, maybe it's this thing I do by putting things together that rub it a certain way, like the feelers at the end of an insect. 

But you know those stores you can go into, GNC? 

Charlotte Burns:

I think I've seen the logo. 

Pope.L:

Well, they have, they sell body-building protein, shit, all these different concoctions that are supposed to be healthy for your body. Who knows? But I'm thinking of grinding down the crumbs till they're very, very small. And then sort of making my own concoctions of health products, and we can sell them in the gift shop or something.

Charlotte Burns:

I wanna ask you a little bit about how you work with institutions. You've worked with such a huge range of spaces. We're talking now about the show at LAX Art with Hamza Walker and Kara Walker. How does your thinking shift in relation to the institution at hand? You've had these big shows with MoMA, you did Choir with the Whitney recently. You have the show at 52 Walker, and obviously, the performances through space and everything else you do which is vast. How does your thinking sort of scale and shift?

Pope.L:

Well, in some ways, you're working with an institution, you have to learn their way, how they work, and it can be very frustrating. I mean, MoMA is a very complex place. The rules that follows are not my typical rules. There's a learning curve there. But I realized if I was gonna be successful in collaborating with these folks, I had to learn their language and I had to find ways to explain to them why I want to do something. Why and sometimes how. It's better to have both actually. If I could tell them physically how to do it, then sometimes, you know, cause that's what they're wondering and like, how are we gonna do this? It's a crazy idea or silly idea and you have to place it in context. And it took me a while to realize that as a maker of things, the collaboration with your team is really vital. If you want them to follow you, your breadcrumbs have to be very visible.

Charlotte Burns:

That's so interesting. 

Do you see yourself as the author, the sort of playwright, and they're your actors? How do you see your role?

Pope.L:

Well, sometimes, you know, as the leader of the project, sometimes you're not leading. I think of a friend of mine and Jim, you know, watching Jim run a meeting was very eye-opening. You know, he's really good. Just watching how he confers agency to the group and how fun it can be. I never thought of it that way when we were younger, that's when we're in our twenties and it was a gift. He just would do it. He didn’t train to do that. It's just something he has. 

Charlotte Burns:

I'm curious about the acquisition MoMA made of your performance objects, which then led to the member performance survey exhibition.

I imagine there were some quite specific instructions and discussions about how those performative objects live on and express their posterity, the memory of them in that museum context. Did that keep them more alive for you or did it memorialize them for you?

Pope.L:

Well, I think it's two things. I think that allowing other people to see them and to be with them instead of just me and they're in some storage, in a way that's kind of silly and it's an opportunity. It's according to how MoMA will take care of the memory of those things and the physicality. 

And I've seen how they've done shows like a Joseph Beuys show would be apropo maybe to what I do. I'm more techy than he was, but is a roughness to what I do. And my work is about a kind of, I think you've mentioned in your notes, your question, decay and absence. But if they can be good shepherds of the material and they think they can, I mean, museums fuck up. Some people say that they only fuck up, but if they fuck up the right way, maybe it's okay. So hopefully they’ll fuck up the right way. 

Can you curse on your show? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, of course you can. 

Pope.L:

I just threw myself into the fucks.

Charlotte Burns:

Throw yourself with abandoned. That's totally fine. 

You talked about the decay, but you said once you were told that your work borrow relation to Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, and you said, “once I looked up their work, I denied any connection. Ha. They were already packaging up their mess for the galleries in the museums, whereas I wasn't thinking about that.”

Now, obviously you are thinking about that with MoMA, you've had to sort of package up that mess. But I guess what you're talking about more is the saleability and the consumerization of the work?

Pope.L:

Just a quick answer is like, unlike those people, they have specific, what would you call 'em? I guess they are series like I don't, I don't think in terms of series, I think in terms of sets of things. Until you have a set, you know, and within a circle you have this uncountable number of things. I work from one look to another, look to another, look, to another look. I find that McCarthy and Kelley, they pretty much work in series, one thing after another, after another, after another and that way. I don't do that. So even though I've tried to put some mess into institutional situations, I really haven't had the chance to really go at it. In some ways I guess 52 Walker, even though the mess is controlled to a certain degree. I like the idea they gave me that I could, you know, like MoMA, leaving the dust on the floor can be a problem, from a hole you made. So I think that was more of an expression of what I'd like to do with mess if I had a chance to. 

Charlotte Burns:

How messy would you make it if you could?

Pope.L:

Oh man. I would make it safe. Maybe. Mostly. But you know, like removing every wall, in a space and just having no differentiated areas. That would be one way. The other one would probably be use of outside and inside like don't make that a differentiation and then have them agree that it, we will do the show in winter. 

[Laughter]

Oh, that would be fun. People have their coats on, they can, we have milk chocolate and shit, you know, and just hang out but they'll never, they'll never agree to that. You know, they'll never agree to that.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you have a they in mind? 

Pope.L:

Oh, I’d go back to MoMA. I'll do a second, I'll do a matinee with them. 

Charlotte Burns:

A winter matinee. 

Pope.L:

Yes. A winter matinee. Open up the whole of the first floor. But that would be a big ask.

Charlotte Burns:

Especially because some of those walls are new. 

Pope.L:

Yeah. But it'd be an interesting show though, I think.

Charlotte Burns:

I think so too. And also this reaches deeper into your relationship with land and who land belongs to and the resources of the land as well. 

Pope.L:

Yeah, I think I could do more. I've been thinking about how to be more invested and who has what, who can own what? Who can be what? And does it have to even be a what?

Charlotte Burns:

Which is something you've been concerned with since, I'm thinking of works like the ATM piece (1997) where you've positioned yourself chained to Chase Bank wearing a skirt of money, which you tore off and gave away, or eating the Wall Street Journal. So much is about power and power is shaped by money. 

Have your perspective on that changed given the sort of durational aspects of some of those performances, ways of thinking? Is it related to something you said recently about, you know, you're moving towards a position where you're trying to create something that you can't even encompass yourself, this ambition to be more than you are.

Pope.L:

Maybe it's not to be more than, it's to challenge my own comfort about what I can encompass, you know? And then you come up with something that you could never have conceived of previously. So you surprise yourself. Maybe you learned something, maybe you ruined something. Maybe you fuck up something.

Charlotte Burns:

So can I ask you, what is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night and the one that motivates you to get up in the morning?

Pope.L:

I worry about my kid, I guess. Worrying about someone is interesting for me. I mean, there was so much stuff going on in my family at one time that if I actually allowed myself to worry, I wouldn't have done nothing and I had to find a way to compartmentalize it or whatever the word is. Maybe that's sometimes why I work so hard, I don't know. But having your kid is different, you know, and being in love is different because you know that whole thing, you worry about those people. And, but for him, because, you know, he's, I know he's a teen, I know that he is strong, but still. 

Getting up in the morning, I don't know. I still have these times, they're not as frequent as they used to, but sometimes I just will stop and go, this is a great place. 

Charlotte Burns:

Why are they not as frequent? 

Pope.L:

Because I worry more. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

The nights are longer. 

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. 

Pope.L:

No problem, babe. It was really nice talking to you, Charlotte.

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to Pope.L for that brilliant conversation. 

You can hear more about Hamza Walker’s upcoming confederacy monument exhibition by checking out episode two of our documentary podcast, The Art World: Hope & Dread, “American History Axed.”

Next time, I’m in Potomac, Maryland exploring one of the largest and most ambitious recent private museums, talking to its co-founder and director, Emily Rales.

Emily Rales:

Once you come through, we arrive at the bridge and this is kind of a threshold between the commotion of the outside world and entering this kind of sacred precinct of architecture and nature. 

Charlotte Burns:

I can already feel my senses relax.

Emily Rales:

Oh, good. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

So join us from Glenstone Museum next time on The Art World: What If…?!

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 13: Kathy Halbreich

What if we could change the dependence on capital and be more engaged with the enhancement of the people who work in our institutions? This episode, Charlotte Burns is joined by Kathy Halbriech, the outgoing director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, who’s led some of the most dynamic institutions in the art world. They discuss freedom, finances, and what the future holds for museums and those who work in them. “You could not pay me enough money to be a museum director at this point in my life,” says Kathy. “Maybe that's just because I really know what the job is, and I think it is one of the most misunderstood and genuinely taxing jobs.”

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello. I’m Charlotte Burns, and this is a podcast all about imagining different futures. Throughout the series, we’re meeting people who are inventing new ways of doing and seeing—and being in the art world. They’re all making change in their own ways, innovating and exploring life’s ‘what ifs.’

[Audio of guests]

This time, I’m joined by Kathy Halbreich, who’s led some of the most dynamic institutions in the art world. She was the director of the Walker Art Center from 1991 until 2007—a period in which it was arguably one of the most progressive museums in America. She left for a role specially created for her at MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], the associate director, Laurenz Foundation curator, and advisor to the director Glenn Lowry between 2008 and 2017. Hired to help the museum think differently, Kathy also oversaw major retrospectives of two of the most significant and least understood artists of the postwar period, Bruce Nauman and Sigmar Polke. Kathy recently announced she gonna be stepping down as director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation—which she’s led to critical and peer praise since 2017. 

Kathy, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kathy Halbreich:

Thank you, Charlotte. It's always an extraordinary pleasure to talk with you.

Charlotte Burns:

So I wanted to talk to you about freedom because, as I was starting my research for the show, I realized there was a thread through a lot of the interviews you've given, which is this focus on freedom. So if we look back to the Walker, when the Walker was expanding to ensure its creative independence, you foreswore millions of dollars in potential state aid for the addition. At MoMA, when you took that job, you gave The New York Times a phone interview, and you said, “The job Glenn [Lowry] has sketched out for me is the cream of any director's job. Our conversations went all over the map. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and this role seemed to offer me the greatest freedom.”

I was struck again in your recent letter announcing your departure. You said, “I arrived at the foundation animated by an enormous sense of possibility and permission. My initial responsibility was to refresh our mission, and for me, that meant embracing the freedom exhibited by Bob in both his daily artistic practice and in his daring to champion a more progressive and benevolent world. This spirit activated everything we did to enhance Bob's legacy.” 

So Kathy, can you talk to me about freedom? Have you found it? How did you maintain it? How did you protect it?

Kathy Halbreich:

I think freedom is transitory. It would be an impossibility to have a sense of freedom lodged in your brain and body all the time. Our life on this planet, and our life together, just doesn't make that anything other than an abstract concept. But when I am most happy—which is working with people I adore and respect—there is a sense of elation that comes very close to freedom. I have had an enormous sense of opportunity at the foundation. I spend my days looking across the room at a portrait of Bob done by Andy Warhol, and I know not to ask him for what he would do because the one thing I know is an artist of that kind of electric creativity and intelligence would not be doing today what he was doing in 2008 when he died. But I do look to him for the stability of values: nimbleness, responsiveness, iconoclastic behavior, a sense of empathy. All those characteristics, for me, are part of the ingredients of freedom. When I hear you recite the repetition of freedom in my vocabulary, I wonder what was in my childhood that made me want to embrace freedom at every turn.

[Laughter]

And actually, I came from a kind of complicated childhood. I had enormous freedom in terms of walking to The Metropolitan Museum [of Art] and purposely getting lost. And the extraordinary exposure to cultures I knew nothing about. There was just a history of animation and invention when I was in places such as the Met. My home life was a little bit more traumatic and troubled and parental complications. So maybe I did see a need to be free from that and a wish for my mother to be free from some of the pain she might have been experiencing in a relationship that was unraveling. 

So, I think freedom has many temperatures. Many ways of seeping into your psyche, but I think for me, looking at art and absolutely spending my time around a table with artists is my definition of where freedom springs from.

Charlotte Burns:

So you found freedom in art? 

Kathy Halbreich:

I guess it's in art, but it's also in the people who make and think about it, which is why I have stayed in this field for so long. The world of ideas is very expansive in the arts. Being with people who start from almost ground zero and build up a reality that then becomes a representation of who they are is almost miraculous to me. 

But I also am very aware, as we're speaking, that freedom is also a sign of some privilege. And I don't mean just financial privilege or educational privilege or any of those things. It has to be aligned with some sense of possibility and some sense of comfort. And working at the foundation on philanthropy has given me an enormous sense of what a certain quality of wealth stops you from seeing, that that kind of privilege actually turns out to not be really a privilege. Who cares if you can take a helicopter? I think it's much more important to really have a sense of the lives below you as you fly over them. 

Charlotte Burns:

You just mentioned this idea of wealth and the different qualities of wealth, and when you worked in museums, you were often lobbying for more wealth or trying to fundraise. At the Rauschenberg Foundation, you've been on the other side of the desk. You've been giving the money away, and you've pioneered new ways of doing that, which I want to get into. But what I want to talk about first of all is this idea of philanthropy. It's kind of wild that an artist can amass such wealth in their lifetimes and beyond. It's a different flavor of philanthropy to run an artist foundation than it is the foundation of an industrialist. I wanna talk to you about that artistic responsibility. But, before that, a bigger question, which is, do you think that philanthropy can solve more problems than the wealth inequality it springs from creates?

Kathy Halbreich:

It's a really good problem. The honest answer would be I doubt it because the problems we face are so massive and in so few hands that I think it's very hard to disrupt that level of being. 

By the way, the money that the Rauschenberg Foundation has actually did not come from Bob in the sense that it wasn't his estate. His estate had next to no money in it. What it had was a lot of art, illiquid assets. It's really been a challenge to assist Bob's sales and then invest that money, and it's the investments which really have created the wealth of the foundation because of his art. But he didn't die with a ton of money. He had real estate and art. 

Charlotte Burns:

One of the things that people used to say about the Rauschenberg Estate before you joined, I remember years ago when there was a big sale of a Rauschenberg or something came up, was that the estate had been cherry-picked over by galleries a decade or so ago and that the stuff that remained was stuff that wasn't so easily sellable because it was the less obvious stuff, the stuff the market wasn't as interested in. You've done a lot of work since you've been at the foundation in repositioning a lot of that work, a lot of which comes from the second half of Bob's life; work that he made in Captiva. How did you approach that? Where is that now in terms of his reputation for those things and I guess also that question of how you manage an estate to build a long-term thing rather than just cherry-picking the best assets at the top of it?

Kathy Halbreich:

Well, I clearly don't believe that's what happened. I think what happened is people knew a very limited band of Bob's very expansive career. Since that's what they knew, they thought that's all that was good. This is the problem of a market mentality. It's inherently conservative. You know, I spent many early hours at my desk with my head in my hands wondering why Bob's cohorts, let's just say Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, were pulling down extraordinary amounts of money and Bob's work was somewhat depressed in price. Particularly at auction were often the things that were put forth were not his best but not everybody knows that either. And I finally lifted my head up one day because I also live with his art in my office and I thought, “Oh, all the reasons that I love it are the reasons he will never achieve that level of financial valuation,” because these stick out from the wall if they even sit on the wall. They're made out of junk. They're only extraordinary if you actually know what real invention and artistic genius—a word I hardly ever use—how it manifests itself. And I just realized, “Oh, stop that. It's your job to get people to just look at what they don't know.” And I think that despair sometimes leads to opportunity, led me to begin to work with Allan. 

One of the things I would say is, no matter where you are, turn to the best for help because none of us know everything. Allan really helped me see a less melancholy future for Bob, and the shows that were seen at the Gladstone Gallery and at [Thaddeus] Ropac and at Mnuchin [Gallery] at the same time gave people a sense that he was fearless. It wasn't about feeding a market, it was about feeding what he needed, and there was such a big hole somewhere in him that he never stopped expanding what he needed. And so, yes, there's remarkable stylistic diversity and what we're trying to show people, bring people to, is a sense that within that diversity of style, there's also intellectual continuity.

So people have to pay attention. That, of course, is the billion-dollar question of today; how do you get anybody to lift their head up from their phone? But somehow—this is where again, my optimism gets fed—the show that Barbara [Gladstone] did at both of her galleries, being in a room with people whose heads were exploding, it wasn't just a light bulb, it was an entire power plant that was going off in their brain because they'd never seen this work. They understood it as what art should be, made by somebody's hands on the beach, a bunch of cardboard and sand and brilliance and fever and fearlessness, fearlessness, fearlessness. You know, try it. And I think artists have led us to understand today that you don't start and necessarily go from A to B. You may go from A to T, loop back to B, and then zoom off into an alphabet that we don't even know exists.

Charlotte Burns:

Let's talk a little bit about artists because the way you work with artists has always been so specific. You give a lot of time to their work. You really go deep into their practice. At the Rauschenberg Foundation, one of the things you did was set up an artist advisor council. Wallis Annenberg gave you some funds, which you used to establish an artist council of roughly 12 artists, different disciplines, generations, and aesthetic perspectives. The board of the foundation agreed to let the council distribute roughly a quarter of the philanthropic funds every year. The artists ended up giving the funds in ways that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And this is gonna lead us to our first what if, which is what if the art world trusted artists more?

Kathy Halbreich:

If only when people respond, at least among the artists that I know best, there's an empathy, intellectual, and emotional commitment to making the world better. And I don't mean that artists change the world by the virtue of whatever's hanging on the wall. I actually don't believe that. But I do think the circulation of radical ideas can change the world. I believe that the way Cameron Rowland holds up a mirror to a community such as Frankfurt, Germany, where I just saw his show, a place that many people said to him, “Why are you here? We have no issue with slavery.” And, of course, slavery runs through every system of water we have, and people who live in this city who thought they were immune to the degradation of slavery that they weren't has to change something in the civic fiber of the city. Is it going to feed people? Probably not immediately, maybe not ever. But if people begin to understand that the self-satisfaction of this very comfortable city probably isn't earned, needs to be explored—I think Cameron’s show can do that—that's the kind of change I'm talking about. Self-awareness, the moment of, “Jesus, me?” That’s the way things change. 

But Bob believed artists could change the world. So I've had to really struggle to understand that. Project ROCI, which was his desire to travel to places, primarily those under oppressive regimes, in order to have conversations with artists that he thought would stimulate greater freedom. I just don't really know if I believe that's how it happens. So I think Bob's naive. But I then began to hear from artists who met him, they saw a little break in the wall. They heard somebody speak with a permission they might not have felt they had. So I've had to do a lot of thinking about that. These are the questions that are so much on people's minds now. How is change formulated? What is the role of creative practitioners? Where are the radical ideas in an arena of such unusual wealth? 

Now, I guess I'm gonna say something that I might have to really think about later, but I've talked to my friend Glenn Lowry about this over the years because both of us have been on the other side of the table from the one I'm on now. In other words, we've had to ask people for money, and if I were being totally honest, I would tell you there are very few people I wouldn't take money from in order to do what I believed in, in order to help artists create new ideas and new things. Now, I know some artists are very particular about who their collectors are and who their patrons are, and I respect that. But when I was running an institution, I had a lot of people's lives in my hands. People to pay and healthcare, research opportunities for them, and the wherewithal to let them be as creative as possible. Our institutions need to aspire to a level of creativity that they see in the artists they support. And I've never understood why there were so many rules in artist foundations or performing arts centers or museums. We should be pliant. That's what freedom also is, the ability to create unique situations for artists. So if somebody's willing to give me money to make these pliant situations for staff and artists available routinely, I'm gonna think very hard before I say no.

Charlotte Burns:

Where would you say no? Where on that sliding scale would you be like, “Okay, that's money I won't take?”

Kathy Halbreich:

I knew you were gonna ask that. Well, I was gonna say I wouldn't take money from Nazi perpetrators, but that would sort of eliminate a lot of companies in Germany, for example. At this moment in time, we are in this country living very close to a totalitarian regime, or were—I think it's significantly different with Biden than it was with Trump. But I think if you look around the world, it's unsavory. This would be a conversation I would love to have with artists. We did have it with the artist council when they first were formed. They asked to know more about how our money was invested, and so I asked the board member who was the head of finance, which oversees our investments, and I asked the board chair to meet with the artist council to discuss how the investments were made. There are certain filters that we do put on our investing. In my own thinking, I'm still confused about those filters. I mean, one of our investment people said that we could invest in low-income housing in India. And I said, “But how much interest do you charge these people?” and actually, I never got an answer. So, you know, all this social impact stuff, I'm not sure how different it is from investing in any of the corporations. 

Okay, here's the easiest way to say it. Museum directors have a huge responsibility. I think it starts with the people who work there, and it's no secret that by and large the people who work in such institutions, they're not making tons of money, but you have to protect somehow those salaries and healthcare costs, which rise every year. You have to have some program. You have to have some way of reaching beyond your walls. You have to take care of the work you own. So there are many, many obvious responsibilities, and in this country, there is no government support. So that kind of leads you with admissions, and if people were to pay how much it really costs for their visit in a day, nobody would be able to afford it. So that leaves us with private individuals. I know billionaires who I think are really good people and who want to use their money for good things. But I also believe that you cut some corners as you go up the financial food chain. If you're looking for purity, it's probably not there. I never really think purity is that interesting an idea anyway, but that's another conversation.

Charlotte Burns:

Have your thoughts around funding shifted being on the other side of the desk as you look ahead to the next phase? You're someone who spent your career interrogating the role of the institution. You said you're not retiring, but you're done working with institutions. What do you want to do? Do you know? What if you could create your dream job, and how would you think of funding that?

Kathy Halbreich:

I am going to spend the next summer months lying on my back, looking at the clouds and looking for messages. I think I have a great luxury, which is not to jump at anything immediately but to let some time enter my brain and create space. I would say that it will involve artists. That is what I know after all these years is the thing that brings me the most pleasure.

I've really loved how I've had to learn with the artist council, whose process is entirely unlinear. And I remember once in the middle of a four-hour conversation where it didn't seem like we were going to reach any resolution, “Children! Did any of you do your homework?” And then I realized, be patient—not my greatest quality—watch this rollout because this is what you are paying for. You are not paying for your process. You are paying for a group of people who have come to know each other from very different points of reference and who have learned to trust each other, grapple with what today is the most important set of issues for them. And I stress today because we have to allow for change in what we think is most demanding at any one time. 

The artist council has been very interested in, again, the world that they live in has to be able somehow to rise above despair in order for them to be able to make work. I think that's really how they think about things. One of the areas that they've been most interested in is shelter, and what we can do is encourage small models to survive so that others can see that if you put money in the hands of those who are going to be most affected by it, they may turn out to be the most effective at figuring out how to change circumstances. So we are in the process of paying for the legal fees of an organization called Reclaiming Our Homes, which grew out of another organization we funded, Moms 4 Housing, which were a group of women who squatted in abandoned buildings in Oakland, California, where there are four times more abandoned buildings and unsheltered families leading one to believe if there were the political will, the housing problem could at least theoretically be solved. That's what the artist council is doing, and they have really helped me understand that we're not involved in global change. We're involved in helping small, sometimes startups, sometimes very wobbly existing organizations stay alive. 

Charlotte Burns:

Something you once said, and I'm gonna quote you, “Suffice it to say the best museum director probably is an unwed celibate with a gift for marketing.” You've been a parent while running a major museum and having these major leadership roles. Did motherhood change your work? Has the field changed? Is it kinder to parents, mothers particularly?

Kathy Halbreich:

I wouldn't think so from the young women I know who are constantly racing home after an evening activity or can't quite get the family to move to the next city where there's a good position. Maybe the partner makes more money. I just don't think the world has changed that much, even though I'm going to be 74 next month. I think there's still intractable difficulties. But that said, yeah, I think my son changed a lot of the ways I see the world. First of all, he gives away a great portion of his salary every year. And I don't know whether that came from watching me crawl around on my knees trying to raise money or whether it came from the jar we had on our kitchen table for the person who swore or smoked a cigarette to put a dollar in each time. And I can tell you I was the biggest patron of that jar. But at the end of the year, Henry, our son, had to choose where to give it. So from a very young age, he had this idea that money was to be shared. 

Charlotte Burns:

I wanna talk to you a bit about leadership and the future of leadership, I guess in institutions. Women are leaving corporate leadership roles at a higher than ever rate, and women in museum leadership are leaving at roughly twice the rate of men. Do you have any thoughts on why that's happening?

Kathy Halbreich:

You could not pay me enough money to be a museum director at this point in my life. And maybe that's just because I really know what the job is, and I think it is one of the most misunderstood and genuinely taxing jobs. And I think you have to have a vision to fight your way through all the landmines. And you have to have something important that's out there in the future that you march to because you will get distracted, you'll get beat up, you'll get disappointed, you'll get turned down. But you also will have the opportunity to think about what are the salient ideas that are not present in this institution that could shape it in a way that reflects more of the community or more of the ups and downs of a global approach or looks at the extraordinary absence of people of color in these institutions. And all of those questions were really big ones for me. 

I was lucky. I was at Walker at the right time with the right group of people in the right community to build a model that I don't think is as well known now as it was. I mean, time marches on, but it was prescient in the questions it asked, and in the solutions it found. Here's the thing that's not a ‘what if’ this is real. I look around the world and I see people, I call my children, probably they don't like that any more than my child likes it, but people who I mentored and I cared about, and I wanted to succeed, and they are now running major institutions all around the world. That's not a ‘what if’; that happened. And that really is genuinely the greatest reward I could imagine.

Charlotte Burns:

I was asking our editorial advisors and Allan questions to ask you, and two of them, seconded by everyone else, wanted to talk about this idea of Camelot. People have said that the Walker felt like a Camelot when you were at the helm. That it was this amazing crew of people working together and that, again, back to this idea of freedom that people said they felt free. People including Kemi [Ilesanmi], who we've interviewed on this show, Michelle Coffey, Doryun Chong, Yasmil Raymond, Philippe Vergne, and many, many others flourished.

Kathy Halbreich:

My children, see!

Charlotte Burns:

They flourished during your tenure, and then they carry that energy elsewhere like you were just saying. And the formula sounds quite simple to recruit and support brilliant, diverse curators and staff, empower them so that they can meaningfully help shape an institution in its program. But it's obviously very rare because it doesn't seem to happen. You know, the Walker really did pioneer lots of different programs, it set a tone and a template for some of the issues that lots of museums are only just beginning to grapple with now, two decades later. Can you share your thoughts on that time and what it takes to make a Camelot, and if a kind of Camelot can exist today?

Kathy Halbreich:

Of course, it must be able to exist today. It may just not be in a big museum, or it may be in a kind of alternative space. There are so many spaces that are doing great things. The ones that I know we are interested in tend to be smaller. I don't really know how to answer this question because I don't think day-to-day we knew we were building Camelot. Day to day, we were just pouring the road so that people could travel over it easier. I don't know where that metaphor came from, but I know when I left, some of the staff said to me, “We had no idea how much you protected us.” And I did think very consciously that my job was to work with the trustees who were absolutely essential to the success of everything we were doing but who may have been, in certain ways, behind the curve of the staff because this wasn't their job. This wasn't things that they grappled with every day, but to like buy the staff the time to work these things out. 

The other thing I learned I remember the first money I raised was to make the first Saturday of every month free because I thought, “I'm a working mother. I can't bring my kid to a program in the middle of the week at three o'clock.” The day that people are freest often is Saturday, and I got corporate support for it. It was electrifying. I think the best thing I ever did in that regard was I said to the board, okay, this is such a great program that I want each of you to volunteer to be at the door with our community partner and welcome people. “Oh geez. Really?” You know, that wasn't the universal response, but these were very busy people. So, I got the first person to do it, and that person was so exhilarated by the experience of seeing people come to the institution they cared about, might have been their first visit ever, that she went back and told her peers, “You gotta do this.” And that's often the way that change works. Sounds scary at first, and then somebody tiptoes in, and they see other people engaged in ideas that they didn't even know existed. And then they take that home and talk about it with their partner, and they realize, “Oh, these ideas are actually also pertinent to the businesses we run.” 

It was Camelot because no idea was a bad idea until it was proven that it sucked. I mean, we just spent a lot of time, maybe people would think it wasteful thinking about every aspect of our institution. It was a luxury. We were able to really be creative and experimental, and we weren't dependent on income from tickets as much as other organizations were. We were dependent on fundraising, and honestly, that made it easier to be a more porous organization.

Charlotte Burns:

You also are a big fan of empowering other people. We've talked about the artist council, but at the Walker, you had a teen arts council, which is 12 members from various high schools and different socioeconomic backgrounds who were selected by peers. They served terms of one to four years, and they worked with virtually all the museum’s departments. They had a not-insignificant budget of around $30,000, and they were in charge of the things they were in charge of. That kind of model of empowering people and letting their decisions be private is this sort of mix of empowering and protecting through opacity. If you were gonna make another council now for the art world, who would you put on it? Would you put the teens? Would you put the artists? Would you put all of the above?

Kathy Halbreich:

I'm really actually thinking about this because I have, throughout my life, really enjoyed working and creating councils that didn't exist before with people who are really brilliant and creative. I mean, the Teen Arts Council, it was the first in the country, and it definitely sprung out of my own experience as a teenager where the status quo was not where I wanted to be. And I realized the perfect combo, teens who don't wanna be part of the status quo, artists who don't want to be part of this status quo. It was like, “Oh, everybody's struggling with teenagers. Give them to me.” And when people actually have authority, they can really start to work. I think before the Teen Arts Council was in business, we did a program with the Parks department and we had a sculpture garden that they maintained, so it seemed logical to have a partnership with them. Most of the teens they worked with had had some kind of fallout with the police. They were pretty hardened for young people. Like one kid, every time he would see me coming, he would pretend to be sleeping. And I don't know, I still chuckle over this, but it was his form of, “I'm not really interested in you and I'm here because I have to be here.” But rather than just having the kids mow the lawn, I decided A, we should feed them lunch. B, we should, with the Guthrie, give them public speaking classes. And C, they would adopt a work of art in the garden and go through the whole process of conservation, also learning how to use the library. And the only requirement was at the end of this period of the summer, they would have to give a tour to a few of us. This kid who pretended he was sleeping every time he saw me adopted the Richard Serra, and I thought, that's so perfect. This intractable, heavy obdurate sculpture that cuts through space so you can't see to the other side. He started his tour with, “I asked myself, what is this work about? And I answered just the facts,” and I thought, I wish I'd written that. So there are so many opportunities to be optimistic. That was a long time ago, and I still remember this kid.

Charlotte Burns:

So if you were going to do your council now, what would you do? Or I guess you're toying with the ideas, but what are the ideas you're toying with?

Kathy Halbreich:

You know, it really is not even half-baked. It's still eggs, milk, sugar, flour, vanilla, so it's not really cool to talk about it because it will just ruin it for me. As I start to put the pieces together, I may not do this. It's always easiest to think you're going to do what's familiar, and I've always most enjoyed doing things that are unfamiliar. I believe each of us can make small differences, and those small differences can bring an enormous amount of pleasure into our lives. That's where I am at the moment. I still have a lot to complete here. And…

Charlotte Burns:

And then get to the sky gazing for a while.

Kathy Halbreich:

Yeah, get to the sky gazing. I probably will continue to assist on programs that aren't quite baked yet, like the Black and Indigenous Land Rights and Agriculture project is just information, and I would very much like to keep it rolling till there's a new executive director. There are a couple things like that; the artist council that I believe should be here when a new ED comes, and it takes a while to find people. So I think there will be months where it would be better if there isn't a hiatus.

Charlotte Burns:

So I'm gonna ask you some ‘what ifs,’ Kathy. You’ve been someone who’s worked in lots of different institutions, you really know them inside out. What if you could change one thing about the institutions, or we don't even have to be stingy, we could say more than that. What would you change if you could?

Kathy Halbreich:

So I'm gonna change two things that are related. We're in fantasy land, okay? I would change the dependence on capital and be more engaged with the enhancement of the people who work and come there. This is fantasy land. Capital is a real thing. It can't be avoided. The best thing you can do is make really good use of it and know what you mean by good.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you think museums and their current guise will survive, will prove durable? The ones that aren't focusing on the people?

Kathy Halbreich:

We're at a moment when a lot of organizations are gonna teeter-totter. It probably wouldn't have happened with the acceleration I think it is happening if the pandemic had not happened. You know, look, hospitals are ceasing to have obstetrics in places that have no other alternatives for delivering babies. It's the same thing. These are not organizations that necessarily have financial wherewithal, or maybe it has to do with they want to make a bigger piece of profit. But a hospital in a region that has no other hospital that doesn't deliver babies anymore is likely not making profits.

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, that's kind of life and death stuff, which is the business you'd think of hospitals.

Kathy Halbreich:

Yeah. Maybe I'm as naive as I thought Bob Rauschenberg was in terms of my expectations. I mean, it should be better. I'm a capitalist. No big secret. But I think capitalism has come to a point where if it's not reexamined soon at the highest levels, a lot of things will fail. So my ‘what if’ would be if all of the Democrats could actually grow a spine and all of the Republicans who are less moderate than Romney could disappear, maybe something could happen that would be good for this country. 

Charlotte Burns:

Kathy, one last thing before I'm gonna let you go. What is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night, and what's the one that makes you get out of bed in the morning?

Kathy Halbreich:

The ‘what if’ that keeps me up at night is the general state of the planet we live on in all respects. I'm not a huge environmentalist, my son is, but I am aware, after all of his years of lecturing me, that he was right, and things are upside down, and we have done such destruction. I stay up at night thinking about the number of children who are starving and the general economic inequities that make it very, very difficult for people to invent new futures for themselves. But I do think that's what everybody wants to be able to do, is to invent a future that's more dignified and comfortable. 

I am deeply worried about the war in Ukraine and the battle between Russia, the United States, and China. I mean the leaders of these countries not talking to each other. I'm not naive. It's about power, but who wants to be powerful if the world is in tatters? You wanna run that place? I don't, but I've never been so interested in power per se, and maybe that's where Camelot grew out of, and that was maybe my model. None of us were there to become more powerful. We were there to attract more permission and greater freedom to speak out, to be creative in ways that might have rubbed some people wrong, to empower people who didn't usually have a voice, to make new work. That power means nothing if you can do all that other stuff.

Charlotte Burns:

We're sort of ending where we started, which is with a toast of freedom.

Kathy Halbreich:

Yes.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Kathy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, and I'm really excited to see what you do next.

Kathy Halbreich:

Oh, thank you, Charlotte. 

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to Kathy. Join us next episode when we’ll be talking to the artist 

Pope.L.:

Even though I've tried to put some mess into institutional situations, I really haven't had the chance to really go at it. But you know, like removing every wall in a space and just have them agree, “We’ll do the show in winter” 

[Laughter]

That would be fun. 

Charlotte Burns:

That’s next time on The Art World: What If…?! 

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 12: Allan Schwartzman

Time to take stock this episode with hosts Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman. We look back at some of the big ideas that have emerged throughout the series so far. From change and creativity to finance and futures, we discuss what’s amazed, delighted, and even filled us with hope. “I was the person who came up with this idea of what if,” says Allan. “At the time, I thought I had a lot of ‘what ifs’, which were really not as much about utopian thinking as they were about bringing an audience to consider another possibility, to throw out assumptions. Having now gone through a number of interviews, I realize that I don't have a ‘what if’ within me!” Tune in for this very special episode.

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Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! the podcast all about imagining different futures. I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and this time we’re back from LA and we’re taking a different approach to our exploration of the ‘what ifs’ of the art world.

[Audio of guests]

Throughout the series, we’ve spoken to some brilliant people—all change-makers in their own way. It felt like a good moment to take stock and talk about some of the big ideas that have come up together with my co-host Allan Schwartzman. From change and creativity to finance and futures, we discuss what amazed, delighted, and even filled us with hope. 

So, Allan, this is a just after-midway show in which we wanted to kind of talk amongst ourselves about the episode so far and our guests. What to you has really stood out or surprised you about listening to these shows?

 Allan Schwartzman:

Well, I don't know about surprise because I expect each of these people to say something interesting and informative. Paul Chan, I found to be such a both rigorous and expansive thinker. What impressed me so much about Paul was his willingness to say I’m going to stop doing this. That's a very powerful position to be coming from and I dare say, given the way in which the art market has so driven what it is that we look about, think about, what gets supported and seen, to be an artist who is supported, even when he works in less material ways such as video, to then be willing to walk away from it, that shows a kind of bigger picture sense of himself and of art that I found really impressive. 

Paul Chan:

We are shaped as much by what we say no to as what we say yes to. I’m a big fan of people who say no. I’m a big fan of quitters. What do you lose and what do you gain? One becomes more comfortable with uncertainty and unpredictability, and to not see those things as only threatening, that perhaps we can think of them in ways other than merely threatening.

Allan Schwartzman:

That was echoed with Rashida Bumbray, by Sandra Jackson-Dumont, by Kemi Ilesanmi. These are all people who are rising leaders within various parts of the arts, and they're finding their own ways and they're not taking the value system that's been here—and that is in many ways troubled and embattled—as the given. They're working with it but sometimes turning their backs on it. Each of these people had an optimism, which I think is not so common right now in the art world in particular, and that suggests a clarity of vision and hope for the future.

Rashida Bumbray:

What if we were able to actually lead? What if all of the power structures were to move out of the way? 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I’m constantly trying to figure out how one—me, anyone—crafts a space that feels humane. How does one do it is not alone.

Kemi Ilesanmi:

You have to name dreams so that the universe can figure out how to help you make them happen. So if we don’t invite people to even name the dream, they can’t get to where they need to go.

Charlotte Burns:

I've really enjoyed doing these interviews because we're talking to people who have clarity of vision but this idea of turning your back on things. Paul talked about, he really likes people who quit. He likes quitters, and it's not something we really hear, this idea of being unproductive, of turning your back on your career on the things that have been successful for you, but it's something that keeps coming up in the show. We hear American Artist talking about this too, how to navigate the job of being an artist.

American Artist:

My own process has been this gradual introduction of these terrifying realities that like, you need to do this in order to make certain amount of money in order to sustain going on. This gradual introduction of shitty realities about what it means to be an artist. But you have to sort of like stomach those in order to keep doing it. 

Charlotte Burns:

We're talking about value systems really, and it keeps coming up over and over what we value, how art is valued, who by, who for. There's a rejection within a lot of the guests of the current value system, but not just a critique. There's something new being created, and I think that's what's so inspiring, for me, about these interviews. They're pointing a way to different futures. They're creating them. It's not just they're there in the future and they're possibly attainable. They're happening right now, and they could happen at scale, but whether or not the broader art world changes its value system is sort of irrelevant. These things are happening anyway, and it's nice to be immersed in them.

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, one repeatedly gets the sense that most of these speakers are people who have had a lot of time to think about change and what change can look like and about the voices that aren't present. In reality, the market became this brutal leveling device over the last, let's say, 50 years. As financial value grew for art, it began to organize everything about our support systems. It formed the boards of directors who then defined the way the growth happens and the way the growth happened for these boards of directors has been primarily the way they grew their corporations. Thought was sort of pushed to the edges of that level of governance and leadership. There were so many artists who maybe didn't enter this as a profession but who nonetheless seized upon the opportunities and the power of the art market as the art market started to develop and so often felt that they could control what it was that they made and how it was perceived while benefiting from the market. So many of those artists, it was kind of like having your cake and eating it too. They felt they could control it and they couldn't control it. They were defined by and rose and fell by the market.

Although I hadn't thought about it until just last night when I was reviewing my notes on these various interviews, that the majority of the people who you've interviewed are people of color. They're women, they're mostly Black. They're thinking about a future and of creating new ways of experiencing and telling stories through art. And so it made me aware that that hope for the future suggests to me that what I've been thinking for a number of years now is that it's time for this country and perhaps the world to be run by Black women.

Charlotte Burns:

I totally agree. One word that keeps coming up in this show is abundance. This idea of imagination and abundance in opposition, I guess, to the scarcity and crisis that we so often discuss. Kemi talked about this, she said very infrequently are we asked to dream. And just recently in Los Angeles, the artist Cauleen Smith focuses her entire work and existence on the feasibility of utopia. This idea that it’s possible. Do you think about that abundance? Is that a kind of way of thinking that you have ever embodied yourself? Did that strike a chord with you personally or in your practice?

Allan Schwartzman:

I think a lot more about excess than abundance. And there is a generosity of with which the word abundance has been used by a number of the people who you've interviewed. And I think that sense of generosity and of abundance comes from an awareness of what the opposite is. Each of these people, in their own way, is either being given power or seizing power, and doing so to create a better world. And that sense of hope in the future is not what we've been seeing in society in general or in the troubles of the world, of the environment, and of a sense of the world getting smaller and more occupied and of seeking to close its borders. So I think that space, not only of dreaming, but of turning the dreams into shared experience is massive. It does suggest that culture can have huge impact in people's lives and in ways that perhaps our institutions and ourselves have not tapped into nearly as much as we could. It kind of reminds me of Paul talking about, well, there are more than five senses. It's about tapping into what power you have without having that power bestowed upon you.

Charlotte Burns:

You mentioned Paul Chan there, and it's an interview that lots of people have brought up to me. This is an artist who was finding enormous success and chose a moment to step back from it and reconsider his definition of success or his values in life and the sense that for him, above all else, time is more important than any other metric of success. He talked a lot about art as a survival skill. He says the art prepares you for filling out forms better, for understanding if you're being conned in a car dealership, really being able to walk down the street and figure out how to get through the day. The art can create a space where you can think differently. It'll help you explore the world in that way. I hadn't really thought of art that way, although what he said made sense to me. It's as if I kind of thought about art that way but had never put words on it. What do you think about that idea of art functioning in that way?

Allan Schwartzman:

The beauty of what Paul's saying is he's talking about empowerment and he's truly placing the artist in the center of things. And I don't think our system, at least over the last half a century, if not longer, has put the artist at the center of things. Even the artists themselves, as they've achieved success, put the market at the center of things or objects or the collector or value. And so repositioning it within the artist is a way of saying that artists are a kind of membrane between what is and what can be and I found that really powerful. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, this kind of connectivity is something that comes up as well. Rashida, who's obviously herself, also an artist, as well as being a curator and someone who's worked in philanthropy, she talks about this idea of building a platform to allow us to speak to each other, and that that is as important as speaking to power. 

Rashida Bumbray:

The dream of Loophole of Retreat was that it would be a truly global program of Black women and femmes from the depth and breadth of the African diaspora. We built this sort of global platform for a dialogue that would really allow us to speak to each other, which I think is just as important as speaking to power or dismantling power.

Charlotte Burns:

That's something that seemed to come up in these interviews. This idea of, well, again, empowerment of communication, collaboration, and sharing these ideas, creating new ways of doing things.

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, isn't the suffocation of communication, of connection, of community organizing, and of not only coalition building, but just of finding common spirits with whom to do what one does, that's what our world has been suppressing very intentionally and actively, well, for centuries but particularly in particular ways in the post-war period. So, we've seen how thinkers and leaders and communicators from communities that fall outside of those that are driven by white male tradition have been pushed away from being able to fully develop. You have a lot of people here who were raised by people that the system not only didn't find ways to bring into the mainstream of life and its opportunities but actually worked hard to keep them away from them. So now you have a bunch of people who've been thinking a lot about, well, how can we change that? What can be lasting? And that's what's really exciting about this moment, is that you have a meaningful number of people who are recently in positions of potentially great power and influence, leading the charge and being supported within it. That's unprecedented, so on the one hand, while you have a kind of chaos and destruction of systems of power that by which our worlds have been governed for centuries, you have a lot of people who are on the opposite side of things, and it makes for a very hopeful future. 

Charlotte Burns:

What you're saying, I think, finds form in these podcast interviews in the way in which the market, which isn't intentionally the focus of any interviews other than the show that you and Joeonna [Bellorado-Samuels] did, becomes a thread in every single interview because the market's become so dominant. And so you have everybody from Glenn Lowry, Naomi Beckwith, to the artists talking about this. 

Naomi Beckwith:

The market is dominant because it’s glitzy and it has things that people understand like numbers. I mean, let’s also understand it’s graspable. My job and the job of my colleagues is to do something that gets people to grasp the ineffable. 

Charlotte Burns:

You know, this idea of controlling or co-opting, it's become clear that you can't control the market, it's running through everything. You also then have this idea of this being a moment because the market's become so dominant and because it's therefore become so conservative in terms of what it values. I remember a curator once describing an art fair to me as cash and carry art essentially, you know, rows and rows and rows and rows of painting that you can pay for and carry out is this idea of art that is graspable. There's this sort of moment or feeling amongst our guests of there not being a lot of love for objects. Connie [Butler] talks about this within museums. The younger generation is more into the archive, the idea, the writing, the artist, then the object. The artist talk about this, American talks about this, Paul talks about this. Can you talk about that within the art that you are seeing at the moment and also how you advise your clients to think about that?

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, the art market became an increasingly narrowed path. Markets tend to become very efficient and when they become efficient, they become narrow and safe. And that's what's happened to the whole enterprise. For several decades, it wasn't possible for museums to centralize or primarily support work that wasn't what its patrons were valuing, and what patrons were valuing was what they could collect, which was painting—painting more than sculpture because sculpture takes up space. It's very practical it's almost dumb when you think about it, but I think that became an increasingly narrowed path. And so the other side of a period of abundance is that there are a lot of people who are not getting the abundance. And so their values go in other ways and they're exploring other things because those other things give them a way to communicate.

I just recently was in Sharjah, where I saw the Sharjah Biennial—and I'm making this up, but it's probably not inaccurate—there were maybe four painters in that exhibition. The vast majority of the artists were working in media and primarily in video because those artists, most of whom were not American, not Western, it gave them ways to communicate that were meaningful and spoke to them. Similarly, as the market has basically narrowed painting down to things that can be bought and sold and that they're less and less places of the ineffable. That’s what’s always kept me looking at painting, is the ineffable. It's not that it hasn't been present, it's that painting has become less and less in our current moment, a place where the ineffable tends to reside. It's much more materialistic than that. It's much more specific in terms of narrative or surface. There's a lot of painting that I love that's being made today. So much of that is about the end of something and not the beginning of something, kind of in the way that abstract expressionism was the end of something. This is maybe a golden age of a lot of painting, most of which is inconsequential, but some of which can be beautiful, but it's limited in how it can communicate in part because I think what's called for today more often than not is narrative. 

I have some clients who are really focusing on younger artists, and that's truly interesting. It's like there's so many artists that have emerged in the last few years, I mean, dozens upon dozens who are truly interesting and compelling. At a certain point, what I say is, well, let's really focus on individuals. Let's not focus on the whole story of which there can be hundreds of meaningful voices. But let's start to focus on individual artists that you, I, we believe are the voices that resonate the most and that have potential staying power. But also it naturally suggests, okay, you have to look at other mediums and if you're not prepared to collect other mediums, then you need to find other ways to put the money that you would've put into those things, into action. So in some instances, that means supporting new initiatives in museums that individual collectors support or other kinds of activities within society that nurture the development of other ways of communicating through art than painting. And in other instances, it means going back in time and collecting in areas that have been underexplored, whether by the market in general or by those collectors in specific.

Charlotte Burns:

You talked then about the end of something and the beginning of something. I think that's really interesting because it feels that way in the interviews as well. That came up a lot, this idea of profound shift essentially. Obviously, we always live in change and obviously, every era thinks its era is the most profoundly shifting, but it does seem that a lot of the change right now is turbocharged or happening at a pace that we haven't probably experienced in the past few decades.

You know, we began the show really in New York, talking to Glenn and Naomi about the shifts happening in New York. Our most recent episodes were in LA, talking to people about change in LA. 

Charlotte Burns:

What do you think, is LA the future? 

Max Hollein:

Then the future will be multi-centric. I think it’s invigorating, it’s interesting, it’s energizing, but it’s not the only one. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Thank you very much. That’s Max Hollein, the [Marina Kellen French] director of The Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Jarl Mohn:

I’m Jarl Mohn. It is the cultural center of the planet. There’s more creativity, more innovation, more adventuresome art here than any other city on the planet.

Diedrick Brackens:

My name is Diedrick Brackens. Oh my God, if Los Angeles is the future, there’s not going to be any water. 

[Laughs]

I should say something more hopeful. 

Charlotte Burns: 

No, you can say whatever you want. 

What if Los Angeles is the future, Tim Blum?

Tim Blum:

My first instinct is to say we're in deep shit [laughs] because LA is still so tricky. It’s so fantastic on so many levels, and it’s so fucking horrible on so many others.

Charlotte Burns: 

Do you think that the kind of geography of the art world is profoundly shifting moreso than usual?

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, I found that very emphatically and distinctly in Sharjah. That wasn't about the world of the market, that was about the world of makers. So that's not about a shift to a city. It's about a focus of awareness to voices and cultures that may not have been central to a mainstream discussion. But when you step back, you realize, oh, well, so many of these voices that weren't part of that history of modern art are the majority of the people in the world. So, I don't think the place, the specific place, be it a city or a country, is so meaningful except insofar as it may dominate through a kind of myopia.

Charlotte Burns:

You could say that's the case, in certain centers. I guess the question then is, is that shifting?

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, the thing about Los Angeles is that it's a city much more than New York that feels like an more an artist city than an institution city, even while you have extremely thoughtful growth and development happening in its core museums. But it's a city where art schools still remain a center of the fiber of the artistic life, where you continue to have most significant artists from Los Angeles teaching at art schools in Los Angeles. That has a certain kind of power, it centralizes the artist in a way that New York maybe more centralizes the market. 

I think these are pockets of moments. You find there are naturally places that younger artists gravitate to because they're less expensive and there's something going on. So then you have these mini new worlds happening. But I think what's been developing in those different environments, while in many instances, having certain kinds of characteristics that may be specific to those environments, the work itself is not cut off from the rest of the world. In that sense the world is quite small. People have access to a computer who are looking for other voices very quickly learn about what's going on elsewhere. So I think place has more to do with a kind of local texture and character and community. 

I think that's what's been interesting in so many of these interviews is that community and what community can mean and how one builds up and develops a kind of momentum of energy through community. That's the part that feels like it's chipping away at meaningful and potentially lasting change.

Charlotte Burns:

We’ve heard a lot through these shows about changes within the institution, the peril, I guess that the institution is in. Glenn Lowry talked about democracy itself being in threat and that these changes, he said, of course, impact our civic institutions in deep and profound ways. 

Glenn Lowry:

What worries me is whether democracy itself will survive the next decade. Because it seems to me, among all the different forces at play, the intolerance of other people’s opinions—the sense that if I lose, it was stolen from me—presages a condition in which we lose all ability to negotiate difference and democracies after all, survive in their ability to do just that; to take opposing points of view and find common ground.

Charlotte Burns:

I think through those institutional interviews, there's this very keen sense that the leaders of those institutions and senior curators are trying to grapple with this moment, trying to grapple the better forces around them with the worst ones around them, and that it's a really acute moment. 

We've talked about this before.Did anything new come up for you within these interviews?

Allan Schwartzman:

It made that much more vivid and succinct for me that the institutions are the battleground and that new institutions such as the Lucas Museum, on the one hand, or what one senses as an increasing reempowerment of the curator, who had basically been neutered and silenced or subjugated by the market. I mean, the museum is the place that has the greatest challenge. It is the battlefield, so it's the individual voices and those that find alignment and empowerment and validation in other similar voices, that's the power of growth.

It's a hard time. We said it many times, you and I, Charlotte. It's a hard time to be a museum director. We're at a point where a generation of directors is coming to a kind of, we're about to have a turnover both in age and thought, and some of that's already begun to take place.

Charlotte Burns:

I think you're totally right about this generational turnover that we're seeing in institutions. I think we're seeing it especially in institutions, and I think a lot of it is this idea of values clashing. It's something that we talked a little bit about with Connie Butler on in our recent interview.

Connie Butler:

It’s clear that what we’re learning from a younger generation of people who choose to work in museums or then choose to leave them is that feelings are facts. That we have to think more about the care of our colleagues and our employees and one another and that is just as important in the work that we’re doing as what we put on our walls.

Charlotte Burns:

One of the examples that seems to have been really successful was the Loophole of Retreat. Kemi talked about this as an intergenerational space, of that being so hopeful.

Kemi Ilesanmi:

One of the things that really drove me in putting HueArts together was a dream of what it might look like for a young person of color, let’s say, a young Black woman who is starting an art career, she wants to make a life working with culturally specific, as in people of color-run arts organizations. Someone is like, this is what I want to do for 50 years. This is where I want to invest and be a part of and dream and grow. That, in this moment, would feel like an incredibly bold statement. And it shouldn’t. 

Charlotte Burns:

In that room, on that island in Venice was the closest that she came to feeling like it might be possible, feeling like it might be within a grasp because of that intergenerational space. And I thought, again, that was this other moment where there was hope expressed. 

Allan Schwartzman: 

Well, sometimes the museum maybe isn't the most effective place for ideas to be percolating. In many cases they do better independently of the institutions. I think that was the message I got from the interview with Rashida and of other voices I've heard of people who were present for that convening. That this event taking place in Venice, having that financial support, however, that financial support came around, brought a kind of, I hate to overuse the phrase, but a kind of critical mass to voices from all different parts of the world and different generations that have things to share and things to gain through the sharing.

Maybe most museums are not connected enough to such discussions to be the centers of such discussions. Hopefully, they learn from them and develop other ways of bringing those dialogues into their larger audiences. But I thought it was powerful. I think it was Rashida who said that now that you're here, it doesn't mean that the world's gonna slow down for you because we've been doing this all along. And so to create one's own streams is truly compelling and empowering. And maybe that's a more effective way at chipping away at a kind of colossus of power and control. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, I was thinking about this too. There was a conversation that kept coming up in Los Angeles, was this idea of this tension in the conversations between people saying, well, you know, yep, there are problems with this, and the structure doesn't totally work but if we're trying to shift it, it takes time. Change takes time. It has to be incremental. Look, we are making little bits of progress here and there, and these are the best systems we have, so we have to work within them. And there was something really liberating about talking to Cauleen Smith who was sort of saying, well, these aren't the best systems, and we've had other systems. These are just the most recent systems that we've had, and that there are other ways of living. There are better ways. The idea of incremental change, which is something that the art world has clung to—it's a narrative that the art world's told itself for a long time—feels like a path of many paths that you can choose. And I think that's something that comes up in these interviews, that incremental change is an option to pursue and some people are pursuing it vigorously and rigorously and others less so. For other people, there are just totally different systems and it feels like a moment in which it is sort of a multitude of options.

Cauleen Smith:

It’s really weird the stuff we fight about on this tiny little planet in the scope of this universe. It’s bizarre that not only we are fighting about that, but then also planning to go to other planets and do the same thing there and fight over that. Maybe it might be time to rethink that.

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, it’s not working so well.

Cauleen Smith:

It’s not working. [Laughs] So why do it? Like, I don’t know, like usually when something doesn’t work, you stop. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Do we though? Is that what we’ve seen in history?

Cauleen Smith:

No! Actually, that’s the past 600 years. No, it’s doubled down on stupid.

[Laughter]

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, incremental change is what's available to establish institutions. You have a support base on the one side of things and you have creative ambitions on the other side of it. These are the institutions that, without realizing it, were building an increasingly narrowed notion of what's meaningful and important. They were creating hierarchy and it's not surprising. Hierarchy is where authority comes from and authority brings clarity and clarity is what most people had sought for the longest time in museums. We're in a different moment now, so for the museum to then all of a sudden, shift to say that, oh, the ways we grew enabled us to grow, but they didn't prepare us for change. That's a hard thing to step back 40, 50 years later and see and say, oh, then we're just gonna reverse it. It can't happen like that which is why oftentimes, starting something afresh is much more empowering and productive even while it may stay relatively localized in terms of its reach when compared to that of a major institution. But that's what I found so exciting about these interviews, is that sense of hope and abundance as you refer to it, even in the midst of a moment that is very embattled and self-conflicted and defensive and self-protective.

Charlotte Burns:

And what’s interesting too is how open people are about that. It struck me interviewing Glenn, who it seems that I interviewed roughly every four years, I don't know that the Glenn of the 20-teens when I interviewed him then would've talked about democracy being in peril, would've talked about the violence within our society that can and will erupt. And this slightly darker reality, I guess. You have Connie saying, unless we loosen up, we're gonna go extinct as museums. You know, you have American Artist suggesting these sort of boutique museums. Kibum [Kim] suggesting ephemeral museums. Sandra proposing a different model of museums.

Connie Butler:

We gotta loosen up a little bit and experiment with some of these models and do it with care for the artists, but we will go extinct unless we are open to other revenue streams and other ways of generating interest in the public also.

Charlotte Burns:

I was struck by how frank and open our guests were in the interviews about the moment that they find themselves in and the challenges as well as the opportunities and their visions for leadership that they're bringing to it and trying to bring people along with them, how they're doing that. It's kind of fascinating.

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, we're at like big, big collision points and the beauty of these interviews to me is that during these collisions, you have a lot of people who are being thoughtful, who are being insistent on doing things in the way that are meaningful to them and the people who are meaningful to them. And so I think we're at a moment where, what I'm hearing again and again through these interviews, is that positive change is going to happen from the ground up rather than from the top down. And occasionally, somebody who is ground up in their thinking is put into a from the top down position. And those are powerful moments, and that's what I think we have to really look forward to focusing on in the future. But what I take away from these interviews is that it's really important to be able to recognize those voices and those places and those moments where powerful change can happen. I think in general, we're resistant to change. Often it's linked to power and people not wanting to give up power, but very often, particularly when it comes to creative fields, it's more just a natural reaction to change, which is scary and the beauty of so many of the people you've interviewed is that they see in a very comforting way, how change can be empowering.

Charlotte Burns:

Allan, I think I'm gonna round us out as ever with a ‘what if’, but a different one for you because you've already done some of the others. What if you could have any guest in the world come on the show to talk about their ‘what ifs’? Who would you like to hear from? 

Allan Schwartzman:

Oh Lord. 

Charlotte Burns:

Is that the answer? [Laughs]

Allan Schwartzman:

No, no, no. [Laughs] Charlotte, before we began this, I was the person who came up with this idea of ‘what if’ and at the time, I thought I had a lot of ‘what ifs’, which were really not as much about utopic thinking as they were about bringing an audience to consider another possibility, to throw out assumptions. And having now gone through a number of interviews that focus on ‘what if’ and that have directed the conversations, I realized that I don't have a ‘what if’ within me. [Laughs] This is where the interview with Paul Chan really resonated in many ways for me but it resonated specifically here from the perspective that I think I'm both very idealistic and very pragmatic. And so the pragmatic part focuses much more not on the ‘what if’ but the ‘what is’. So the who of the ‘what if’ I leave more to those who are envisioning the future than to those of us who are trying to help track a path to it.

Charlotte Burns:

I like that. The ‘who’ of the ‘what if’. It sounds like we're starting a Dr. Seuss for the art world. 

[Laughter]

Okay.

Allan Schwartzman:

Well, we had that, the how of the what.

Charlotte Burns:

The how of the what and the why of the who. Maybe they're seasons four and five. 

[Laughter]

Thanks, Allan. I've really enjoyed it as always.

Allan Schwartzman:

Thank you, me too. 

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to my co-host Allan Schwartzman. Join us next episode when we’ll be talking to Kathy Halbreich, the outgoing director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. 

Kathy Halbreich:

If I were being totally honest, I would tell you there are very few people I wouldn't take money from in order to do what I believed in, in order to help artists create new ideas and new things.

Charlotte Burns:

That’s next time on The Art World: What If…?! 

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 11: LA Special with Cauleen Smith and Kibum Kim

We’re still in the city of angels for our second special episode asking ‘What if LA is the future?’ Join host, Charlotte Burns, as she drives from the East Side to Korea Town and out to Santa Monica. We visit the studio of artist and filmmaker, Cauleen Smith, whose life and work centres around building a better world. We also drop in on Kibum Kim, partner and co-founder at Commonwealth and Council - a gallery building a supportive community of artists - who wants to challenge the high-speed efficiency of the current art world model. Both embody what it means to live in the realm of possibility. “I guess I'm, what I'm doing is always looking to like the relatively recent past of models where people really did do things differently quite successfully,” says Cauleen. 

Join us for more.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?!. I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and this is the show asking people in the art world to imagine new possibilities. We’re still in Los Angeles for our second special episode from the city of angels, asking people what if LA is the future?

Diedrick Brackens:

My name is Diedrick Brackens. Oh my God, if Los Angeles is the future, there’s not going to be any water. 

[Laughs]

I should say something more hopeful. 

Charlotte Burns:

No, you could say whatever you want. 

[Laughter]

Michael Govan:

You know what they say, “LA is the future,” they always say that but what I love is that it’s always the future, meaning it’s always in a state of becoming, it never becomes. That’s a sort of philosophical state of mind for a place that I really love.

Chris Sharp:

I’m Chris Sharp, run a gallery here in Los Angeles. Obviously, New York dominates, Miami is very important but LA is definitely on the rise. 

James Fuentes:

My name is James Fuentes. In LA, the art studios are bursting at the seams. There’s experimentation, there’s freedom—maybe it’s the large spaces, maybe it’s the culture, maybe it’s the light. 

Charlotte Burns:

I’m here with Alex Logsdail, the director of Lisson Gallery, which is about to open in Los Angeles in April. Why LA?

Alex Logsdail:

Artists are here. And a lot of artists continue to be here and are moving here. 

Lisa Spellman:

I already thought LA was the future and the future is now. So here we are. 

Charlotte Burns:

And we’re standing by this great Doug Aitken Sonic Table. 

Charlotte Burns:

Lisa Spellman of 303 Gallery and me making some noise there, and Michael Govan, the director of LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art] with his optimistic take on Los Angeles’s future.

Join me as I drive around the city from the East Side to Koreatown and out to Santa Monica. 

Now, for our first guest.

Charlotte Burns:

Here we are in Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles. We’re starting the day, it’s hilly here, it’s chilly here. Cars going past, you can hear birds in this slightly industrial part of the city close to the LA River.

Good morning, LA.

One of the biggest privileges of working in the art world is talking to artists and—even better—visiting their studios. We're lucky enough to be in the studio of artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, whose life and work are focused upon the idea that, and I quote: “It is possible to build a better world. It is possible to be generous. It's possible to leave something behind. It's just possible to make a better world. People do it all the time.”

Cauleen, thank you so much for having us here in your studio. 

Cauleen Smith:

Sure.

Charlotte Burns:

Which part of LA are we in? 

Cauleen Smith:

Well, we're in a big warehouse that used to be a Mattel toy factory in Lincoln Heights, which is by the LA river, sort of Northeast LA. It's hilly and industrial over here. 

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

And we're surrounded by Cauleen's work. Fabric pieces hanging from the ceiling and also lots of your inspiration. Your books, I can see The Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis.  Energy Never Dies, lots of science books on the bookshelf, political writings, queer feminology. And then lots of images that provide you, I guess, with inspiration. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. A lot of the stuff on the walls is actually gifts from friends or fellow artists and then this stack of books here is like the current, what I need to be reminding myself to think about. It's pretty sprawling range from, like, poetry of Wanda Coleman to American folk tales to Black geography. It's a big range of ideas I'm trying to grapple with right now. 

And then the banners you were talking about are from a show that just closed at my gallery, Moran Moran and they're all kind of talking about geologic time, but also what happens after kind of apocalyptic destructions, like what's possible and stuff like that. 

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Just light stuff.

[Laughter]

Souffles!

So Cauleen, you were an obvious choice for this show. Our editorial advisory team was like, “you have to interview Cauleen, her entire practice is a ‘what if?”. Let's start there. You often envision alternate futures in your work, often with Black communities at the center of them. What if we weren't so cynical about ideas of utopia? That's a question you've asked, and I'd kind of like to bring it back to you. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. I mean, I wonder if it's cynicism or if it's really like a failure or a fear in the imagination to think about the fact that this version of human that we are is a relatively recent invention. A lot of work has been put into placing us into this hierarchy where we imagine, as a fundamental truth, that this earth is our dominion and it's here for us to take and to extract and to exploit. But there is and has been other ways of understanding our relationship to this planet that we're on.

And so when people say it's not possible to do away with capitalism, or it's not possible for people to work in communities of mutual aid because the base nature, the fundamental nature of humanity is what it is…This fear of loss is just to me a failure of imagination and to think about what else there could be, who else we could be, how else we could live. And that the absence of one notion of security might produce a multitude of other possibilities in which we don't have to rely on ourselves and our little piles of money. We can rely on each other instead.

And, in fact, that's how people lived for quite some time—maybe tens of thousands of years. Maybe it's a bit of a heresy because I feel like the way we understand humanity is like a religious commitment to an idea that is purely an invention.

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, there was imagination once, and it since failed us?

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. And now I guess it's Hobbs, is that the guy who was talking about, like, once we stopped being hunters and gatherers and we started having property, we started killing each other. And that's nonsense. That's just not even true. But it's the way we structured an entire, I mean, religions, nations, governments, economies have been structured on this total fiction of what humans are. 

Charlotte Burns:

So what if we thought differently? How does your work propose that? 

Cauleen Smith:

I mean, I guess what I'm doing is always looking to like the relatively recent past of models where people really did do things differently quite successfully. And even though maybe some of these models don't last forever—I mean, that's a question, isn't it? Like, what is the value of forever on a planet that we're rapidly killing? Like, you know what I mean? Or, like, actually, we're not killing the planet, we're making it so that we can't live here anymore. So what's the point of that? 

And I was looking at the shakers, or now I'm looking at Fannie Lou Hamer's, a Poor People's Farm or Freedom City [Freedom Farm Cooperative]. The last project I was—I'm still really invested in—Chicago's Freedom City, which is not an actual city, but a conceptual model of, like, how communities wanna live and treat each other and interact and sustain themselves.

And so I'm just actually looking at what people do that operate outside of these realms of like, coercion or deprivation or exploitation that we are all subjected to. The boundaries and enclosures that we have. It's really weird, the stuff we fight about on this tiny little planet in the scope of this universe. It's bizarre that not only are we fighting about that, but then also planning to go to other planets and do the same thing there and fight over that. I think maybe, it might be time to rethink that. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, it’s not working so well. 

Cauleen Smith:

It's not working. So why do it? Like, I don't know, like usually when something doesn't work, you stop.  

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Do we, though? It's not what we've seen in history. 

Cauleen Smith:

Actually. That's the past 600 years. No, it's double down on stupid.

[Laughter] 

Charlotte Burns:

I love that. “Double down on stupid.” You said something actually just there about this idea of permanence, and I was listening on my freeway drive-in here this morning to something you said for an artist talk at Berkeley questioning why it is that we hold permanence so dearly because it's a mirage anyway, considering we’re finite. But you said there was a sort of inherent violence in this idea of keeping something permanent at all costs. 

I thought that was so interesting in the context of some of the big conversations in the cultural realm right now about museums and what they're for, and this idea of hoarding a past and being really reluctant of breaking any kind of tradition, and a hankering back for these older models. 

But we're in a real moment of nostalgia, which kind of seems tied to that idea, in my mind, of a search for permanence that's impossible. Maybe the question is, what if art is the space that can allow us to think of impermanence rather than art trying to be a space that makes a claim for the permanent, which in a way, is what art’s stuck between? 

Cauleen Smith:

I mean, that's what's so interesting about museums. This idea that they're preserving the past but then only collecting things that are preservable and not actually being able to support things that are ephemeral. And like what would it mean to have a museum of the ephemeral where it's the ideas circulating? That's where all the work is. And like, “Oh, this gesture,” “Oh, this performance.” Like how do we keep the conversation of this active? What would that museum look like? So it's not as if artists, artists all the time, are dealing with decay and impermanence and ephemerality, it's just that they're punished by the art market because no one can buy that. No one can hang it on their wall. 

So, that's a totally different conversation—the values of the museum sort of being guided by what people can have and hold and accumulate versus being guided by history and culture and human practices. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's so interesting. Well, another thing I wanna ask you related to your work is, what if we imagined what a radically generous community, an intentional world-building, looks like? That’s something you spoke about, and I think in your work, there's so much generosity. It's so lush, you know, somehow you get sort of into these worlds and they are abundant utopias. How do you feel when you're making those works? Do you get transported yourself? I guess it's a very positive place to dwell. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. Like, I think like I was thinking of the Shakers, which ironically to me have this really amazing idea about how to live, but also it was…the practice of how to do it was so austere, it was difficult to survive in it.

And I tend to look at a person or a group of people who are doing something interesting and try and figure out, like, what can we learn from that? And I guess so many of the people that I have looked to actually have like philosophies or practices that are really different from mine or anything I would be interested in actually living. But the ideas they produced are just so exciting and rich. And I think what I try to do is translate my excitement or my enthusiasm for these human experiments into something other people can inhabit. So I guess all of like the textiles and colors, the sequins and the satins and all that stuff comes from a kind of desire to invite or seduce people to think about something and to do away with ideas around taste, which I think taste is so different than the aesthetics of pleasure. They're not the same, and they don't look the same. And so I think I'm really interested in the aesthetics of pleasure and sociality as opposed to the authority of like order and good taste and those things, things like that. Like they're really different to me. And so particularly when I'm trying to make something for other people to experience, I'm thinking about like, even if it looks completely, like, broken or, like, gaudy, that it also looks really like that would be where you would wanna be. You know what I mean?

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. It's sort of opening up a possibility for mess. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. Like the messiness is the sociability. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. You don't have to arrive at that space knowing the answer. You can arrive there and your films, you've made it so that people wanna be in that space so that the installation is a welcoming space for people, which is often what we don't hear about contemporary art. It's got this sort of austere bubble around it. 

Cauleen Smith:

I was talking to another videomaker, Stephanie, who’s here in LA on a residency, and she, we were talking about how, because we were trained in film, we always think about audience. You know, you'll see video art and the artist has explicitly said that they do not want a bench in front of this video because they want you to encounter this image as like a work of art, I guess. For me, if there's no place to sit and it's a time-based piece, meaning I need to be there for more than, I don't know 35 seconds. If there's no bench, I don't watch it. Like I just, I don't care who it is, it's just like, I'm like, to me, that's just rude. 

[Laughter]

And like, that's like a… this kind of principle of conceptual art, this austerity. And it's literally that idea of like the withholding and the denying. That’s like so much a part of a particular idea of the human that I just think is a problem. You know what I mean? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah.

[Laughter]

It's just rude. 

Cauleen Smith:

It's just rude.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

I agree. I’m in strong favor of more seating around the place. 

Your work, Sojourner (2018), meditates on this idea of what it means to build something for others and be generous. You re-staged a photograph of nine dapper Black men taken in 1966 at Watts Towers by Bill Ray, but this time you did it with women and at Joshua Tree inside Noah Purifoy’s sculptures. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. 

Charlotte Burns:

And this is an example of that sort of lushness of your work and this sense of there's almost something viscous about it. There's this sense of like being carried away on a body of water somehow. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Cauleen Smith:

It was just so lucky, actually, that I couldn't reenact the photo at the Watts Towers because it was being restored and so when I thought about taking a huge group of women out to the desert, a lot of things actually started to happen just in reckoning with what that would mean.

The photo was this beautiful image to me of a kind of like performance of leisure where these guys are just hanging out, and they're just kind of enjoying being in this formation, and they're all presenting a version of themselves that they want people to see. I felt like that photo was very self-conscious. Like it wasn't a captured thing, it was a collaboration, and I love the idea that people had this desire to have some say about how they were seen. And so I tried to have that feeling with these women. Sometimes it works really well with a film shoot where everything you set up produces the effect you want, so you don't really have to work for it.

So, they all stayed in a house together and we would wake up with the sun. Everybody committed and submitted to this like rhythm of like waking up really, early shooting and then it gets too high, taking a nap. And there was a kind of care in that, and I feel like it was my collaborators, they produced that and maybe I set up the conditions that made that possible. But that's the funny thing about filmmaking is that filmmaking is an experiment in sociability and how to live, and the way I was trained to make films is kind of horrible. It's like this hierarchy and all the metaphors for filmmaking are like from war. Even like the activity of filming someone is to shoot them and the hierarchy of how sets are run violent…and so like trying to do something different is like, that's the point, is like, we should be able to figure out how to do things differently.

I don't know if that makes sense. 

Charlotte Burns:

That makes a lot of sense. And it's what you see on the screen that there's this…you just presented with a different vision, quite literally. 

Your 1998 debut feature film Drylongso has just been digitally remastered. How do you feel seeing that work again in these kind of fresh conditions? It highlights associator threats towards Black men. I love something you said. You said, “I like Black people. I think they're interesting. I think they made for themselves a culture in a way no humans on Earth ever had to do before, and that's just endlessly fascinating to me.” I love that. That kind of sympathy of like, yeah, it's just interesting to me. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah.

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Do you wanna talk a little bit about that in the context of this remastered film?

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting because it's true. One of the characters in the film is obsessed with like the impending jeopardy of Black men in society, but actually, the film is about two Black girls who are just trying to like, make their way. Every minute of the film you spend with them trying to figure out how to live and they do it by linking themselves to each other even when it's sort of uncomfortable or unclear what's happening—and with the people around them, like, and with the surrounding community. And again, like my favorite thing about watching that film now 25 years later, is just remembering how it was made. And that was actually my lesson in this idea that making a film could be a social experiment because we didn't have enough money to secure anything or get permits for anything.

And so the only way anything ever got done was through the protection of the community or the generosity of the community. And I kind of realized, I was like, “Oh!” But that was the best part actually, like, you know what I mean? Like if I had all the money, I guess I would just spend the money on people to see what that would do. But like in film, like the money is supposed to go to producing this perfect image and that was like the least interesting thing going on.

You know what I mean? 

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

That's so interesting. I guess that's what you see. There's this, in the absence of that perfection, there's a real fullness to your work. 

Cauleen Smith:

Right.

It's like you can feel everybody around the edges, like holding the image up. You can just feel it. It's like incredibly sweet and a wonderful way to make something. It's also really exhausting and depleting because you have to, there's a lot you have to make yourself open to in order for people to feel like they wanna give you anything back. You know what I mean? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. 

Cauleen Smith:

But the irony is like my goal at the time was to make another movie and with a real budget so that everybody, myself included, could be like paid and supported. I never got that opportunity for other instances. But now, even as I think about it, I think, I wonder if I would've enjoyed that. I don't know, because it was truly amazing to see people decide every day that this is what they were gonna do. You know what I mean? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. They were in it. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah and it's beautiful. Even now when I can compensate people better, I really try to produce an environment in which we decide we're gonna do this. We commit to making this happen and it's not just me like cracking a whip to make it happen. 

Charlotte Burns:

Would you wanna make a big feature film?

Cauleen Smith:

Uh, I love the idea of making a movie. I don't love the idea of operating in the film industry, which is where it ends up. It's just something I think about a lot. I really love screenwriting. I love crafting like this, like document that's supposed to be a thing and like, but I, the business itself…I mean the art world has its problems, so I'm aware. But there's something about the weird social hierarchies of Hollywood that I find really hard to deal with. I can't, it's just not my disposition. In fact, I feel like I had, I made decisions very young to live a life that wouldn't conform to those hierarchies and values and so it's hard for me to operate in them and it's better to not be in it than to be in it and be like, defensive or contemptuous or suspicious or, you know what I mean? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. You'd need to be in it in the same space in which you approach your work.

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. I had this epiphany, I was talking to Jordan Peele one time, and I realized that he loved cinema, he loved everything about it. He loved all aspects of like making movies and I was like, I actually don't. I actually have an argument with cinema, like I'm actually trying to break cinema. Like, no wonder I shouldn't be here. Like, you know what I mean?

[Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

I don't know because that's also coming from a place of love, right? Isn't it also about, like, you could be better, I want the better thing for you, do it my way. 

Cauleen Smith:

But sometimes, instead of like attempting to change something, it's better just to do something else. So I make these broken little films that are imperfect and very taped together and that's my way of responding to this thing that I wish would change a little bit. You know what I mean? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. Showing an alternative reality, I guess. Which is what you come back to so often in your work. 

So let me ask you a question about Los Angeles. What if Los Angeles is the future? 

Cauleen Smith:

Oh, I mean, is that even a question? Of course. LA is the future. It's been the future. It is the future. I mean, how and why? Okay, so LA is this place that embodies sort of like all of America's past. There's this poet that I love named Wanda Coleman who calls LA the Deep West and I think that that's absolutely true about California. It has this same horrible history that the South has and modeled itself on, say, states like Texas. And on the other hand, it's always looking East, it's looking out towards the Pacific. So there's always this possibility that like when the sun sets, there's another day in which anything is possible. And there's this interesting like way in which even with this history here, one can shed habits or values or beliefs that like enclose them. I think that's what California offers. My concern is that that particular idea is vulnerable right now. Like it's too expensive to live here. People have decided that the people living on the street, that it's their fault that they're poor, and things like that are really frightening to me. 

Actually, strangely enough, when I was in Europe, I heard someone talking about homeless people in LA and the American woman, and the way she was speaking, it broke my heart. I thought it was like the absence of compassion and her clarity that like “I've given up on those people. We've tried to help them and they're beyond help.” That mentality frightens me and I know it's always been present, but we're at like a moment where if we don't decide that we really are the future and that we really can figure out how to do things differently—one of those things being how to take care of people—if we can't figure that out if we can't figure out how to take care of the earth, the land that we're on if we can't figure out how to respect the people who know best how to do that, I am worried about LA's future. You know what I mean? It's like we're at a moment. We don't have water, we don't have shelter for people. We don't have an education system that works and people have made decisions over the past 30 years of my life being a California native to make that the case. Like if I had to go to public school now, I wouldn't get the same education that I got when I was a kid. No one would've handed me a cello when I was eight years old, and said, “Take this home and practice.” That doesn't happen anymore. So I think I'm like, strangely, I hope it's not nostalgia. I just know that something else is possible. I think we have to fight for that. 

Charlotte Burns:

Let me ask you one final ‘what if.’ What’s the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night and what's the one that gets you up in the morning?

Cauleen Smith:

I would like to make something real and even potentially lasting for other people and I'm not sure what that looks like, but I always think about like, what if I could leverage the things I make into something that's useful for other people. What if I could actually figure out how to set up a situation for people who want to experiment with mutual aid and different ways of living could do it. And what if the art I make or the ideas or the things I make and other people make our are part of this different version of human relations?

I think about all the time, like, what if we didn't believe the things we believe in? We believe something else. Like what if we believe that elephants and dolphins were superior beings? Which they are! That's obvious. And like, what if we like, you know what I mean? Like what if we just believe that? And instead of thinking about things like equality, we just thought about things like regard so that you would have to have regard for any and everything around you as opposed to trying to figure out where they fit into your idea of a little hierarchy. I think about that stuff like obsessively. All I can do is make little films and little objects that suggest that ask people to think about it. But I think about what it would mean to amplify that or how to do that. And ironically, I think you have to do it outside of politics because I think politics is just people with clubs beating the shit out of each other, and I'm not interested in that. I'm just interested in like, how we can relate to one another, relations. Yeah.

Charlotte Burns:

There's also something about art existing on its own terms as its own separate space, its strength. 

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. 

Charlotte Burns:

Is that the one that keeps you up at night or the one that motivates you or both? 

Cauleen Smith:

Both. I feel like my concerns and my worries are also the inspiration and the fuel for what I make. Absolutely. And I was talking to someone and they were like, “I just really need more leisure time.” And I thought, but God, I feel like sometimes I'm in my studio and someone's helping me sew something and we're just chatting and I'm like, this is a great way to spend the day working. I don't know about like leisure time. Like sometimes I just think that's a part of capitalism. Like, here you work, here, you rest, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, why would you need leisure time if every practice in your day is like rewarding or fulfilling? Like what does that look like? You know what I mean?

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, I think so. Like your work obviously fulfills and sustains you, which for many people isn't the case.

Cauleen Smith:

Yeah. And like what if we could change that? I think sociality is really our strength that as people, we're better when we're talking to each other and doing stuff together. And that even that includes people maybe who are anti-social that we still look after and regard like we don't all have to perform in the same way. We started out where I was like saying like, what if we just understood ourselves differently? That's what I think about all the time is like, how do I encourage a different way of thinking about humans in relation to time, space, each other, place? How do you do that?

Charlotte Burns:

How do you do that?

Cauleen Smith:

I don't know. I actually don't have an answer, but it's what I'm trying to do.

Charlotte Burns:

But that exploring in your work that you do, it's creating a space for that question itself, which is, it was just a lovely space to be in, you know, to watch your works and to be in the studio is a lovely way for me to start my day. It's a great privilege. So thank you very much for having me here. 

Cauleen Smith:

[Laughs]

Sure.

You forgot to pour your tea.

Charlotte Burns:

I did. I'm gonna do that now.

[Laughter]

[audio of crowd]

So we are now in Koreatown in Commonwealth and Council with its co-director and partner Kibum Kim. Founded in 2010, the gallery has a different structure and set of values than most committed to exploring how a community of artists can sustain our co-existence through generosity and hospitality. It champions practices by women, queer, people of color, and ally artists to build counter-histories that reflect our individual and collective realities.

Kibum, thank you for joining me today.

Kibum Kim:

Thank you.

Charlotte Burns:

So what if the gallery could function differently? Commonwealth and Council does. Do you wanna talk us through how?

Kibum Kim:

So my gallery partner, Young Chung, started the space in 2010 at his apartment. And the artists who have shown with us—especially from those early days—they were beginning their careers a year or two out of graduate school. They literally built this gallery together. There were no sales to even imagine at that point and it was a collective enterprise that they dreamt up together. Since my joining, we have been navigating the commercial side of the art world space and being completely frank, it has not always been easy because there are many things that we've done that involve us subscribing to the art world system. So we participate in the big fairs, we do a lot of the similar things in traveling to the biennial circuit and supporting exhibitions and all of that. But at the heart of it, I think we also really want to carve out a space for ourselves that, if it doesn't necessarily reject the system as is, it's trying to at least pose questions. 

So some of the initiatives that we started include something that we call the Council Fund and that came out of conversations during Covid. The Council Fund is something that we ask of our collectors and institutions. So when they purchase a work, there's that customary art world discount of like 10% to say 20% for a museum. We ask you to consider either foregoing the discount or taking less than what you normally would. And that money would go towards a pool that the artists together can decide how to utilize. The kind of most acute needs that we wanted to address was the fact that as this pandemic was raging, about half of our artists still didn't have health insurance. So currently we are trying to build this war chest because the overall sentiment at this point has been that the artists want to kind of make a big gesture together. So that might mean, perhaps buying a building or a plot of land together because I think that is one of the acute pressures that many artists feel today, is constantly not feeling any sense of security.

Another initiative that we have is something we call the Commonwealth Trust. For artists who participate, we are taking works years from now when a few of these artworks are potentially valued at a high price, at least in the market, we will be able to place them and share the proceeds to the artists who participated in that pool.

I feel incredibly lucky to be doing what I do. It's a real privilege to dream up something that feels impossible and work with artists who are true visionaries. We get to travel around the world, meet incredibly dynamic, intelligent people but there are moments when it feels like we are just in this, um, interminable rat race circuit. This kind of contemporary art world system is relatively a new beast and I think many of us, even though we love what we do, don't always feel we have agency in our day-to-day lives in what we're able to do. I would love to be able to challenge that. To me, this current system is unsustainable on many levels but particularly in the way artists' careers, that trajectory is playing out it feels more and more difficult to find a time to come up for air.

Charlotte Burns:

The efficiency is, on the one hand, creates a lack of friction that is helpful and on the other hand, reduces that sense of patience in the system. That sense of this being something you needed to make a deliberate decision about, that it wasn't a disposable action. 

Is it that the system is so efficient once you are in it and you start finding success as your gallery is, is it a question that things become so efficient that the lack of friction creates its own issues around thoughtfulness and scale and the artworkn itself?

Kibum Kim:

Absolutely. I mean, this is something that's been kicking in my head. I started up my career in finance and working in the art world was completely unplanned. And it was something that really changed the trajectory of my life and changed how I think about the world and the role I want to play in it. And I am so incredibly grateful for it. But I know how the system works. 

I am a product of neoliberal aspiration. My parents sent me to this country at the age of 10, hoping for a better future. And that future that they wanted for me was ostensible economic and social success—which in some ways, I failed miserably at. But I also feel I've gotten so much more out of life in the path I've chosen. The most precious inspiring things I experienced in the art world come out of illogical inefficiencies where the most interesting magical encounters and exchanges might develop. I would hate to think that the art market can be reduced down into an algorithm.

Charlotte Burns:

So I guess the question is sort of what if the art world became too emollient? I think about this a little bit as it from the journalist's perspective too. And I think you're right, that it's a market thing that everything became smoother and easier to digest if we think about the stories we tell ourselves what the art world is, that the art world is this place where it's a space of imagination, that it's a progressive space. The reality of that sort of mainstream art world is that it's not very diverse and it's not very progressive and that progress isn't really being made in the way that the art world conceives of itself as making progress.

Kibum Kim:

Yeah, and also the naval gazing of the art world drives me up the wall. I do believe art plays an important role in our social and political discourse. Visual art has a power to express ideas in multivalent ways that linear written text or speech can't. I do believe there are important politically exogen conversations to be had in the art world. But I personally feel frustrated at times when there seem to be certain drives to play out and solve real-world problems through the art world, if that makes sense.

This is kind of like a very like facile example, but we are having very important, very complex and very urgent conversations around racial inequities in our society. Buying a bunch of Black figurative paintings does not make you a good person. There's something so consumerist about that, not that it's a bad thing, supporting Black, POC, queer artists and what have you. But your actions should not end there. I think it's really important that people think deeply about what their own relationship and responsibilities are. I would love to see some deeper, inefficient, slow-food approach to things. 

Charlotte Burns:

What if the art world ran a little less fast? There's this sense of it being slightly runaway, that to maintain success, to build success, to serve the best interest of the artist, to keep the thing going, you have to go to the next thing. Do you think that the art world has lost control of itself, has lost its sense of agency? Do you feel that for you to have success in that realm, you have to give over more of that and that the artists probably feel that too?

Kibum Kim:

Yeah, I mean, I think about that a lot. This kind of explosion of interest in contemporary art is a super, super, super recent phenomenon. I thought it was like very interesting, the last interview with Paul Chan and his wanting to get off the hamster wheel and having finished this art practice and what was it like 2007 or something when he did that? I was like, oh my God, I would love to do that but the art world rat race that he got out of in 2007 probably feels like a real pastoral stroll compared to what it is now. He chose to prioritize his agency and really drive his career in a way that felt authentic to him. 

Something I've also been thinking a lot about is the art world's relationship to labor, how we define it, how we compensate for it, because art doesn't fit into prescribed systems or expectations of what productivity is. It's not leisure, but it doesn't fit into perhaps the capitalist definition of labor and that's probably where a lot of the power of art comes from. But at the same time, artists should be rewarded for the work that they're doing, at least to be able to have comfortable lives, to be able to expand and grow their production in ways that feel good. But there are times when I feel like even as we are trying to not subscribe to the art world system in like a blind way, we often do feel so much pressure to not miss out on opportunities to participate in these things. I don't think that's a very exciting environment in which to make, look at, and think about art.

Charlotte Burns:

There's that tension between the things that you think you should be doing for the artists to make a successful gallery for them to bring more stability and even the things that you're doing differently, like the fund and the pension trust, they both revolve around money. And so to do something differently, you need to earn enough money. You're redistributing the money, but you're still needing to earn the money in the same way as everyone else. You can spend it differently, but you still need to earn it. And so if you're building more ambitious ways of redistributing it, you need to probably earn a little bit more to keep that all going. And then that makes you more part of the rat race.

For whom is that success? Is it that the artists want those opportunities to show? Is it that that's what you should do in a gallery? You sort of need that, and yet the transaction isn't only one-sided. It takes something as well as it gives something.

Kibum Kim:

You know, I mean, like, that's one of our most difficult conundra that we have to grapple with. We've had tremendous institutional success with our artists. It's a blessing. It great. They have these platforms to make new work, and oftentimes, most of the works that get made for those shows have zero market demand, and half of my job is fundraising for these exhibitions and, at times, acquisitions. It's a 360 issue in the art world where the demands of institutional validation and the practicalities of building market demand, they don't correspond in a way that makes things comfortable for the artists to make work but also for us to survive as a gallery that is representing them. 

Charlotte Burns:

What do you mean by that? That the market wants something else than the institutions? 

Kibum Kim:

Yeah. I do think that the tastes are changing, shifting at this moment. I know it's not a good thing, but I do think the sort of potential recession is going to have some correction in how the art market has been trending that will be healthy overall. The market loves wall-based works. The market loves paintings. The market loves things that they can compare to be like, “Oh yeah, you know, this is like a 2020 version of what [Mark] Rothko was trying to do,” whatever.

Many artists who create work that doesn't fit into certain scripts, even if they're getting all the opportunities institutionally and critical attention in the world, they find it very, very difficult to feel comfortable having a roof over their heads. You could do a solo museum show and the artist fee is often negligible if there is one. While oftentimes, we have to put in money ourselves to make these shows happen. And the expectation is, well, with this critical attention, you're going to have more… 

Charlotte Burns:

Market success.

Kibum Kim:

Yeah. 

Charlotte Burns:

Which isn't true. 

Kibum Kim:

It's not true at all. 

Charlotte Burns:

We did a data study actually a few years ago, In Other Words, looking at that idea that a museum show brings about market success. And it basically is true if a series of factors align beautifully. You need to have the right show. It needs to be a show that synthesizes things clearly because the market doesn't like confusion. So it needs to make things clearer for the market to grasp. It needs to be shown at a moment in time when there will be enough people going. So having an exhibition in Venice in November is not the same as having an exhibition in Venice during a Biennale year. There needs to be a curator who does a great job of the work. You need to get the right loans for the work. You need to have it be in a proper space rather than a little backroom corridor. Usually, even if there is the expectation of market growth, often the expectation is larger than the reality, so it's a myth actually that exhibitions create more market success because it depends on so many different factors aligning. And even then it can be a destabilizing success. It's a kind of pay-to-play scheme in a way, isn't it? That you have to pay the museums and the museums by saying, well, you might have market success. It's slightly unethical really because it's sort of a collusion with the market that the museum says it's separate from.

Kibum Kim:

Oh yeah, every time one of our artists gets an exciting museum show, we're really happy. But then in the back of my mind, and also, oh my God, I'm gonna get that email about from the development people, and they're gonna ask for this X amount, and that's another hustle. You know?

Charlotte Burns:

A big collector of like [Andy] Warhol the other week who was saying the same thing that they're constantly told, you know, lend your Warhol to this exhibition, no doubt you'll see the increased market value. And it was like, no, we won't. And that's not the job of the museum anyway. It's just funny that the market took over to that extent that museums expect.

Kibum Kim:

Yeah, to me it feels unsustainable. I think it's very exciting that more people are interested in contemporary art than ever, especially in the past few years, I feel that there have been many, many, many, many new collectors who have come onto the scene who are very eager. But at times, it feels like we're adopting like a hype beast model where you talk to any gallerist, everyone wants the same handful of artists’ work. We all know from experience that kind of hype doesn't last. It might be a completely different set of artists from that same program who are making the same kind of work, who might have their moment in a few years, and the ones that currently have a waitlist of 500 and might fall out of favor in a few years.

That feels so toxic to me to adopt the trend cycles from mainstream culture, especially when we're talking about artists who are making work hopefully to do this for the rest of their lives. And the speed at which things have been happening has been so disconcerting. The fact that an artist can come out of school and within a couple of years have sold out shows and be picked up by like a major gallery. And in a couple years after that may be completely forgotten. I would love for all of us, galleries, artists, curators, collectors, the media. I think it's incumbent on all of us to recognize the sort of art world that we're building and this is a kind of like a self-defeating thing to admit, perhaps, but personally for me, I love art. I don't care that much about artworks. That's not what has brought me joy and changed me as a person. It's been the relationships, it's been the completely inefficient acts of generosity and dialogues that have been the most rewarding. 

I hope we can continue to protect that space instead of engaging and committing to this star-making system. I've been thinking about the ‘what if’ question, I would love to see what we could achieve if we try to de-mythologize art a little bit. The romanticist myth of the artist genius, and we love to anoint these superstars and take them down. What if we engage with art at a much more humble human level? And even in the transactional space of running a gallery, going to an art fair, selling artwork. You know what I mean? Like, we sell artwork, I'm not gonna make it seem like this is some like moral enterprise. But what if we really thought about the basic human dignity of everyone, particularly towards artists? I think it's a very, very vulnerable, hard position to be in. Like whether or not you have success. Working with artists very intimately as we do running a gallery, we see how much pressure, how much instrumentalization that happens. 

Charlotte Burns:

I’m going to ask you a ‘what if’ that I’ve been asking everyone, which is what if LA is the future? 

Kibum Kim:

I would love that. Obviously, I’m biased. A lot of what we've been talking about, I think we do see a lot of inefficiencies. I mean, just look at the geographic makeup of this city and our traffic. You can't do more than three things a day, although you're, you seem to be doing more today. I moved here seven years ago. I thought it was the strangest thing when I started going to gallery openings. I'm like, why are people hanging out here for more than 30 minutes? You know, in New York, I was just used to like hitting like 20 openings a night, and it's incredibly inefficient. But that's where so much of the communal exchanges take place. I think LA can be described as an anti-institutional place and not to always like pit LA and New York against each other, but New York to me is hyper-institutionalist, hyper-structured, hyper-hierarchical. LA is a much more open, porous place where a lot of these strictures and expectations don't exist.

I feel like Los Angeles, because of just how inherently inefficient and like nonsensical this place is, it leaves a lot more room for more organic odd things to happen. I think that's where a lot of the magic comes from. Some of the wildest like weirdest artists, like Mike Kelley came out of LA and I think an artist like Mike Kelley only could have come out of LA. And you went to a place like Clockshop, which is running an incredible program that is asking different questions and really also showing art in a different way because they operate in a physical space that is quite different from the traditional art world model.

If I may, a gallery like Commonwealth and Council only could have happened in Los Angeles. The fact that it was able to take its time and figure out what its core kind of program and values is. You know, Young says this thing that drives me up the wall, so I asked him to stop, but he loves to say is like, “Change the world.” That’s kind of like a motto and ethic and raison d'être for the gallery. And of course, we're not gonna change the world, but isn't it beautiful to dream that and aspire to that.

Charlotte Burns:

That is such a lovely note to end on and it's so interesting because everyone I've spoken to today has that sort of commonality of, “I think it might be an LA thing,” that sense of steering the future.

But I have a question for you. What is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night and the ‘what if’ that gets you up in the morning?

Kibum Kim:

We believe in and we value the collective, but the collective only works if individuals have their basic needs met. The collective goal has to also reflect individuals' needs and dreams. And that takes constant work, conversation, and empathy. Going back to what I said before, it's really, really difficult to maintain that at the pace we're all moving. That's what keeps me up at night. 

The ‘what if’ that gets me up in the morning is the next generation after us all have real capabilities, the moxie, and the abilities and the drive to change the system. I’ve been meeting a lot of younger artists and younger curators who are bringing such fresh ideas to what is important about art, to question the canon, and to really focus on the integrity and dignity of people for their own selves and also other players in the art world. I guess the ‘what if’ that is inspiring to me is, what if these radical, brilliant people roll this fucked up system? I dunno if I can say that, but, um…

Charlotte Burns:

You can definitely say that!

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Oh, thank you so much. 

Kibum Kim:

Thank you.

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to Cauleen Smith and Kibum Kim for joining us and sharing their ‘what ifs.’ Join us next time for a conversation with my co-host, Allan Schwartzman, looking back on some of the biggest ideas of the season so far. 

Allan Schwartzman:

What rose up, again and again, was a sense of belief in the future and of creating new ways of collecting, viewing art, the role of talk. Everybody was speaking in their own ways about the need for a kind of daily life, a community sense to what it is that we do. 

Charlotte Burns:

Join us for that and more next time. 

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 10: LA Special with Connie Butler and Sue Bell Yank

What if Los Angeles is the future? This episode, Charlotte Burns visits the city for the first of two extra special episodes. We’re at the Hammer museum with its chief curator, Connie Butler, before heading over to meet Sue Bell Yank, who’s executive director at Clockshop. Both are experimenting with how to do things differently and how to make LA a sustainable place to be and to create art. Nowhere encapsulates the need to imagine radical new possibilities more than Los Angeles. “LA is an amazing place to think about what our possible futures could look like,” says Sue Bell Yank. “It's a place that’s at the bleeding edge of a lot of crises, from wildfires to floods. How cultural organizations fit into that is really interesting.” Join us for more.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! Los Angeles edition. I’m your host, art journalist Charlotte Burns, and this is the show asking brilliant people big ideas and imagining possibilities for the years to come. 

We’re in LA and for the next two episodes, we’ll be bringing you different, more kaleidoscopic versions of the show. We’re driving around the city interviewing four people we think are reconsidering old models. So, what if LA is the future? 

[Audio of a crowd at Frieze LA]

We’re standing in the entrance to Frieze LA. I’m here with my former colleague, the esteemed Melanie Gerlis, Financial Times market writer. 

So, Mel. It’s one of your first times to California.

Melanie Gerlis:

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte Burns: 

What are the cliches we’re going to bust by the end of the day?

Melanie Gerlis: 

It is not that hot. [Laughter] It is not as hot in Los Angeles as I had hoped. They are definitely the best dressers of any art fair I have ever seen. 

Charlotte Burns:

Okay, so as a market person, what are the myths about the LA market scene beyond the fair?

Melanie Gerlis:

We’re told it’s very sprawling and very emergent, but it looks pretty together, and everyone’s here. 

Charlotte Burns:

Everyone’s here. 

Okay, should we get to it?

Melanie Gerlis:

Let’s get to it. 

Charlotte Burns:

What do you think, is LA the future? 

Max Hollein:

Then the future will be multi-centric. I think it’s invigorating, it’s interesting, it’s energizing, but it’s not the only one.

Charlotte Burns:

Thank you very much. That’s Max Hollein, the [Marina Kellen French] director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. 

Susanne Vielmetter:

I'm Susanne Vielmetter. Los Angeles is already the future, and I've been saying that a long time. 

[Laughter]

Jarl Mohn:

I’m Jarl Mohn. It is the future. It’s now and the future. It is the cultural center of the planet. There’s more creativity, more innovation, more adventuresome art in all of its forms here than any other city on the planet. 

Charlotte Burns:

What if Los Angeles is the future, Tim Blum?

Tim Blum: 

My first instinct is to say we're in deep shit [laughs] because LA is still so tricky. It’s so fantastic on so many levels, and it’s so fucking horrible on so many others. I do feel like with human behavioral change, systemically, if LA is the future, it could be very bright. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yes, we’re taking a spin around Frieze LA with some of our favorite people. Before that, we’re escaping the buzz of the stands. We’re going to seek out some calm among the palms with our first guest. 

Here we are in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles with Connie Butler, the chief curator of the museum and the legendary organizer of such groundbreaking exhibitions as Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, which took place in 2007 at MOCA LA .

Connie has worked at institutions, including LA MOCA [The Museum of Contemporary Art],  MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], and of course, the Hammer, which is on the verge of unveiling the results of a two-decades-long project to remake itself inside and out, including a suite of exhibitions called Together in Time[: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection], drawing on the more than 4,000 works of art in the museum's collection of contemporary art.

Connie, thank you so much for joining me today. I know this is a very busy week in Los Angeles. 

Connie Butler:

It's a pleasure. Thank you, Charlotte. 

Charlotte Burns:

So I wanted to talk to you about a few ‘what ifs.’ Museums have come under a lot of fire in recent years for lots of different things, from their lack of diversity to the sources of funding to their narrow vision of their own capacity. 

What do you think, can museums rethink themselves? How are you approaching that at the Hammer?

Connie Butler:

It's the right question to ask as we're all still, I think, emerging from Covid. You have to think of it both on the micro-level of, in my case, kind of curatorial practice and how you generate exhibitions and how those exhibitions can question authority and the notion of the curatorial voice and how artists occupy our spaces to the macro-level of who are these spaces for and really who are the different publics that we serve. And I think that over time the Hammer has really gone from being an institution that really Los Angeles didn't even know was here—and many people don't know that we have been collecting, actually—but just physically, the process of this kind of iterative renovation has been a gradual process of physically opening the museum to its surroundings, making it more visible in the city, making it a real anchor point on the west side of the city, which is not necessarily where all of our audiences, or at least our aspirational audiences come from, but really trying to reach different audiences in the city and thinking about what those publics want.

Our current exhibition, which is Joan Didion: What She Means, which is curated by Hilton Als, and I worked closely with him on that show. When Hilton approached us to make that exhibition in 2019, just before Covid, we, as we moved into Covid, we started to think about how we could generate ideas differently and how we might think about exhibitions and how they originate differently. And though the exhibition itself doesn't look very radical, perhaps, the fact is that the regular audience loves it and really responds to this act of reading and looking, which is what Hilton's shows are all about and the kind of curatorial framework that he uses. But we loved the idea of one writer kind of narrating the life of another and as a way, again, of thinking differently about what happens in our galleries. So, I think the question of how to think differently about our institutions is what we're all doing in different ways and how to be more accountable to our publics, really.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you think you've rethought that through your career? What a museum can do, what its role is?

Connie Butler:

You know, I don't talk about it that way, but since you frame it in that way, in fact, I would say yes, because what I have been working on and thinking about for so long is how to make these collections and our exhibition programs, and also the curators and program staff that generate them, look more like the world is essentially what I've been doing,  and a lot of us have been doing. And so though, day by day, I wouldn't say I feel like I've done anything radical, the fact is the notion of a MoMA or a Hammer, or a museum of contemporary art representing women, representing artists of color, representing different histories and different narratives in a way that reflects the complexity of our time day-by-day isn't radical, but in fact, it's taken great will on my part and on the part of the institutions I've been a part of to make those changes. So in a way, it does add up to, I would say, at its best, a kind of institutional re-imagining for sure.

I would find it hard to get up in the morning and continue to be committed to the different wonderful institutions that I have worked for if I didn't think what I was working for was institutional change. I mean, I just think that's the only way to approach this work. I'm just not interested in doing it otherwise. And at the Hammer, I'm fortunate enough to work with a director who has set the mission of this place to be committed to social justice, for example, which we are in our programs. And now the challenge, I think is to be as committed to social justice on behalf of our staff and our boards and our publics as committed as we are in a way in our programs. And that's very complicated to do, but that's what we are also currently grappling with. 

Charlotte Burns:

You said that the, um, experience of working at Artists Space in New York in 1990 when its funding was cut by the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] after the David Wojnarowicz exhibition politicized you. You said you thought of it as a sort of activist way of operating, and I know that's been a long thread in your practice. When we spoke at some stage during the pandemic, you were reading again Yvonne Rainer’s Feelings Are Facts and thinking a lot about how to bridge generational thinking about activism, how different generations can work together in that vein rather than at a clash. That's a big thing in institutions. What do you think are feelings facts? How do you do that? How do you bridge those generational impulses for activism and change?

Connie Butler:

Well, I mean, certainly Yvonne Rainer comes out of that generation of feminism that not only were feelings facts but the personal was political. Right? And I think more and more it's clear that what we're learning from a younger generation of people who choose to work in museums or then choose to leave them is that feelings are facts, that we have to think more about the care of our colleagues and our employees and one another and that is just as important in the work that we're doing as what we put on our walls. And I was saying recently that the work that many of us were doing, say, starting 20 years ago or so, where we were thinking about equity and diversity in terms of collections and exhibition making, that was easy in some ways. I mean, yes, lots of people are still learning how to do that work. But I mean that to me, that's the easy part. You collect more women, you collect more artists of color, you put them on your walls, you make the walls of your museum look like the public, and so on. But much more complicated is to really, from my perspective, more complicated, I guess, is to really attend to the lives and the desires and the ambitions and everything of all of the particularly the younger generation that we are now working with and learning from. They are changing how we think about work, they are changing how we think about work-life balance, and all of that is about attending with care to the fact that feelings are facts. I think, I do. 

Charlotte Burns:

Do you bring that into your work? When we spoke about it, I think you were saying that you found the personal being political made more sense, but the feelings being facts thing was something you were like, that was something that you had never brought into work. You know, the idea that your feelings could be part of your professional existence.

Are you personally more comfortable with that now in the way that you operate? 

Connie Butler:

Yeah. You know, it's funny, one of the things I've learned from actually going back and rereading a lot of Joan Didion is that her evolution as a writer, as a journalist was so fascinating in part because one of the things she did and was so good at and was so powerful about her writing is her bringing in of the personal to her journalistic voice. And there are so many writers that have been influenced by that, but I feel like, I think when we spoke before, I talked about how when I was educated in art history, you certainly kept biography, you certainly kept feelings, you kept all of that kind of subjectivity out of your work. It was really important to try to achieve, we were told, some kind of objective voice, which of course, we know now doesn't exist. I mean, it absolutely doesn't exist. The subjective is always there so I've become more and more comfortable and I think I've become a better writer and thinker when I attend to that. It's not about putting my own feelings always forward but just understanding that those things, that all of the biographical, political, social things that we each bring to our work, are present and acknowledging them. 

Charlotte Burns:

You've worked on major feminist exhibitions from WACK! to Witch Hunt (2020-2021) and projects, including co-editing Modern Women[: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art] (2010), which was a massive examination of work by female artists in MoMA's collection when you were there.

What if the future or female and non-binary, the data shows that we're still a long way away from that. What do you think the current state of affairs is?

Connie Butler:

Well, it was sobering to read the results of your study, honestly, because I think for many of us who really have been working at this for a long time, I would've thought that the statistics were better. But of course, what they proved is that no matter how much good work you're doing, we're overcoming a lot of history and a lot of bad habits in terms of what was collected and shown and so on. And it, of course, depends on the institution, but I am really proud of the fact that at the Hammer, for example, now we have, we really have in the last 10 years moved the collection and our collecting patterns anyway to be fully more or less, to achieved parody based on gender anyway. And we are aggressively and actively and have been for a number of years, the work of artists of color and trying to really bring up those numbers as well and represent those very important histories too. 

Charlotte Burns:

Well, the Hammer does have…we see that in the data. We see that it’s not a trend, it’s just an inbuilt part of the mission of the institution. That it’s been a leader in many ways to sort of solidly…it’s not this big firework moment, it’s not always pronouncing itself as that but the numbers are solid and they’re consistent and there’s a year on year logic to them that we can see when we look at the data.

So when you unveil the new building and you show this collection, what are your hopes for what that does? Not only for the audience but for the staff and also the board—you know, these sort of three vectors. 

Connie Butler:

I think in the case of the Hammer, I think everyone will be extremely proud and not surprised. It has been though and continues to be a process of education over time and I think it's mostly a generational one. You know, a younger generation of collector and philanthropists and supporter completely gets it and is excited about that part of our mission. Of course there's an older generation of collectors who were educated one way and the art world has moved in a very different direction. It's a process of education, a constant process of education. I guess introducing them to different ways of viewing the collection that you can have conversations about. What is our strategy around collecting women artists amidst other conceptual and historical threads like, Los Angeles art or video art, medium based assumptions, things like that. Gender and race are just one lens among many that you put onto your strategy of building a collection. I feel like here we've been having that conversation for long enough that everyone is completely on board and supportive and very excited about it, honestly. 

Charlotte Burns:

One of the questions I asked Glenn [Lowry] in our interview was what if you could separate funding from governance? Is that something you think would be interesting to consider?

Connie Butler:

One of the questions and the constant conversations we've been having since Covid is exactly this question, how could we imagine different kinds of income streams for nonprofits and museums? And it's one thing that I find very hard to imagine because it really means rebuilding how these places function from the bottom up, or maybe from the board down, in a way. And I think it means redefining who is on your board, that philanthropy is just one piece of it but that other kinds of representation, other skills, other cultural points of view need to be represented on your board just as much as the people who really bring in the big money. And that I think is gradually happening on boards. 

I think at the Hammer we've been really privileged in some ways to value a very curatorially driven program that sometimes mounts exhibitions that are not popular with the public necessarily, or there are aspects of them that are not but as soon as you have exhibitions that generate an enormous amount of attendance, you do get very addicted to that. We're fortunate in that our attendance doesn't provide an income stream so we're not dependent on that as a bigger institution might be. I do dream of just filling our galleries with dance and performance and just seeing what would happen and seeing who would come. And I still believe that you can make exhibitions that are like that where there is maybe there are no objects, maybe there's…and we've done this, actually we have done it. I think those moments where you can rethink what happens in your galleries are so exciting. But it's hard to do them without thinking about where those funding streams are gonna come from.

So if we didn't have to think about that, it would be terrific, but it's not our reality at all. And I think, I am really interested in these new models. I don't know how they yet, how they will affect or how they apply to museums, but the new models that a lot of artists are pioneering where they are collaborations with fashion, the music industry, all these ways that artists are getting into product and different kinds of revenue streams. I think it's interesting. I mean, I don't love it all the time and I don't love the product that happens as a result of it necessarily, but museums are gonna have to be open to more of that, more and more of that. You know, I think of like the Hirshhorn Museum example that they announced recently of this reality TV show, whatever that is gonna be. And being, admittedly a little horrified, but then understanding that we gotta loosen up a little bit and experiment with some of these models and do it with care for the artists, but we will go extinct unless we are open to other revenue streams and other ways of generating interest in the public also.

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, it's interesting because everything that gets you closer to product keeps the market in the center of it all. And that's just a fraught thing. It’s like you sort of feed the beast and then the beast becomes bigger and that becomes the norm. There's this real sense of wanting to be less product focused, of not caring so much about the art object and it's come up in every interview in a different way; This dream that everyone seems to have of being less object-centric. 

Connie Butler:

I mean, I personally think we're just, and you've probably been hearing this from other people, but I personally think we're in a very conservative moment in the art world and we really saw it during Covid where people had a lot of money to spend and were perfectly happy to buy art virtually sight unseen, certainly without seeing things in person. We benefited because a lot of people gave us gifts of paintings. But honestly, I've never seen so much painting in such a short period of time and it's all about object. And when that happens, I think things get interesting in other parts of the art world. I mean, it just is true, you know, that artists find other ways to move around that and subvert that, but the old model of sort of like rejecting the market, there's too much money around. We've gotta think about ways of collaborating with it, not only resisting it and protesting it because we will be left dinosaurs if we don't. But I don't love the object focus of the current moment. I think it's really boring. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, especially with your background,  which is so much…your beginnings, especially in sort of more dance there, more ephemeral forms. 

The idea that the market will grow after a museum show is a myth actually. Like when you look at the data of what impact museum shows have on the market, it's not that significant unless a series of factors aligns. So why do museum stage object shows?

Connie Butler:

Well, I mean, artists make objects and they will continue to but I know that what we do doesn't have that big of an effect on the market because the market is too big right now. And it's so collector driven. The museums really have very little to do with it in a certain way. 

Artists still want what they feel like is the validation of the market. They still wanna show in museums, I'm happy to say, you know, it's incredibly gratifying. I think we can offer something. I mean, speaking of care, we can offer a kind of curatorial attention and care to it and we will always show objects. I love objects. I'm very object based. I realize that when I'm talking to some of my younger colleagues who maybe like they love the archive, for example, or they love the writing or they love the activism, they love the social justice mission at the museum. They're not so interested in the objects, even though they love the artist, you know? So it's, I think that's changing too.

Charlotte Burns:

Where do you find art? Where do you look yourself? You're talking about things that cut through. Where do you look? 

Connie Butler:

Well, I'm a little bit perverse but maybe it also has kept me fresh in some way and my eye a bit fresh in that I still love to go to the Documenta that everybody hates. You know, I still found the last Documenta and the one in Athens, I found them incredibly generative and powerful and was really moved by them in part because of the sort of anti-market stance that they took. And I find that just going to exhibitions like that, that really try to reposition how you're looking at the work, what the curatorial voice is—like with the last one, where it was curated by a collective of artists and then it was an exhibition of many collectives. I thought it was really powerful and inspiring at this moment when we're all trying to figure out ways out of the conservative moment, this market driven moment that we're in. I look at places like that.

I still really value the work that a lot of younger galleries do. And in Los Angeles we have some really interesting ones. There was recently a wonderful collaboration that Bridget Donahue and Hannah Hoffman and Nina Johnson, I think, and a number of women-run galleries did from LA and Miami and New York and all over. They collaborated on a exhibition of Rochelle Feinstein, this wonderful New York painter who has been, not overlooked, but she hasn't had as big a career as she should. And they collaborated on a sort of like cross-national exhibition and show of her work. And those young women, I think are creating a little bit in their own way of a different model of how to have a gallery program or certainly Kibum [Kim] of Commonwealth and Council. I mean, those guys run their space like an artist run space, even though it’s a commercial business of course, but it's also a community. They really put that community first in terms of their identity and I love that. 

Charlotte Burns:

Another question of you, which is what if museums aren't the future? I'm asking this because you were a fellow in the 2020 Center for Curatorial Leadership Program. So the program is a kind of cohort of national curators who are…it's quite prestigious thing to be accepted into the program, and it's a sort of career rethink moment and most people are at some stage paired with someone who becomes a mentor. They shadow that person. Typically it's within museums. You made the decision to take a mentor outside museums. Your mentor was John Palfrey of the [John D. and Catherine T.] MacArthur Foundation, which I thought was really interesting because we're in this moment when foundations and philanthropy in general is such a literally rich area of the art world and an entirely newly empowered industry that's only going to get bigger because there are so many more artists thinking about legacy and we've been in this big market moment of enormous wealth, and artists are considering how to use that wealth. Why did you wanna look outside? Why did you wanna look at foundations? What did you learn from that? 

Connie Butler:

It's interesting to me that you know that because actually my cohort was the 2020 cohort, so we fell victim to Covid and my internship, so-called, never happened but the reason that it interested me at the time, and it still would, is because at that time, so in 2020…In 2019, we were starting to really see this shift in the direction of foundations and foundations, very conservative ones like the Ford Foundation and Mellon [Foundation] and so on, doing really important social change work and going into these institutions, these museum institutions, and sort of forcing our hands in a good way, tying funding to hiring diverse curators, doing collection work, really trying to make some of the systemic change that was happening and being called for in the culture. I was curious about the MacArthur who have their eye on leaders in all kinds of fields and one of our oldest and most respected foundations. I was really just interested to see what the thinking was there—and I know he's a relatively new leader of MacArthur—how a younger generation new leader is sort of turns the boat, towards a new mission. 

Charlotte Burns:

Would you consider working in that area or is curating too much part of your practice? 

Connie Butler:

No, I would consider that program, CCL, which is so wonderful, is partly about curators at pivotal junctures in their career where they're beginning to think about leadership in a different way and moving into museum directorships for the most part. It's something that I have mulled over for myself of course but I'm very curious about foundation work and think it could be tremendously rewarding and really a continuation for me of a lot of the work I've done. Again, trying to make change and just working at it from a different, a slightly different perspective. 

In a discipline like curatorial work, I do think there is a time when you have to recognize that you can't always know about the new in the way that you did once. And I don't think I'm there yet, but I'm fully aware that there will come a moment perhaps when one should just step back and let a younger generation take over. I'm still really interested in working with emerging artists and I do it all the time. I just think that the foundation perspective is one that, where you could still do a lot of similar thinking and a lot of the intellectual work from but from a different part of the field.

Charlotte Burns:

A lot of people in the museum sector that I talk to say, curators and museum leaders of smaller institutions say that for them at some stage, it would've been a goal, a dream, a career objective to be a director of a major institution and that for some of them that's shifting because, as a museum director said to me a couple of years ago, no one wants to be a museum director anymore. It's a terrible job. And they said because it's not terribly well paid, but it's quite stressful. It's attracting the worst people like politicians. 

Did you want to be a director of a major museum? Do you still want to be, or are you in line with the other director who'll remain anonymous and say, maybe not for me?

Connie Butler:

It still is. It's so exciting to me. I mean, look you go to any of the museums from ours to MoMA to LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art] where I was over the weekend and it was packed. I mean, museums are places that people want to be, and we know that from the statistics, right? We know that the museum as a gathering place, as a social space has tremendous relevance for the culture still and for a younger generation. So the idea of stewarding and being in leadership of these places is still super exciting. I think it's an incredibly difficult time. I do, I know. I mean, nobody's having very much fun at the moment, but change is slow and hard and not always fun. So potentially, yes. [Laughs] Potentially, yes.

Charlotte Burns:

If you had a vision board, what would you manifest? What would be that dream job?

Connie Butler:

Oh my God, Charlotte, I didn't expect you were gonna ask me these questions. Well, for me, still, the audience of artists is central. They are one of our core audiences always. So thinking about what artists wanna see and find urgent is still really exciting to me. And vision board, I mean…yeah.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you believe in that? Do you believe in manifesting your dreams? It's something that's come up in our podcast with other guests like Kemi Ilesanmi talked about it quite a bit. You have to name the thing.

Connie Butler:

Well, you know, I have enormous respect for what she has built and if that works for her, I would try it in a minute. I'm not a big vision board person. I think what I've done over time is to manifest by doing, and I'm a very intuitive person and I process as I go. So I think that's how I've worked. I mean, when I came to the Hammer, I had my own ideas about what the program needed and what I wanted to do here. And fortunately, with the support of my director and the rest of the team and stuff, we've made change in it. 

Charlotte Burns:

Let me ask you two questions to finish this out. One is what if LA is the future?. 

Connie Butler:

I've always thought LA is the future. [Laughs] One of the really exciting privileges of working here is that geographically where we sit on the Pacific Rim and with our relationship to Mexico, to Canada, to Vancouver, to the centers of artistic practice around the Pacific region, I think there's enormous possibilities still in terms of the collection and program. There's so much that we can do and we've done a bit of it. But that's always what's excited me about working in LA. It isn't about looking to Europe, which in so many ways, one could say broadly speaking represents the past and what people always say about this city is that it has more creatives—and I use the word guardedly—but more creatives per capita than like any other city in the world. And it's kind of true. You feel it when you're here and that's why so many galleries are moving here, that's why people are so excited and giddy to be here, I think. I'm not entirely sure why they're all here, but they're coming and I think it's because it's a place of possibility and I do think it's about the future.

Charlotte Burns:

A last one to round us out, which is something I ask most of our guests. What is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night and the one that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Connie Butler:

The one that keeps me up at night is about maintaining in this art world some kind of hold on curatorial integrity amidst all of the forces that are quite frankly against it. All of the forces of conflict of interest and the market of trying to be really true to what artists are making, what they wanna see, what they want to think about, making sure that that guides our program. I mean there are many things that keep me up at night, but I would say that is one of them. 

And how to also stay ahead. I mean, we're an incredibly competitive environment. I've chosen to work and been lucky enough to work at really leading institutions but what comes with that is you gotta stay on top of your game because there are a lot of people who want these jobs. Making sure that our program is honestly the best contemporary program in this city and I'll just go ahead and say that I think it is, and maintaining that position, understanding that MOCA, LACMA, that we're all doing great things in different ways, but that keeps me up a fair amount at night too.

And what gets me up in the morning, and it just amazes me every day practically, is that I just love the work. I really do. I'm still really excited about what I see happening in this city. The art that I see, I'm really excited to intellectually engage with it and I hope I don't ever lose that, but I definitely still have that, and that's, that's what keeps me coming to work.

Charlotte Burns:

Connie, thank you so much. I appreciate how much time you've given me. As always, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. 

Connie Butler:

It's a pleasure to talk to you and I have such enormous admiration.

Charlotte Burns:

Okay, so we've just walked through the courtyard at Clockshop, which is a beautiful oasis in the middle of the city. So can you situate us? Where are we in the city? 

Sue Bell Yank:

We're in the northeast part of LA in a neighborhood called Elysian Valley, or sometimes it's called Frogtown. We're right up against the Glendale Narrows section of the Los Angeles River.

Charlotte Burns:

So we're now at Clockshop with its executive director Sue Bell Yank, the writer, curator, and former public school teacher, who is a passionate advocate for a greater understanding of the power and relevance of art in our society.

Clockshop as an organization is basically a ‘what if’ proposition in real time. It collaborates with artists, activists, researchers, educators, curators, institutions and neighbors to reframe how the community engages with public space, creating portals through culture to revisit the past while looking for ways to reimagine new futures.

Sue, thank you so much for joining me.

Sue Bell Yank:

Thank you. Delighted to be here. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's the first anniversary of your taking this role, so happy Valentine's anniversary. 

Sue Bell Yank:

Thank you. Thank you. 

Charlotte Burns:

You said when you were hired that “public space is a precious resource in our city, and most Angelinos do not feel like they have any power over the development of their own neighborhoods. We believe that through arts and cultural programming, we can not only highlight the importance of this land to generations of Indigenous people and immigrant communities, but also stimulate how we might imagine our city working better for all of us in the future.” And you'd said that over the next two years you were gonna expand and enhance that work with artists and communities. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like in reality?

Sue Bell Yank:

Sure. One thing I've noticed in my 20 years living in LA is that there are so few places to gather that don't involve a transactional relationship with a place where you're either buying something or you're there to purchase a service or a good, or whatever but a place where people can actually just come together from all different walks of life in public space and interact, cross-community with one another. And I think that's incredibly important for social cohesion and for wellbeing for our city. A lot of the work that we've done leading up to this massive project that we're undertaking right now, which is our cultural asset mapping called Take Me To Your River: Stories from Northeast Los Angeles. It's really about listening to understand what communities would like to see in their public spaces and how they would like those spaces to be activated in the future. 

Charlotte Burns:

So tell me about the project Take Me To Your River, the cultural asset mapping.

Sue Bell Yank:

It really hearkens back to a lot of our work over the past eight years on the Bowtie parcel right next to the Los Angeles River. It's one of the few pieces of public land that has direct access to the river in this beautiful area of the river called the Glendale Narrows, which is soft bottoms—so there's a real ecosystem that is growing. It's a piece of land that's owned by California State Parks and it has not been developed into a park for about 20 years that it's been owned by the parks. Clockshop began working on that land in 2014 as a result of a series of conversations we had done about the future of this neighborhood and the future of the LA River in Northeast Los Angeles. That resulted in dozens of artists projects and cultural and community events, family events that took place on that site and was successful in gathering momentum amongst the community and amongst government agencies as well to start being able to have funding for that to eventually become a state park for this region. We know that it will open up the access to many, many more people. We also know that these communities surrounding that park are rapidly changing and are undergoing a lot of gentrification and displacement pressures, which are likely, unfortunately to be accelerated by new Green Space. 

So part of what we really feel like is a role that we can play as an arts and cultural organization is to make sure that we're capturing the histories specifically of the communities that are at highest risk of displacement but also making sure that those cultural practices and stories about this neighborhood are being captured for future generations.

So this project is an oral history project where we're collecting histories and images of this neighborhood as it currently exists. We see this as being a foundation for artistic research, for projects into the future and lay the foundation for what the future programming that we do looks like in this neighborhood. 

Charlotte Burns:

That's really interesting because it's sort of a conundrum of creating the nicest space and then being aware of what that brings with it, which is that displacement of the community you're trying to serve.

Sue Bell Yank:

I think as any organization that is working with and on public land needs to acknowledge is that we're, we're working on stolen land. Specifically many of the state parks sites that we're working on have been historically very important sites to Indigenous peoples, but also were stolen from those peoples and basically given to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which created a lot of toxic soil in those spaces that then now have to be mitigated in order to have state parks there.

Understanding what these lands originally meant to the original inhabitants of this place, we recognized as incredibly important. But we wanted to have a series, kind of, in this current era that we're in, where I think there's much more momentum around talking about land back and co-stewardship agreements with Indigenous tribes or different kind of mechanisms, rather than conceptually is this, you know, an important thing that we all should be talking about? We're like, yes, of course it is, but what practically can we do? We see that as a role that we can play in terms of trying to push that edge and push organizations that work with public land to be sure that they're in conversation with the First Peoples of this land and what the stewardship of those places looks like in the future. We're trying to be a really good ally in these conversations.

Part of, I think what was so interesting about the dreaming land back into reality series was bringing in that intersectional element. So not just thinking about Indigenous land return, but also how that intersects with Black land theft historically, which of course happened throughout LA County and throughout the nation. But looking at some of those specific cases like Bruce's Beach that have been successful and how that can be a much wider policy of reparations that could be adopted or pushed for. 

Charlotte Burns:

I'm really interested in hearing how you see Clockshop as a cultural organization taking that role because stewardship of land is related to climate change and the climate crisis. How can it become the domain of culture to help find solutions to these enormous problems? 

Sue Bell Yank:

Absolutely, we partner with organizations that do incredible on the ground work in the sort of very technical and logistical strategies of how we transition to renewable fuels and really try to support those people and partnerships as much as we can. But, I think in order for people to feel a real investment and a real pathway towards their own advocacy there, it's necessary to have a kind of social and emotional investment in the land that you live on and a really a deepening understanding of how those infrastructural decisions affect you directly. Why there's a drought in California, why the groundwater aquifers aren't filling dates back to the original decisions to channelize the river in the 1930s. And to me, that is a role that a cultural organization can play, you know, revealing histories, revealing questions. Then you start to really gain that emotional connection to that place and then you wanna fight for it and you wanna fight for its future. 

Charlotte Burns:

Right. One of the organization's core values is to reimagine expertise based on a belief that we learn best through non-hierarchical dialogue. So what if expertise weren't linear? What does that look like? 

Sue Bell Yank:

That's something that we've always thought about since the very beginning of Clockshop, how expertise can manifest. There's the lived expertise of living here next to the river for your entire life and seeing its changes. And I think through our cultural asset mapping project, that is gonna be a huge part of the expertise that we're hoping to uplift to the surface. There's expertise for how you move policy through governmental agencies that make it really difficult to do that sometimes. And absolutely, I think we believe strongly in the expertise of artists too and that ability to really kind of provoke that discussion or that thinking in broader audiences. 

Charlotte Burns:

So, Sue, you have lived with and we all watched the footage of the terrifying images of the LA River bursting its banks. We're used to seeing it in drought conditions and all of a sudden this terrifying abundance of water floating through Los Angeles, causing devastation and yet not replenishing the drinkable water of the city. I imagine that that brings you as an organization closer to the questions of how to live with the river. 

Sue Bell Yank:

There’s a big question that we’ve been thinking of a lot which is about the future of the river itself and how it’s become this flashpoint in discussions around climate change in the future, is kind of the future of the river and that it’s not really possible to de-concretize it and bring it back to its completely natural state but how do you find a balance? And I think that’s always and interesting question that we’re struggling with, is like, how do you find a balance between the people who live next to the river and their needs, the river itself and it’s ecological needs, and then our needs as a society facing climate change and what we need in terms of water and water recapture and all of those things. So I think those are like the big questions that we’re thinking about right now. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, just a small thing. [Laughs]

So, Sue, a question about Los Angeles now. What if LA is the future?

Sue Bell Yank:

I think that LA is an amazing place to think about what our possible futures could look like. It's a place that is at the bleeding edge of a lot of crises from wildfires to floods to crises of climate. We have an enormous housing and homelessness crisis but I think also, I'm hopeful, some more political will nowadays to try to do something about that. How we address these crises and how we think about a more livable city in a really smart way is gonna play out in the next five to ten years here and how cultural organizations fit into that, I think is really interesting. In LA I think there's arts and cultural organizations in every arena trying to push that forward or to propose counter-narratives to what have you, capitalism, commodification of land, the way that we move through our city and there's artists here and arts organizations that are doing incredible work proposing a different way of thinking about these crises. 

Charlotte Burns:

I was struck this morning driving along. There's this sense in when you're in LA that you can really see the future. And there's this sense of hope and possibility and then there's this also this sense of like, wow, it's such a great place to set a post-apocalyptic movie. [Laughs] It's sort of both. 

Sue Bell Yank:

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there's so much beauty that reveals itself slowly to you over time in this city and on the surface like the river itself, you know, on the surface you sort of think about Terminator and you think about the race scene in Grease and it really does look like this sort of post-apocalyptic landscape with a natural force that's completely divorced from any nature. But then you get to know the city more and you understand there's other parts of the river that have great blue herons and beautiful native willows that are growing up through the concrete. None of that is gone, it has been paved over  in many places. But there is a balance to be found between the natural environment and our communities and the way we think about interacting with one another.

Charlotte Burns:

So, my final question for you, what is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night and the what if that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Sue Bell Yank:

Oh gosh, that's a good one. I mean, the ‘what if’ that keeps me up at night is what if I'm the last generation of my family that's ever gonna be able to afford to live here? Are my children gonna have to move to another city because LA is just not possible to live in anymore? I worry about runaway housing costs or any cost of living types of things and just think about how much if that's affecting me and my family in our relatively privileged position, you know, how extremely stressful that must be for so many people in this city. And I worry about that, you know, in the future I worry about it sort of carving out the underbelly of the arts in Los Angeles. Artists will not be able to afford to live here, small organizations will not be able to afford to stay afloat. And then what happens when you have only LACMA left or something? It's a much less dynamic place. So I do worry about that. 

What gets me up in the morning is really the incredible people that I know working in the arts and working adjacent to the arts and thinking about these new ways that we can work together and support one another. We're part of the LA Visual Arts Coalition and we did a bunch of really successful fundraising together. We're talking about getting healthcare for all of the different workers that work in all of our organizations.So, working in coalition and in collaboration with all of these folks at many other disparate organizations has been incredibly rewarding and that gives me a lot of hope for how we can move forward as a city. I feel like there's an enormous amount of collaboration and generosity in supporting each other, especially in our field.

Charlotte Burns:

Thank you so much, Sue.

Sue Bell Yank:

Thank you, thank you.

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to Connie Butler and Sue Bell Yank for joining us and sharing their ‘what ifs.’ Join us next time when we visit the LA studio of artist Cauleen Smith and chat to Kibum Kim, a partner of Commonwealth and Council gallery. 

Kibum Kim:

Because of just like how inherently inefficient and nonsensical this place is, it leaves a lot more room for more organic, odd things to happen and I think that's where a lot of the magic comes from. 

Cauleen Smith:

We're at like a moment where if we don't decide that we really are the future and that we really can figure out how to do things differently, I am worried about LA’s future. 

Charlotte Burns:

I can’t wait for another LA special on The Art World: What If…?! 

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 9: American Artist

What if each artist had a focus of research? What if all the possible topics that could be explored in art were delegated to different artists? This time, American Artist joins Charlotte Burns. 

One of the most interesting artists working today, American produces deeply thoughtful work that is as enmeshed in digitization and technology as it is in history and alternate realities. In 2013, they changed their name to American Artist as part of a constant negotiation of how much of themselves they put into their work. 

American talks about how their art tackles police violence in the US. They also discuss a newer body of work centering on the life and writings of sci-fi novelist Octavia E. Butler. This is tough work, says American, but ultimately hopeful: “If I didn’t feel strongly that things could change, I wouldn’t even bother. But I want everyone else to try as hard as I do.”

Courtesy of American Artist. Image credit to Myles Loftin.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! the podcast all about imagining different futures. I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and throughout the series, we’re meeting brilliant people who are helping us explore some big ideas, asking them to imagine what might and could be our reality in the years to come.

[Audio of guests]

On this episode, we’re joined by American Artist, one of the most interesting artists working today. They produce deeply thoughtful work that is as enmeshed in digitization and technology as it is history and alternate realities. In 2013, they changed their name to American Artist—a manifestation and declaration of intent as much as it was an act of erasure—part of a constant negotiation of how much of themselves they put into the work. It also recenters who and what the name conjures whilst being a smart piece of search engine optimization. 

A teacher themselves, American questions the systems that govern our lives. Conscientiously avoiding the spectacle of violence, American’s work is nonetheless preoccupied with it, and in this episode, they talk about their art dealing with police violence in the US. They also talk about a newer body of work centering on the life and writings of sci-fi novelist Octavia E. Butler, in whose apocalyptic fiction and extensive archive American has found a generative space of creativity. 

This is tough work, but ultimately hopeful. American says, “If I didn’t feel strongly that things could change, I wouldn’t even bother. But I want everyone else to try as hard as I do.”

American, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

American Artist:

Thank you for having me.

Charlotte Burns:

The show thinks a lot about futures and so does your work. And I'm slightly cheating here because this is a ‘what if’ based on a question you yourself have asked of someone else in an interview. You were thinking about what it means to try to imagine a future as an artist. And you found yourself starting with really fraught points in history and then trying to invert them, and you found it really hard to imagine anything completely new.

And you asked them, “do you think imagination always starts as a response to frustrating moments in history? Or is it possible to dream up things that are entirely new?” So I'm gonna ask you that question today. What if it were possible to dream up things that are entirely new? 

American Artist:

I was really thinking about the history of computer technology, and particularly the interface and this moment in the 1970s where we transitioned from an all-black background on a computer where you were typing green code, and in that transition, the background of the screen began to be this blank white backdrop, and I was trying to challenge that, trying to think outside of that. And imagine a quote-unquote black interface, both formally black, but also thinking what would be an interface or software motive computation that sort of began from a place of the needs of a Black person, given that a lot of the people that were in these early conversations around computer design were cis, hetero, straight white men. And so just trying to like, think about what it means to have something rooted in a different set of values. How do you imagine something that's totally different that doesn't draw on the histories that we've been informed by in order to even be legible or recognizable?

I found myself going back to this early command line interface where the screen actually was black, and that actually seemed like the perfect place to look because it wasn't that I needed to create it new in the future, but that it had actually already existed.

And so then it was like, okay, let me go back and use this and put it into the future where now it's anachronistic, now it's out of place. So it almost is as strange as something entirely new anyway, but it already has everything that we were sort of trying to imagine doing.

Charlotte Burns:

What we're talking about, in a way, are the biases built into the technology around us, and there is this sense that technology or data are neutral. But of course, they're built by people, and so, garbage in, garbage out. And that slickness of technology that's Apple particularly has been a driver of that idea of that glossy, sleek finish is something that you take task with in your work in lots of different ways. If I think of a piece that you did in 2018, No State [2021], an array of smashed cell phones and you said about that, that, most people don't see data or its technologies as having an emotional weight and that the lightness that we associate with that kind of tech is a success of the companies that they've managed to help us think of these things as transparent and light. 

American Artist:

A general conception around computer technology is that most of the computational power is happening somewhere else. When you think of the cloud, it's displaced in a way that makes you think about this notion of lightness or cleanness. Also, there is a huge effort in early Silicon Valley days to render the entire industry as a clean industry, even though it was extremely poisonous to the people that were actually working on these chips. 

This title No State, I was trying to say that these phones are neither dead nor alive. I kind of think of them as having a one-to-one relationship with a human figure. These phones that are something we hold so intimately and keep all of our data become very tightly binded to us. So when you see this sort of lot of phones, it has this sort of emotional weight as well, sort of like a sense of loss.

Charlotte Burns:

When I was preparing for this interview, actually more than any artist I think I've ever interviewed, your work is so brilliant, really in the way that often, when people talk about technology, there's this sort of otherness, this over there-ness. And what your work does is really reinforce or ram home in often uncomfortable ways how much our lives are technical lives, how much we exist online, what it means to be viral, what it means to communicate through social media, what it means to have a digital footprint. And there's lots of different ways I wanna get into that with you. But I think I'm gonna start with a work that you did called, A Refusal in 2015, and for a year you posted only blue rectangles onto your Facebook page and you redacted all the text updates and viewers if they wanted to see the images and the text behind the work could do so if they arranged to meet you in person. 

On the one hand, it seemed to be a sort of repudiation of the business model of social media in which the users are the product. But it's also personal to you because you'd said that your mom was one of the main people who really had a personal relationship with you through the internet and really relied on your social media. And so to remove her access to your life in that way felt like an emotional and maybe a difficult thing to do.

American Artist:

Yeah. I appreciate the research into these earlier works. This was kind of the first work I made out of grad school that I felt like was, a real artwork, if you could call it that. That was sort of like the gateway for me. And being someone that was born alongside the commercialization of the internet—and I was thinking about that, this sort of like exploitation that inherently happens when you're creating the content for these platforms, like you are the product. The content is like your personal relationships, the people you love. That's how you stay engaged. Your loved ones are being dangled in front of your face. But yeah, I did spend a year just with this blue image. My partner did not like it, she's like, “Can't we just post some photos?” And I'm like, “No. Like I'm doing this performance. I have to stay true to the rules.”

My mom lives in California, where I'm from, so a lot of what she knows in my life is through social media. So those things made it difficult. I remember people describing to me how they encountered it because you're scrolling through your feed and then every once in a while there's just this hard solid blue rectangle that just cleanses your palette. It sort of like wakens you up a little bit. It was just a sort of reminder that there's like an outside to this. I also thought if I really wanted to make this critique, shouldn't I just leave the platform? But I think this work was really about making a conspicuous critique. You know, something that could be witnessed, something that could be experienced within the platform to sort of remind you of your relationship to it.

Charlotte Burns:

That discipline of imposing that sort of slightly almost monastic approach to social media but to your work and life, it reminds me of something that came up in a conversation between you and the artist Simone Leigh, because within that discipline, there's also a distance. And in your work that's often attention. There's, it's a very personal work. It's very based on your life, your experience of the world. This sort of intertwining of technology, your recent work with Octavia Butler—you both went to the same high school. There are autobiographical traces, but the work is always presented at a sort of distance. Is that something you always want to do? Do you struggle with that gap? How much of yourself do you want the world to see in the work?

American Artist:

Yeah, it's an interesting question. It's something that has sort of followed me since I was in school. When I moved to New York for grad school in 2013 and that was right after I had changed my name to American Artist so I was really contending with what that meant. I remember one of my professors asking like, “When does the performance end? Do you ever stop being American Artist?” And no. I think that was the point. That's just who I am. People would ask me, “Why isn't that just a moniker? Why isn't it just an alias?” And part of it was also making a sort of assertion in this very practical way that I don't need to reiterate that I'm American Artist, it just is. And that's why that aspect of it was important for me. 

But all that to say that when I was in school, I was really continuing with what that name meant. And I think at that time, I was including more of myself in the work. And I think like over time I've moved away from that and maybe now I'm also like, leaning back in with this Octavia Butler project. So, I guess it's like a constant negotiation. But I sort of have these moments of feeling reluctant to share so much about myself and then other times where I feel like the work is feeling too estranged.

Charlotte Burns:

I want to talk a little bit about the algorithm and going viral. You had said going viral might be the only way for artists without a lot of privilege to become class mobile, but you've done other work that looks at how going viral can be really fraught as well. For example, Bobby Shmurda created a dance that went viral in 2014 and then essentially got consumed by that virality and punished for that. Or the work you created around Sandra Bland and the pieces she'd made in the year before her death in a Texas jail cell in 2015 called Sandy Speaks.

Can you explain the piece to listeners who may not know it and if you still think virality is a way for artists to gain mobility?

American Artist:

I don't know the right word, but it can be extremely violent and also liberating. I think it has the potential for…but yeah, as far as the Sandy Speaks piece, this work was important for me because I wanted to think about a way to continue talking about Sandra Bland after she was arrested and died while in custody because we're seeing such a constant cycle of Black death in the media, which you would hope by now is not the case, but as we can see with the case of Tyre Nichols, this is like happening still now. And so for me it was like keeping that on our minds, continuing to hold her and the other people that have been victims of police violence. Not letting them be lost to the next news cycle, I think, and that sort of reduction that happens was important. It is about Sandra Bland, but it's also about Tyre Nichols, George Floyd, and everyone else that's been a victim of police violence.

Charlotte Burns:

So in the work, you dealt with the fact that Sandra Bland had been silenced, obviously physically, but also digitally. She'd been making this series called “Sandy Speaks,” and she had been texting friends all the way up until her death when everything went silent in terms of digital footprints around what happened too. And so you gave her a voice in a different way, and you presented a sort of alternate reality in which Sandra Bland continued to give video testimonials. What were your hopes for that work?

American Artist:

My hope for that work was, on one hand, I wanted to see it as like a tool for people to actually like, understand their legal ability within certain situations. So you could actually ask questions, you know, what do I do if I'm arrested? Like, how should I approach given situation? So in one sense, it was like a tool to actually try and answer some of these questions for people, and also questions about surveillance within the prison system and statistics and things like that. That was my kind of hope, but also as you mentioned, to continue to share some of the beliefs that Sandra Bland had and that she shared through this social media series of videos that she was making. So it was kind of a way of continuing that and also pointing out the intense invisibility that she experienced once she was actually arrested and trying to draw a contrast between that and everything that she was sharing on Twitter, on, I think on Facebook is where her videos were. So that intense silencing that happened once she was arrested.

Charlotte Burns:

You did another work more recently in 2019, I'm Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die) and it dealt with the police state in a different way by centering the police and Dr. Manhattan. It was an installation and there's a video screen where an animated blue figure speaks out into an empty classroom where there are some desks that look a little bit like shields and they're higher than the average desk, also like highchairs, and there's a blackboard upholstered in the blue fabric of a police uniform. Can you tell us more about that work?

American Artist:

I can tell you about any work. I could probably talk for hours on any of these. It's funny like hearing about them all side by side because I feel like a lunatic, because I don't know if there's any continuation.

Charlotte Burns:

It feels like there is. Yeah, they feel like really similar, the technology is through them, all that sort of visibility and virality and violence.

American Artist:

I mean, I hope so. I hope so.

Charlotte Burns:

And this sort of refusal you have to engage in the spectacle of it. The reason those works are connected in my mind, the questions come after each other, they're on the same piece of paper is because in both of those works, you're dealing with violence and you're dealing with horror and dystopia, but you do it in a removed way. You don't have the violence depicted, you have residues of the violence and you have the sort of imaginative space of the violence. And in the I'm Blue piece, the sort of systems that lead to the creation of the violence and how those things get enshrined into law and lawfare and legal bills of rights such as the Protect and Serve Act of 2018.

So it's very much about what it means to be a human, specifically what it means to be a Black person in America within a heavily policed state. You deal with it conscientiously, avoiding the spectacle of it, but being more critical about how whose voices are lost, who's gained, who has power, I guess. So they seem very connected to me, those works. 

American Artist:

Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. I guess to give some context, so the piece A Refusal that we spoke about earlier, these series of blue images, that was my first engagement with both the use of blue and also this means of a visual redaction that I think has sort of continued to show up in different ways. After that, I worked on Sandy Speaks so it was this shift. It was still related to what it means to be a Black person online, thinking about Sandra's own use of social media but particularly in relationship to police violence. And then with the pieces that were part of I'm Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die), I was returning to the color blue, but originally when I was using it, I was thinking of it as a color that could potentially represent a liberatory possibility. This is the color you see on a screen before an image is present. But then just seeing how over-determined that color blue is, both in the way that the police use it, the way that it's used, nationalistically, it is a very fraught color. 

I wanted to look at how are the police using this color, and I was learning about Blue Lives Matter, which is the movement of police that is really in direct response to Black Lives Matter. And it's for police that feel like they're being attacked because they're police. And so they're now identifying as a social group, they identify as blue, like we are blue, we're not Black, white, Asian, Latino, et cetera, we're blue first. And they then put into law a law that protects them in a similar way to a hate crime as if they're not already the most protected group in American society.

I read this essay, “Blue Life,” by Tiana Reid and Nijah Cunningham. It does a really interesting job of pairing like the legal aspect of how this operates with the fantastical aspect of police officers wanting to sort of embody state power in a blue figure. And so I was literally sort of conjuring in my imagination this blue authority figure, and how absurd that is. We have a precedent for that in Dr. Manhattan, who's literally a blue figure, works for the government, all-powerful. And at the same time I was also thinking about Christopher Dorner, who was a former LAPD officer, Black man, was a military officer before that, and he published this manifesto, pointing out the racism within the LAPD and how he had been fired and felt that it was a racist retaliation for reporting his fellow officers. And he went on to kill a few police officers that he had identified in this manifesto. And I was really fascinated by him and his story. As violent as it was, I was also thinking about what it meant for Christopher Dorner to do that and how we might think about his story. And he did that shortly before Black Lives Matter became a thing. So thinking about the maturation of the Black Lives Matter movement and then the birth of the Blue Lives Matter movement, what would it mean to now look back at Christopher Dorner who was blue and Black and tore himself up because he couldn't consolidate those two realities that were so violently opposed to each other.

Charlotte Burns:

And also, you know, Dr. Manhattan, there are similarities. These figures who have power but aren't able to wield it in the manner in which they want; Dr. Manhattan's like, “I can do anything!” and people are like, “Can you just be violent?” And so he disengages and goes and lives in Mars. There's this sense of the failure of power to be imaginative almost within that. 

American Artist:

I like the way you phrased that. I do see a sort of parallel in Dr. Manhattan and Christopher Dorner in the sense that they were both essentially weapons of the state. Christopher Dorner was an extremely skilled marksman and he dedicated his whole life to being a military officer and a police officer and felt very strongly about it. But growing disillusioned with what was actually possible in that role and then having this breaking point before going on this killing spree. And I see in Dr. Manhattan him also having this sort of breaking point and then going on to Mars. And so, in that sense, I see some relationship.

Charlotte Burns:

You said that you hope that your art gives viewers a sort possibility for thinking. For instance, entering into critical conversations about policing and how it operates. That's a space of imagination. Do you think that art can do that? I remember in the interview with Simone Leigh you’d said that you were surprised that there wasn't a bigger reaction to that installation. And I wonder the extent to which you think the art world can be a space that is big enough to move those conversations along more broadly in society.

American Artist:

Does art have the ability to create that sense of imagination to what else can happen? And I think it may be one of the only things that can do that, and I think that's why I'm so invested in art because critical theory is one thing, political organizing is another thing, but art also is sort of so spectacularly able to imagine those things and see all of the different variations on what they can be and through that, inspire people to actually go through with it. As an artist, as someone that obviously very much identifies as an artist, that's second nature for me to imagine those things. But I think for people that are not artists, to see those things really does open your mind up, and a lot of times it's like you might see this one weird art piece, and then it's 15 years later it's still in the back of your mind. I don't know like maybe it's sort of a seed that can ultimately, like, grow into something else at some later date.

Charlotte Burns:

It's also something about the inefficiency of art. The constraint is the opportunity, art can kind of create those seeds in the cracks almost. And I think about this in the context of your work, which is so much to do with technology, which is so much to do with optimization and efficiency and consolidation of power. It's something about the imaginative space as being empowering. Whereas there's something about the technology that is infantilizing, or at least when I look at work, like I'm Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die). And there's something about algorithms always being based on past behavior, always being based on past biases. Do you think it's possible to find freedom within that tech, or is it only in that frustration between art and tech that it could happen?

American Artist:

I don't know that I have an answer for that being someone that exists in the space of being critical of technology but also using it. There's often this question do you think it's possible to have an equitable relationship to technology or use of technology that's actually not biased and considers all the different people that are interfacing with it? And honestly, I don't know. I feel like it's one of those things where I don't know if the reality I'm wanting is possible, but I'm still gonna keep hammering away at it because otherwise, the reality I don't want is gonna be here even faster, and with more authority. And I think that is what many social movements have done is, if anything, slow down that progress that's moving towards something that we definitely don't want. 

But I may be a little pessimistic. I think there are artists, Black artists, that are using new technologies in interesting ways and that are trying to create realities for those technologies that still use them but are allowing us to experience something life-affirming, I would say.

Charlotte Burns:

You teach at Yale. That work was situated in a classroom. Your work is also really rooted in models of conceptual art and institutional critique. When you are teaching, how much do you think about the models of teaching? Did those things function as roadmaps or limitations? How do you approach that part of the work?

American Artist:

Yeah, I think a large part of my teaching practice is like stripping away the presumed power dynamic that so easily presents itself in the classroom. And that's not to say that there's not a power dynamic still at play as the teacher, but what I mean by that is like when I set the chairs up for a seminar in a circle, and I'm sitting next to my students, they're freaked out. They're like, “Why aren't you at the front of the class talking at us?” And it's weird to me that is weird to them because there has to be a sort of changing of that structure. Even though those seem like minor things, they're actually quite significant, I think, in undermining all of the baggage that is built into academia. Who is supposed to be there? Who's supposed to be a student? Who's supposed to be a faculty or professor? How are we attributing or citing different people whose labor is going into the process? 

Charlotte Burns:

Do you enjoy teaching?

American Artist:

I do enjoy teaching.

Charlotte Burns:

What are the most surprising things about it for you?

American Artist:

I don't know about surprising, but one of the things I've been saying is Iike, I feel like there's this sort of continuum between art and education. Like I, I don't feel like there's separate things at all. There's an art to education, and there's an education to art. So when I am creating the syllabus, I do feel like I'm designing an experience that is going to surprise me, and I don't fully know what's gonna happen, but you are creating the conditions through which you're going to go through this event with 10 or 15 people and see what comes out of it. And yeah, I don't know. It's maybe surprising, relative to, I guess like, how I experienced school. 

Charlotte Burns:

How did you experience school? The reason I asked this is because I was doing a piece of research recently into art schools, and it struck me that so many artists today are building things because they were failed, because they see a need for change. That's, I guess what I'm asking is where is the change that you are trying to build in the way that you teach? Where is that need for artists today?

American Artist:

Yeah. I'll tell you where that need is because there's really no clear path into art. It's one of those terminal degrees where after you receive it, you have almost nothing to prepare you to enter the real world and what are the paths that artists can follow to create a life for themselves and start thinking about the life that they want to create? How do we do that for more people? In a given class of graduating students, there might be one or two that are still practicing art in five to ten years. And my own process of going from school into where I'm at now has been this gradual introduction of these terrifying realities that like, you need to do this in order to make certain amount of money in order to sustain going on. And it's like this gradual introduction of shitty realities about what it means to be an artist. But you have to sort of like stomach those in order to keep doing it, and you don't wanna introduce that at a point where someone is gonna be entirely discouraged from pursuing the field. So it's like, how do you set someone up to succeed but not scare them out of doing it?

Charlotte Burns:

It's a very parental responsibility in a way. It's “I'm preparing you for life, but not really telling you about it yet.”

[Laughter]

American Artist:

Right.

Charlotte Burns:

What are the shitty realities you, you mentioned you've gotta sell the work? Is it the creep of the market? The ways in which you have to survive to make money?

American Artist:

I definitely think that's part of it. Yes, it is does have to do with the market. It has to do with money. It has to do with that half your job is like admin. Everything you make is gonna come back to haunt you, either because it was so shittily made that it is impossible to maintain or people loved it, can you do more? Or like, all of these different things that have nothing to do with making art.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

It sounds like being stuck in an algorithm.

American Artist:

Right.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

Like everything that you've done is everything that you are, but how do you move from there to make something new when the market doesn't want that? Maybe museums don't want that. So where are you finding the spaces that support experimentation and risk-taking as an artist?

American Artist:

Yeah, I think it's a balance of being beholden to everything that you are and that you've done, but also, yeah, finding that sort of area where you can experiment. In my case, like, I'm working on some short-term things that are more related to what I've been doing around, like surveillance or policing, but I'm also doing this sort of, like, slower long-term project about Octavia E. Butler and just trying to create a way that I can spend more time with that project and be in the research phase. Because up till now, it's like I'm always responding to a deadline, and I'm trying, trying, trying to get ahead of the deadline so I can be someone who like, makes work, and then, someone says, “Hey, there's a show, and I can give you a work for the show,” rather than “Hey, there's a show. Oh, I don't have any work. Let me make some work for that show.” And I think this is something many artists aspire to, I don't know if it ever happens, but…

Charlotte Burns:

It doesn't happen for journalists either. The deadline is the all-seeing eye. 

So one of our editorial advisors to this show is Deana Haggag, and she said that you taught a class a few years ago about DNA technologies that was fascinating. And she said if her memory served her correctly, attendees brought the things they'd learned about their ancestry while also reading about DNA tracking. And she said it held the tension of this phenomenon really well. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

American Artist:

Yeah. I appreciate that she said that. I was thinking at that time about how within the context of teaching, it's kind of one space where you can ask people to do something that they wouldn't do otherwise, and they'll actually do it. And then I thought, you know what if I have all these students take an Ancestry DNA test? They have to do it if they want to be in the class. And we'll do it together and process the results together. I wanted to do these readings that were very technical about the history of DNA, the history of race, and how DNA technology came into production. So we read, like Alondra Nelson's book, these chapters that sort of talk about the origins of the African ancestry technology and like the academics that were doing this research at the African burial site in Manhattan. And then that sort of ultimately led to this technology and then, we were also reading about the history of race science. But at the same time, I was also having them talk to their family members and ask them these really serious questions. Asking a family member that you haven't talked to very much to fill in the blanks about this other family member or things that would sort of require this very meaningful engagement and we also asked them to tell us about how your parents met, which ended up being a really, a really nice moment of everyone sort of sharing.

Charlotte Burns:

That's such a beautiful thing, and talking of beautiful things, the research you are doing into Octavia E. Butler's archive is a beautiful thing. And I understand this came about as a result of a grant you got from LACMA’s Art and Technology Program in which you had proposed a project called Collective Head. You were gonna build a machine in the form of a rocket motor test inspired by the writings of Octavia Butler and America's second Great Migration. Are you still doing that rocket motor test? Is that still part of the work?

American Artist:

It's shifted slightly, but I'm still working on it. It is now titled The Monophobic Response, which is inspired by this short essay by Octavia E. Butler that was shared to me by Ayana Jamieson. This essay is about why humanity needs the idea of extraterrestrial aliens to avoid facing its actual problems and its need to alienate people and create in other and fight continually amongst ourselves. We're thinking about creating this object from the 1930s rocket tests that were performed by Guggenheim Aeronautical Lab. We're going on almost like 90 years now. I'm wanting to rethink about that moment, though, through the sort of lens of Octavia Butler’s. So having this sort of critical perspective on colonial space science but also, I'm thinking about it in that, in the Parable of the Sower (1993), the earth seed community, their goal is to take root among the stars. And ultimately, they do leave the planet. And so I'm imagining this ragtag group of people at some point, had to have a rocket test of their own. And it probably would've been about a hundred years after this pre-JPL rocket test. So I'm finding a parallel that way. And my idea is to actually have this rocket test out in the desert and bring some scholars and poets to talk about critical relationship to colonial rocket science around this event.

Charlotte Burns:

Let's talk a little bit about Octavia Butler then. You did an exhibition as well off your research and called Shaper of God at REDCAT in LA last year. You grew up in the same area of California and you attended the same high school, which is a lovely twist of fate. And Octavia Butler, for people who haven't read her books, was a science fiction writer, she was labeled as, but really all great science fiction writers was a student of history. A kind of great gobbler of the news and what was happening around her. In your exhibition, you created, for example, a wall as a centerpiece, and in her book, the Parable of the Sower from 1993, a wall protects the cul-de-sac in which the novels protagonist lives in this sort of post-apocalyptic America that's actually set a year from now. So Octavia Butler was thinking about power, and she was thinking about the apocalypse, and you've said about that, that we understand the apocalypse as a singular event, but you see it more as something that we live through and trying to speak about how systems oppress people in ways that are unspectacular, that are banal and quotidian, and we have to navigate them. I just thought that was really interesting because, again, that's another throughline in your work is the ordinariness of oppression and violence and constraints upon our imagination and our freedom and bodies, whether physical or digital. Did you read her novels and situate yourself in that landscape as a child because you were in the same landscape? Or did you come back to them more recently?

American Artist:

I didn't read her writing growing up, and I wish I had, but I came to her work much later, around the time that I had learned that she had gone to the same school as I did. But I think it's very fitting your description of her as a student of history. That's something that I'm trying to take up from her. One of the things I've learned the most through this research that I was surprised to learn is like ways that her process can influence my process. Because she was such a thorough researcher, she saved, like, all of these news clippings about different events that were going on. She has these like envelopes upon envelopes of index cards, and on each index cards, it's like the name of a disease and like a description of the disease or a particular biological phenomenon and then like a description of it. And it's really wild how thorough it would be, and she would do all this research just to describe this one person's ailment, that's like a fictional ailment that feels very real. And she also was, I don't wanna say pessimistic, but she wouldn't give over to uncritical optimism that a lot of people have about the future. She would say if things remain the same, this is what's gonna happen. And that's also how she describes the series of the parables is these are cautionary tales for what's gonna happen if we don't change our ways. And a lot of people are really freaked out by those novels because they're quite violent; they're not a reality that we wanna live in.

Charlotte Burns:

They're clearly dystopian, but there is always this hope in those books, the idea of humanity talking to the stars. Where do you sit on that line from utopia and dystopia? 

American Artist:

Honestly, I think those terms are not the most useful. For one thing, it sounds extremely binary but also fictive. Like, “Oh, the dystopia is this like fictional other thing. The utopia is this fictional other thing.” I think that a lot of the conditions we live through are like things that we would describe as dystopic, but maybe happening slower.

Charlotte Burns:

I guess then another way of asking it is hope, which is a simpler concept. Do you feel your work is hopeful?

American Artist:

That's interesting. I would say it's hopeful in a similar regard to Butler's work in that if I didn't feel strongly that things could change, I wouldn't even bother. Also that I'm trying to give you the tools to understand the situation that we're in. And in that sense, it is hopeful because I'm really trying, and I want everyone else to try as hard as I am to bring about this other reality. And yes, in that sense, it's hopeful, but it's not a calm, happy, hopeful. It's like a, we need to get to work hopeful.

Charlotte Burns:

How much of that is about building community around your work? And I asked this because I haven't read about your work in that context, but in the Bomb magazine article with Simone Leigh, she asked you why you wanted to talk to her. And you said you'd been inspired by Black studies and Black feminism, particularly some of the thinkers her work relates to. But you also said that you admired the presence she maintained in the art world and admired her as an artist who is able to materially manifest the concerns of Black studies and also build community around that. And so that idea of building community, talk to me about that in the context of your work, in the context of your ambitions for your work.

American Artist:

Yeah. That's really great. And I am still thinking about that. What I admire about Simone and what she's doing is it's multifaceted. It's on one hand it's, bringing together all of these brilliant Black feminist scholars to share space for the Loophole of Retreat (2022). But also the way that she is employing a lot of people, like younger Black people, in her studio and things like that and she really created a way for me to enter into this industry.

And I am thinking about it a lot because like I feel like there's things I want out of being an artist that are like, unrelated to like what the field is designed to give you in exchange for what you're doing. I recently have gotten a few grants and I'm starting to sell work and it's really cool to be getting money for this thing I'm doing. But it's weird to be awarded in money for something you didn't do for the money. What I actually want is like how can I be in a position to actually like influence change within the industry and create opportunities for people in a meaningful way and with the position that I maintain, how can I actually facilitate that for younger artists, Black artists, other artists of color? How can I, like meaningfully actually help them get to where they're trying to go?

Charlotte Burns:

That's so interesting. What if artists were free from institutional obligation? In one of your conversations about Octavia Butler, someone had asked you what you were seeking shelter from, and you said from institutional obligation, from having to align with institutions that you feel compromise your values. And I'm imagining that's become more pressing as you've been finding a larger audience. So there's a tension between the you that your work is talking to when you say, I'm giving you the tools and the means of getting there. Is the answer to build your own systems?

American Artist:

It kind of is. It necessitates a certain amount of autonomy. I feel like some amount of autonomy is the best way for me to create my relationship to the arts that I would like. Institution building is hard. It shouldn't be taken lightly. I think that's definitely what we're experiencing with our school. Yeah, as far as this like sort of freedom from institutional obligation, having to compromise your values in order to go through with an exhibition or something like that is really a terrible feeling, and so the way that you can shift your working relationships so that happens as, as little as possible is kind of the goal.

Charlotte Burns:

So let me ask you a couple of ‘what ifs’. What is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night, and what is the ‘what if’ that gets you out of bed in the morning?

American Artist:

Yeah, I don't know. One ‘what if’ I have, I have this kind of like abstract idea for what could be a short story—I don't know if it ever will be but—what if there's a sort of like fictional society, but it's like about the arts, it's about professional art practice. But what if each artist had a kind of focus of research and you couldn't have one that someone else was already doing. So all of the possible, like topics that could be explored in art are delegated to different artists and they're guaranteed to have work because they have this thing that they're given that only they can do. Everyone is doing their part by tackling that one question. 

Yeah, that's my ‘what if,’ like maybe one day I'll write about it. I don't know which ‘what if’ that is, it's one of those.

Charlotte Burns:

I feel like that was an answer to both. How about this, what if you had a magic wand and you could wave it over your practice and have your practice achieve whatever it was that you wanted. What would you do? What would you do to make your practice a dream for yourself?

American Artist:

That's so funny. Well, first I'd ask who made the magic wands? Why did they make it? 

[Laughter]

Why did they give it to me? But if I got over that hurdle, yeah, I just want to have what every artist wants, space, time, resources to do and explore whatever you want. I mean, I think I'm gradually moving towards that. Trying to have a studio that I have for a long time, like multiple years, rather than just moving between residencies and then being able to take on less exhibitions so I can be more intentional about what I'm making and spend more time.

Yeah, those are things I'm moving towards. I'd also like to think about other alternative ways to display work, not necessarily mine, but just like in general that are maybe outside of a traditional like museum or gallery system, but that's very like head in the clouds kind of idea.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you have a sense of how that would work?

American Artist:

Yeah. I was thinking about it like if you've been to the Rothko Chapel, not that I'm like a huge Rothko fan or anything but, what I appreciated about that is that it's just like a single installation in a place. So it’s kind of like if a museum was reduced to just one room. It's either permanent or near permanent be cause people who are not our professionals do not go to museums every three months or six months. They go to museum like once every 10 years. So the exhibition needs to be there a while before people even make their way to it. So I think I don't know. I'm imagining what if there's like boutique museums.

Charlotte Burns:

Sort of like Dia Beacon.

American Artist:

I guess Dia Beacon is kind of like that cuz they, yeah, they have long-term installations, but it's still pretty big. If you go there, it's like all day.

Charlotte Burns:

So just these small, little intense moments.

American Artist:

Yeah.

Charlotte Burns:

Sounds great. I look forward to seeing you make it a reality, as I'm sure you will. 

Thank you so much for being my guest today. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I'm a huge fan of your work, so I'm thrilled that you took the time to talk to us. I look forward very much to seeing everything that you do next.

American Artist:

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me as well.

Charlotte Burns:

Big thanks to American Artist. Next time, we’re in Los Angeles to bring you a different kaleidoscopic kind of show, the first of two in which we’re joined by various brilliant guests, asking them, what if LA is the future?

[Audio of guests]

LA is an amazing place to think about what our possible futures could look like.

You feel it when you’re here and that’s why so many galleries are moving here, that’s why people are so excited and giddy to be here, I think. I’m not entirely sure why they’re all here, but they’re coming!

Charlotte Burns:

Join us then 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 8: Rashida Bumbray

What if we didn't have to push past human capacity to make work happen in the world? What if we had spaces of incubation that would allow us to then push our imagination to its experimental lengths?

This episode, Charlotte Burns is joined by Rashida Bumbray whose career straddles different realms within culture. A choreographer and curator, Rashida aims to create new spaces of imagination, empowerment, and connection. While the data and the daily realities of the art world can reflect a scarcity, Rashida’s action, notably the recent organization of artist Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat Summit, reflects an abundance that is intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and inspirational. Subscribe for more.

Courtesy of Rashida Bumbray.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?!  I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and this is a series all about imagining different futures.
With the help of some brilliant people, we look ahead to try to find out what might and could be our reality in the years to come.

[Audio of guests]

This episode, we’re joined by Rashida Bumbray, whose career straddles different realms within culture. A choreographer, and curator, Rashida has also worked in big-budget philanthropy, at the organization created by George Soros, becoming the inaugural director of the Open Society Foundations’ Cultures and Arts Department until late last year. 

In all aspects of her work, Rashida aims to create spaces of imagination, empowerment, and connection. While the data and the daily realities of the art world can reflect a scarcity, Rashida’s actions—notably her recent organization of artist Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat Summit in Venice—reflect an abundance that is intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and inspirational. It's also unrivaled at a moment in which the broader art world seems to have a lot of complaints. This summit represented new possibilities, showing the way to new futures through history, excellence, and potential. A giant “what if” made real.

Hello Rashida, thank you so much for joining me today.

Rashida Bumbray: 

Thank you so much for having me, Charlotte.

Charlotte Burns: 

Talk to me about “what ifs.” It seems to me that a lot of your work resides in that realm of imagining new possibilities, building new futures, creating new worlds. 

Rashida Bumbray: 

I really am interested in what if we were able to actually lead? What if all of the power structures were to move out of the way so that we could actually lead, we could actually gather. And somehow even in the midst of what you described as the statistics really showing that museums are not centering Black women in ways that they should, I think that we’re able to create the spaces that we dream of anyway, and what I think happens over time is that the mainstream catches on.

Charlotte Burns: 

So let's tell our listeners a little bit more about the Loophole of Retreat. 

Rashida Bumbray:

[Music and clapping]

[Good morning, everybody. 

Good morning, everybody.

This was my opening for the first day of Loophole of Retreat in Venice. As part of Simone Leigh’s exhibition Sovereignty for the American Pavilion, we brought together scholars, artists, activists and filmmakers from around the world for a three-day symposium focused on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor. 

Did you feel alright? Yes. 

Did you feel alright? Yes. [Music].

[Clapping and cheering]

Charlotte Burns:

As part of her exhibition at the US Pavilion, for last year's Venice Biennale—which was a historical participation since she was the first Black woman to exhibit her work in the US Pavilion—the artist Simone Leigh organized a gathering called the Loophole of Retreat. 

You, together with curatorial advisors Saidiya Hartman, who's a university professor at Columbia, and Tina Campt, who's the [Owen F. Walker] professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, organized this three-day symposium. And it came from a 2019 convening at the Guggenheim in New York. And the conceptual frame comes from an 1861 autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a formerly enslaved woman who wrote about her “loophole of retreat.” Do you want to describe this more fully for listeners?

Rashida Bumbray: 

Sure. I think what made Loophole of Retreat so special was the vulnerability that was present in everything that was shared. It really demonstrates Simone's thesis around Black women being her primary audience. And I think, because there were over 700 Black women in attendance—each of which could have also presented or performed or shared their own practice and work—there was a certain knowing that the presenters had in sharing their work, and it created a sort of warmth that people said actually started on the airplane that when they saw each other and looked at each other and said, “Loophole of Retreat?” 

And so I think it was very special before anything happened, but what Lorraine O’Grady said at the end was that she felt that she was speaking to herself. That every joke, every sort of bit of wit—and, you know, if you know anything about Lorraine O’Grady, she's extremely witty—that she felt she never had to explain herself. That everything that she said was understood and received in the fullest way. 

And so I think that made Loophole of Retreat sort of a magical dream space. Which is something that I don't say lightly because I don't want to talk only about sentiment. We also asked for feedback. We did a survey of those who attended, and the most used word that was given back in the survey was transformational. Which is something you might not hear after people go to a conference for contemporary art.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns: 

Yeah. I mean, often the biggest conveners of people are art fairs, and I'm not sure we hear transformational there either, unless we're talking about sleep habits.

So, everyone I've spoken to who's been to Loophole of Retreat, they're ebullient about it, they’re effervescent, they talk about how it was life-changing, transformational, seminal, empowering, and all of these things. And when we were putting together this show—which is really about the “what ifs,” about imagining new futures—I was like, we have to talk to Rashida because this isn't a theoretical. You've taken a theoretical idea, and you are making that space of fertility in terms of seeding the future. 

Talk to me a bit about the hopes in planning the summit and the threads now that you take forward. What were the “what ifs” that you were trying to get? You mentioned this idea of moving past power structures. What do you mean by that? And what are the other things that you were hoping to do in building it?

Rashida Bumbray: 

Well, one of the things that I noticed in my work, especially within philanthropy and the intersection of art and human rights, was that the far right were very much in collaboration.

I went to Sarajevo for a conference, and it was called Art the New Battlefield, and there were all these artists from the Western Balkans. It was a week after Trump had been elected in the fall of 2016, and I had this overwhelming feeling that we were not communicating with each other as artists and as curators about what it meant for people all over the world to have practices in the space of fascism and of closing societies. 

And so it became an obsession for me to connect artists and thinkers around the world who perhaps we are powerless in terms of support and money than, you know, the fascists that are connecting. But in terms of imagination, in terms of ideas, in terms of problem-solving, that we were much richer. And so it made me start to do work around connecting people around the globe. And why I say this in terms of Loophole of Retreat is that the dream of Loophole of Retreat was that it would be a truly global program of Black women and femmes from the depth and breadth of the African diaspora. 

We were able to have participants from across the US and Canada, throughout the Caribbean, Brazil, from the UK and other countries in Europe and then, of course, participants from Africa. We built this sort of global platform for a dialogue that would really allow us to speak to each other, which I think is just as important as speaking to power or dismantling power. 

Charlotte Burns: 

So let's talk a little bit about what it achieved. You said it surpassed your imagination. What are the threads you take from this?

Rashida Bumbray: 

It was really not lost on me that my own daughter and Simone's daughter and so many young people who are really the next generation of artists and thinkers, as well as children, were there sharing space with people like Lorraine O’Grady. That, to me, was so profound because, again, they heard and understood each other. For everyone in that room of multiple generations, it was something that we could never understand the profundity of until being in the space and actually seeing it happen. 

One of the things that Lorraine O’Grady also said was that we are no longer alone. This movement is unstoppable. And she really spoke about the fact that for many of her generation, that there was a sort of fear of isolation. And that Loophole of Retreat made manifest the larger kind of community and connections that we can no longer pretend are not there.

Charlotte Burns: 

How do you carry that forward? Is it something that would be iterative? Is it more something that lives, you know, within each of you and now in informal networks?

Rashida Bumbray: 

I think it absolutely lives in informal networks. We are also wanting to make a book, which would be a really important way of documenting what happened there. There is something really important about the archive and so we're focused on the archive now and how we can submit it to the Smithsonian, possibly the Schomburg [Center for Research in Black Culture] in the New York Public Library. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Do you think there would be another Loophole?

Rashida Bumbray:

Absolutely. I think we've been afraid to sort of name it. People were saying, “Oh, how long did it take you to plan this?” And we said, two years. And then Simone was laughing and she said, 20 years, “Like, because this is like Rashida's full career—these relationships, this way of thinking, focus on performance.” We don't want to make the next one just because we should. We wanna make it because there's an urgency. And we also are really just trying to determine where the next one should be physically. We've talked about it being in the Global South, which I think would be ideal.

Charlotte Burns: 

Let's talk a little bit about the Global South. As part of your work at Open Society Foundations, you built a strategy enabling the organization to become one of the leading arts funders focused on the Global South. And you did this with key buy-in and support from the organization's leadership, its global board of directors and the Soros family, who are the founders of the organization. 

I wanna ask you about how you did that and why you did that. For people who don't know, you were the inaugural director of the Cultures and Arts Department appointed in 2019, after being the senior program manager of Open Society's Art Exchange since 2015. You recently left the role in late 2022. 

What I was really interested in—and I think this is a thread of this conversation—is that there's a really practical part of this. It's not just an idea. You made it happen and then oversaw more than $70m going to artists, museums, organizations and projects working in social justice and human rights in the Global South and also in the Western Balkans and Belarus.

So talk me through why the Global South and then talk me through that kind of really practical thing of getting buy-in and making it actually happen.

Rashida Bumbray: 

Even one of the ways that we thought about this work of the restitution of African cultural heritage was really thinking about what does it mean to return cultural knowledge production to its context of origin. And so for me, you know, I think there's a larger thesis that is rooted in the idea of Pan-Africanism, which thankfully I was a beneficiary of being born in the late ‘70s, and the Black Arts movement, which looked at the connections between Black and Brown people around the world, created an alternative space for telling our stories. Those are the things that allowed me to step into the art world with a sense of belonging and, equally a sense of being an outsider. I wanted to bring that same perspective to philanthropy, of really what does it mean to support artists and arts organizations in the place where the ideas are generated, but much of the resources are not found? 

And so one of the other ways that we talked about this was historically underfunded communities. Which, you know, when you think about Africa, which has an incredible art world, there's so many curators that come from the continent. Simone and I were both lucky to work with the great Bisi Silva, who passed away a few years ago now, on her Àsìkò [Art School] program, which was essentially a program for artists and curators around the continent. And she brought us to be lecturers there, and it was really influential for both of us to really understand that Bisi could have gone and been ensconced in any museum in Europe, but she chose to stay in Lagos and create a contemporary art center. And she chose to create a space for critical dialogue among artists from the continent who were otherwise, I would say, a bit isolated from each other specifically. And that is not the case now, thanks to much of the work that she did. 

But for me, the focus on the Global South was really about, one, this idea of problem-solving. How do we solve some of the problems around climate justice, racial justice, et cetera? And always, it's about going to the person most impacted by those issues, who would have the most imaginative response to how to solve them.

Charlotte Burns: 

One of the things that you sent me as part of our research was a video by the Open Society Foundations and it's called Embracing the Arts in an Era of Reaction. And you say in that video: “Art is more important than ever in this climate. Authoritarians are quite clear about the need to shut down artists to defund artists. And so I think as people working for social justice and human rights, we also need to be clear of the power and agency that artists hold in society so that we can actually create spaces for freedom of expression when the authoritarian governments are actually pushing for their silence.” 

Do you think philanthropy can solve that?

Rashida Bumbray: 

I think philanthropy can participate in a solution. I think George Soros is a very specific, incredible contributor to this space as someone whose money is not coming directly from injustice. There's been a sort of radical set of priorities there for many years around things like decriminalizing sex work, for example. 

And so I think it was such an important space for me to imagine what happens, especially artists that are not connected to the market in a direct way, who are doing important work in society, in their communities. How do we support them in robust ways? You know, how do we ask them to not run around the world to do their premieres so that they can gather enough cash to come back and do the local work that's important to them? How do we give them the support to actually work deeply in the ways that they want to? I think that philanthropy has lots of potential and I don't think it's the answer, but I think it's one prong in a set of solutions.

Charlotte Burns: 

So having been inside that kind of massive organization in terms of scale, budget, ambition, what were your kind of learnings? Because I'm sure for you, that was a kind of “what if,” like, what if philanthropy can do this? What if we can invest in the Global South? What if we can, you know, bring heritage back to Africa? What did you learn? What are the things that are going to make change? 

Rashida Bumbray: 

Well, I think speaking about the Global South is always interesting to me because there's a certain problem-solving built into the way that people are able to make work, but also make sure that that work has functionality and relevance. That's something that the art world can learn from—not because everyone has to make a socially engaged practice by any stretch—but that I think if people trust artists, then there are ways that artists are able to create new pathways, create new understandings that I think take us and raise the political imagination together. 

So Faustin Linyekula, the choreographer, who's from the [Democratic Republic of Congo] DRC, is a great example. He went to study contemporary dance in Nairobi, and when he came back to the DRC, he really wanted to create his own space and he created Studio Kabako, which is a space for contemporary dance. And what he learned was that he had to actually train dancers if he wanted to make a company there, and so he built a sort of residency. 

But one of the other things he realized is to be relevant in Kisangani, he actually had to provide water. He realized that clean water was an issue and he provides even now water for up to a thousand people per day. Because he realized that contemporary dance, in order for that to be a focus, he also needed to make the space itself relevant to the city where it resided. 

So that's an example to me of someone who is like at the top of a conceptual dance practice but also thinking about how to solve problems that, you know, economists are being paid to solve unsuccessfully.

Charlotte Burns: 

So you've collaborated with Simone on lots of projects, including her first critically acclaimed solo exhibition, You Don’t Know Where Her Mouth Has Been, in 2012 at The Kitchen, where you worked at the time. You curated her 2014 Creative Time project Free People’s Medical Clinic, which explored the intersections of public health and racial consciousness and of women's work. 

In 2016, you worked together on the immersive dance performance Aluminum, or “aluminum” as Americans would call it, at Tate Modern in 2016, and obviously Loophole of Retreat and various other things. 

There is talk that Simone is looking more deeply into setting up her own foundation and that you might be involved in that in some way. Is that something you can talk about, like your next collaborations with her? 

Rashida Bumbray: 

Well, we really just want to find out how we can create the structures that we need to make the kind of work that we want to do possible. Emily Mello, who was the curator at the New Museum when Simone made The Waiting Room (2016)—which was a different iteration of the Free People's Medical Clinic—is working on the foundation now and really just trying to get it set up and institutionalizing it in the ways that it needs to be.

Simone would really love to decouple Loophole of Retreat from her artwork. That's really one of the main reasons why the foundation has become interesting and important for us is like, how can we do this work, and it doesn't have to mean that there's a biennial happening or there's a survey show and that the Loophole of Retreat can continue to be its own entity, which would not necessarily mean that people were also coming to see an exhibition. 

I think Loophole is actually a problem-solving endeavor in and of itself. For example, it wasn't reviewed in The New York Times or Artforum. There was a piece written by Rizvana Bradley, who was one of the speakers, in Artforum. But it was more of a sort of response to the review that we got in Hyperallergic.

And so, you know, while that was sort of, I don't want to say it was disheartening, I think it was something that we were not shocked by, but we were sort of surprised by. But it sort of also emphasized why Loophole of Retreat was actually necessary.

Charlotte Burns:

Why do you think those things weren't reviewed and why wasn't that surprising? and would you need a review? Would that matter for future iterations?

Rashida Bumbray: 

First of all, it does matter. Let me say that. In terms of the role of criticism, the role of these major publications as an archive, right? Because I think we know that certain things happen because we go to The New York Times and we read about them. And so I think for people to have to go to social media to kind of see that this was as major as it was, I think, is a problem. 

I don't want to say I understand why it wasn't reviewed, but I think I understand that taking on our own authorship is sort of a central thesis for Simone. The Loophole of Retreat is really not asking why the appropriate platforms don't exist for Black women intellectuals, but really taking on the task of building the platform.

And so I think there's a way that it's a response before we even knew that we wouldn't have these kinds of reviews in the mainstream publications. But it also really speaks to this idea of the need for diversity within editors and the people who make decisions. In The New York Times, there was a dinner party and they said, “oh, the main point of discussion at this dinner party was the Loophole of Retreat.” So it's sort of a weird kind of like footnoted thing that usually you would be able to click on the actual review for what that is.

Charlotte Burns: 

That's so interesting because it was one of the most ambitious projects that's taken place in the art world in recent memory. 

Rashida Bumbray: 

Absolutely.

Charlotte Burns: 

Not only ambitious in terms of the sheer size of it. I mean, gathering 700-plus people on an island in Venice is not the easiest place to gather people, it’s not the easiest number of people to bring together, especially when it’s from so many different countries. So even just logistically, it's audacious. 

And then to have three days, to have a robust program to intermarry, academia, performance, dialogue, dinners, the livingness of it all is, it's an intellectual endeavor. I initially wrote to you for the Burns Halperin Report. We do these data studies and the numbers are, they reflect mainstream tastes and that's what we document. That's the data that we look at. But there is a scarcity and there is a sense of fighting for more space and trying to take up more room and actually, what Loophole of Retreat did, it seemed to me, was just take up the space and be its own thing. 

Rashida Bumbray: 

One of the other things that Simone has said—and Simone is about 10 years older than me, and so she has a different relation to the generation just above her—and she talked about the fact that so many Black women artists that she met when she first moved to New York in the early 1990s had never had a museum show. They only were showing with the Black galleries, Kenkeleba [House] Gallery, which is very important. Obviously, we know about [Just Above Midtown] JAM now, thanks to the exhibition at MoMA. 

There's a sort of recovery happening right now in the art world, a recovery project around all of the practices that the mainstream art world missed. It's not a new thing for us to continue to create our own spaces, to create our own practices and work, even if the mainstream art world does not participate in that process. And I think that this is sort of an example of it being situated at the most…the height of the art world, right, at the Venice Biennale connected to Simone's incredible pavilion, the American Pavilion.

So I don't think of it as a marginal gathering by any stretch. I think that what happens is really that it takes time for people to catch up. But we can't wait for that, right? We can't wait for them to catch up in order to continue making our work. 

The first time I was interviewed about Simone for The New York Times, they asked a question about, “oh, isn't it great? You know that Simone's having such a big year?” And what I said was, “Simone has always been making this and thanks for joining us.” Basically. 

I'm glad that the wool has been lifted from everyone's eyes, but she's been having this kind of practice and it's not been marginal to any of us. This kind of work really propels us. And that propelling happens in many different spaces. Those things are not disconnected. Even just the incredible, intergenerational and globally diverse show that Cecilia Alemani made for the Milk of Dreams, you know, all of these things are really, I think, ahead of their time. And I think it's our responsibility to keep going even while they catch up. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Another reason I think Loophole is so interesting is that it’s intergenerational fostering. It was so many things that we are not seeing in other parts of the art world that are needed. 

I don't know if the art world will catch up or if it just separates. If that sort of money, you know, the market has taken over so much of the art world, I wonder if…We always assume that these things evolve together, but I don’t…do they? Do you think they do? What if they separate? What if the art world becomes, you know, much more closely tied to markets? 

And I'm thinking of this particularly because I just edited the show with Cecilia for this podcast and she talked about value. What if the value of art and what art can do, what art is, becomes increasingly taken over by the financial value of art as decided by the market?

So what if they do become decoupled? Do you think they do catch up? Or do you think there is just a separateness?

Rashida Bumbray: 

In most cases, they are separate. So even the distinction for me around performance, for example, it was really important to me that performance be central at Loophole of Retreat. Not just because performance is often decoupled from the market, which it is, but also because performance has such an impact on intellectual production. 

So, you know, I think there have been parts of the art world, especially having been a curator at The Kitchen, which is focused on experimentation, there were only certain times where there was an overlap with the market in the work that we did. And usually, that was when we had exhibitions in the gallery. And usually, that was if there was some kind of two or three-dimensional work. 

And it always meant that they needed, even if the artist was, you know, working with a great gallery and being successful in that arena, they also needed, in a dire way, a space for experimentation. 

So I feel like there's a way that the market can't be successful unless these other spaces are also able to flourish because these are the spaces that nurture artists. 

There is a sort of mutuality that's inherent here that I think, on some levels, the art world understands, and that's why there's so many residencies. Because otherwise, if people just made the same painting over and over, which we do see happen, right—if you have a bad dealer, super extractive, that can happen—but I think where we stand as curators is really to allow for something else to happen, which we know is really the richness of peoples’ practices and also the humanity of artists is such an important focus, I think, for the art world, which sometimes can become crude.

For me for example, I don't like going to art fairs. You mentioned art fairs, but I try to stay away because I feel like it's such a, you know, it's kind of like the darkest part of our work. And so I feel like…

Charlotte Burns:

Have you ever been to an auction? 

[Laughter]

Rashida Bumbray:

Well, that too!

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns: 

That’s competition.

Rashida Bumbray: 

But anyway, I just say that to say that I don't see them as, like, in competition with each other. For example, if Simone did not have the commercial success that she had, she couldn't say, “I'm gonna actually pay for Loophole and make sure that it happens,” right? Or she may not have gotten the American Pavilion, for example, to be able to make this work that is completely expansive. 

And, you know, we have to credit Cecilia with that too because she gave her the High Line Plinth project for Brick House (2019), which was the first time she had that level of support to work at that scale, which then allowed her to not only send Brick House to Milk of Dreams but also make the larger,  incredible works that she made for the pavilion.

So I think there is an interdependence that I don't want to not acknowledge and also not highlight. Because I think even for me, there is a space where the market is important, but I think we have to de-emphasize it because I think there's a certain way that the crudeness of it can also crush the important aspects of art and the actual value of art, the actual social, political and transformational value of art.

Charlotte Burns: 

There's always been spaces of creativity that the mainstream has always overlooked. Something that seems newer about this moment that we're in is that kind of collision of market success and new platforms.

And this is something we looked at a little bit in Hope & Dread, our documentary show related to that is the fact that we've had this historic moment of the expansion of the art market, the rise in prices and for certain artists—Simone is one of them, but there are various others, Julie Mehretu, Hank Willis Thomas, Michael Armitage—really using that money and platform and power to imagine new possibilities and create change, to circumvent those power structures.

That's always been there, but the scale of it—because the market scale is different— seems different to me. Does it seem different to you?

Rashida Bumbray:

It is different. Derrick Adams, for example, has a residency in Baltimore called The Last Retreat [The Last Resort Artist Retreat]. What makes it important is that artists become what they need to become to create the things that they didn't have. And I think it's usually because of a failure of the art world itself to create those things. 

So, for example, why is it necessary for Simone to consider a foundation? It’s because in order to do Loophole of Retreat,  that may be necessary. And it's because Loophole of Retreat may not always have the Guggenheim or the American Pavilion to open the space for its existence. And I think this is the same thing that you see Theaster Gates or Derrick Adams or Julie Mehretu thinking about, and Kehinde Wiley also with the Black Rock Residency in Senegal. I think he's also building one in Lagos. It's really like creating something that there is a deficit for and filling that gap. 

And I think unfortunately because institutions, again, may be slower to build themselves or adapt—like museums, for example, may not adapt fast enough—that it means that the artist has to become the institution. And I think that that is both great and I think it's also a sort of, tragedy is a strong word, but I think it really speaks to this idea of the art world being obsessed with the market. 

And also, failing artists, even artists who have reached this level of success, have to consider what they need to build to make sure that they're not the only ones. And I've heard artists, especially in the Global South, for example, like a Sammy Baloji, also from the DRC, saying it's a miracle that he even exists. So the fact that it's a miracle that Sammy Baloji exists means that Sammy Baloji is gonna build a biennial, [Lubumbashi Biennale]. And it's because we understand that there needs to be a pipeline and we're gonna build it if it doesn't already exist.

Charlotte Burns: 

Let's talk a little bit about performance. I was watching some of your performances. I so enjoyed it. It's such a great way to prepare for an interview. I was transported from a cold winter’s day to this really imaginative, energetic space that you create in your performances. You were nominated for the prestigious Bessie Award in 2014 for being an outstanding emerging choreographer. Together with the Dance Diaspora Collective, the performance of your work, Run, Mary, Run (2012) at the five-day residency at the Whitney Museum [of American Art] of pianist, Jason Moran and his wife, the operatic singer Alicia Hall Moran was listed as one of the best performances of 2012 by The New York Times, which said that it was rooted in motion and music and memory entwined, based on the tradition of the ring shout. Tell us more about this performance, which is an amazing performance.

Rashida Bumbray:

Thank you. I have to shift to being an artist Charlotte in 30 seconds… 

[Excerpt from Run, Mary, Run]

[Rashida Bumbray: You got a right, you got a right! 

Chorus: You got a right to the tree of life.

Rashida Bumbray: But you got a right!

Chorus: You got a right to the tree of life.

Rashida Bumbray: Run, Mary, run! 

Chorus: Oh, Lord!

Rashida Bumbray: Run, Martha, run!

Chorus: Oh, Lord!

Rashida Bumbray: Hail Mary, run, I say!

Chorus: You got a right to the tree of life.]

Run, Mary, Run is a work that really uses a sort of magical realism framework to approach the ring shout.

And the ring shout is a traditional dance which was done and is still done actually in the American South, specifically in the Sea Islands, the low country of Georgia and South Carolina. But it really is a sort of universal form that was developed by enslaved people from all over the African continent. 

So the ring shout features dancers moving in a circle counterclockwise, and we are singing call and response songs, which are spirituals that reference the Bible, but they're also telling people, you know, how to escape enslavement into maroon communities. 

What I've been able to do is really bring it into contemporary context. And we use hip hop as well as funk music mixed into the spirituals as a way to talk about the conditions. For example, there's a song that says, “Loose horse in the valley. Tell me who gonna ride 'em?” And the original spiritual says, “King Jesus gonna ride 'em.” But when we performed in 2012, we said, “Trayvon gonna ride 'em.” And it was months after Trayvon Martin had been killed. It was also Mother's Day that day at the Whitney. And so you could see people start to weep in the audience. And we know that the art world, that doesn't happen a lot. Like the art world is a cold place usually. And I think we have a sort of formality in the way that we are used to dealing with performance.

And it even surprised me, honestly, the level of emotionality that happened that day. But it really is a forum that was built by our ancestors to respond to these conditions. You know, the sort of hellish terror of the plantation. And I think it has an important relevance today in terms of how we survive, you know, living through times that are not unsimilar.

Charlotte Burns:

In the performance lecture on “On the Necessity of Attending to Black Healing,” which was part of a convening organized at the Met [The Metropolitan Museum of Art] curated by Sandra Jackson Dumont—who's another podcast guest—around the Kerry James Marshall exhibition. And again, this was another very powerful performance that you gave. 

I wanna talk a little bit about that idea of healing and this idea that the choreography you do, rooted as it is in this vernacular, interrogates that sort of healing, initiates healing.

Rashida Bumbray: 

Well, I think that we have been a part of a media culture that, through showing Black death, has really been using that as a way to justify the humanity, and that racial justice is a worthy cause that everyone should join in on. And I think there's a way that that has been successful.

As a person who has that specific DNA of people, you know, who were tortured and lynched and all of the things that we still see with police brutality, there's a sort of re-traumatization that happens when witnessing these things, hearing about them, talking about them.

And so, for me, I've been really focused on a moral obligation to attend to Black healing. Also, as a way, as I said, to resurrect the forms that belong to us, that were designed to respond to this context. Many times there's a sort of underground nature to these practices, and usually, you have to be initiated to experience them. And so I think for me, it took me a while to be comfortable, not just performing these things in public spaces or in contemporary art spaces or dance spaces, but really to understand that this idea of hidden in plain sight had a functionality when these kinds of practices were outlawed, right? When the drums were banned after the Haitian Revolution, for example. But right now, who are we hiding these things from? And I think it can be ourselves oftentimes. 

[Excerpt from a performance during the lecture, “On the Necessity of Attending to Black Healing”]

[Music playing]

[Cecily Bumbray singing: I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life

Injecting my stories into the veins of leaves

This is an excerpt from my performance entitled “On the Necessity of Black Healing.” Here you will hear me dancing with Zulu anklets made of the tops of aluminum cans. A gift from Simone Leigh. 

I am accompanied by my sister, Cecily on vocals and Axel Tosca on piano. 

Only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons]

For me, I really wanted Black people specifically to have access to our own healing forms in a time where we really need them. And I think that these songs, as I said, like the genius of Black repetition, these songs actually have embedded in them a certain tenor, a certain functionality that is meant to be healing. So, for example, the ring shout would be traditionally be done all night. They call it a watch night. So you would come out of that experience transformed.

That is the kind of thing that I want to activate for the audiences and also for the participants. And I think it's a scary thing sometimes to have this kind of spiritual vulnerability. But at the same time, I think it's really important because I have a connection to this material to not only present the material but also to be intentional about the function of it.

Charlotte Burns: 

It reminds me of what you wrote for the Creative Time volume, Making Another World Possible. Your article was called “The Low End Theory: when they go high, we go low.” And you talked about the rise of fascism and the fact that as autocrats rise, you were focused on who is falling. You said, “I'm sending myself underground.”

Rashida Bumbray:

I mean, I think so many of our practices that sustained us happened underground. So my aunt, for example, who was a member of the Black Panther Party for many years while my mother was in college, she was underground. And the FBI showed up to my mother's college and followed her around for a few days, and my mother was terrified and she called my grandfather and she said, “These people are following me.” And he said, “They're looking for your sister. If they approach you, just tell them you don't know where she is.” And that's what happened and they left. But I think what was important for us also is what was she doing during that time.

And a lot of what she was doing was strategizing. She ran part of a free breakfast program, which we know is the roots of why there's free breakfast in public schools now in this country, is the work of the Black Panther Party. And she also was teaching people how to defend themselves, how to use weapons.

And many of her friends had to leave and be in exile. She had to be underground for some time. And I think this kind of subterfuge is what is necessary many times because our movements are under attack. But also it's because there's a certain incubation space that's necessary to develop things that are not meant to be visible yet.

For example, the work that Simone did with the Free People's Medical Clinic was focused on the United Order of Tents. We were so honored to have Annette Lane—who is a great-granddaughter of Annetta Lane, who was the founder of the United Order of Tents—at Loophole of Retreat and the United Order of Tents functioned as an underground society, a secret society of Black women nurses.

And the reason why they needed to be underground, they started working during the Civil War in the tents to actually provide healthcare to the Black soldiers who would not otherwise have had nurses. And so, you know, there are ways that we have to develop the things that support our communities underground because, one, they're not supported, but oftentimes they're actually under siege or under attack.

So for me, this idea of going underground that I wrote about was really about how do we learn from the practices of artists who are not allowed to be visible. Like the Belarus Free Theater is a really important organization for me, not just because of their work, which is spectacular, and they've won many awards for their plays, but because of their strategy. The directors, Natalia [Kaliada] and Nicolai [Khalezin] had to leave and have been living in exile in the UK for many, many years. And it meant that they had to conduct all of their rehearsals on Skype, for example. And that people who came as part of the audience actually had to risk being arrested every time. So they would meet in an undisclosed location and then walk to where the performances would be held and they knew that the police could break in at any moment. And actually, recently, the company had to be completely extracted out of Belarus. But this is a strategy and it's also a way of being that they shared with other theater companies around the world. They traveled to Australia to work with Indigenous First Nations communities. They worked throughout the Western Balkans, they worked throughout the former Soviet Union in Ukraine, for example, obviously not now. 

We have so many kinds of underground spaces that I think have been so generative but also protective. And I'm really interested in that. And also interested in how there are safe spaces to share those kinds of practices. 

Charlotte Burns: 

So, Rashida, I'm gonna ask you a few “what ifs,” but before that, what's next for you? 

Rashida Bumbray:

Well, I'm actually forcing myself to take a break. Which I'm very excited about. And one of the things that I'll be working on is the Loophole of Retreat book. We're sort of thinking about the structure and format now, and also starting to fundraise the archive.

And then also returning to my practice as an artist because in doing this sort of, I'll call it a residency within philanthropy, I was able to continue my practice because of great friends and curators like Sandra and Simone who invited me into spaces for my own work and also in collaboration.

But I do have a lot of ideas that I want to push forward in my own dance work and choreography. 

Charlotte Burns: 

I love the fact that you said I'm taking a break and then went on to detail what sounds like quite a lot of work. 

[Laughter]

I'm not sure your definition of ‘break’ is totally accurate, but it sounds amazing.

Rashida Bumbray:

I know. My husband would agree with that.

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns: 

Okay. So to round us out, let's talk about some “what ifs.” If you could change three things about the art world, what would you change?

Rashida Bumbray:

Okay, so the first one is a very personal “what if.” As someone who has overworked for so many years, I really thought about this idea of “what if we didn't have to push past human capacity to make our work happen in the world?” And this is really the one that keeps me up at night because the work that I've invested in was sort of coming from the idea to inception and, like, pushing forward. And I think that that is so valuable and I do it for myself and I do it for artists. And I also think that there's a way that I've been able to be super successful in that. And there's also a way that I've been extremely burnt out. It always seems like an uphill battle to create a space where there is none.

And so, for me, I would love for there to be the possibility of creating new spaces and having those spaces supported without necessity of overwork. Does that make sense? 

Charlotte Burns: 

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, the way that you just detailed your own break makes me think that it’s a work in progress.

[Laughter]

Rashida Bumbray:

True.

Charlotte Burns:

Perhaps we'll get there.

What do you think we need to do? Or is that what you're going to be working out?

Rashida Bumbray: 

We sort of talked about it with the fact that artists themselves are building retreats, residencies, spaces for rest, sabbatical, and thinking and strategizing. And I think the Loophole of Retreat is a great metaphor for that because when Harriet Jacobs escaped from slavery and she was in this crawlspace for seven years, she thought of it as a generative space, a space where she could watch her children, a space where she could write and strategize and think.

And I think that that was a space that we wanted to create again for the Loophole of Retreat. And I think it's a space that everyone deserves. We really deserve spaces of experimentation, spaces of incubation. And that is sort of the “what if”; what if we actually had that? What if we actually had the resources, the space? And these spaces were created with people who had imagination that would allow us to then push our imagination to its experimental lengths.

Charlotte Burns: 

It seems like Loophole of Retreat did that, and then the next step is how to make it not a one-off. But I imagine that in the act of doing that one event, which was obviously the second iteration, you have imbued it in the imaginations of 700-plus people who attended and so who have the imagination, who have the resources or can have access to them.

I imagine that part of that answer is in collective work?

Rashida Bumbray:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think some of it is a shift in reality. How do we actually build the necessary spaces that allow us to feel what we felt at Loophole? Because people keep saying, “I'm still in the Loophole of Retreat,” and I think that means that we're carrying that with us.

And that seems to be like a spiritual, emotional, intellectual space. And then I think there's the physical spaces, which, thankfully, someone like Legacy Russell, who is now leading The Kitchen, is providing those kinds of spaces for artists.

And so I think that there are ways that, as we carry Loophole of Retreat, each of us, into our own spaces of work, into our own spaces of making, that we continue to be generative enough to share so that we can create a community of space for imagining, a space of creating everything that we need and everything that we desire for our own wellbeing. And also for the progress of our field.

Charlotte Burns:

That was one thing you would change about the art world. Do you have two more things you'd change?

Rashida Bumbray: 

Well, I think I said this one at the beginning. I think it would be great if people would get out of the way and let Black women lead. That seems like a pretty straightforward one because, when we do, I mean, it sort of speaks for itself what happens. And so I think that that's really the one that I think most boggles my mind about the art world. And I'll say equally for philanthropy as well. 

And these different spaces where certain power resides at the top, there's a reluctance, right, to hand it over to Black women. Not because it's some kind of charity or gift, but because we know what we are doing. When we see someone like Sandra Jackson Dumont leading the Lucas Museum, we have full confidence that that'll be a space that is nurturing and imaginative and pushing our field.

When we see Legacy Russell running The Kitchen, we know that it will be imaginative and generative. The more that can happen, I think the art world will be, one, in good hands, but also that we can really shift out of this space of recovery, which I think we're in now, where we have to make exhibitions to talk about the things that were done that the art world really dropped the ball on and failed on. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Yeah. Especially because that's still happening as you point out. 

So, your third thing? What is the “what if” that motivates you? 

Rashida Bumbray: 

The “what if” that motivates me is what if they were to get out of our way? Because I think we have found ways to do it with everything in the way. And so that's what motivates me is that once people actually concede power or realize that our liberation is intertwined and allow Black women to lead, we fly.

Charlotte Burns:
Rashida, thank you so much. I’m so glad we made this happen. Thank you so much for making the time. 

Rashida Bumbray: 

Thank you, Charlotte. 

Charlotte Burns:

Big thanks to Rashida Bumbray for taking the time out to chat and for letting us hear some of her performances too. 

Next time, American Artist, who makes thought experiments mining the history of technology, race and knowledge production.

American Artist:

What if each artist sort of had a focus of research and you couldn’t have one that someone else was already doing? So all of the possible topics that could be explored in art are sort of delegated to different artists and they’re guaranteed to have work because they have this thing that they’re given that only they can do.

Charlotte Burns:

Join us then 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 7: Paul Chan

In this episode, we get into some of the biggest What Ifs —about virtue and value, about life and loss. Host Charlotte Burns is joined by one of the most thoughtfully provocative (or cunning, as he’d say) artists of our time, Paul Chan. He made his name in the early 2000s with film and media works, and by 2008 had found significant success. Then, he stopped making art. Now he’s back with a show called Paul Chan: Breathers, where, influenced by sky-dancers, he literally shapes air. He says, “Maybe one way to talk about pleasure is a capacity to control our own time. Time may be the only non-human thing I really care about losing. I can lose everything. I think I've lost everything. I'm willing to lose it all, but I'm not willing to lose time, and that to me is more precious than anything else.”

Tune in and join us. New episodes every Thursday.

You can purchase Paul Chan’s book, Above All Waves: Wisdom from Tominaga Nakamoto, the Philosopher Rumored to Have Inspired Bitcoin here.

Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo courtesy of the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I’m your host, Charlotte Burns. In this series, we navigate the churn and change currently shaping culture.\

We imagine different futures and we talk about big shifts that need to happen for art to stay relevant.

[Audio of guests]

In this episode, we’re going to get into some of the biggest “what ifs.” We’re going to talk about virtue and value, about life and about loss. We’re joined by artist Paul Chan who is one of the most thoughtfully provocative, or perhaps cunning, as he’d say, artists of our time. Paul made his name in the early 2000s with film and media works, and by 2008 had found significant success but it was at this moment that he decided to stop making art, because he felt like he was in a circus. He set up Badlands Unlimited, an alternative publishing house, which was also one of the first to accept Bitcoin—but that’s a different story. Paul has since returned to art making, finding a totally new form powered by air. You can see these works in his first major US exhibition in more than 15 years called Paul Chan: Breathers. The exhibition is now on at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis until 16 July. The show will travel around the US through 2024. 

Paul, thank you so much for joining me.

Paul Chan:

I’m happy to talk to you.

Charlotte Burns:

You took a break, you took a breather. There's sort of two concepts to this idea of breathing: the breathers, the body of work—which we'll talk about—and then this idea of taking a breather. You took a step back from the art world in 2008. You felt that you were sort of done. You said that there was this moment in the mid-to-late 2000s when there was such excitement about contemporary art in a way that made it global and festive and vivid for people, in the events and the art fairs that gathered them, which created a really robust contemporary art economy, which created lots of opportunities for artists. But, at a certain point, you felt like your production cycle wasn't your own anymore. You said, “I felt like I was in a circus, and I wanted to leave the circus. I was very grateful for the opportunities, but I was kind of done.”

You had this moment where you wanted to take a step back, which is quite a brave thing to do when you found this degree of success that you had found.

What did it feel like to take that step back? Was it just inevitable? Was it something you just had to do, or was it a choice? Did you feel like you were doing something risky?

Paul Chan:

I think you've characterized what I put myself through pretty well. I don't know if it was inevitable that I would quit. My gallerist would probably say it wasn't. But I think that moment in my life, like so many moments in our lives where we feel like a path is forked, comes with a sense of really having to listen to yourself and all your senses about what those senses are telling you about what is happening to you, and around you.

And at that point, my senses were telling me that, as cool and as fun, as vivid and festive as it was, something was wrong. So, it was then a question of whether or not I was going to listen to those senses. Whether I would pay attention to them, whether I would take them seriously. You know, there are many times when we don't take our senses seriously, when we don't listen to what we feel.

In the case of 2008, 2009, I had sensed that I was tired. I was done, and I wanted to try something else. What that something else was, I didn't know. But I was always dumb like that. The uncertainty never scared me as much as the anxiety that comes from regret, I suppose. I didn't know that I would return to art making. I didn't plan on it. I didn't plan on any of it. All I actually planned to do was to clean my studio and maybe check my email every once in a while, back in 2008, 2009. But I thought I'd give it a go, and here I am. 

Charlotte Burns:

Now you are back making art, you have this major museum show. It's going to be on tour for two years. Do you feel like you're back in the circus, or does it feel different?

Paul Chan:

I'm not back at the circus. I'm not, and I think it's because the circus has moved on from me, which is great. I think a new world deserves new art, and a new world deserves new artists. And so the festive, vivid, complicated circus that we understand as commercial contemporary art, I think has gone on. And it's wonderful to see the circus from afar and to partake in it every once in a while, but I think I live differently. And also, I have different, perhaps even more peculiar ambitions. I like the circus, but it’s something I do on weekends, I suppose. 

Charlotte Burns:

Let's talk a little bit about those ambitions. Can you define your ambitions? I know you don't like really being pinned down, so I'm going to try and do that.  

Paul Chan:

Oh. It's a great question. I'd like to stay alive. I would like to keep all my limbs. I would like to raise my daughter to be the most resilient, independent-minded and cunning person I can. I would like to get a haircut every three months. That's mostly about it.

Charlotte Burns:

So I like this idea that you brought up of cunning. I also love that you brought up your daughter. I was reading an interview you did in Vogue with your then 10-year-old daughter, Ruby, about your 2021 work, A Drawing as a Recording of an Insurrection. You explained how you were giving away a drawing to anybody who registered to vote on-site at the gallery, Greene Naftali, where it was showing. And she reacted, “You're giving away art?” which just really made me laugh. And you said, “It's not like they're worth anything, Ru. But maybe it's a gesture to remind people you know about voting and participating in a democracy. And maybe art can play a role in democracy in a new and vital way.” 

But I love the fact that your daughter got straight to the heart of the value of art. “You're giving it away? Like, why would you give it away?” And you often want to give things away. You'd given away the source files, for example, of a New Museum work in 2008, The 7 Lights (2005-07). And you were asked about it by a journalist who expressed similar kind of incredulity. You're giving it away, it's an editioned work of art, and someone could recreate it. And you said, “you could conceivably, and you could try and sell it on the open market, but A) it takes more than the work itself to sell the work.” And you said, “Besides, there's no such thing as the open market.” 

But you are very drawn to that idea of the open market. Through Badlands [Unlimited], the publishing company that you ran, you were looking for decentralized ways to deal with e-commerce. You were one of the first publishers to take Bitcoin, and you said, “There's no such thing as an open market. Bitcoin is maybe an option, maybe even an answer, or at least something like it.” 

Are you still looking for that idea of an open market in the way that you think about disseminating your work and the ideas that you are interested in?

Paul Chan:

What you brought up about Ruby being flabbergasted that I was giving away artwork and how it relates to maybe earlier things I had done in my life, my so-called career, and to me, what connects those two experiences may be the more general experience I have about the nature of value, which is fundamentally social.

There is, to me, nothing inherently valuable about anything. It may seem to be the case that gold, as we understand this sort of precious metal, is somehow inherently valuable because everyone covets it. But I think it took some point early in our history for someone to say, “this looks and feels valuable, and so we should save it and we should prize it and we should use it for whatever purposes.” I am a believer that value is ultimately socially derived. 

So when Ruby was flabbergasted that I was giving away artwork, on the one hand, you could conceivably think, “oh, you're giving away something that's valuable, that has value.” On the other hand, the way I see it is, perhaps the giving away part inaugurates a new kind of value for it. One that's not derived from what we generally and conventionally understand is how we value things like artwork. 

I think you can think that way if you believe that value is fundamentally socially derived as opposed to inherently derived. I know there could be artists and perhaps galleries that believe that there is an inherent value in art, that the thing itself holds the value. And it may be the case. I think those forms of values are fair game and I think exist, and we should live with them and partake in them when we can. But to believe that that is the only kind of value that an artwork can take on is, to me, narrow-minded and close-hearted. 

What was the second thing?

Charlotte Burns:

The second part is open-sourcing, but let's put that as a fork over there that we'll loop back around to and talk about value a little bit. I just read the book that you produced.

Give me one second while I find that piece of paper. 

Paul Chan:

Charlotte, if you're having trouble with those papers, you could have invited me last week to your place. I would've helped you, uh, file them, put 'em away. Just let me know.

Charlotte Burns:

Well, I'm, yeah, I'm living in a different country, but you're very welcome because my books are a mess. I just moved. 

Paul Chan:

Okay. Where did you go?

Charlotte Burns:

That's a long story. We'll get into that. 

Paul Chan:

So where, where are you? Do you mind me asking?

Charlotte Burns:

No, not at all. I'm in the middle of the countryside in a village in England, in the UK, in the middle of the middle of an island.

Paul Chan:

Oh.

Charlotte Burns:

Far away from New York, which is where I was. 

Paul Chan:

How do you like it? Do you like it? Do you mind me asking?

Charlotte Burns:

I don't mind you asking. I…I don't know. I do and I don't like it. It was necessary at this point in time, I think, for lots of different reasons. And I think then that if things are necessary at some point in time, then you have to let go of other things and you have to be on a different path and be on that path, whatever it is, and think about it in a different way.

Actually, something you said in that book about being an outsider, it reminds me of growing up being outside things. And I wanted to get to the heart of things and now I'm back away from the heart of things, but I don’t know if I'm away, really. When you, if you think about the value of art and this is what I was thinking about last night. My daughter wouldn't sleep and so she came into my room, and I was reading your book, and she said, “What are you reading? Will you read it to me?” And so I was reading this Japanese philosopher to my daughter, who's six, and showing her some videos of your work, which she found funny and creepy and said, “Why don't they have heads? But I like the way they move.” I was thinking it was great that I didn't need to be anywhere for That. I could just be with those ideas and think about them and share them in a way that if you were inside something, if you were inside the circus, I guess you wouldn't.

I don't know that that's an answer to your question, but I did think about that last night that physical distance is a kind of outside-ness that can be useful for thinking.

Paul Chan:

I think that's a great train of thought that I'll piggyback on just a bit because what it reminds me of is the capacity for those who are in contemporary art to partake in a particular quality that art has to offer, which is the capacity for us to change the goalposts of a game. That I think, what you say about being in the center of it, I think I understand in spirit, you know. So let's say for the sake of argument, conventionally speaking, New York is the epicenter of contemporary art, for many people and for lots of epochs, that's true—and it may still be true. But on the other hand, if I was to take seriously the experience of art and what it has taught me and what I have learned from it, it's that art is most cunning and perhaps at its best when it shifts the goalposts of what it means to be it and what value may mean.

And so your experience of shifting the goalposts, of realizing that maybe New York or those typical epicenters can be shifted, so that you can partake in it in your bedroom with your daughter on a laptop on an island, and have it sort of resonate in such a way that it makes sense, perhaps even more sense than being in a gallery in the Lower East Side, I think is a quality that I think art offers and art can illuminate for us. That's why I think of art in terms of cunning in a very historical lineage. And I think it's an important and vital concept for me, as far as I recognize it in art or certainly the art that I admire.

Charlotte Burns:

Let's talk a little bit about that cunning because I was confused about that a little bit last night. I was reading this book Above All Waves: [Wisdom from Tominaga Nakamoto, the Philosopher Rumored to Have Inspired Bitcoin] an Introduction, which is about Japanese philosopher  Tominaga [Nakamoto], and this idea of decentralizing moral value. And I won't explain it as well as you, but there's a point in the book where he looks at the dominant thought systems of moral philosophy at the time and essentially decides that there's something like a fraud because whatever the original kernel of the idea was, the followers of that philosophy have had to explain and convince other people of the integrity of that philosophy. And in doing so, have led to aesthetic embellishments, which Tominaga essentially says there are a kind of deception and fraud, and it's this kind of cunning that people have used to get followers towards Buddhism or Confucianism or these different schools of thought. And that because they're, therefore a kind of fraud, we don't have to think of them as sacrosanct. 

And so Tominaga, who seems to be someone that you have as a kind of hero, is seemingly slightly anti-cunning. And then, when I look at the Greene Naftali website, they describe you as an artist who has a Homeric cunning to your practice. So, can you square that for me?

Paul Chan:

Sure. I think one thing to say is that perhaps the description of me being Homeric cunning is a pure PR stunt. It’s possible to say it that way so it's easy to dismiss. On the other hand, I think how you describe Tominaga is right. But I would only add that my feelings and my characterization of cunning involves more than the creative act of making something out of nothing but that my notion of cunning as I have learned it, is that cunning is itself a form of reason. And that in practicing cunning, you become more reasonable. 

Let's say Charlotte, that you are a great thief. So let's say as Charlotte Burns being the great thief, you may carry yourself a certain way and have certain tools on you. And what if then on the street you see someone else who is carrying the same tools that carry themselves in the same way. You may be able to recognize them as a thief as well, right?

And so I think the notion is that, through practice, you come to learn a certain way of thinking, feeling, being—a certain methodology, perhaps—that you can recognize when someone else is deploying them. 

And so maybe the next step of that is that, let's say for the sake of argument, aesthetics is the capacity or the methodology of making anything agreeable. That means to me that if you were genuine in your experience of art, you may be able to understand what makes anything agreeable, whether it's a painting or a car loan or a federal policy. Because car loans have an aesthetic to them, federal policy has an aesthetic to them, and that aesthetics is the capacity to make you believe that what they're saying is true, is reasonable and right and should be believed. That's an aesthetic, and our capacity to recognize aesthetics being deployed in things other than art, to me, may only come from a genuine exposure and experience to art itself. Because my claim is that a more genuine experience in art allows us to be more vigilant when aesthetics is being deployed in other arenas of our life and that truly is what I think cunning is. That's cunning in The Odyssey.

In Homer's The Odyssey, the main character, Odysseus, is described as polytropos, which in ancient Greek means “many ways.” The poet Stephen Mitchell translated the word polytropos to cunning for the first time in 2012. It's true Odysseus is a liar and a cheat, but he is also the most reasonable person in the story. He's the guy who says, “Don't go on that island because if you eat those cows you will anger the gods and we will be screwed.” He's the guy who realizes that we shouldn't mess with these people because they will fuck with us. In the story, he not only is the most creative person, but in a way, Homer intimates that his creativity is what gives him a better sense of reasoning. And I think that's an important aspect of the aesthetic experience in general. 

Charlotte Burns:

If I'm synthesizing this correctly, it's sort of this idea that what art can do is prepare us to live better against systems that may not have our best interests at heart because we can recognize. We can be more reasonable. We can be better prepared. That the five senses, as we think of them, sit alongside another set of senses, our internal set of senses and that these things work together and that they empower reason, but that we have to have our senses alive in order for reason to be capable of being practiced. 

You then wrote that “What stands between democracy and mass deception is the genuine experience of art because aesthetics heightens epistemic fitness if and when artists practice and experience with more than a return on investment or taste-making in mind.” I love this idea of epistemic fitness, of art, you know, being this workout essentially for our survival. 

Paul Chan:

I think we generally know what's called the five big senses: seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. But those are not, certainly not our only senses that we possess. We possess also a suite of senses that are collectively called interoception and it's weird. It took up to the 1960s and ‘70s for human beings to acknowledge that we have sensory capacities inside us. Before, we just took Aristotle on face value that we only had five senses. Our senses are called Aristotelian senses because Aristotle came up with them and we've kept with them for thousands of years. 

The notion that we have sensory capacity inside our bodies. Hunger is considered a sense. That's just common experience. We feel hungry. Our capacity to tell how much oxygen is in our body is a sense. Our capacity to tell our heart rate is a sense. Proprioception is our capacity to tell where our limbs are even though we don't see them. These senses collectively help to give us a sense of what is happening inside us.

And so it must be these senses connected to our Aristotelian senses that truly give us a greater picture of our situation. And as a consequence of that, and as an artist who's interested in experiences, it must be that aesthetics—as a methodology or a theoretical, conceptual, perhaps even an emotional framework for understanding what is agreeable—aesthetics must also touch upon those senses as well. For me, understanding interoception and other things that I've learned and admired over the years have given me a kind of peculiar picture of what art is and what art can be.

To me, it's like a whole new perspective in seeing things. And I think it dovetails nicely into the notions of cunning and art, insofar as in our common experience, I think, Charlotte, that when we, when we meet someone that we find incredibly uncomfortable or perhaps a creeper, we may not see it right away, but we can certainly feel it. And who knows what that is, right? 

I'm just trying to make sense of the world like everyone else. 

Charlotte Burns:

We're living in a moment when lots of authorities are being questioned and the power of institutions is fraught. Whether that's the role of media, whether that's institutions like museums or governments or monarchies, a lot of that has been decentralized, in a way because of the internet, but also is consolidated at the same time.

Bitcoin and blockchain are two separate things. Do you still think that there is the promise of something else there in the same way you did, you know, 10 or 15 years ago?

Paul Chan:

I first knew about Bitcoin in 2010. And I didn't actually think much of it when I first learned about it. I was actually interested in the Silk Road. Do you remember the Silk Road, Charlotte? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. I was really fascinated that you were interested in that. And the dark web, you wanted to sell things on the dark web and reach new audiences, reach people beyond typical art and culture, right? Is that what was going on? 

Paul Chan:

Yeah, in 2010, that's when I started Badlands. And as someone who's never run a business before, I absolutely had no idea what I was doing. You know, I literally bought a book called Small Business for Dummies, and I thought I could learn from that way. And I started Badlands out of my studio. And one of the ambitions of Badlands was to be the first serious e-book art book publisher because, at the time, e-books were in the ascent, and it was cheap to make e-books as opposed to spending thousands of dollars making paperback books that no one will buy and will sit in my studio for years and years, in perpetuity, probably.

So we focused on e-books, but I was also very curious about what other ways we can distribute our books. And one of them was the dark web, literally an alternative internet. And the Silk Road was a website on the dark web that was notorious as being one of the most robust marketplaces for people to buy and sell goods. And so I wanted Badlands to be a vendor on the Silk Road. But in order for you to be on the Silk Road, you had to use Bitcoin. You couldn't accept USD or Visa on the Silk Road. They only accepted and used Bitcoin, and so I thought, what is Bitcoin? We actually never ended up being a vendor of the Silk Road, but I think we kept up with Bitcoin and in 2011 became, I think, the first art book publisher to accept Bitcoin payment for works and books, which no one ever took us on up on until 2017.

Crypto has certainly changed since 2010. And I'm not part of the crypto space enough to really have anything concrete or salient to say about where it's going. I do know that it hasn't left. And for me personally, I really do differentiate Bitcoin with crypto, Bitcoin being the first cryptocurrency. It’s also qualitatively different than the other cryptocurrencies that have come, and so for me, Bitcoin is just, among other things, a remarkable story about an anonymous inventor who invented something that still exists, that has had such an outsized influence on how we live in the contemporary world.

I'm not aware of a technological invention that has not been hacked, and that has had that such an outside influence that nations are now thinking of doing it. I just think it's a remarkable story. For me as a publisher or as a reformed publisher, or maybe a recovering publisher, I find it fascinating to think about the blockchain as a form of publishing because that's what it really is. The blockchain is essentially an open database so that anyone can write or read it. That's what it is. And so if you take the notion that publishing is simply the act of making information public, regardless of medium, then the blockchain really is just a kind of evolution of what is possible as publishing. And so that's how I thought of it and continue to think about it and continue to develop peculiar things quietly, secretly on my end to sort of make that a reality for me. 

Charlotte Burns:

Make that a reality for you in what way?

Paul Chan:

Since sort of the transition of Badlands from it having an office and having a staff, and sort of folding, folding the work, is that I had enough time to really delve into the technologies of things that I'm interested in. 

One of the other reasons why I stopped making work is that my work before 2008, 2009 was so sort of entwined with technology, video projections, right? Animations, the look of it, how it was produced, how it was presented. Along with reaching what I call peak screen, where we're so tired of looking at screens that we can't bear to look at it anymore, I think maybe I also reached a kind of peak technology that I felt like technology as a field wasn't interesting. 

Back then, the technology that was on the ascent was like social media and apps and sort of the development of the web as a kind of service. And it wasn't interesting. It just was kind of boring and so I kind of left. But around 2015, 2016, to me, particular kinds of technology became interesting again.

Charlotte Burns:

Which kinds? 

Paul Chan:

Well, you've got machine learning, you've got the development of blockchains, and maybe it's those two. It's the rise and the golden age of AI in 2015, 2016, and the sort of maturation of Bitcoin, not only as a technology but as a platform for other things, like other cryptocurrencies and other technologies that play with fintech, financial technology. 

I'm not a technologist. I'm not a developer. I'm not a programmer. I may be nothing. But the best part about being nothing is that everything is up for grabs. I have no domain to protect and so I can go in and out of them as I please, and no one's wiser for it.

Charlotte Burns:

When you're experimenting in these more secret capacities, do you have a sense of ultimately making those things public—producing a body of work or producing a book? Because I know that part of the issue in 2008 was production, and then you became a book producer and publisher, and now you are producing work again. It feels like there's always a tension between product and the other forms of creative act. And so do you envision some of these forays into technology now that you're doing resulting in a production, or is it more that the creative act itself is enriching? 

Paul Chan:

I don't know is the truth. For instance, I just wrote an essay that'll come out in May, and the essay is called, “Sympathy for the Devil in the Machine,” and it's an essay about my experience of creating what I call a self-portrait of me using GPT-3, which is a variant of the chat GPT produced by OpenAI.

OpenAI is the company that has been innovating in what's called natural language processing in the NLP space and they have arguably one of the largest LLMs out there. LLM stands for large language model, and it's these models that allow one to generate text using machine learning frameworks that can sound human.

All I know is that I'm curious to know what it can do for artists, but I'm not willing to work with software engineers or developers to do it, like partner with Google or MIT because in my experience, working with technologists in art projects is a terrible experience.

And so my only choice is to learn it on my own. When you do that, you sort of set your own time frame and you make your own mistakes, and those mistakes lead you elsewhere. And I think that's part of the pleasure of it, you know? 

Like you talked about earlier, about how you wanted to talk about value and pleasure and maybe one way to talk about pleasure is a capacity to control our own time. Time may be the only non-human thing I really care about losing. I can lose everything. I think I've lost everything. I've lost everything. I'm willing to lose it all. I'm not willing to lose time.

And so the capacity to control my own time to do things like learn linear algebra so that I can more adeptly do programming in machine learning or learn enough JavaScript to do a database of my own work or learn differential calculus so I truly understand what a gradient and a derivative is insofar as machine learning frameworks use those to statistically understand what the next word ought to be in a sentence.

They may not lead to anything. What they ultimately lead to is my sense of my own time, and that to me, is more precious than anything else. 

Charlotte Burns:

I think that's really interesting because as I was preparing for this interview, one of my questions was how did art alienate itself? I've was thinking about it in this series a little bit, is this idea of how we talk about art. The ways in which we've talked about art for as long as I've been a person working in the arts have been around the price of art, the value of it monetarily, or around the sort of social good of art. You know, if you think of Tate Modern opening in the UK, it was a massive moment where we talked about art for all. If you ever went to an Armory [Show] art fair, you would hear Mike Bloomberg talking about the economic impact of the arts upon the City of New York with all the people working and the money coming in and the hotel stays. I was talking to someone in a big foundation the other day who was saying that they had asked artists to nominate institutions that were really meaningful for artists, and they were really surprised by how few museums were on that list. 

I was thinking about that and don't really know the answer, but something to do with that circus that you talked about and using languages that maybe constrained art or took away the time or the inefficiency of it. Art was meant to do something, and in a certain way that we could put a metric on and I'm not sure that it's worked. 

That’s what I was thinking about art and time and freedom when I was reading your book. You said, “Art is a field of endeavor that historically has tolerated the act of making something out of nothing and that it's not so much what's left behind by that act for you, but those ways of thinking and making that can be admirable.”

Paul Chan:

I got you. I feel the spirit of what you're saying. What struck me as you were talking about how artists and nominating institutions, that so few museums showed up on the list. It reminds me of an experience I had for the last couple of years, actually. I've been on an artist council at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, run by Kathy Halbrech, and this is a council consisting of 13 or 14 artists who help the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation give away money. 

And one of the interesting experiences about the group is there are arts spaces and groups or entities that we've given away money to, but there's also a wide array of other groups that we've given money to: advocacy for housing, advocacy to help with the problem with desert islands in different places; indigenous rights; voting rights; advocacy groups for mental healthcare, not only for artists, for others. 

And I think how we characterize the reason for the kind of spectrum of spaces, as opposed to just focusing on art spaces, is that working artists make better art when our civil society works better. That artists aren't any different than you or your neighbor or my neighbors. We're human beings and it just happens that we make art. But as a person who makes art, we need access to better healthcare. We need access to more equitable housing. We need a civil society that works better for more people than not, because our argument is, if it works better, we make better work.

So supporting those kinds of institutions, those endeavors, I think uplifts art insofar as we know what underwrites the production of art, are working artists and working artists need better healthcare, need a kind of judicial system that works, that is equitable. What I would say as a maker is that my experience with art has taught me that in genuine experiences with art, I can discern more ably the aesthetic qualities that make anything agreeable. 

And so, I don't know if this is true, but my claim is that if you have a genuinely serious experience in art over time, that you will be able to tell a good car loan from a bad one. That a bad car loan will have the kind of aesthetic qualities that will want you to believe that it is a good car loan and that only someone with a genuine experience of art and only someone who has an in-depth sort of experience with aesthetics, right—the capacity to make something persuadable or agreeable, regardless of what it is—will be able to tell, will see the telltale signs of the ways in which the contract is written or designed to convince you that it's worth doing. And so you'll be more likely than someone else with no experience in art to say, this doesn't smell right. This doesn't look right. And my suggestion is that you only get that experience if you go see a Chris Marker film or a sculpture by Iza Genzken or a painting by X.

I don't know if it's true, it's a theory. It may be a terrible one, but I like it because it gives me a new reason, it gives me a renewed purpose of what art can be. 

Charlotte Burns:

Did you need that new purpose? You said you felt like you'd lost everything and I read in the Star Tribune that Badlands bankrupted you. Have you experienced that as a grief? Are you going through a phase of renewal now? Where are you in that process of loss? 

Paul Chan:

[Laughs] Oh, that's a great question. Where am I in the process of loss? I think we're always losing. You ever read that, Charlotte, you know that great essay by Anna Freud on losing and being lost? Have you ever read that? It’s beautiful. 

Charlotte Burns:

I probably lost it.

[Laughter]

Paul Chan:

Yeah. I think I've lost it too. I'm gonna have to find it again. I love that essay. I've lost as much as anyone else has. No more, no less. But I don't grieve it. You know? I am… how would I describe myself? This is how I describe it. I believe in science. I believe the world is round. I believe that the earth revolves around the sun, right? I believe that we are multicellular beings. And I believe in Newton's law of energy conservation. 

Newton's law of conservation is that mass equals energy. That energy in a closed system, energy in a closed system is never lost, it only changes right in form, right? So energy turns into mass, mass into energy, but no energy's lost. So I think, to completely misuse Newton, I suggest that any loss that we feel may be a kind of game, if you are willing to see it as a transformation, I suppose. 

So, I don't wish for anyone to go bankrupt. I certainly didn't want to go bankrupt. But I loved every experience. I loved the whole time of going into bankruptcy. It was worth it working with the young artists and writers. It was worth it putting out books that were accessible while being—hopefully—culturally, intellectually sophisticated. It was worth it to make books that people could afford, $12.95, $11.95, as opposed to artist monographs that are $60, $70, that weigh 75 pounds. It was worth it. 

And so the loss, I don't really think about as much as what I gained from it. And maybe this is my way of dealing with it. But I don't know how you gain something unless you lose something else. I don't know how that works. I don't know what it means to only win. I don't know what it means to only gain. And it strikes me that people who want to only gain are people who Marx called primitive accumulationists.  

Charlotte Burns:

I really like that. I was talking to my daughter the other night. She was really sad about something, which she's not usually, she's a very happy child. I was like, when you have these moments, it's just like, I’d seen a picture of a heartbeat, it's just like that. It goes up and it goes down and that's how you know. And that's what it's gonna be forever. It's gonna go up and then it's gonna go down and that's just what your heart will do. And that will also be the landscape of everything that comes from your heart. 

You talked about this idea of transformation a little bit and something I was reading today…

Paul Chan:

Wait, can I just say one thing after that? I think that's great. What I empathize about it is the feeling as a parent that you want to give your daughter a different way of seeing it, which is very important. And perhaps another way of describing what I've been calling cunning is that, just simply another way of describing something so that the choices that are given or self-evident are not the only ones available, because truly that's what the creative act is, to me. Giving oneself or others choices where none are self-evident or given. Apart from that, to cultivate a capacity for that, to me, would mean cultivating and deepening our sensory awareness of the things around us and also within us.

And who knows what makes us sad or depressed. There's an infinite number of reasons but it seems to me that a capacity to reflect upon what it is that saddens us or depresses us in a way that speaks to an accounting that we feel up to is one of the ways in which we can pull ourselves out of it. When it's a fog of depression or a fog of sadness, one of the reasons why it feels so debilitating is because we can't pinpoint what it is. I'm not saying a deepening of sensory capacities can pinpoint it, but it may be possible to at least give it shape and in giving it shape, we have more of a chance of describing it. And in describing it, perhaps there's a way of coming out of it. 

Charlotte Burns:

I think it makes a lot of sense what you're saying. There's something about art that is about ideas and is about being able to think and reason beyond the systems that you are in. There is a creative space that you step into. And something about it is that very physical experience of seeing something. I don't think I understood Minimalism when I read about it until I went to Dia and I stood in front of those [Gerhard] Richter mirror paintings, and I was like, why do I always stand to the left? You have to approach things head on. And I realized I should move into life more directly, rather than obliquely, through Richter. 

Paul Chan:

See that's interesting, right? That to me connects to the notion that to see something in person is to engage all the sensory capacities.

But IRL [in real life] experience with art are truly, at its best, engages the whole of us in a way that makes us feel a little wholer. I think if one were to engage in it or see it that way, and it doesn't come from mediated technologies. I'm not a leadite, you know, I think we need technology. Do we need technology? I don't know. I'm agnostic about it, but I do know that I believe that experiences like art are at its best when they're fully embodied.

Charlotte Burns:

You talked about writing being a full-bodied experience and also this idea of the glimpses of what you learn, you know, that maybe it's not important to remember everything, but the things that fall away are the spaces that leave the gaps for, you know, the next inventor of Bitcoin to put all of those things together and create something totally new. 

Paul Chan:

Oh, see, now Charlotte, we have to really find that essay on losing and being lost by Anna Freud.

Charlotte Burns:

We're gonna have to do. We'll have to find it. 

[Laughter]

Part of this makes me think about fetishes. You said in an interview that you had a foot fetish but I was thinking that your work is almost deliberately anti-fetish. That you produce digital books when art books can fetch so much money, that your work has become further and further away from being material. It's now work made largely out of air when the art market’s in an all-time high for objects, for 2D objects specifically. And also this idea of rejecting the fetishizing of trauma via images. You broke sanctions to go and visit Baghdad and you filmed Iraqi citizens dancing and singing in the face of the impending Gulf War. You refused to put out images of conflict and trauma post-Katrina. You staged Waiting for Godot in the ninth ward, which had been very badly damaged by the floods. You refused the mediation of crisis as image at all and so it seems like a lot of your work is moving away from that idea of fetish. 

Paul Chan:

I don't know if I would characterize it under the rubric of fetish. What I would say is that we are shaped as much by what we say no to as what we say yes to. I am a big fan of people who say no. I'm a big fan of quitters. The first book that I published at Badlands after my own stuff was Yvonne Rainer's first book of poetry. Yvonne is a national treasurer and began her career as a choreographer but quit and said, I'm done, and became a filmmaker.

All those instances that you point out is really just… I don't know if I think of it in terms of fetish as much as thinking about what it means to say, “I prefer not to.” It's again, the loss and gain thing. What do you lose and what do you gain? Is it possible to redescribe them so the loss is in fact a gain and perhaps the gain is the loss. I mean, it's a vertiginous way of thinking and I don't recommend it to anyone. It's a terrible way to think. It's really awful. But maybe the only saving grace is that one becomes more comfortable with uncertainty and unpredictability, and to not see those things as only threatening, that perhaps we can think of them in ways other than merely threatening.

Charlotte Burns:

Does that work for you? Do you see those things now? Are you more comfortable with uncertainty? 

Paul Chan:

I haven't lived a peripatetic life, but I've moved around a lot and so I've had as much uncertainty in my life as anyone else, I suppose. What's interesting is that my experience of art has encouraged me and gave me permission to think about uncertainty in different ways. Certainly not as a threat. Certainly as perhaps something that could be of value and perhaps could lead to something even better. It can certainly lead to something worse. I mean, I've made terrible works, arguably, it's all terrible. But I think I can't say that I've been attracted to certainty a lot.

Charlotte Burns:

You said at the top of this show that one of your ambitions was to live, which is a serious thing. You were diagnosed with very severe asthma, when you were young. Your mother was told to plan your funeral, that you had a 10% chance of surviving, and the family left Hong Kong to escape the air pollution to move to Iowa and Nebraska.

And you've said that you think about the body a lot when you're asthmatic and you think about breathing. So it's funny to use air as a medium, which you now do with the works that you produce, the breathers, these wonderful creations that exist between sculpture and mobiles and moving image.

If you're familiar with the American landscape of car dealerships, you've probably seen these sky dancers, tube men, clothes for spirits, as your work has been described, and you've sort of repurposed that idea and powered these creations by industrial fans and using different fabrics, and one of the works you created, you said is the closest thing you've made to a self-portrait, and it's the sort of movement of an asthmatic attack.

And when I look at these works, they're so moving. Also this idea of engaging bodily, that there's something you can view full on and it’s noisy and you can hear them, but they're also things that move slightly peripherally. I always think, like, what happens when the machines are turned off? They seem very much about mortality in a way and that human condition of struggling—and they're also kind of fun. 

Can you talk a little bit about the breath of it all? 

Paul Chan:

Should I talk about this? You know, I just had…[Laughs] Why not? We only live once, right? Wait, that's not true. We live every day. We only die once. In any case, I had a recent revelation. Should I say this revelation?

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. You should.

Paul Chan:

Oh no. I am gonna save it. I'm gonna save it. 

Charlotte Burns:

You're gonna save it or say it? 

Paul Chan:

I'm gonna save it. Should I say it? 

Charlotte Burns:

No! You can't do that to me. I'll be wondering for the rest of my life what it was. 

Paul Chan:

Okay. But I think it's gonna trigger podcast warnings. So it might, this whole episode may be taken down for lewd, for rudeness or perversity.

Charlotte Burns:

It's fine. It's fine. 

Paul Chan:

Okay. They revert between geometry and mimetic representations of animals and human beings. I like that interstitial space and it's very important. When I design them, I have to categorize certain parts of their bodies. The part that's connected to the fan I call the body, and then the parts that are around the body I call limbs. And then there is the opening, which I naturally assumed was the head. 

But I recently sat down and had to do a kind of an audit of my patterns that I designed to make these. I'm doing a hardcore database that can work with machine learning techniques to heighten the experience of designing them on my own. And I had to really think about, well, is the body a body? Are these limbs? What do I call them? And it turns out that if I seriously look at it, the opening on the top is not a head. Because the opening at the top is where air comes out. And a head isn't a place where things come out. A head is a place where things go in. And so technically the fan is the nutrient and the part that connects the limb to the fan is the mouth, is the head, which means then that the opening here is the rectum. 

And so I had to reconcile the fact that I'm making these things and they're literally assholes. 

[Laughter]

Now, I don't know, I'm pretty sure this is not gonna sit well with anyone.

Charlotte Burns:

Literally. Literally not gonna sit, no.

Paul Chan:

But I thought, “Gosh, that's terrible. This is what I'm making.” But I'm too in it now. I enjoy myself too much making them. They're a sheer joy to make, and I think they have certainly renewed my interest in making work. And I think it really came from me finding myself in a situation where I had to truly come to terms with what I was willing and not willing to look at.

I'm very proud of the work that I did with screens, but I can't bear to look at screens to save my life. And so the real question is, well, what do I make? So for years, I didn't make anything, but I think it turned out, given time, if we give ourselves enough time and if we are honest enough with ourselves, for me, I realized that maybe all I cared about was the movement. And I think this is the sort of cascading and consequential sort of train of thought that led me to making breathers. That it allowed me, I gave myself permission to animate off of the screen.

So, you know, it's taken years, but I can comfortably say that I know how to shape air so that these things move in ways that I want them to, whether they're circling, whether they're drooping or the work that you're talking about, The Inhaler, it looks like a quasi human-like figure that is trying to hold up a towel but can barely do so because I find movement very moving. 

Charlotte Burns:

No, it really is. It's helped you literally create your own world. Like you've seen things in your own way and now you've created this sort of universe of these figures who are about movement. But how much of that is about controlling that universe and how much of that is about grappling with breath and air and mortality?

Paul Chan:

Whoa, that's a lot. That's a lot, Charlotte. I would say that in general, living tends to be a little easier when you don't feel like you need to control it. I would say that when contingency is a friend, living becomes friendlier. That I think life lived with the notion that you must have absolute control for it to be any good is not a good way to live. Not only is it unreasonable, it is maybe sadistic. And the question is, who are you being sadistic to? 

I don't feel like making breathers means I am controlling anything in particular. On its worst days, I feel like the world's worst seamstress and the world's worst pattern maker and the world's worst artist. On the better days, I feel like I'm on an adventure with material that has a life of its own. My capacity to negotiate with these materials so that they will allow me to make the thing that I see in my head—but only to the degree that they're willing to allow me based on the natural laws of the world—is as good as it gets.

It's a kind of synthesis between what I think I want and what the material's willing to be. It's never wholly from my mind but never wholly from the material. It's a sort of nether space, which I think is as good as it gets. 

Charlotte Burns:

Paul, this show is called What If, and I feel like our conversation is that because so much of your art, I think, is probing into all of these spaces. I'm going to round us out with a couple of specific ‘what ifs.’

Do you have like a dream, if you had a magic wand, you would wave on the art world? Like “what if the art world,” or “what if art was…”

Paul Chan:

“What if the art world was dot, dot, dot?” Is that the question? 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. Or “what if art was…”

Paul Chan:

Oh, that's two radically different questions. 

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah. But you can choose which one you'd like. 

Paul Chan:

[Laughter] Okay. You know, the funny thing is, and this could be my contrarian nature, nothing exactly comes to mind. [Laughter] Let me try it on. What if the art world was, what if art was more and less than a thing? Can I say that? I'll try that on. What if art was more and less than a thing? Full stop. 

Charlotte Burns:

So what is the “what if” that keeps you up at night, and what's the one that motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?

Paul Chan:

Oh, whoa. Oh, the night's easy. What if the salmon I ate was bad? That usually keeps me up at night. It usually does keep me up at night. 

What is it that gets me up in the morning? [Laughter] What if I forgot to turn off the heat in my studio? That's the one that wakes me up in the morning.

[Laughter]

That's a good one. 

Charlotte Burns:

Do you often leave the heat on in the studio? You have a lot of fans in your studio. So… 

Paul Chan:

Charlotte, I'm a terrible artist. I don't know how to run anything. A studio, a business, email. I can barely buy pants. 

Charlotte Burns:

Paul, you shouldn't talk about yourself in this way. There is substance in what we say, as Tominaga wrote.

[Laughter]

Paul Chan:

That's so true. And my substance is inability to buy pants. I don't actually even know what my pants size is. Is it 28? Does that sound right? I don't even know. 

Charlotte Burns:

It probably depends on the salmon. 

Paul Chan:

I think so. I think so. 

Charlotte Burns:

Depends on the salmon.

[Laughter]

Paul Chan:

I like that.

Charlotte Burns:

Paul, thank you so much for joining me today. This has truly been my pleasure. 

Paul Chan:

Oh, it's been a lot of fun. It was great talking to you.

Charlotte Burns:

My enormous thanks to Paul Chan for some of the most interesting hours I’ve spent talking to anyone.

Next time, curator and choreographer, Rashida Bumbray, joins us to talk about some of her what ifs and share her performances… 

Rashida Bumbray:

We really deserve spaces of experimentation, spaces of incubation. And that is sort of the ‘what if’; what if we actually had that? What if we actually had the resources, the space that would allow us to then push our imagination to its experimental lengths.

Join us then on The Art World: What If…?! 

And in the meantime, you might like to listen to our friends over at Artnet.

Artnet Ad:

In a time of global upheaval, art provides an invaluable lens for understanding our change in society. I’m Andrew Goldstein, host of Artnet News’s The Art Angle podcast, a show dedicated to those places where the art world meets the real world bringing each week’s biggest stories down to earth. Join us for conversations with artists and thinkers, analysis and in-depth reports on the most pressing subjects. 

Stay contemporary. Subscribe to The Art Angle wherever you get your podcasts. 

Charlotte Burns:

Love that show. Definitely worth a listen. 

Our podcast, The Art World: What If…?!  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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 6: Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels

What if the art market had more faith in its own future? What if we could improve the health of the swamp? This episode, we consider the state of the market—and who better to join Charlotte Burns than co-host, the art advisor Allan Schwartzman, along with  Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, director at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and founder of We Buy Gold. Together they discuss the boom and bust, aspiration and desperation—and much more.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome back to The Art World: What If…?! I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and this is the podcast all about imagining different futures. 

[ Audio of guests]

This week, the art market. Who better to join the conversation than my co-host, the art advisor Allan Schwartzman and Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels. 

Joeonna is one of those dealers who actually has an eye. She can tell great art from the rest and she works tirelessly to support the artists she believes in. She works within traditional models but constantly innovates within them. A longstanding director at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, she also founded We Buy Gold in 2017, a roving gallery space that doesn’t represent artists but works instead with them to present exhibitions, commissioned projects and public events. 

Asked about the name We Buy Gold, she said: “It’s important to think about what we value, who we value and how we value it. It is a sign, slogan that we see all too often with its undertones of desperation and aspiration that I think can inform the way we think about the art world.”

In this episode, we’ll discuss some of that desperation and aspiration. What if we could improve the health of the swamp? What if the art market had more faith in its own future? But let’s begin at the beginning—talking about the state of the market right now.

First of all, just to say thank you for being here, both of you and wanted to talk to you today about markets, about models, about artists and art, and about value. 

So, people are expecting change this year. What kind of change are we expecting to see in the art market?  Where are we in the cycle? And when I say cycle, I mean the boom and bust.

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

Hmm. In terms of the boom and the bust, which are so extreme, I don't know that anyone knows where we are right now. There's a lot of conversation around an impending slowdown, recession—if we’re not in one already. I definitely hear a lot of conversations that revolve around that. I can't say that I have seen or experienced that, you know, firsthand, but that's certainly central to a lot of conversations right now.

Allan Schwartzman: 

Overall, we are in a very cautious period. There's a lot of talk about an impending slowdown in the art market that is based upon talk about the general economy overall and not based upon patterns within the art market, per se. 

As we've seen in the past, most times when the stock market goes down, the art market goes up. And that's primarily a function of the fact that people who are rich tend to get richer, or they stay rich and they put less money into stocks. And they therefore look for other places to put their money. The number of people collecting art has increased so dramatically over the last 10, 15 years that now you have that much more wealth that believes in art as an ongoing value. 

So I think that, barring a major international financial catastrophe, such as what was experienced in 2008, I think if we experience a sharply measurable slowdown in the art market, it could very much be rooted more in anxiety-wish fulfillment than in a reality of what needs to take place. And I have more of a caution for the talk around an expectation of a slowdown than of one naturally occurring by its own flow. 

Having said that, there's been so much of a spike in collecting both at the top end and at the emerging end over the last couple of years, there could easily be a slowdown that would have nothing to do with the economy but have to do with the cycle of where a new generation of collectors or collectors who emerged X years ago, are now with their collecting. 

You'll often find new collectors, particularly at moments where there's a lot of interesting work by younger artists that's very inexpensively priced, that you'll find collectors buying quite broadly. And then at a certain point, whether by budget or by volume and the shrinking of available wall space and the increase of storage, where people step back and say, “Wait a second, what really matters to me? Let me look at it differently.” 

So slowdown is…I really hate talking about the potential of a slowdown as so inextricably tied into the general economic cycles of the US economy.

Charlotte Burns:

There's a couple of things you both said there. There's a lot of talk—talk doesn't necessarily mean anything. But the art world is often led by conversation, and increasingly so, conversation and algorithms. And so a sense of softening might become a softening based on it not being totally rational anyway. 

But also, in previous downturns, it seems that the art market was more detached from the broader economy. There was less of a close connection between the two. But in those around 15 years since the last major crash—and like you say, Allan, that was a much bigger seismic collapse—it seems that the art market has become much, much closer to the broader economic markets, not only in terms of the language it uses and how it markets itself but also in terms of the people that it has successfully attracted into the art world. And so I wonder about that. The art market behaves much more like a financial market now, if you think of, like pumping and dumping, and BOGO, and all of these kinds of things, and also the mechanisms of things at auction, and the ways in which people think about value and the data they can use to track it. A lot of that behavior is quite different than other downturns. Do you think that changes things, that that closer connection between the art market and other markets?

Allan Schwartzman:

What I would say is that there are many things that affect buying cycles within the art market. In the last few years, concurrent with Covid, when most of the world was at home, you had a tremendous increase in collecting the work of young artists. As people go back to work and spend more time on their businesses, I think it's natural that you would have a slowdown regardless. 

And I would also say that there are always events that happen in the world that trigger parallel shifts in taste in terms of art. There are always periods, in strong markets and in weak markets, where the market kind of unconsciously, or as a broader pattern, begins to re-position what it considers valuable. 

I often point to the 1980s; the first half was all about bigger, better. As that market grew, things got more expressive, more and more physical, sometimes more decorative, often more ego-driven. By the end of the ‘80s, the taste had shifted completely. And artists like [Anselm] Kiefer and [Julian] Schnabel, that work was tended to be viewed as excessive or about a kind of glory day of play and entertainment. Whereas by the end of the decade, you had entire arts communities dying from AIDS, very young artists who didn't yet have time for their work to develop. And so, by the end of the ‘80s, taste had shifted to work that was far more introspective, psychological, modest in scale. No one could have, I should say, it would have been very hard to anticipate in 1982 that Bob Gober and Charlie Ray would become two of the most representative artists of their generation. 

So you could also see a shift in the market, a slowdown in the market, that's related more to shifts in sensibility and values than in money. But I think all these factors play into it.

Charlotte Burns:

Joeonna, do you see that sort of shift in taste? Do you see that in the gallery?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

Because I work very closely with a particular group of artists over a long period of time, while I definitely see new groups of collectors coming in, new generations of collectors coming in, micro-shifts in taste within the roster, I don't know that I can speak to a shift in taste, in a more broad sense. 

It complicates it when I work with a group of artists for, you know, over a decade. And so when I speak to a shift in taste within the roster over a decade, we can maybe have a conversation about how, you know, people have shifted towards it, but we've always been there. 

Allan Schwartzman:  

So that leads to a question for me, Joeonna, which is that your gallery does indeed represent artists who have been at the forefront of a shifting awareness and sense of significance to artists, some of whom had been there for quite some time, and some of whom are younger artists, but that are representative of wider cultural arcs that hadn't been quite so visible until your gallery, in fact, came into a focus that parallels some of the most sentient issues of our time. So, do you see a shift in the kind of scope of collector who has become interested in collecting the work of artists that you represent? 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

Absolutely. Yeah, we've definitely seen a shift, and we continue to grow through the expansion of people that have come to know us and get to know us and who we've worked with. Our collector base has grown exponentially, of course. 

And I also don't like to reward so much people who, you know… I mean, I don't want to center necessarily every conversation around, you know, who finally showed up, right? Or who, like, decided to start thinking about society more broadly in every conversation about value and what we're looking at and where the art world is today. 

I mean, yes, it's quite obvious that there are a lot of new eyes on a certain segment of the art world and the art market. But I wonder how we can continue to be committed in what we do and where we are interested in looking as more curious people. 

What if we are less interested in who's coming late? And more interested in what the artists are doing and where they're going and maybe continue to look in directions that maybe even we have not been looking in?

Charlotte Burns:  

I think it's a really great point because it's also to do with the language that’s used. And this is something you've talked about a lot, Joeonna. When you opened We Buy Gold in 2017, there was a lot of press around this roving art space that you created, in addition to your role as a director at Jack Shainman Gallery. 

And you said that your gallery had been discussed as focusing on non-White artists, and you thought it was a really interesting thing that the journalist had focused so much on that, because galleries who are mostly exclusively showing White artists aren't discussed in those terms. And I thought that was a really interesting distinction to make, is who gets categorized?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

Yeah, I think it's also a distinction, but I think it's also a normativity that I think needs to be always acknowledged, that sits with us everywhere we go. And it's really important for me to name it. Because otherwise, we start having conversations that continue to center that normativity because we're not acknowledging that that's where that conversation is. 

And I certainly question why so much press was around working with non-White artists, but that's also, you know, a catch-22. Certainly, like, it was a choice. Yes, they were just artists I was looking at and interested in—of course, we all work with artists that we're interested in. But you know, there is also a purpose that is beneath that surface and an intention about it. And I like to play with not talking about that intention in a way that a kind of normativity is not spoken about. But it's always, you know, wanting to acknowledge it and also wanting just to talk about the work in a different way. And we dance that line all the time, right?

Charlotte Burns: 

Jack Shaimman is obviously expanding this year. It's moving into a 20,000-sq ft home in Tribeca on Lafayette Street, opening with an exhibition of work by Nick Cave this fall. That's obviously an enormous expansion.

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:  

It's always Jack's and the gallery’s intention and interest to support the artists in the best ways that we can, and that means growing with the artist. It means reacting to their needs and their needs for expansion. 

We have been looking for another space for over a decade. And practically, it's just really difficult to do in Chelsea. There's really a shortage of spaces that were interesting to us, that made sense financially as well. And Tribeca has a similar energy as Chelsea had when Jack moved there. 

We were able to find a space that was just really, really exciting. We could think about our engagement with the architecture. We're kind of creating cubes within a very ornate structure, a kind of temple of sorts, as it's been referred to by Jack. That's another conversation. 

Yeah, I mean, for us, it's about sustainable expansion, as opposed to, like, imperious leanings of like wanting to buy up a bunch of real estate all over the world and expand in that kind of way. That's not really our interest. New York is our home, and we want to do what we do, and we want to do it well. In the same kind of way that our philosophies around working with artists and long-term strategies, we want things to work, to grow, to expand, but to not expand in a way that is a fever dream, responding to what other people seem to be excited about in the moment. 

We want to be there for the artist in 20 years, as opposed to reacting to a fresh gaze with a kind of delight that maybe overextends ourselves. But it's gonna be exciting as we open the space, I think it'll take a little bit longer than we had hoped to get in there just because of the amount of work that's necessary. But that's also really the fun part, thinking about how to create this new space, react to the existing architecture, but also how to create architecture within it that can respond to all of our artists and all of their different needs. 

So with every exhibition, you know, the walls are going to change. Nick really wants to respond to the existing architecture and wants to limit the amount of walls that we add into the space. And so we are listening to those requests and thinking about what those needs are, and really excited about how it can be this kind of ever-changing, ever-evolving project. And we'll be staying in Chelsea, too, because we're homebodies. And that's our home, it's been our home for a really long time. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's really interesting, the idea that the artist can come in and just change the space. That's something that was happening quite a lot at some point in the art market, I think in the early 2000s and has really shifted as things got much bigger, and much more white cube-ish, and much more corporate-looking. I remember when I worked at Hauser a million years ago, they were in that Lutyens building on Piccadilly, and it looked totally different with every single exhibition. 

How much of it's also about scale, about the sense of what you offer your artists in that, there are obviously the mega galleries poaching artists aggressively and ruthlessly. How much of it's also being able to compete in that sense of scale—if you have a massive project Jack Shaman can help the artist realize that?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

Of course. I mean, I would say that that is certainly a consideration, with the exception of the poaching and the mega galleries. I mean, it's related, sure. But I think that it’s really about responding to what the artists' needs are and growing with them. 

I mean, yes, 28-foot ceilings is what we're going to end up having in Tribeca. Artists need to be able to do things that they just could not do in the 20th Street space. That's also along the lines of why we went upstate with The School so that we could have exhibitions that we just could not do in Chelsea. And this is just a way of continuing that thought, continuing that ambition, a little bit closer to our home base.

Charlotte Burns: 

And this brings us back to artists. 

So Allan, talk to us about strategy here, too. How do you think of long-term strategy for artists’ careers?

Allan Schwartzman:  

Well, let me just say so much of the art market is rooted in primary galleries that represent artists. We can talk about the shifts from a focus in the primary market to the secondary market, which has taken place over the last decade or so in a notable way. 

But Joeonna represents artists, and there are many, many artists, and I would venture to guess, especially at Jack Shainman Gallery, that have very healthy and growing markets that are not reflected at auction and that are very sustainable, regardless of the market's lazy dependence upon data. 

Having also said that a few of the artists that have become, quote, “sensations” or have set records at auction that have become visible to a wider public through published data are a few of the artists that are represented by Jack Shainman Gallery. 

So, I'm imagining that Joeonna’s experience in terms of primary market and the solidity of that across various artists—and then how that gets reflected or not reflected at auction in data—happens to be somewhat different than most other primary galleries. So I just think that's worth stating as a kind of understanding of a market. 

If none of the artists you represent appeared at auction and set records or not, you would still have an extremely healthy primary market for most of the artists that you represent, probably to a much higher percentage or extent than most primary market galleries.

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

Yeah, no, I think that's a really important point. And hopefully indicative of part of a strategy. We, of course, want sustainable careers for our artists, and there are a lot of artists that are doing very well and are not reflected in auctions, and part of the strategy for us is also doing our damnedest to keep them out of the auction house. 

Certainly, we understand how it can be helpful in terms of data, people need certain benchmarks for understanding and making them feel more comfortable. They need a little bit of a backup to feel good about what they're doing. We understand you know, not completely head in the sand about those things. 

But we certainly try our hardest and try certain strategies to keep the work out of auction as much as possible because that's really where we find the most volatility lies. And we can do a pretty good job of helping an artist grow a really strong career without that happening. It's generally more helpful to be outside of the auction than it is to be within it.

Charlotte Burns:  

Your gallery model is like you’ve said, it's a traditional model, but actually, in a way, it's somewhat rare in the degree to which it's maintained that position. It's managed to grow with its artists, it's managed to steer them away from the more dangerous market volatility. Are other galleries equally able to do that? It seems to me that there are fewer galleries able to do that.

Allan Schwartzman:  

Jack Shainman Gallery is in an increasingly rare and certainly unique position. A significant number of artists amongst their roster are artists that are very actively collected, where the demand is greater than the supply. And the gallery has always done a great job of placing the work well, as Joeonna mentioned before. 

If you look at most galleries that emerged in, let's say, the last decade or so that represent younger artists, by and large, they have one or two artists that attract a great amount of early attention and very little elsewhere. And so it creates a very vulnerable situation. Those galleries are much more dependent upon maintaining the relationships with one or two artists for their survival. 

In my work, the area in which we've expanded the most is in the realm of advisory for artists. This is work that we do without any desire to compete with what galleries do—we're not seeking to be in the realm of sales—but there's an increasing number of artists who are aging out and have not prepared fully, if at all, for their legacy. 

And there's an increasing number of younger vital artists who have needs that often go beyond what a single business or entity can serve. I mean, we've been extremely successful in the growth of the art market through the growth of our collector advisory as well. 

But I've become increasingly aware that all of this is because of artists. And so much of this art market has kind of sidelined the notion of an artist as an evolving being that needs all kinds of support, in many ways, whether it's an artist who sells or an artist who doesn't sell. And that ultimately, the long-term health of this market, ultimately sustainability, is through a long-term faith and belief in the value of what artists do. And an ecosystem that supports it other than a market or beyond what a market is. 

Charlotte Burns:  

You used the word “faith.” When you're working with an artist or when you're looking at art, what is it that can make you believe in an artist's long-term vision, in their staying power, in them as being an artist of importance? 

Joeonna, I'm gonna go to you here; What do you look for? How do you know whose work you want to believe in? I was looking through the exhibition history of We Buy Gold. It’s a really rigorous program. But you seem to stage exhibitions when you have something to say. So how do you decide when you have something to say? What are you looking for? How do you bring that together?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:  

They're such distinctly different projects, We Buy Gold versus Jack Shainman Gallery, in so much is what we're looking for, what I'm looking for. 

With We Buy Gold, it's not representation, it's not a long-term relationship. I've had the privilege of working with a number of artists through We Buy Gold, well, they're all fantastic, but who've gone on to do really incredible things. 

With Jack Shainman Gallery, it's with an intention of working with an artist forever. What do we look for? I mean, Jack always, I have to shout him out with this, he always uses the expression that his “socks roll up and down without touching them.” That's his favorite thing to say. But I think that that kind of speaks to what you mentioned around faith, Charlotte, that kind of intangible, that kind of unknown, that feeling that you get? 

I'm particularly interested in what artists are thinking about and how they're thinking about what they're thinking about. Of course, seeing what they make materially, there needs to be really good bones in that regard, of course, but when you think about history, and over time, and when they're going to go on and do, like how rigorous are they with their ideas? How expansive are they thinking? How curious, really, I think it comes down to, that makes me really excited about what the future could be with an artist, you know, and that's not speaking to a market. That's speaking to a career and a voice and an impact.

Charlotte Burns:  

Allan, what gives you faith in an artist?

Allan Schwartzman: 

What gives me faith? When I'm looking at art that I'm not familiar with, I'm not necessarily looking for it to be one thing or another, I'm looking to respond. You can easily be seduced by things, and one has to be careful about that. 

Often there's something, whether it's an energy or a take on something that seems fresh, or something that seems very unknown, that draws me in, in terms of curiosity. Those are the things that trigger interest in younger artists. 

There are a lot of artists emerging that one finds compelling initially that don't necessarily sustain themselves over time. It takes a number of years in order to begin to get a clear sense of who has range. 

Within my work as an advisor, we're often looking beyond where other people are looking. It's become of particular interest to several collectors I work with and to myself to look at periods of time or arts from certain cultures or by individuals that didn't hit a mainstream notion of significance. And that has opened up huge opportunities in developing collections over a period of time. But if one has too many articulated criteria for judging art, I think you'll often miss the boat because certainly, in terms of newer work, the work that tends to sustain itself is work that you might not really be able to comprehend so well at first. 

I learned something very early on in my involvement in the art world, which is there was an exhibition by Gilbert & George, I think it was around 1980-82, somewhere in there, at Sonnabend Gallery, and the show really offended me. I felt like they crossed a moral line in terms of their relationship to their subjects. And in a way that the subjects weren't aware. It seemed to me they were being taken advantage of or being exploited in a certain way that could be considered titillating or prurient. 

And after the third time that I explained to someone why I found the show so objectionable, I realized that all the reasons that the show bothered me were the reasons why the work was interesting. And that flipped so much for me. It made me realize that my own sense of my own standards for day-to-day life only take you so far. With art, you really have to remain open and to be prepared to look beyond. What one ultimately looks for is the same. And that is to not fully understand it and to have a curiosity to always face it, and not know it fully but to be moved by it, which I guess is my version of Jack’s socks moving up and down. You know, it's a certain feeling in the gut. 

I believe we're in a very exciting time for very young artists and emerging work. I think that the work that I find interesting spans a much wider range than I've witnessed in previous decades. But at the same time, I see a lot of work emerging that has attracted a lot of critical, collecting, market, and auction attention, that I say, “Wait a second. That's so much like what so and so was doing in 1979 or 1982.” So there are times where I'd love to be able to transport whole chunks of the art world and the art market into just a few decades earlier in order to have real criteria to hold on to. I mean, it's funny because what needs to be open and looking at new work, but one also needs to be critical.

Charlotte Burns:  

If you could innovate any particular model, now, if you could create one change, what would that change be? If you could build a new model with ease, just tomorrow, and it all worked out—you didn't have to worry about scaling it, funding it, sustaining it—where do you see that need? Where are you interested? And what would you do?

Allan Schwartzman: 

One thing that I think there's a desperate need to change is the art market’s faith in its own future. So often, the behavior of the art market has become increasingly cautious, safe, dependent upon what's been validated. And often, that validation is at the highest financial levels, meaning by the biggest bucks that go into the market. 

One of the things that distinguishes art collecting from so many other activities is that the richest person doesn't usually get the best collection. It's somebody with a vision, somebody with a unique take on things and with an extremely precise eye. I think there's become so much more dependence at the top end of the market on a consensus notion of what a trophy is. I think that this increasing conservatism of collecting doesn't parallel what sustains healthy art production. 

I'll give you something else that I would love to see change. I would love to see curators more greatly empowered financially to pursue their notions of significance rather than what has become a somewhat standardized pattern of the exhibition activities of museums echoing the behaviors of the market. 

There have been times where I think collecting and curating have been appropriately aligned. And I think that we're in a time where they're not.

Charlotte Burns:  

Joeonna, what about you? 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

I absolutely agree with Allan. And I think my “what if” is similar. To echo what Allan said, the health of the ecosystem and what that means in several different directions. 

And so much of that is financial support and allowing the ecosystem to thrive; the health of the swamp is so important, and it's so rich, and it's like, the whole planet falls apart when you don't have these places where people can be incentivized to explore their own ideas, their own relationship with art. 

We live in a society where the nucleus may always be, unfortunately, the market in some sense, but I think that we can kind of kick that ball around a little bit and play with how we center that and make sure that it is at least not obscuring the sun and the health of everything around it. 

I also hope that we challenge our relationship to ideas around growth and what growth is and what it should look like. And to bring it a little bit more inward and to be kind to ourselves and to think about how we grow as people and what healthy growth is. And I mean that in like every area of our lives. But that is also to mirror the conversation around sustainability and more broad-based health of the ecosystem.

Allan Schwartzman: 

I'd like to posit a “what if,” and maybe it's not a “what if,” but it’s a when. Given that the high end of the market has become increasingly focused upon and effective at identifying the most extraordinary trophies by the most validated artists—be they living artists or long-dead artists—what happens if that changes? What happens if the market no longer has that same appetite for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on increasingly rare top-level works by the historically most significant artists? Or what happens if that supply dries out in the near future because there's been so much concentration of what would seem like bottomless wealth seeking to buy such works, whether they spend $50 million or $150 million or more? So what if, by dint of supply, that part of the market withers out, or simply that fashion or that taste loses its luster? What does that do to the art market? And what does that do to collecting?

Charlotte Burns: 

I think it's a really interesting question. It reminds me of something an auction person said to me recently, which is that they are seeing a lot more supply in their inbox. People are trying to sell stuff, and it's not necessarily the A+ stuff. 

And that's to do with economic reasons, and taste shifts, and all of the things we talked about at the top of the show, but they're also saying that they're seeing a generational transition happening suddenly. There are various collectors who are dying. And so what does it mean if you get one [Mark] Rothko in a blue moon come up for sale? It means that Rothko gets a record price as it did. If you get five Rothkos coming up for auction, what does it mean if you're an auction house? Well, it probably means you're going to price those five at that same level because you're going to compete with the other auction houses to get the work. But you're probably not going to sell all five of them at that point. 

And so that's an interesting moment, too, because it's going to be totally dependent on the next generation of buyers wanting the same trophies, supporting the same artists, having the same tastes and being interested to pursue it with the same vigor as more of that material comes to the market. 

I think that's kind of interesting because it's a big generational shift. And that is a big “what if” like, is that going to continue? Or are you going to see other collectors wanting different things if art itself means something different to a younger generation?

Allan Schwartzman: 

Well, here's part of that, “what if.” As the appetite to buy works, extraordinary works, at prices beyond whatever could have been imagined in the past—with no ceiling basically—as the markets become increasingly focused there, it has become increasingly less interested in works by those same artists that don't meet up to the same standards of excellence. 

So is it not more likely that with the estates that will come to the market over the next 10 or so years that there'll be an increase in the number of average or okay examples by those same artists? And should that be the case, would the absence of the highest examples dampen the market in general for such artists? 

What's become very evident is that a good work by an “A+ blue-chip artist,” at least as far as the market is concerned, it's much harder to sell at half or less than the exceptional work. There's just less appetite for it. So as more of those works come forward, does that dampen the market for certain artists in general? And if the exceptional work becomes so rare that it's only seen every 10 years or so, does it make it a kind of albatross?

Charlotte Burns:  

That “what if,” Allan, is about value. And there's another one that you and I have talked about conceiving this show, which is, what if there's a market crash and everything we valued was wrong? What does that mean? And what if we come out the other side of a market moment, whatever that looks like, and it turns out that that doesn't look so good anymore? What do we do, then? What if? What if that happens? 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:  

I definitely think anything can happen. There's so many “what ifs,” so many different directions and so many ways that we can shift our understanding of what's valuable. Anything could happen. 

Allan Schwartzman:  

Change is good. 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:  

Change is great.

Allan Schwartzman:  

Change is good. Volatility is dangerous. 

[Laughter]

Unless that volatility surrounds work that's been overvalued and needs to be reevaluated. 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:  

Right. 

Charlotte Burns:  

I'm going to just ask you a “what if” before we leave. Well, there’s two really—the night and day of it. What is the “what if” that keeps you up at night? And what's the one that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

I no longer allow the art world to keep me up at night. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:  

You texted me at three o'clock this morning. So that is not true. That is a lie. 

[Laughter]

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

It’s called wisdom, Charlotte. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns: 

You were very much up. 

[Laughter]

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

The excitement and the possibility gets me up in the morning. I like thinking about uncertainty. I like thinking about “what if,” even if I don't have answers. I like thinking about change. And being surrounded by people who are thinking in every which way. I find it really exciting and really hopeful. 

At the end of the day, after all the market talk and after all the strategies, art is the most important thing that we as humans can put out into the world in a certain way, and yeah, it gets me up every day, I'd say. Is that corny and lofty?

Charlotte Burns: 

It's lovely. If that's what gets you up in the morning, how do you build that world for yourself? You're in that world already. But do you, do you think a gallery is the place for that, for you, for the rest of your career? Is that how you see having those conversations? Do you have things in mind for you and your future?

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels: 

Yeah, or some model thereof, right? For me, it's about experimenting, figuring out what interests me, following those leads, but also being anchored in what works and what works the best for artists and putting their needs at the forefront. 

So I don't know what I'm going to be doing. I really love what I do. But I'm also really always excited and curious about the ecosystem and being engaged in different ways. But I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. I think that perhaps my involvement with a bunch of different things all the time is an example of that. And I hope to do more and engage more and hopefully one day, I’ll be able to look back and say that there was a bit of an impact somewhere. But in the interim, I lived a pretty amazing life by being surrounded by all of these artists and thinkers and folks.

Charlotte Burns:  

Allan, for you, what keeps you up at night? What gets you up in the morning?

Allan Schwartzman:  

What keeps me up at night and what gets me up in the morning are the same things. Which is I have ideas of collections I'd love to be able to form. And so I'd love to be able to find the right collectors through whom to do that. I think there's a lot more to be done than what I and others have done. 

I think of myself as a pragmatic idealist. Basically, there are ambitions that drive me that fall beyond my own ambition. They have to do with my belief in art and my belief that we can affect change through our commitments to art. 

So I have ideas on different kinds of collections that I would love to develop, including some very fresh takes on collecting extraordinary works, be they contemporary or historical. Ideas on much more experimental ways of collecting as well. And I have ideas on ways in which the legacy of this massive and unprecedented population of artists that has come into existence with baby boomers, that is, with artists educated from the 1960s forward, ways in which they can be served. 

So it's really about fresh ways in which to be collecting, supporting a sustained engagement with a curiosity for a wide range of work that the existing system is simply not able to fully absorb.

Charlotte Burns: 

Well, thank you very, very much. I hope you sleep well tonight.

My huge thanks to Joeonna and Allan for wading through the rich swamp that is the art market and its ecosystem. 

Next time we welcome the MacArthur Genius Prize-winning artist, Paul Chan, who tells us all about his “what ifs.”  

Paul Chan:

Maybe one way to talk about pleasure is a capacity to control our own time. Time may be the only non-human thing I really care about losing. I can lose everything. I think I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost everything! I’m willing to lose it all, but I’m not willing to lose time.

I can’t wait. Join us next time on The Art World: What If…?! 

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 5: Sandra Jackson-Dumont

What if we reimagine the role of the museum? What if we bring more intention to what culture can be and do—and by whom and for whom? What if we tell ourselves different stories? In this episode, host Charlotte Burns talks to Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the CEO and director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art—a new museum founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his businesswoman wife, Mellody Hobson. The institution, which is set to open in Los Angeles in 2025 is one of the most potentially exciting museums in America or around the world, given the scope of its ambition and size. Sandra says: “We’re building an institution, a 200+ year proposition. And we’re doing it amidst the most uncertain moments in our time.” Who better to help us tackle hypotheticals— including dismantling the idea of high and low art, and entirely new ways of thinking about art? Join us and tune in.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I’m your host, Charlotte Burns, and this is the podcast all about imagining different futures for art and the art world.

[Audio of guests]

So far, we’ve spoken to some wonderful guests about their “what ifs”—and this episode is no exception. We welcome Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the CEO and director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The institution, which is set to open in Los Angeles in 2025, is one of the most potentially exciting museums in America or around the world, given the scope of its ambition and size. A one billion dollar, five-story, 300,000 sq ft building that sits within an 11-acre campus. The museum aims to take a new approach to narrative art. Sandra has said of it, “we’re building an institution, a 200-plus-year proposition. And we’re doing it amidst the most uncertain moments in our time.”

So, this whole conversation is a “What If”. What if we reimagine the role of the museum? What if we bring more intention to what culture can be and do—and by whom and for whom? What if we tell ourselves different stories?

Charlotte Burns:

Sandra, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. We have been through trial and tribulation to get here, and I appreciate your perseverance.

[Laughter]

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Thank you. [Laughs]

You're a good partner.

Charlotte Burns:

We do stick together. 

I've written three different openers for this show. And I'm really glad that we have rescheduled, because I found myself just doing more research in those windows of time that we've had. And I found myself on a completely new path, having a kind of unusual experience while doing some last-minute research for the previous scheduled recording. 

I had interviewed another guest on the show, Kemi Ilesanmi, and I was mentioning to her that I was interviewing you. And she said, “You have to watch Sandra's talk in Venice. You will cry. We cried.” And so I watched your talk. And I watched it just before our last scheduled interview. And I was so glad that we had to call that one off because I was a mess! I was like, “How can I interview someone? I am, like, crying.” I found your talk so moving. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I haven't stopped talking to other people and telling them to listen, and I will tell people now; if you haven't seen it, look up the Loophole of Retreat summit in Venice. Sandra speaks on day two, it's about 20 or so minutes. And you won't have heard a director of a museum speak this way before because, Sandra, what you did is you create this space of vulnerability. And you move us through this very intimate but structured talk and you speak about Miss Edie Mae Jackson also known as “Sweet” also known as your mother and maker, and you talk about packing up her apartment because her health has been declining. And you talk about paying attention to what the apartment contains. Realizing that this home, this intimate space that you've just thought of as a domestic space, as a familiar space, is an installation and you're standing in the contours of your mother's memory, the loophole of her retreat. And you move through this personal story, and then bring us to museums and say, as someone “whose work is about museums, about making meaning in these places, making them functional and deliberately usable for our everyday existence, and bound up in the everyday lives of people, I am moved by my mother's deep and incisive understanding of how to make lives relevant through things.” 

I was so impressed by the power and strength of the vulnerability and the space that you opened up for other people. It was such an act of generosity. And I also felt like it was a shift in how museum directors, how figures of authority in our institutional world, might speak. It felt like a medicine, like a new way forward. Did you feel vulnerable, doing that? Did you feel emotional preparing to give such a personal talk?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

The answer was yes. But I always feel vulnerable. I always feel kind of emotional about the work that we're doing. And I don't mean in that nostalgic way but I mean, in that critically-urgent, it's important-work-kind of way. It's not frivolous-work-kind of way. 

And I'm super grateful that people actually heard it as an art historical talk, and a personal talk and a timely talk at the same time, in the same space, in the same moment, because I think that's what museums should be and have been, or have the power and potential to be. 

Charlotte, I thank you for saying that because I'm still wearing my Loophole of Retreat bracelet for those that spoke and I was like, well, I'm gonna treat this like one of those red bracelets that people wear and when they break off their wish will be made, because that was such a powerful, powerful moment. And I felt like people could hear the various contours of how people really exist in the world. And I felt heard for one of the very first times in such a critical and amazing way. So yes, vulnerable, but also, that's a continued part of my existence, you know?

Charlotte Burns:

Mmm-hmm.

You began that talk by saying that you felt seen and “that is pleasant.” And I wonder, for you, there was such a power that you gave to people through that, but it seems like you gathered your own strength from it. It's sort of sad in a way that you say that this is one of the first times that you felt seen in that capacity. Why is that? And how can that change?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Well, you know, it's interesting. I was having breakfast with the great Lorraine O’Grady. It wasn't planned or anything like that. A lot of the speakers, we were staying in the same hotel, and I was sitting by myself at breakfast, and she came and she sat with me and she says, “Can I just ask you something?” She said, “What’d you think about the conference?” and I told her what I thought and I said, “What did you think?” And she said it was one of the first times that she felt like everything she said landed with this group. Like it was as if she was talking to herself, is what she said and I was just like wow, and that really resonated with me because there are so many times in my career where I've sought to marry the personal with the private, and the mundane with the academic and we're kind of taught to have those be apart. But even if you're studying [Walter] Benjamin, I’m like can we study Benjamin, but talk about that kind of theory through the lens of Toni Morrison? You know what I mean? Like, how can these things coexist in the way that feels like it’s popular knowledge, or our popular information or popular experiences. 

So for me, when I said, I felt really seen, because the moments where people rose to their feet and stood there, when I put the pictures of my mother's walls up—and I could see people, like they were reaching for the screen, like pointing to it, but also like, “I know that”—and these were people from across the world, you know, and people I respect and adore and love. 

And so it was to be seen in the nuanced way is what I meant. To be seen as a whole person, not just someone who has to tuck away a piece of themselves. You know, being a professional in so many ways, and also being a Black woman oftentimes is about practicing the highest level of restraint. It's a skill that no one talks about. 

And that moment was wonderful, because I felt like I was my professional self, my personal self, my friends’ self, my performance self, my sermonic self—the churches I grew up in—but I was my mother's daughter in that moment, too. And she was present with me at work in ways that I just never imagined her to be. So that's why I felt that people got it in the nuanced way. And that was powerful, really powerful.

 Charlotte Burns:

There’s so much there. I mean, this idea that you feel the sense of restraint, I think is a loss to the field because you bring so much. It's a shame that you have experienced that.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Oh, I think everyone has. 

Charlotte Burns:

I think you're right, but it scales, right? What was so refreshing about that talk you gave was the freedom of it, was the wholeness of it, was the full person. And I know this is something that's really important to you as a museum director. How do you do that when you're managing a billion dollar building and something new, and that doesn't exist yet that you're trying to bring to life with founders’ visions, with city and municipal logistical things, with new staff that you're onboarding? How do you keep grounded within the middle of that, the full sense of self that you're trying to bring to the role and encourage those around you to do too?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I'm constantly trying to figure out how one—me, anyone—crafts a space that feels humane. How does one do it, is not alone. I think that's the biggest piece of it. Constantly seeking counsel but be full of research and understand that everything is not a grand experiment. There are just some things that just are, and everything isn't always up for discussion. How we treat people is not up for discussion. Sometimes that can be uncomfortable, having honest conversations, but also be very congratulatory around the things that deserve it and really shine and lift people up in many of these spaces and help other people understand that it's everyone's responsibility to do that. 

I have to say I'm very clear that Mellody Hobson and George Lucas are also that way. They are really interested in people bringing their best selves into the space. And so what does it take to create a best selves kind of space and encourage that, that coupled with the highest level of accountability. 

Lots of people talk about, like, “Oh, our workplaces, we spend so much time there, it should feel like family.” And—I can't believe I'm gonna say this on this podcast, but I'm gonna say it—I'm like, I have a family. I think also, not all families are healthy. 

And so like, if we create a workplace of standards, and those standards will change and evolve over time and look differently. But I don't want to bring my own home values and all that stuff into the workspace all the time, because my values are not necessarily such and such’s values. So we have to create a shared ecosystem, that's called labor, work. And there's value in that. And there's pride in labor. There's pride in creating spaces. 

And so I think just continuous discourse, but at the same time, lots of reading and trying things on and rapid prototyping things and admitting when we didn't get it right. But also saying, “Hell yeah,” when we got it right. You know what I'm saying? 

So, I wish I had a better answer for you, because it is one that is not static. Creating space is not static. And I think that's where we've gotten it wrong oftentimes in workplaces, and in community building or engagement with anyone else other than yourself, is that sometimes we think there's a one shot wonder, or we got it right this time, we should just always keep doing it that way. And I'm just like, oh, no different circumstances, and different individuals require different things. 

So, you've heard me say before, Charlotte, it's imperative that we focus on skill sets, versus just tactics only. I think that if we have skill sets in the people who are employed, and are places that are both empathetic, that are, you know, full of robustness and quality of listening, then we’ll be in a different place. That's a long answer to your short question. But it's nuanced.

Charlotte Burns:

Well, I think museums are at such a complicated moment. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. But it's still not that common as a practice, to talk that way about empathy, about skills. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Yes.

Charlotte Burns:

Okay. So let's talk about your board. You have an unusual board. In addition to the founders, the board of directors, includes Henry Bienen, the president emeritus of the Northwestern University; the sociologist Arne Duncan, who was secretary of education during the Obama admin; Michael Govan the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Andrea Wishom, the president of Skywalker holdings, Lucas's real estate company; and the filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro. You obviously have been inside other major institutions and senior roles, like the Met[ropolitan Museum of Art]. So how is this different as a kind of governance structure for you as a director, as someone in a senior position in that way? What are the different accountability models? And what are the different questions that the board asks of the institution, from your perspective?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

When I think about other boards I've sat on, I mean, they've been made up of people like this. If you think about the Met’s board, it has different types of people from different, you know, sectors. 

I think one thing that sets us apart, and museums are trying to do this more, is having artists on their board. So we have filmmakers, creatives on our board. I think this board is also made up of people that have a real appreciation for getting things done. So that is a difference, I think, between this board. 

It's a small type board that will grow and evolve over time. But right now it's made up of people—when I think about it in the way that you're asking this question—it's made up by people that have a background in production, that are filmmakers, that are policy people, as you mentioned, university folks. All those folks are folks that are deeply thoughtful, cerebral, think about how big ideas can get consolidated and made actionable by people and/or put in a framework that can be tackled in a very public and expeditious way, in concrete ways. So that, to me, is interesting. 

It's very different than just like, “we could just be at this forever” kind of institution. You know what I mean? Like that treadmill of, this is how things are done. They're like, “Oh, it didn't work? Go. great.” I mean, I never get questions about trying something new or different. It's never like “whoa”. It’s never like, “Hold up, Sandra”. 

It's a very generative board. It's a very busy board, too. So a lot of my interactions with them are individually set up, where I'm talking to someone one-on-one. I have two or three people engaged in conversations. They're all heavy hitters in their own right so they bring a certain level of confidence and resource to the table and they just don't have time to be meddling, if you will, in simple things that should be left to the staff. But the most powerful part of them is, one, their brains, which they lend to me all the time, and we have intimate conversations. But they're both strategic and tactical, but they are so busy, they don't really have time to get involved. And I don't think they would, because they respect the staff so much that they are responsive as partners and critical friends, versus getting involved in the day-to-day operations. They are really fantastic partners to us.

Charlotte Burns:

So the whole institution is a kind of “what if”, because you're looking at this idea of narrative art. And I guess it's something of a dream job, if you're a museum professional to be kind of given the reins of something as imaginative as this. Like, is it a bit like being a kid in a candy shop? Where do you decide to prioritize? How exciting is it to have to have that potential to shape an institution of this scale with those resources and ambitions?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

It is daunting in many ways to think that we have an opportunity to build, as I've said publicly a great deal, a 200+ year proposition versus we're building a building or opening a major exhibition or creating a project or an initiative. This is so much bigger than that. So the idea, I've never thought of it as a kid in a candy store, because that's not my experience. Because that just assumes a certain level of jovial, just playfulness that I think is, no pun intended, full of saccharin. [Laughs] But I think we have moments and days like that, but even those are shaped by the current contours of responsibility. It’s a huge responsibility. 

And so I think it also ties to this notion of narrative art, because there is this grand narrative that we're creating about the realization of this institution because narratives are the stories we live with, and inform how we view and understand the world and it gives shapes to our real events, and our hopes and promises in many ways, our imagined realities, and also systems of power. 

When I gave the talk in Venice, just to go back to that, one of the things that I thought was so interesting is that as much time as I've spent around my mother's walls my entire life I, as an academic, never saw those as installations. If I took her house and put it in a museum people would be like, “Oh, wow.” I mean, even people just looking at the photographs were doing, like critical race theory commentary about the images on the walls, right? How they were structured, the juxtaposition of image to image but I had been indoctrinated to decouple, almost by osmosis, that part of the visual landscape from my academic pursuits. And it wasn't…I'm very proud of who I am, proud of where I'm from. I've always talked about those things in every space I've been in. But this high/low thing seemed like it had gotten, in that moment, some of the best of me as someone who promotes the dismantling of the high/low. 

So the Lucas Museum becomes this incredible crucible for these discussions to break open through it to the point where narrative art becomes one of the most important art forms, because it's shaped society. It has shown itself to have done good and bad things. And I think it's such an opportunity for us to look at this institution as one that really allows us to unfurl who we are as a people. It also kind of critiques the art historical canon for a lack of inclusion, whether it's the maker or the subject matter. So there are certain stories and ideas that have not made their way to the quote, unquote, kind of halls of the institution. I mean, right now, I could not be more happier than to say that next to the great American [Emanuel] Leutze painting at the Met is the Robert Colescott George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware [Page from an American History Textbook] (1975), which does exactly what we're talking about. So when I think about narrative art, it actually kind of labors on behalf of people.

Charlotte Burns:

It's also interesting, what you just said reminded me of something that came up in a podcast with Naomi Beckwith, where we talk about this idea of, kind of the high/low, and that mundanity has always been the basis of the Modernist movement. It's just a question of who was allowed to be mundane. So this idea of the high/low, for the past, more than century, the low has been the high. It's just not everybody's. 

It is a daunting proposition. It's a big responsibility. And you're setting it up for a 200-year proposition. So how do you do that? How do you future proof those conversations of who we are? 

I mean, the Colescott's a great example, because that's the founding of America. So that's tackling a foundational myth. But how do you do that in terms of, you know, there's more than 100,000 works in the collection? I'm imagining you really do have to be strategic when you think about those questions. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I mean one of the things that is powerful about this moment is the fact that museums are willing participants with each other, I think in ways that they weren't always. There's this incredible opportunity to collaborate. 

So the work of the Lucas Museum and the work of narrative art is not just the responsibility of the Lucas Museum. Just like the work of modernity is not just the work of The Museum of Modern Art. The work of supporting and celebrating and doing scholarly work around Black and Latinx artists, they're not just the responsibility of El Museo [del Barrio] and The Studio Museum [in Harlem]. It is everyone's responsibility. They are going deep and they are ensuring that that work gets done. We will do the same. 

But how do you future proof it? You don't. You actually allow it to grow and evolve and shift and change and reconfigure itself. And so the Lucas Museum is taking an inclusive approach to this notion of visual storytelling, and really unpacking and exploring academically rooted and mass produced art forms, as well as new modes of creative practice. So that evolves over time. But our work will encompass all forms of visual narrative, including painting and sculpture and photography, video, all those things. 

But the thing that future proofs it, really truly, Charlotte, is that narrative art provides a window into lived experiences, and as long as people are alive, [laughs] honestly, narrative art is going to be the thing that elicits emotion, ignites the imagination and we hope moves us to action. And I think what we're trying to do is empower diverse constituencies and artists and audiences to connect and engage with artworks and each other, through these compelling stories that the work contains, and also just have a level of criticality about these things.  

I mean, I've said it before, I think museums should be used. And I also think we should respect them as places that challenge us. 

 Charlotte Burns:

So, two really specific questions here. One is about the institution. One is about you. How far along, in the nuts and bolts of things, do you know the opening shows yet? Can you talk about them? And if you can't reveal them, can you tell us what you're hoping to communicate with them? 

And then the second question is for you. You talked about it being a 200-year-plus proposition. For you, I imagine that when you're thinking of this job, you're imagining it's going to take many years to see certain things that you're putting into place now come to fruition, like how long it will take to bed down, bring the audiences, when you'll figure out the cadence, that kind of stuff. So the first is the opening and the second is the continuation of the cadence.

 Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

So the first, the opening, we're saying 2025, which I am very excited about. In terms of the opening shows, I am not going to share those yet. I do think that there's this idea of having people understand how nuanced narrative art is. That's what people will see—this incredible range of narrativity that is across time and place. It's incredible. Because when you see it all bound up together in the same building, you start to realize, “Wow, what have I been looking at? How have we not looked at these things together, or put them together?” 

The third thing I would say about that is because the gallery spaces are so expansive, it's not going to be a single single show. There are many shows that will be opening at the same time. And so my hope is that people will come back and over and over and take in pieces of it, and explore it through different vantage points. And we'll have a whole series of programs and activities that really tie to those things. But then also, a lot of the efforts that will roll out will be standalone, that type of narrative art, but not necessarily wholeheartedly to the exhibitions that are on view. So that's that piece. 

I usually come into jobs and gigs and I would normally say I know within the first five years, I will really start to see the fruits of one's labor—my labor, our labor—because you really have to put things in place, bring people along, be brought along yourself. But in this moment, I've only been here during Covid. So that has thrown everything into, like, a different way of being, a different way of working. We had our first holiday party in person last week. I've been here almost three years. That's unbelievable.

Charlotte Burns:

It's all an exercise of future thinking. It's not grounded even in meeting each other in the office. It's such an interesting, difficult way to work, I imagine.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

So how I have kind of come into understanding time right now, it's just so elastic. It’s almost like there are days when I feel like it's so long, like I pulled the rubber band really far, and when I look at either end of it, it feels like “Oh, my goodness, I've been here, like, I've been here three to six years.” But then, when it snaps back, I'm like, “Oh, wow, so many of these things happened in such a compressed state of being.” 

So as I'm thinking about my time here, I'm excited about the opening. In the most unusual way, I almost have to push myself back from being like, “the 10-year plan.” Because we've been living in such uncertain times, what I thought was a 10-year plan has actually expanded and contracted in ways that I just never imagined. So I have to say, you gotta come back to me in a couple of years on that one. 

But I'm always thinking about how we succession plan, from the moment I walk in a door, whether or not it's my role, or a different role, or our partners, I'm always thinking about that. I really see us as a launching pad for careers and opportunities, and people will become versions of themselves here in ways that they may not be able to become versions of themselves in that same way at another place, only because of the timing, the approach, and the scale of this project. And what it is in the world. It’s just such a unique all-around opportunity.

Charlotte Burns:

Is that happening to you? What you want for your staff and everybody else associated with the museum, becoming more themselves? Are you experiencing that within the years that you've already done this job?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

So the answer is yes. Because of the circumstances we've all lived through, you know. So that's one piece of it. 

When I look at the director role, specifically, there are things that I've learned. I've never been the director of a museum before. I've been the director of what has been the equivalent of a museum scale and scope-wise but I've never been the person that is the final say at the institution, if you will—if there's such a thing, honestly. 

And that is a different kind of responsibility, which requires a different type of awareness and communication. And understanding that even though I think I'm the coolest kid, I think I'm the person who gets on with people, I think I'm the person that “my door is open,” we all have worked in places where leaders have not been that. And so we all bring baggage to the table. And so I have grappled with the notion of power dynamics, even though those power dynamics aren't ones that I buy into. But we all come with stuff. Does that make sense?

Charlotte Burns:

Yeah, so like you're trying to deal with other people's perceptions of your role as well as your own.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Exactly. That's like a very succinct way of putting it. My perception of myself and how I want to be and who I am and how I want to lead is different from maybe, even if I were a younger version of Sandra coming to the table, I might not believe that I am who I say I am.

Charlotte Burns:

Right. Yeah, it makes sense.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Yeah, I'm always very committed to the process of learning and listening and mentorship but also recognizing I've been hired here because I bring certain skills and competencies to the table. And recognizing where it is truly my responsibility. It's been wonderful. And I feel like I've been built for this, not the least of which I'm the fifth of five children. So there's that. But I actively seek opinions and ideas from people. 

It's one of my favorite things about Mellody Hobson is that she really, truly respects people who have a point of view. One of my favorite things about being in spaces where I'm making decisions, that I love when somebody has an idea that changes my mind. I respect it, I appreciate it and I really truly believe that good ideas come from everywhere.

Charlotte Burns:

I mean, so much of that is you being you but a lot of it also is your background in education. It's such a different way of existing in the museum, than a curatorial role, for instance. And we spoke about this before the shift that that has on the field, that there are leaders, including you, who come to those positions from an educative background.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Yeah, when I think about my background as an educator, I think that when people hear that they really think, “Oh, wow, she might understand the public in a different way.” And there are so many amazing educators that do; they pay attention to the public, they understand. But then there's also educators who are just translating other people's ideas. 

The educators I respect and adore the most are those that really do have points of view but they also demonstrate behaviors that include fairness, respect, inclusiveness, empathy, integrity. They have ethical content depth at their core, but their ego is around making sure people understand the ideas. Their ego isn't about just spewing their own point of view. Does that make sense? 

Charlotte Burns:

Mmm-hmm.

It's a real complex layered thing where you're trying to translate ideas to so many different people who are interacting with you in rigorous debate, whether that's academic debate, or you're getting feedback from your public.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Yeah, that part that you just said, the rigorous debate and the skills to do that, instead of being shut down. I don't think even the field really understands how nuanced the practice of an educator of a public programs person is. It's such an interesting thing to have that skill set. And how that plays out with me as the director is the same exact way. Like leaning into that level of discomfort and having the conversations to respond appropriately to someone and not just say, “okay,” all the time. But saying back to someone, “say more.” 

Charlotte Burns:

That is what's so interesting about it is that it's a much more active position, in a reaching forward and reaching back kind of way. Much more mutually engaged.

So I want to ask you, so much of our conversations are about creating new ways of doing things. Or rethinking or interrogating different ways of doing things in the work that you do. The show's called What If. What's the “what if” that keeps you up at night? What's the thing that you think that you worry about that you wish were different? That you puzzle over how to change?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

This is so sad. I knew you were gonna ask me this question. And I still just, I’ve thought about this every time we've rescheduled this. And I guess I puzzle over the two ways that I think about this. One hand is more of a deficit model, which is, what if people don't buy into this process? What if? And I mean, by people, I mean people that are consuming and active participants, and those that are shaping the field. What if the believers become so skeptical that we remain in this place that museums are for “those people,” whoever those people are? You know? So that is like, what if? And the answer to that is, that would be really sad. So that's one piece of it.

But the other “what if” is one of abundance. Right? One of the glass half full. What if we work together? What if we actually have some shared ideas? What if we actually can address certain structural issues? What if we become, as a creative force, museums become the place that people truly look to as a better business model for certain things? Or a better education model? What if? Do you know what I'm saying? Like that abundance place is so impressive to me. And so what if we could be extremely adventurous and imaginative? And our decisions not be shaped by fear or anxiety or lack of resources? What if we could work from this other place of generosity and being generative? What if? And I just see so much possibility on every front, coming out of that. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, Charlotte. I might need to call you back on that one.

Charlotte Burns:

No, I love that. Because it's both, it's what keeps you up at night and I guess what you dream about. And are you the kind of person who gets energy from thinking in that way, that positive, abundant manner? Does that propel you forward?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I do. I mean, it's rooted in reality. I'm the first to be like, I think this is actually amazing, let’s work from a place of abundance. Can we work from a blank page on this, while at the same time, in the back of our heads, we have the knowledge of the history at our disposal, and we really tackle things in that fruitful way. So yes, I'm that person. I'm also the person who is very, very clear about the structural issues that have held institutions and individuals back. I'm very clear about that. And so those things hang in the balance for me. 

Charlotte Burns:

What if we could change those structural issues? And I guess that's part of the work. How do we do that? How are you approaching that? How is the museum?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

When I think about some of the things that have happened in the art world over time, right, women in leadership, they're not dissimilar to what's happening in the rest of the world. We are like a microcosm of the rest of the world, you know, racism, architecture, design, interpretation, exhibition, content, all those things, community engagement, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging—all those things are happening both in the art world and outside of the art world. 

And so when I think about how we address those things, I also think about the episodic revisiting of this stuff over time. How we have a situation, then there's a lull. And then we have another situation and it's the same, and there's a lull. So I'm interested in how do we start to document not just the “how to” but the nuance of how one arrived at those decisions, like the problems and the peril that led to them, and the growth out of it. And having five or six or seven or 20 different versions of it. I think that's interesting to me, like documenting some of those experiences so that we can understand, not through a didactic approach, but even a storytelling approach that people can begin to unpack things through narrative, if you will.

Charlotte Burns:

That's so fascinating. One of the things I had noted down in my prep for this was from our last interview, because I was talking to someone recently about change and they said, just assuredly, “This is a moment of great change, the conversation is absolutely shifting.” And when we look at the data—Julia Halperin and I just did our latest report [the Burns Halperin Report]—the numbers haven't, they're not really changing. And as I was talking to this person, I thought of you and what you said in our last interview, which is this episodic nature of change. 

And you'd said to me, which I hadn't been aware of at all, that the Met had done some amazing things a half century ago. It had commissioned a paper on poverty and housing in 1968, Nina Simone performed there in 1969, B.B. King in the 70s, Martha Graham [Dance Company] in the Temple of Dendur. I mean, this is amazing stuff. And you knew this because it was documented. You'd worked at the Met, and I'm sure you delved deep into that history. 

Where are we in that cycle of museums and change and this episodic relationship? Because one other thing I would like to say about that is when we talk to people about female artists, for instance, we point out that there's been graduation parity since the 80s. But actually, when we looked at those figures, again, we realized that the time before graduation parity in the 80s, was the 1940s when there was graduation parity. So there was parity and then there wasn't, then there was and then there wasn't in broader society, in education, in access and all of these things. How do we keep moving forward? Where are we in that structural shift?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Well, what I always think about when people talk about artists and graduation, I'm just like, since when have all artists come through academia? Like that's fascinating to me, but you know, that those are, okay. It's a good marker. But you could say the same thing in architecture, women who are leading at firms, the number that are principals at architecture firms, pale in comparison to the number of architect women architects that are coming out of architecture school, you know? That is a degree you need to have, right? The same thing with lawyers. There is this idea, there's a great proverb that is attributed to, you know, West Africa, Sankofa, this idea that you don't know your future unless you know your past. And I think that we don't spend enough time really grappling with what has happened. And looking at the future. 

I'm interested in that kind of rigorous dialogue that can happen and continue to shape our field, because on the back end of this is this notion of accountability, right? And that's interesting to me. So I love the fact that, you know, Robin Coste Lewis, great poet, is partnering with Julie Mehretu. Two great artists from two different disciplines, fascinated and engaged in issues and ideas. And making sure that that's documented and shared and codified. 

And part of the issue is that we haven't seen those moments as being as important as the catalogue for the exhibition, or as important as a different type of scholarship. To me, that actually is a form of scholarship. That's a form of presentation of social history, but also the two of them are doing incredible work together. And I don't know that we always get that. And so much of that kind of work that has transformed how people see art and museums and their role in society is left to a, “you had to be there” only experience, right? I love the “you had to be there”—my whole career was built on that. But if you weren't there, you don't know about it. And so how do we actually ensure that we are codifying those things so that they're reproducible? 

It's not just about the presentation of that program. When we did the Kerry James Marshall convening, [A Creative Convening], the thing that people remarked about a great deal was when we did the publication of the convening, that we included when people clapped or the side conversations in some ways. So it's as much about those kinds of things as it is about the presentation. 

And I think that's what's going to change in museums. They're going to be the place where you come to see and experience those things. But they're going to become known as the place where you go to participate in discourse or witness something amazing happen or be changed by something that was shaped for you. So I think that's important.

Limor Tomer did a project with Lee Mingwei. I think it was when we were at the Met. I was overseeing the [Met]LiveArts and she was head of that area, and we did a program where Lee Mingwei commissioned a classical vocalist to sing. He created this beautiful throne, if you will, a chair that he would place in the galleries. And this incredible vocalist would go up to someone and ask them, could they gift them a song? And if the person said, yes, they would go sit in his chair, and the vocalist was singing a song directly to them. And one would think that it's just about that gift, but watching the people watch this? Tears in their eyes. I mean, they were having another experience watching all of this happen. And it's that kind of stuff that changes people, truly changes people. 

So, anyway, I'm getting a little excited about this. 

Charlotte Burns:

I love that. It's all kind of bound up in this shift in that kind of…if museums can exist in a space of uncertainty and flexibility, more so than they perhaps have in recent decades, then they can better embrace the responsibility they have that's being put on them currently. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

That’s a beautiful way to put it. 

Charlotte Burns:

Oh, thank you.

I'm trying to pull together the threads of the conversation and I wish I had a pause button on it and I could come back to you in like 20 minutes. Because there's like thoughts at the top of my brain that aren’t totally permeating down and I know that in the night I'm gonna be like, “I should have asked that.”

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Well, you can call me back! 

Charlotte Burns:

We'll do another dance around our scheduling.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Now that we know how to set up the microphone.

Charlotte Burns:

Exactly. 

[Laughter]

I'm not going to keep you for much longer because I appreciate the time you're giving me. I've been thinking about this interview in the context of the title of the show, which is a “what if”, and kind of coming back to the same place I started, which is that I feel like so much of the work that you're doing, and the way that you embrace your work is in that position of “what if”, which is both ambitious and imaginative, but also pragmatic and grounded in what has been, and therefore what might be. 

And I guess the question I want to leave you with is the art. You've talked to me about artists being the sort of firefighters for justice, the people who have the courage to tell the truth. You spoke about Kerry James Marshall, and said, “Nobody does this better than him. To view his work is to stand in awe of his courage, his intelligence, his integrity, and his humanity.” So I wanted to ask you which artists you're looking at—I understand that you're looking at a lot of different things. Can you name a few of the artists that, when you leave your job as the director running all of these logistics, who are the artists that take up room in your brain at the end of the day?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Well, there are quite a few. One of them who I think has been at this forever is great artist, Pepón Osorio. I think he is just rooted in a practice and a way of working that is synonymous with humanity. And you see it in his installations, you see it in the narratives and the stories that he chooses to tell, feels compelled. Just telling the story, he gets at levels of concern that, I guess, resonate with so many people, I would say. 

Another artist is Firelei Báez, who is just incredible. It's almost like her work is so imaginative, but rooted in belief systems and religiosity that makes you want to participate and love whatever it is she's talking about, which happens to be also women, particularly Black women. 

And then that leads me to Simone Leigh, the great Simone Leigh, who I think has, over time, stood the test of time. And is graceful and functions in this space of gratitude, for being gifted being a Black woman like she, I think that that is definitely the way she sees herself in many ways. So she feels blessed to be able to tell the story, or like hold us up high. So I'm really interested in the story she's telling that she is unraveling around labor and love and sense of self and liberation. 

I'm interested in the Hernandez Brothers, these amazing comic artists that are based here in Los Angeles. Love and Rockets and all the other series that they've produced and they sit in the cultural capital of popular culture for so many people. 

Miguel Luciano, phew! What an amazing artist who I think is equally humble as he is intelligent; equally intelligent as he is a teacher; equally generous as he is a maker. And his way of working—all these people I'm talking about are great storytellers as well. 

I mean, the list goes on. I go to bed also thinking about iconic artists like Artemisia Gentileschi and Faith Ringgold. It’s just like these women, who took up so much space, and take up space. So these are all artists that I think are compelling. 

Also I think about artists like Norman Rockwell. And I'm not just saying that because I work at the Lucas Museum. I think about Norman Rockwell and his perceptions of the world at the time he was making works. And him displaying his own reality in many ways. And then reality of those around him. 

Yeah, the list goes on.

Charlotte Burns:

Well, Sandra, thank you so much. I think that's a great “what if” to end it on, which is what if people took up more space for that kind of pursuit of creative expression?

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Yeah, I would say one last thing. 

And so when I was thinking just now about “what if”, given some of the things you just said, Charlotte, and things I think about and maybe I haven't been the best at putting words around this. And that is, what if we could live in and through ambiguity? What if we have the skills and competencies to actually live in the interstitial spaces and move through them, as opposed to the binaries that we're kind of forced into sometimes? I think that that would require us to be brave. So what if we actually didn't have all the answers? Or didn't act like we have all the answers or didn't have to behave like we have all the answers, but we actually were actively seeking the creation of these spaces that are ambiguous, that are more akin to the world we really live in? That's my “what if”: what if we were in the interstitial, in those moments, showing our best selves?

Charlotte Burns:

I think as well, George Lucas builds worlds. So many people on your board do the same. You're essentially trying to bring that vision of world building to an audience and you're going to get this audience that comes to you via Star Wars. And you're going to be taking them into these interstitial spaces about humanity. Which is just so fascinating to think of how you can corral an audience and take them into those ambiguous spaces and tell a story through narrative that is not tidy, necessarily. Especially located in LA, which is always very aware of its own past, whilst being geared towards the new. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I think the art world and the world needs people who are taking up a little space that allow us to present a more nuanced, “more than one answer” to a single question. 

I think everyone thinks it should be tidy. I like that word. And that's not always the reality and so I find it fascinating that the things that should be tidy are the things that are messy. The things that should be messy are tidy. There's some things that should just be, but we make them messy.

Charlotte Burns:

As you were saying that, I started laughing because I started thinking that’s such a good way of describing museums, that the things that should be messy are the narratives, or the ideas that should be rigorous and playful at the same time. And the things that should be more straightforward are the kind of behind-the-scenes logistics and decision-making. And it's kind of the other way around often in institutions. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

And you know, what, so many PhDs have been, like, had from, “oh, that's actually not what that was about.” This dissertation is built around like, “oh, wow, it was stated that in 1852, blah, blah, blah, did this and this was the purpose of blah, blah, blah. And then like in 1972, such and such wrote that that actually could not be farther from the truth.”

So I love that history also is made by the people who write it. And so we can do our little piece now, I guess, huh?

Charlotte Burns:

And the Lucas Museum is taking the reins of history and moving it in a new direction. I think it's super interesting.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

Thank you so much. 

Charlotte Burns:

Well, Sandra, I can’t wait to catch up with you as you keep all of this going. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Thank you so much for making all of this time and bearing with us on all of our technical challenges. I’m so glad we got this interview. I really, really appreciate it.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

I really appreciate it. Charlotte, I want to thank you so much.

Charlotte Burns:

My thanks to Sandra Jackson-Dumont for sharing her “what ifs”—so thought provoking—what if we could reimagine the museum entirely?

Next episode we’ll be tackling the “what ifs” of the art market. Join us for a conversation between my co-host Allan Schwartzman and Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, director of Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and founder of We Buy Gold. 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

There's so many “what ifs”, so many different directions and so many ways that we can shift our understanding of what's valuable.

Allan Schwartzman:

Change is good. 

Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels:

Change is great.

Allan Schwartzman:

Change is good. Volatility is dangerous. 

[Laughter]

That’s next time on The Art World: What If…?!

The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 4: Cecilia Alemani

“What if the world was without ethics” or “what if financial value was no longer the way we talk about success?” This time, art journalist and host, Charlotte Burns, welcomes Cecilia Alemani, artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, and the director & chief curator of Highline art, New York City. Cecilia masterminded the Biennale production through the pandemic, to rave reviews, notably for the cool manner in which she presented a new version of art history, bringing focus without fanfare to female and non gender conforming artists and to Indigenous artists. Charlotte and Cecilia discuss the role of the curator (and how it could be different) what value really means in art and whether ethics and art are compatible.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I’m art journalist Charlotte Burns, and this is the podcast all about imagining different futures.

So far, we’ve had conversations with some brilliant people including Glenn Lowry, Kemi Ilesanmi and Naomi Beckwith. With their help we’ve tackled some big “what ifs” that could shape and change the art world for years to come.

[Audio of guests] 

In this episode we welcome Cecilia Alemani who was the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, the biggest exhibition in the art world. Cecilia masterminded its production through a pandemic, to rave reviews, notably for the cool manner in which she presented a new version of art history, bringing focus without fanfare to female and non gender conforming artists and to Indigenous artists. 

Cecilia is also the director and chief curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City. 

We talked about some great “what ifs.” What if curators could simply be curators without having to think about fundraising? What if the art world did away with ethics? What if value was not lead by the market?

First, we began with the Biennale…

Charlotte Burns:

Cecilia, welcome, thank you so much for being on the show. 

Cecilia Alemani:

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Someone had asked you how did it feel to be in Venice, and you said, “it's been so long working on this virtually that I just want to get my hands dirty. I want to install, I want the artists to be here. I want to get to the juice of things.” 

And I love this, and I want us to get to the juice of things.

Cecilia Alemani: 

For many curators, the installation part is the most exciting part. I worked on this show for so long, completely isolated, I couldn't travel, I couldn't go and do actual studio visits. So when I finally got to Venice, I was so excited to be there. And finally, you’re there with the artists, I mean, it's still quite a construction site, but the crates start coming in. It was finally wonderful to be there to see in practice what you've worked on for so long, virtually. 

Charlotte Burns:

It was the first time since the Second World War that the exhibition had been postponed. And, of course, your show opened with land war once again in Europe. Meanwhile, you prepared the show during Covid-19. And so it feels like the entire process was engaging in a series of “what ifs.” You know, what if the pandemic never ends? What if the war spirals and Venice can't open? What if, what if? It feels like the whole thing was planning very pragmatic things. There's a lot of details and logistics involved in an exhibition. But meanwhile, you're in this quite abstract space, trying to imagine what the world will look like. How do you navigate that space, it's, it's always a creative space. But this feels particularly ambiguous. 

Cecilia Alemani:

There was never the desire to present something online or virtually, you know, the Venice Biennale is a show that happens in Venice, in the physical spaces of the Biennale, which have been always the same. So we worked for that target—full of uncertainties, of course, and full of incredible complications going from, you know, the shipping costs to the lack of many materials—but in a way, you know, those are all logistical issues. And there is always a solution. And then, of course, the pandemic hovers above us. But at some point, there is nothing you can do about it. And so we just push forward and try to think and stay positive and remain optimistic. 

Unfortunately, with Russia invading Ukraine something like six weeks before the opening, it was a traumatic event, especially thinking of the Venice Biennale, how close we are to Ukraine and how close we are to Ukrainian culture. And the attention that is on Venice, because of the structure of the national pavilion, you know, it becomes a sort of big UN meeting when the Biennale opens with all these pavilions. So there was a lot of attention but also a lot of stress on the institution to make sure that all the decisions were taken to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian art scene. 

Charlotte Burns:

You talk about Venice being sort of the UN of the art world, which it is— for people who haven't been to Venice, there is the main pavilions, which Cecilia was curating. And then around that, there are national pavilions. And there's been this sense of internationalism in the art world. But now, there's a new kind of conversation coming in, which is the death of globalism. 

And whilst you were curating Venice, there was one of the art world's other major events, documenta [fifteen], which took place at the same time. And there's this schism developing in the curatorial world over this idea of collective visions versus authorial ones. Documenta was alternatively heralded as life-affirming, and lambasted as a dreadful embarrassment. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jason Farago said, “It will never recover its aim of imagining the whole world in one show, the dream of a global art world has died. And I fear a lot of people, reactionary and radical alike, prefer it that way. The incomprehension and anger the show has elicited are the proof they always wanted, that we have no common future.” 

You were in charge of curating a totally different kind of event, one that had a theme. You said it was important to give the visitors an entryway into this. I wanted to ask you what you think about that; the sense that the world has become more nationalistic and fragmented and that international globalism has become more fraught. 

Cecilia Alemani:

I think it's a very complicated question. And thank God they exist at the same time. Otherwise, you would only have the same exhibition in different cities in the world, and it would be extremely boring. So I think, of course, the idea of globalization is very much embedded in the fabric of the Venice Biennale because it was founded on the idea of these sort of international expositions of the 19th century. So it's hard to overcome that idea. But it's the job of a curator to sort of use that maybe obsolete model at your advantage and to actually maybe challenge that same notion of nationalism and national identity with the work that you exhibit.  

Charlotte Burns:

One of the authorial visions that you've invoked is the 2003 biennale, Francesco Bonami’s. And you've talked about the freedom of that show. You thought that a lot of these kind of big Biennale exhibitions had become “more professional or more perfected and kind of lost.” How did you move away from that professionalism?

Cecilia Alemani:

I don't know if I fully moved away. If I think about Francesco Bonami’s exhibition in 2003, what I remember, you know, was incredible energy that just was ebullient and effervescent as you walked through the spaces. After that exhibition, there is a sort of professionalization of that exhibition that happened because, you know, all exhibitions grow and become adult. [Laughs] 

I wish I had been able to convey that spirit that Francesco’s exhibition had, but it wasn't necessarily my goal. I think, in a way, the conditions I had prepared this exhibition in were so specific that I've made the decision of creating an exhibition that was extremely tight conceptually and thematically because maybe I just needed that clarity of thoughts and process in a very chaotic and unpredictable time. So I wanted the exhibition to be very clear and for the viewer to be able to grasp like a journey through space that was thematic and was artistic and was quite clear, while I think Francesco’s exhibition was celebrated, maybe more like an effervescent creativity of the artists. 

Charlotte Burns:

This was also the biggest art Biennale to be put together by a single curator, more than 200 artists from 58 countries. And so I want to talk to you about ambition here. What were your personal ambitions and your professional ambitions, as well as your ambitions for the show and its place in art, and art history? 

Cecilia Alemani:

I wanted to organize an exhibition where the participants were happy. I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but you always hear horror stories about these big biennials in which artists are desperate because they could not do what they wanted, they didn't have the space, they were just next to someone they didn't like. So this is a lot of negotiation and real estate. 

But I wanted to make sure that, ideally, every single artist invited and that worked with me for so many months could have a great experience and could have a great way of exhibiting their project and their work. I wanted the artists to be pleased and think about this occasion as the most important exhibitions they will ever be featured in. 

And then on the other side, the ambition to create an exhibition that could be approachable and could be really appreciated by a wide audience, and maybe that comes very much from my training and working for the High Line, where I have a very, very broad audience that is definitely not the art world. But I wanted to make sure that the exhibition—which is, you know, highly visited by just, schools and people that are not expert in Venice—could come and learn something and maybe through the historical capsules they also learn something that is not just about contemporary art. So I wanted to create an experience of learning and discovery that could talk to a broader audience and not just the art world.  

Charlotte Burns:

Typically, a curator will travel to an artist studio to look at their work. It's one of the great privileges and pleasures of being a curator. You obviously couldn't do that. So you traveled through your imagination. You also asked a group of advisors, curators and other museum professionals from regions you couldn't visit to recommend artists. You looked at thousands and thousands of lists, portfolios and you did more than 400 studio visits. This is extremely productive. And there's so many interesting strands here of collaboration and travel and imagination. But the thing I want to ask you about first is that you've said these conversations over zoom, these studio visits that you might think would be more sterile, you said that they became almost a confessional space for conversations. And this is you talking to artists about what they're making, what they're doing with their lives with their time and their creativity. And so that's a lot of space and weight to hold for those conversations during a time of such fear and anxiety for so many people. How did you carry that and then also have the ability to remove yourself from it enough to sort of look at the intellectual threads and the creative links to make a strong thesis of an exhibition? 

Cecilia Alemani:

I kind of just changed gear and accepted this new medium or this new format of studio visits. We put aside more like the idea of looking at works. There was this sort of hiatus and this kind of bubble space in which they found themselves, in which they couldn't even talk so much about art. And so I think what happened is that we opened up much more in talking about personal feeling and emotion and personal state of being in these very uncertain times. And that's why I'm saying that very often, these conversations felt like confessions because, eventually, you end up talking about very profound things and very profound aspects of your existence. And for many of these artists, I feel like the pandemic, in a way, also became the practical manifestation of many of the concerns that were actually maybe just studying and thinking about, you know, the idea of climate change, or the idea of the sort of the pressure from technology onto our bodies. All of a sudden, all these concerns became extremely factual with the pandemic. And so, in a way, I think, for the artists themselves, it became a very kind of revelatory moment in which we found ourselves fighting against this force and this virus that was invisible and unbeatable for the first few months. And it was kind of a revelation also, in terms of how to think about these large themes in a very practical way. 

Charlotte Burns:

One of the things we’ve talked about when we were planning this show was this idea of the value of art, what we value, what we venerate, and whether we’re in the beginning or the midst of the beginning of a massive shift in what we value. In your biennale, when I walked around it, I felt that. I felt that it was of now, whereas some exhibitions I've walked around since I feel are pre-internet, you know, and that might be artists I love. And I might think about their art as being as revolutionary as I thought about it 10 years ago, but I don't feel the same way about it, it doesn't feel like something I need to see. 

And I think that felt so exciting about your show that you offered something that really did feel of now and in a very elegant way, you opened up art history looking at artists and ways of thinking that are different. Specifically, one of the things you did was make it mostly female or non-gender conforming biennale. Of the 213 artists, only 21 were male. And this fact is worn very likely, it's not something that you've talked about that much in statements. When you're asked to talk about it, you tend to sort of downplay it. I know you're asked about it a lot and it seems to me that in your responses you don't really like dwelling on it, you don't want it to be known as like the “women biennale.” Tell me, tell me what your discomfort is with that. 

Cecilia Alemani: 

Not necessarily discomfort, I think it's important to remember I'm Italian, and I work in America, so I know both cultures fairly well. And I know, and this is more like an Italian reflection, but I know that we are not very advanced when it comes to discussions and conversations about equity and equality in the art world, but also in our society, especially in our society. And I did not want the Italian people or the Italian audience to just dismiss the show because it's a show that features a majority of women artists, which has happened already anyway, even if I didn't make big claims. But I wanted this show to be meaningful for Italy and for Italian culture. And I do feel like there is a huge separation between Italian culture and the rest of the world. And I wanted people to be able to come and see the show and then maybe in a second moment realize, oh, you know what, there are so many actually women artists in the show that I've never seen anything like that before. And you can see a good show by featuring women artists, which is the reverse of the last 125 years. So I was very aware of that context. And that's also one of the reasons I did not care about making big statements. 

But I wanted to prevent also the Italian audience dismissing because they don't want to entertain those conversations because they're very uncomfortable. And so they just dismiss it. “Oh, it's a women biennial, so who cares? It's just politically correct.” That's been very much in the Italian press, which I think is, of course, very reductive, but I want people to be able to have that conversation and have that discussion. Even if it's uncomfortable for many of them.

Charlotte Burns: 

I think what you're saying is so interesting because things do just get reduced to, “it’s the women's show, it's the politically correct show,” and what your exhibition did so empowering and generous for your audience was that you just focused on the work and you quietly made the case that this was art that should have been seen and should have been looked at and that it should be taken seriously, on its own terms, and there should be more space for it. And more exhibitions could look like this without being called “the women show.” 

Two women, let's talk about in particular, you knew you wanted to start the Biennale with a work by Katharina Fritsch and Simone Leigh. So talk me through that. And like imagine you're someone who hasn't seen it, seen the Venice Biennale. Can you describe to someone what they're going to see in those two entrance points to the show? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

Yeah, so the exhibition takes place in two venues. One is what is called the Central Pavilion, which is located in the Giardini, which is the historical side of the Biennale. The pavilion itself was built in 1893, it's a rather traditional space. One could say it's a more museum-like or kind of white cube space. The only historical room that remains from the foundation is the first room which is this octagonal room, which is called Sala Chini. Galileo Chini was the gentleman who decorated the cupola with this beautiful Art Deco or like Liberty style frescoes, which were realized, I believe, in 1910 or 1912. And then during the fascism, they were completely covered by a sort of fake cupola, which was removed only in the 1980s—actually just restored in 2013, I believe. But it's this beautiful historical space. And also, it's a reminder that in the past, for the first edition pre-Second World War, those spaces were decorated. They didn't necessarily have white spaces or white walls. So they were decorated with textiles and frescoes and things that were actually adorning the space beyond the artworks that were exhibited. And so I always love this space. I wanted to start with a sort of monumental gesture, and I always had this vision of having this incredible artwork by Katharina Fritsch, who is a wonderful German artist, and to me, one of the most relevant sculptors in our time. The piece I chose is a very, very early piece from 1987. It’s her first hyperrealistic large-scale piece, and it's called Elephant (1987), and it's basically a giant elephant. The scale is right, it’s actually modeled after an elephant that was in a natural history museum, but the color is very weird, this kind of dark green color. And you enter this beautiful space, and you find on a fairly high and tall pedestal this creature that, of course, we can all recognize, but, it's this weird sense of something gone wrong because the color is completely unnatural and surreal in a sense, or super real. And I also wanted to start the show with a traditional gesture of a figure on a pedestal. But instead of having a man or a woman, having an animal, also an animal that is part of a matriarchal society—because elephants are led by women. So there were many layers of my thinking. But most importantly, again, this kind of monumental gesture of starting a show with a giant animal on a pedestal. 

And when it comes to the other entrance, the Arsenale is a very different space that was built in the 16th century. Its main features are these Greek columns everywhere, and nothing can sort of be changed or can be touched. So, in that case, when you walk through the Arsenale, you have to build your own architecture. And I wanted to start with this sort of monumental gesture by bringing a sculpture called Brick House (2019) by Simone Leigh, who is an American artist with whom I worked on the High Line and actually produced the sculpture that is on view now in Venice for the High Line back in 2019. And in this case, the sculpture is a portrait of a Black woman whose body becomes a form of West African architecture. So Simone is someone that has been very interested in seeing the conflation between portraiture and architecture. And so I love the idea of starting part of an exhibition where the idea of metamorphosis and transformation is very strong by bringing this very iconic sculpture in the first room of the Arsenale. 

Charlotte Burns: 

They’re such powerful starts, punctuation points and entry points to the show. But also, so much of the retrograde thinking you might hear about female artists is, “oh they’re very collective,” or “they work more in craft, it's a smaller scale thing.” And this is a very immediate rebuttal of the sense of ambition and power in those works by those female artists. 

What I want to talk to you about here is how do you fund that, then? Because we know that funding for exhibitions is tied very strongly, often to the market. When you're funding a big show like Venice, you do get some institutional support, you get some funding from the Italian government, but you have to fundraise a lot for that show. How do you do that when you're funding artists that people may not have heard of, whether they're female artists or Indigenous artists or artists from further afield? It felt like a show that wasn't situated enormously in the market. Was that harder to fundraise for? 

Cecilia Alemani:  

You know, just know you got to do it. [Laughs] So you start from day one. You kind of just know that you have to raise money. And that's, I think it's always the case in Venice. I think in my case, unfortunately, it was an expensive show to produce because the shipping was completely messed up and because I had a lot of artwork. The approach that I had, I tried to fundraise for the exhibition as a whole. So I had lots of support from donors and foundations that sort of stood behind my choice and my concept, and my theme. Then, of course, you know, when you have to produce new installations and new projects, then you can also target specific foundations or supporters or individuals. But as a general practice, I tried to fundraise for the whole show. 

To be honest, because the show was mainly women artists, I did find a lot of good responses and people that actually wanted to stand behind this choice. Maybe they're not the usual suspects, but there were both foundations and individuals that were very, very generous and really believed in my vision. 

Charlotte Burns: 

So you kind of presented us with a vision of “what if?” What if the art world mostly put out shows by female artists and were funded by people who wanted to support artists? What did you learn from that? Is that replicable? Is that something that you think the art world could do more of? You sort of made this theoretical a reality.

Cecilia Alemani:

I think so. Again, I'm an optimistic person. And I think the world is changing. I know that your report, unfortunately, doesn't show that the world is changing that much, but I want to believe that we can make a difference. Money's out there, you just need to know where to go get it. And maybe it's not the usual funders of exhibitions. But there are lots of people that do believe in the power of women artists and want to support that and want to advance equity. So I think it's about shaking a little bit the fundraising and the philanthropic net. But it's not an impossible mission. It’s just about being creative and looking maybe other ways to find support. 

Charlotte Burns: 

One of the big funders for the show was the Teiger Foundation, right? And the Teiger Foundation has, in recent years, started really focusing on this idea of supporting curators as a concept, as a funding proposition to just give curators more freedom. Do you think that's something curators need? There is a sense in the field that the role of the curator has slightly diminished, particularly institutionally, since the sort of 1970s. That it's much more tied to the trustees now and to funding. What would you suggest that curators need? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

Well, what the David Teiger Foundation does is really unique and really, really incredibly generous. They were the first foundation to support my show—I believe it was even before the pandemic--and David Teiger was a dear friend and supporter also of previous exhibitions of mine. It's an incredible resource because, in a way, grants and funding that go to curators eventually go to artists and exhibitions. [Laughs] I didn't put anything in my bucket. It’s just, you know, to support my vision and to realize the artists’ visions. 

And while there are lots of grants and residency and programs that support artists— which there can be more and more—but there is a good wealth of supporters in that sense, at least in the Western world. For curators, there is very little in terms of grants and support. Of course, the Venice Biennale is an extreme, and it's an institution that has already a foundation, has already a structure, but thinking of an impact of a grant of a few thousand dollars that can go to a young curators who wants to realize a small show in a nonprofit space can be so impactful and so meaningful. So I hope that in the future, there will be more people that also look at the curatorial practice as a way to support the entire ecosystem of the art world.

Charlotte Burns:

What are the threads you take from Venice in terms of the high-level concepts? And the practical realities, by which I mean, you now know how to do a really big show. Does that make you want to do another really big show again? But also kind of more grounded in the art itself—that you've had 400 studio visits? How are you following up on all that tapestry of conversation with those artists? And where is it taking your curatorial practice now? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

One of the best outcomes of doing a show like this is that you learn so much. I got to know, first of all, so many artists. Many of them did not make it in the show because of different reasons. But that does not mean that I will not work with them on the High Line or on a next project. So I feel very enriched in that sense. But also, especially when it came to the historical presentations, I feel I was very lucky to have the time to study and learn, and that experience is one of the most rewarding aspects of our job. So, I hope that there will be things coming out of this deep research. It was a giant show to organize, yes. I would love to do another show of that scale. But at the same time, I can also do things that are a bit less conventional or a bit more outside the regular circuit because I have, I'm not necessarily a museum curator, I like to look at other way to other places to find locations to curate. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Where are you looking now, then? 

Cecilia Alemani:

[Laughs] Now I'm just, you know, happy to be back at the High Line. And it's a job that I love very much. I'm focusing on that for now and back home.

Charlotte Burns:

You're back home and not doing as many zoom calls. I imagine.

Cecilia Alemani:

No. [Laughs] I actually desintalled Zoom from my computer, so…

Charlotte Burns:

Throw it in the river, burn it [Laughs].

Charlotte Burns:

We talked a little bit about value. Do you think there is a kind of shift in value, the kind of art people, the public wants to look at? The kind of art the artists are interested in?

Cecilia Alemani:

I don't know if I feel comfortable with the term value but what I can say, I think the biggest challenge or what I think still now is, can we look at what's happening now, what's been happening since the pandemic, as a sort of a new wave that is coming through the art world, and without making, of course, big declamation? I think that was one of my goals, try to identify if there was something new happening—I still think it's happening right now. So it's very hard to name what it is. But what I can say, and what I hope is a little bit visible in the exhibition, is, I think, there are many artists that, for instance, are using methodologies of introspections, and the dream or you can say the irrational, which were shared with, of course, Surrealism, to kind of look at our current reality, which is not exactly exciting both in terms of political and social. And so while I would say a few years ago this show could have been, in a way, much more openly political, I think the artists that I talk to are still investigating political themes but are doing that in a much more intimate and introspective way. 

It is fairly similar or parallel to what happened in the 1930s with Surrealism. But it's still very much evolving. But I hope that, like 20 years from now, looking back at this show, one could say those were some of the artists that started thinking about political and social issues but in a much more intimistic way.

Charlotte Burns: 

Do you think the public is changing in that way too? Are they lockstep or the artists ahead in that? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

I think the public always grows, for better or worse; To me, the public is expanding and especially for these large exhibitions. What I can notice is that there is and maybe also the High Line, is this broadening of public reach. I don't know if it also means diluting expertise and losing some sharpness or critical gaze but I do think the public is expanding. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Does it make you crave something small and intimate yourself? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

Maybe. I think they can exist both at the same time. I think we should not necessarily think that these big shows are good because there are a lot of people going. Of course, it's great that lots of people are going to these big shows but that doesn't mean that you cannot create a different aesthetic experience which is much more domestic or intimate. Absolutely not.

The bigger risk is to judge and an exhibition just for the numbers because that's one facet of the whole situation. And I think it’s important to me, for instance, the idea that artists are pleased or they did create what they wanted to. So there are different kinds of clients or different kinds of audiences here, not just the public. 

Charlotte Burns:  

That’s a really interesting distinction. 

I want to ask you a little bit about place. Where are the best places right now to be a curator? And I ask this because you've said in the past that Italy isn't as hospitable to younger curators because there's so much 1960s bureaucracy and that there needs to be a change of generation since there aren't that many positions open and not much turnover. 

In New York, it's completely different. There are lots of positions, there's lots of activity, it's very fast-paced but you've said a difficulty there is that everything can be so “boxed in.” An artist comes from a school, they belong to a gallery. While as a curator, you're always looking for things that don't have a label already attached to them. If you are a young curator now or if you think of the next stages of your career, is New York still the best place to be a curator? Are you excited by other propositions? I know you've done a lot of work in Buenos Aires and places like that. 

Cecilia Alemani: 

I think it's, it's very hard. I think New York is still the one of the most important capitals of art. But what's happening, and it's clearly in front of all of us, is that the profession of the curator has become very cool and very trendy. And I'm part of it, of course, because I moved to New York to study curatorial practice. But while 20 years ago you had x amount of curatorial schools, now you have such an inflation of curatorial schools, which is great because the more curators, the better. But the problem is that there are no more curatorial positions because museums are pretty much the same. And yes, some of them are expanding, but they're not necessarily expanding the team exponentially. So I think it's very hard. Like, I know when you open up positions for curatorial assistants in museums, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of applications, which means there is such an eagerness to do this job, but there is very little positions. 

So maybe New York is not the best place to start as a young curator. The good thing about America is that there are so many incredible museums scattered across the map of the United States. So it's also maybe New York is a place where you end up and not where you start. 

I think of South America as, to me is one of the most interesting region to look at, not just for artists, but maybe also for curators, museums in Brazil, in Colombia, in Argentina, are doing an incredible job. So I think if you are lucky enough that you can maybe travel or start your career somewhere else, there are also other centers that are not necessarily North America. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Okay, what if? What if you could change three things about the art world? What three things would you change? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

“What if,” I mean, maybe the first one is, what if financial values was no longer the way we talk about success? And so what if we could say that it's amazing that museums have acquired works by female artists but regardless of their market values, because market values should not be, in my opinion, the sort of trigger or like the sort of model upon which we attribute value because it's got nothing to do with it. And we all know how the market and the auction houses, it's a sort of an unreal and surreal world that has very often nothing to do with the actual value of the artwork. So, could we actually reimagine art history where the monetary value is left out? And so we refocus on the artistic value and on other kinds of values but not the market value.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you think we can do that? Do you think that's possible? 

Cecilia Alemani:

You know, what I think is happening that is rather scary, to be honest, is how and this is of course, my personal opinion. But how often there is completely like a hiatus between the sort of values attributed by museums and institutions, and let's say art criticism and the market value, because there is a big split there, of course. 

But the last thing that I want to see is that the market value is what drives museums because it should be, of course, the other way around. Now, of course, you see young kids going to crazy millions of prices without ever being collected by a museum. And that's, of course, it's absurd because it's the museums and the sort of art historical institutions that should be driving this attribution of value, not for sure that market or auction houses. But I think we're in a very tricky moment because they don't reconcile so and they shouldn't. But the market is taking a big step in this picture. So it's very worrisome. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Is that tied to the funding structures, the way that museums are funded, you know, most people are collectors they're in the market? 

Cecilia Alemani:  

I don't know if it's all laid out, I mean, isn't that a big game, you know, who has the new shiny stars? And who can have it and then flip it? So I think it's just a different ecosystem? I mean, yes, they do cross and when collectors decide to donate and that's a whole different story. 

But what's happening in the market is it's completely its own ecosystem that, again, has nothing to do necessarily with value that is attributed by museums or art historical institutions. So I think either the two will keep going apart from each other. And I don't know what's going to happen but it's going to be a very polarized world. Or when we reconcile them, you know, the big risk is that museums will be just following market values and market mechanism, which is, it's got nothing to do with what a museum should do. A museum should value things according to their intellectual and artistic values, not market values. So I think that's a big “if” in the upcoming years.

Charlotte Burns:  

Okay, two other things. If you could change two other things about the art world, what if? What would they be? 

Cecilia Alemani:

Ah, I often think, what if the funding system was completely provided by their institution? This is never gonna happen. But what if we could go back to doing our job and not fundraising because we all know that curators, in one way or the other, they have to do fundraising, either by raising money or by getting works from collectors? They’re just different forms of fundraising. So what if that was no longer in the picture and was no longer part of my job? Could I go back to being a more purer curator? Or is just, you know, the evolution of this job? That the curator is also fundraiser and she's also a manager? It's a more contemporary vision of what curators are. 

Charlotte Burns: 

Okay, your final change Cecilia, your last wish. 

Cecilia Alemani: 

Wish…well, this is not a wish, but I asked myself often, and I think that's something that you have touched upon in previous podcasts. What happens—and that is not a wish—but what if the world was without ethics? What if the art world was just focusing on the artistic language? And I don't think this is my desire by no means, but we talk a lot about the sort of overlap between artistic merit and moral issues of the artists. And that's a very interesting conversation. But I wonder where we will end up with that conversation. So I'm very curious to see happens if you split those completely. Is that gonna bring us back to medieval times? Or is that like a parallel way of seeing the art world? 

Charlotte Burns: 

Do you think you can split ethics from the conversation around art? 

Cecilia Alemani:

No, not necessarily. That's why I ask myself if you could imagine a world in which you can. The idea that you can actually look back and reevaluate and reconsider and without being moralistic or pedantic, but the idea that you can look at someone's work, knowing more about the person, the man or the woman behind, to me as an art professional is just exciting, and it's just enriching. But in a way, I wonder where that conversation will take us. You know, I'm just, I'm just curious to see what's next when it comes to this, this conversation? Because in a way, as I was telling you about the idea of the women biennial like to avoid those simplifications, you know to avoid, how can we be more thoughtful when it comes to bringing ethics into the artistic discourse without the risk of being called, oh you just want to cancel Paul Gauguin. That's something that I think a lot when it comes to art. I don't have an answer necessary. So I wonder, you know, how can we move forward in a positive way that is not just about canceling and silencing histories?

Charlotte Burns: 

It’s an interesting point about whose values as well? Because you mentioned earlier you're from Italy, you live in New York. So when you thought about your Venice Biennale, you thought about the Italian press and the Italian public and how they would receive it. That's a different conversation than the New York press and the New York public. And so, you know, perhaps you having that kind of dual identity, maybe that gives you a different intro into whose ethics they are anyway, who's deciding what's ethical, what's not ethical, what the correct way of looking at it is. I wonder if that's part of it. 

Cecilia Alemani: 

I think so, I mean, or maybe it's also thinking, what is the outcome that we want to reach? You know, it's because there is a process. But it's also the outcome, I think the outcome is that we want to see museums more diverse, so that we want to see museums and institutions and cultural institutions to just represent the world as it is, which is certainly not a white world. Talking about planet, but how do we get there? And so I guess, maybe being a bit more strategic, focusing on a more strategic thinking, how do we get there knowing how other people think and you know, in a way, what I was telling you about Italy also applies to gender, but it applies also to race and other imbalances. And so how do you get there? Is it by confronting and claiming that the world is different? Or is it by doing the job and showing through an exhibition that you can do an exhibition that is diverse, and it's  female, without necessarily having to claim it, just showing it with facts? I tend to do the second one, because I'm necessarily not a big declaration person. But I'm very sure and I'm very convinced that the art world would be better if it was a more diverse also in the representation in culture and institutions. But how do we get there? And so that's in a way, the more managerial side of me is, can we be strategic about it? And can we get there? So, hard job that shows that you can do, you can collect, you can do exhibitions of a diverse group of artists. Clearly, you know, your studies and your data show that we're not there yet. But I wonder, once you have the objectives very clear is how do you get there? 

Charlotte Burns: 

You're, of course, someone who could kind of answer that. I think part of the situation that we're realizing is that there isn't really that membrane of knowledge being transferred around how to do what you've done so your knowledge that you've gained from this, like, how would you pass that on? You talk about strategy, what would the strategies be that people might consider? Like, how can you share the knowledge you've gained from this to create that change and that strategy? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

I think there is a basic, basic level, which is literally knowledge. I am 100% sure that a lot of people simply don't know a lot of female artists, both contemporary and historical. So and of course, that's not nothing that I introduced, like an artist that was very important in my show is someone called Mirella Bentivoglio. She was an Italian artist who did concrete poetry, but most importantly, she was a curator and did a lot of exhibitions of concrete poetry in the 70s when it was a very popular movement in Europe and in South America. And the average number of women artists in these large exhibitions were 2%, while there were so many incredible women doing concrete and visual poetry. And so she made a point for 10 years to do shows on the female artists working with concrete poetry, including a very important one in Italy at the Venice Biennale called Materializzazione del linguaggio, the materialization of language that happened in 1978. And she said, you know, I'm not necessarily interested in doing women show for the sake of it. But after I did this 10 years of show, the average number or percentage of female artists included in shows created by men rose from 2% to 20%. And it was simply an educational tool for lots of museum directors and curators to get to know the work of artists that would not, maybe they couldn't find in the usual platform, they couldn't find in galleries, they couldn't find on the walls of collectors. So there is certainly an education factor. And then, you know, what's next? It's up to the next curator of the Venice Biennale to deal with that. But joking aside, I want to hope that this is not just an exception at my exhibition but there will be a way of again, loosening a little bit the sort of fabric of how you do an exhibition like that to include different stories and different perspectives that are not necessarily my perspective or Western perspective. But to me, the biggest risk is all of those voices that don't want to open up or don't want to rewrite and to reconsider other voices. And you know, here I see, much less in the US, but I can totally see it in Italy so much. And especially now, with the new political situation. You know, I think exhibitions, like Venice can make a change, at least for the younger generations that can see themselves represented in a show that has never included them. 

Charlotte Burns:

That's such a great note to end us on. But before you go, I've got one question for you. So I'm just curious about because you don't strike me as someone who approaches things with very strict limitations to how you're going to perceive a situation. But I did read about one rule in your home, which is that if you have any art, you keep it in a cardboard box because it's nice to go home and look at white walls. That the ironclad rule of your marriage has been no art in the house. Have you stuck to that? 

Cecilia Alemani: 

I'm facing a very white wall where I used to have all the plans of Venice. Kind of, yeah, we have very little art. There is not a lot of white walls because we have a lot of books. So books are covering and kind of occupying every surface of our apartment. But it's nice to have a bit of a visual respite when you come home after having looked or lived so much art. 

Charlotte Burns:

Cecilia, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. 

Cecilia Alemani:

Thank you so much, bye-bye.

Charlotte Burns:

My huge thanks to Cecilia Alemani again—especially because on the winters’ day we recorded with her, it was a bizarre and boiling 25 degrees in New York City, and we asked her to turn off the aircon to better the quality of the audio currently ringing around your ears. 

Next time we’ll be talking to Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which is scheduled to open in 2025. 

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:

What if we actually have some shared ideas? What if we actually can address certain structural issues? What if museums become the place that people truly look to, as a better business model for certain things? Or a better education model? You know what I'm saying? Like that, like, abundance place is so impressive to me. 

Charlotte Burns:

So many brilliant “what ifs” coming up. That is 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 3: Kemi Ilesanmi

What if we all name our dreams before following them? This episode we welcome Kemi Ilesanmi, the now-former executive director of The Laundromat Project, the non-profit focusing on the art of the everyday, amplifying community and artists as citizens and change agents. 

This show is all about ‘what ifs’, and Kemi operates from that place of abundant possibility. What if businesses invested in their staff, seeding future next generations? What if arts organizations functioned as community assets? Tune in for more.

 New episodes available every Thursday.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome back to The Art World: What If…?!, the podcast all about imagining different futures. I’m your host, journalist Charlotte Burns, and throughout the series we’re meeting some brilliant people who can help us explore some big ideas. Asking them to imagine, what if? 

[Audio of guests]

This episode we welcome Kemi Ilesanmi, the now former executive director of The Laundromat Project in New York, the non-profit focusing on the art of the everyday, on amplifying community and on artists as citizens and change agents. 

This show is all about ‘what ifs’ and Kemi operates from that place of abundant possibility. What if we all name our dreams before following them? What if organizations invested in their staff, seeding future next generations? 

As you listen to this, Kemi will be traveling around the world. Where better to start a new year? 

[Music break] 

Charlotte Burns:

Kemi, thank you so much for being here today.

Kemi Ilesanmi:

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here. Really nice to meet you. 

Charlotte Burns:

So we're lucky to catch you, Kemi, you're stepping back from The Laundromat Project after ten years of being its executive director. And you're heading off on a life-changing adventure from New Year's Eve to New Year's Eve, a gap year through 2023. This show is looking at life's ‘what ifs’. And it feels like you're a person who thoroughly embraces those possibilities. Can you tell us a little bit about where you're going so we can all dream and vicariously live through you for a moment.

Kemi Ilesanmi:

It started off being, “Oh, I'll probably need a break after being an executive director, and somewhere along the way morphed into what if we take a whole year?”. We're starting off in Mexico, then we’re off to India then Southern Italy. In between each trip, we're actually coming home to see family and friends. Then we take off for South Africa and Namibia, then Ghana and Nigeria. I'm from Nigeria and I’ve not spent a month in Nigeria since I was 15. And we're ending, we're in discussion... But we are ending in either Australia, New Zealand or Argentina. 

Charlotte Burns:

Oh my goodness. I can't imagine what that feels like. You're stepping back from, you know, you've been working so hard. You've built up this, you know, organization, when you joined, the budget was around $200,000 annually, you were the second employee. You're stepping back at a moment when the budget’s more than $2 million annually, and there are 12 to 14 staff. You have a physical location, a permanent home, a 10-year lease. And there's money in the bank. 

So you've worked tirelessly, with your community, with all your staff, to get the organization to this place through a pandemic. And now, instead of feeling that kind of cosh of burnout, you're feeling this sense of radical possibilities. Can you talk about that feeling, what you might expect? Because I know that you have epiphanies on vacation: you came to The Laundromat Project with the idea of becoming its executive director after taking a holiday. And you said to your husband, “I know what my job is. Now I have to go and get it.” 

So, what kind of epiphanies might you come back with?

Kemi Ilesanmi:  

Oh, I'm so thrilled in the not-knowing what exactly the epiphanies will be. But I believe in facilitated epiphanies, when possible. 

I am excited to explore community arts organizations in the countries we're going to, keeping an eye out for interesting spaces. My husband, similarly, is interested in community organizing entities in the countries that we're visiting, which have incredible histories in both of these ways of working, right, politics and art. So being really open to that and meeting up with artists. 

The epiphany I had this morning, because I'm very excited about Nigeria—I lived there for nine years as a child from six to 15—I'm really interested in digging deeper into my Yoruba heritage. This morning, I was reading The Times, and they had the second article in about two weeks that touched on the tradition of adire, which is tie dye in Nigeria. And it occurred to me that I could go and spend time learning about this, I could learn to do adire. So that would be completely new. But I think I'm excited to do things that make me think and feel differently. I don't have to be an expert. 

Charlotte Burns:

I love that idea. Essentially, what you're also reminding yourself is your potential. And this is something you're very good at doing. So much of The Laundromat Project is about reigniting that sense of creative potential, reigniting that creativity in people. 

If you could run the art world, what would you do? What's your what if? How would you get people to do that? Is it engaging with things? Is it making things with your own hand? Is it being in a space where you can be vulnerable? Like, what are the ways that you get people to remember that they're creative beings?

Kemi Ilesanmi:

Hmm, that's such a wonderful question. And you're right. It's one that The Laundromat Project is really focused on. The very heart of it is why we're called The Laundromat Project. The idea was to actually meet people in spaces in their everyday lives and insert ourselves into their everyday lives, like a laundromat, and just say this too can be a place of creativity. 

There's something really beautiful about that idea of meeting people where they are. And I do still think there's something really gorgeous about just going to that community event and saying we're going to figure out an art project or a conversation prompt that moves us into a space of creativity and generative thinking and generative making and doing. I live in Flatbush in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn. We have a lot of musicians in the neighborhood and a lot of porches. A lot of the musicians really wanted to be able to share who they were. And regular porch concerts became a regular thing during Covid, and now continues. So you can just walk down the street and on a Sunday afternoon and possibly run into a saxophone player or a reggae band or whatever kind of music, jazz singers, and there's something really beautiful about the possibility of running into art, just by deciding to like take a little walk in the neighborhood. 

And there's something there that I think to be pulled out about just running into, and being a part of people's everyday lives, to the extent that it doesn't seem extraordinary. Right now, it still deserves comment. But what if it was so ingrained that it didn't deserve comment? Of course, I ran into a jazz singer, and of course, I talked to an artist or whatever that might look like in different neighborhoods. 

Charlotte Burns:

I love that so much, this idea of kind of bolstering creativity. In a past interview, you said something about, you know, artists are who we turn to in difficult times. And it reminded me of something the actor Ethan Hawke had said that people think that art isn't for them. But actually, when they're heartbroken, they read a poem. If they're feeling sad, they might watch a film like, you know, through art and culture is how we learn to find empathy from others within difficult moments like that. 

When we were prepping for the show, I said, what's your ‘what if’? What's the kind of imaginative space we might want to discuss or think about? And you said that your number one dream for our field was one in which POC arts organizations, artists and cultural workers are well funded and can thrive in their own communities. Can you talk a little bit more about that and bring us on to your work with HueArts NYC? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

Before doing HueArts, I never would have guessed that New York City has over 450 arts entities, be they fiscally-sponsored, nonprofit, or for profit, founded and run by people of color. Black, indigenous, Latinx, Arab American, Asian American. Just every kind of person of color. Never would have guessed that. And it just made me so excited to know that there are 450 different seeds and, you know, cultivation opportunities out there around creative arts in the city, just around people of color, so, many others as well, right?

But what also made me take pause was recognizing how many of them were getting by on $15,000, $10,000, $20,000. Under $100,000. The vast majority are not well-resourced. 

Basically, at the top of Covid, I was following all the lists of Black bookstores, Black toy shops around the country; there were a number of those lists coming out in the midst of the George Floyd summer of 2020. I started sending those kinds of lists to a few funders and saying: “Wouldn't it make sense to have one of these for New York City around arts?” And very quickly, they turned back to me and said, “Well, that would be amazing. You should do it.” 

[Laughs]

And I definitely was not expecting that.

I thought they would hire, you know, someone fancy and get this done. And I had a job running a relatively small grassroots organization through a pandemic. So I was not looking for this project. But I did know that it had to be done. And that it did make sense that it be done by the people who are in that community and running a POC arts organization. 

So I quickly partnered with Museum Hue, which had worked with arts workers of color over the years, and Hester Street, which does phenomenal work around community-engaged processes and had worked on New York City's first, and so far only, cultural plan. And we raised the money very quickly from Mellon [Foundation], Ford [Foundation] and the Department of Cultural Affairs—Commissioner Gonzalo Casals was our fairy godfather. And basically, HueArts became my Covid passion project. That's what I worked on for a year and a half. And it went public with our map and our Brown Paper, looking at what we thought the field needed to look at and what we had learned from some of these 450 entities. And it all came out in February of 2022. 

It has been so empowering to recognize each other, for people who got to add to the list. Museum Hue now owns the project. From the beginning, I knew that it wasn't the Laundromat’s project to steward for the rest of time. So I wanted to bring in a partner that it did make sense for them to be the steward, and Museum Hue is now working in a New York State version with the New York State Council [on the] Arts, which is incredible. 

One of the things that it felt really important to me in that sense of making visible who was here being the step one because, again, I don't think there was any of us that was going to guess 450. And then through the Brown Paper to begin to name, here's where we have strengths. And here's where we have challenges beyond money, because we all know money is a challenge. But also that many of us wanted homes and spaces and brick and mortar, and didn't have them. 

And the LP, of course, had just signed a lease in March 2020 at the top of Covid. So we understood that very well. And it had taken us 15 years to get to that point. Even though our name… the dream was in the name. The Laundromat Project states our dream. It was that we wanted a home. And it no longer needs to look like a laundromat, which we now think about metaphorically, but literally, our dream was captured in our name. And it still took us 15 years to get to a place where we have a long-term lease. And there's still a dream of perhaps owning something more permanent in the future. 

So just being able to state our dreams was something that we talked to in some of our community conversations with other people of color-run arts entities. And very infrequently are we asked to dream. Instead, we're asked to solve problems. There's an expectation of prices, and very little of an expectation of dreaming and possibility. And that was something that felt just in the naming that we exist, and that there are so many of us, and then capturing some of that dreaming in our Brown Paper was part of the seed that I'm hoping to plant so that there can be other dreams that can be manifest. 

In my life, personally, just my personal philosophy, you have to name dreams so that the universe can figure out how to help you make them happen. So if we don't invite people to even name the dream, they can't get to where they need to go. 

Charlotte Burns:

And what happens to people when they name their dreams? What's happening to these organizations? What process—that kind of alchemy of this project? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

A lot of people just looked up on the map, like who else is around me that I may not know, so that they can start connecting to each other. We, none of us—and people of color know this very well—we don't get anywhere by ourselves. But sometimes we don't even know who the other people are to band together with. So that was one of the biggest things we've just been able to make ourselves visible to ourselves. 

And then it gives us, when we're talking externally and meeting potential funders, we actually have something to point to. And it's data. It's actually, I'm not dreaming this. These are the folks who are down the street. Just being able to give people those tools to have a stronger conversation. Those are some of the possibilities that we're already hearing about. 

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

I want to talk to you, after this in a second, about that human-sized dreaming and how it leads to much bigger things. And I mean human-sized as opposed to sort of algorithmically sized. 

But first, I want to talk to you about data. Because when people talk about The Laundromat Project, they talk about community, they talk about grassroots. They talk about possibility, artists and neighbors and neighborhoods. But they don't really talk about data. And when I was doing research for this, I was thinking you're a kind of data nerd. 

By the time you'd become director in 2012 of Laundromat Project, for instance, you said that you had a lot of data about all the artists of color working across communities in New York. 

HueArts NYC is a data project. And it's something you reference as one of the key findings in the Brown Paper. You say that “the dearth of data and metrics on POC arts entities in New York City is significant and remarkable, creating barriers to truly comprehensive field knowledge, visibility and impact. It is one of the main contributors to the lack of POC arts funding, representation, real estate and decision-making power in New York City arts and philanthropy sectors.” 

So data is something you're very focused on. And a lot of organizations don't want to look at that data. It's something that feels intimidating. It feels like it may lead to processes that aren't human-sized. And so I was just thrilled to see that you're a data head, and I suspect that behind these, key findings, there is something of a plan to bring about more data. We know there's a dearth of data; what data do you need? And what are you going to do with it? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

No one has actually called me a data nerd, so I really appreciate that. 

[Laughter]

Charlotte Burns:

It's a highest compliment. 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

I accept. I take it as such. And shout out to Sade Lythcott of the National Black Theater and Kyoung Park of [Kyoung’s] Pacific Beat. They were both on our advisory committee and were very focused on the possibilities of data. 

One of the things that I'm always saying to my staff is, “We have our own data. We have the data,” whatever that might be. Like, we did a fundraising campaign, what happens when? We've been doing this for 10 years, what have we learned? Here are the artists we're working with; what are the trends? What are they looking at? And I'm constantly looking for those ways to, like, quantify, qualify, like a lot of the data I'm interested in is qualitative data. But it's just the idea of looking, recognizing and making things legible. And data helps to make things legible so that you can figure out the next step. 

And one of the things that goes with the data that I'll say that I really focus on is sort of that idea of, you know, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there, did it make a sound? How do we make this public and visible so that it does make a sound? So I made sure we had a PR budget. It wasn't big, but there just needed to be a PR budget so that we could get articles and move things out in the world. So one of the, for me, some of that is socializing an idea so that it is no longer a niche idea. Some of that is being able to inspire ripples that I can't predict. I may never know about, but if they don't even know the thing, then they can't be inspired to do whatever version of a ripple effect that might happen in the world. 

One of the things that really drove me in putting HueArts together was a dream of what it might look like for a young person of color, let's say, a young Black woman who is starting an art career—curator, registrar, there are options. She wants to make a life, a professional life, working with culturally specific, as in people-of-color-run arts organizations, in New York City or even around the world or country. 

Right now, that feels like, you know, that's 50 years. Someone is like, this is what I want to do for 50 years. This is where I want to invest and be a part of and dream and grow. That, in this moment, would feel like an incredibly bold statement. And it shouldn't. 

I am coming into this conversation with a lens that says that is a valuable life and professional goal. I did not work for a POC arts organization until I took the helm of the LP at the age of 42. And I love the places I've worked, I learned a lot. But there's something that has deepened in my practice, and the way that I think about my professional life, and what I have to give the world really came into crystal clarity working at a POC arts organization. So I didn't know what I was missing until I was in it. 

It doesn't have to be everybody's path. But I do believe it deserves to be a path that feels viable for young people of color in the arts. That, ultimately, is my goal. So to be able to make that path visible, legible and possible, we have to have strong POC arts organizations. There's got to be more than five. And they have to be different scales, different niches, around the country. So if you want to live in a smaller town, you get to be at the National Underground Railroad Museum [Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center] up in the Buffalo area, or, “I love heat. I'm going down to the Project Row Houses in Houston” or the Bay Area, you get to be at the African American Center or the East African Arts Alliance [EastSide Arts Alliance]. 

So beginning to name and thread together and know that if I'm going to pick up and move to Oakland, so that I could be, you know, at such and such organizations—Self Help Graphics [& Art] in LA does amazing work and has been a part of a Latinx community there for years. Well I need to know that they'll still be here, and that I'll be paid in a way that allows me to have a family, because that's when people leave. It's when people start having families or just having those greater adult concerns that you have at 30 and 35 and 40, that you didn't have at 20. And you're like, oh, shoot, I need to actually be paid, so I can like send my kids to college to do these kinds of things, and have a life where I don't have roommates for the rest of my life. 

So if we can't resource organizations to be able to hold on and retain and build out our staff, and this field from that space—talk less of the ways that we can support artists and the dreams you might have about the work they do, when we get them, which is the next, obviously, a related layer. But my personal dream is like, wow, wouldn't it be beautiful if a young Black woman who's entering the arts right now, if she wants, could make a 50+ year career in POC arts organizations and not feel like she gave up any kind of professional development or material supports. Because I'm sure that she'll feel satisfaction about the artists she gets to work with. I'm not worried about that part. It's can you have a life? 

Charlotte Burns:

How far away is that? How possible is that, at this moment in time, do you think?

Kemi Ilesanmi:

I caught a glimpse of it at the Loophole of Retreat in Venice, which was a gathering of 700 women coming together under the auspices of Simone Leigh being the first African American woman to represent the US in the Venice Biennale. And she worked with Rashida Bumbry, Tina Campt and Saidiya Hartman to put together an incredible three-day program with lectures, films, performances, and just time to be together on our own island. We had our own island. And it was our intellect, our creativity, our beauty. The fashion was awesome. Really, it was awesome. [Laughter]

One of the things I loved, it was such an intergenerational space. 

They had actually partnered with Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta [University], which, jointly under Dr. Cheryl Finley, run a curatorial program at a historically Black set of colleges. There were about 20 of them there, who were either current students or very recent past students, and they introduced each of the speakers. And every single time one of them would get up and say, “I'm such and such from Spelman”, “I'm such and such from Morehouse”, the entire room would erupt as if we hadn't just heard introductions of the previous. We were so excited that there were 20-something young Black folks who wanted to be in this career, and they got to do this incredible three-day symposium at the age of 20, when those of us that were 50 were in tears at our happiness to be there. I can't even imagine.

Charlotte Burns: 

That is so powerful. So you had this moment where you could envision it. And now you're obviously one of the people who's helping build that. 

I guess this is the same space, this is that same imaginative space that you were discussing, bringing people together to dream. You're coming off this tenure, the successful tenure and the organization and you have handled this transition with such grace. People keep saying you have to ask how they handle that transition because it's a model. Because it hasn't been about you leaving. 

Usually, if a museum director leaves, it's about the buildings they built and the money that they fundraise and the wing this and the acquisitions there. Whereas you leaving has been about naming the next director. It's been about that continuum of the project. It's been about the next step dreams. And you're creating that space within the transition, I want to ask you how you did it? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

It has been so interesting to navigate a transition. So the interesting fact, and it is literally fact, is that the day I took the job, I thought it was a ten-year job. I had dreams for the organization. And just knowing again, I was employee number two, I was like, it's gonna take ten years just to get where I'm going. Something that more than one executive director said to me when I first came on board was, oh, it's gonna take you about two to three years just to figure out what your job is. So I was like, well, I need the other seven just to do whatever I figured out in the first three years. So I came in with that frame. 

I had been on the board for a number of years so I had a sense of what the organization could be. There were a couple of different key moments for me, because, for me, it was always about, what's the dream if you can't begin to live it in some format. And the things that I imagined, which were not all crystal clear but became clear over time—and part of it were just experimenting and trying things and going “that, not that.” But I knew that we had the possibility of some really beautiful community building, creating a class of community artists in New York City and driving change in the city through that group. Being a good neighbor. 

So one of the things that I wanted to do early on was to just make sure that I was building our capacity. It seems so boring. But one of the best decisions I made about a year in was to hire a grant writer. I hated writing grants. If we had kept me as the grant writer, we would still be a $200,000 organization. Literally, that was the trade-off. So the trade-off feels like, “Oh my God, you're gonna pay someone $50 or $60 or $75 an hour? How could you do that? Like you can write, you're a good writer.” No one said this, to me, it's more an internal dialogue, But there is this sense of scarcity. And literally the trade-off was, well, we can be a $2 million organization in 10 years, or we can still be a $250,000 organization, and I'll write those grants for the rest of time. But we'll never get to live our dream. We’ll always be right below scale that would allow us to really dream. 

So that was one of my early best decisions, as far as I'm concerned. Because I worked with someone who worked with us for about six or seven years, her name was Jessica Svenson. Thank you, Jessica. And one of the grants she helped me write, about three or four years in, was to hire someone to be our director of strategic partnerships. And she later on became our deputy director. And that person turned out to be Ayesha Williams. 

So in our first interview, Ayehsa says to me, because she at the time she was working at Lincoln Center running their arts program, she said, “Don't let the Lincoln Center name fool you, I can get down there and really make things happen.” And I just took notice, because I was like, “Oh! Okay!” 

She has just jumped at every opportunity. She has been such an incredible partner. So two years in, she was promoted to deputy director and this whole time for her and the director of programs, who was then Hatuey [Ramos-Fermin] and is now Catherine Green, I wanted to make sure that I was helping to create people who could be leaders in the field going forward, very much inspired by the Studio Museum [in Harlem], because there's so many amazing people of color who have gone through, in particular, their curatorial program of the Studio Museum. 

But I also went through a very long and storied series of fellowships and internships at the Walker Art Center, which is how I started my journey. So I really take seeding the field with amazing people as a part of my job. So I was kind of like, well, you guys are probably going to be recruited and move on to other things and I want to make sure you understand budgets, and you understand strategy, and you can think like a leader and really bring that to the table. So we formed a leadership team. One of the things that a lot of people talk about is a sense of the loneliness of this job. And that's not untrue. But I have made it my duty to not feel lonely, to figure out how to be in community with other people, so that I can take some of that away, because it's too hard a job to do by myself. And Ayesha was part of that group. 

So once I realized that it really was 10 years, then started having conversations with my board, immediately, they were like, “Do you think Ayesha would want this job?” And I was like, “I don't know but I sort of was thinking the same thing.” [Laughter] 

So it was a very collective, very organic welling. And we kind of went to her and said, “This is sort of what's on our minds, what do you think?” And of course, she had to absorb that I was leaving, and then kind of track what the possibilities were and how they could affect her life. Very quickly she understood and saw the possibilities and stepped into her moment with such beauty and grace. And since March, we've been in discussions and passing on knowledge and pulling her into meetings. But the other day, she actually brought tears to my eyes because I was like, “We have to have a meeting. You know, we only have eight more weeks. I have to pass this on and do this…” And she said “Kemi, you're not going to finish. You're not going to pass on everything you need. It's going to be fine. We will be fine and we know where you live.” And I burst into tears. [Laughter]

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

I want to ask you about this, because a thing that you lean into is this idea of people being very complex, that emotion is a huge part of your job. It seems that you lead with that, in every sense. 

It's not what you hear, in most places of work. How did you decide that that was the thing? And how do you have the confidence to bring that into your practice?

Kemi Ilesanmi:

I think part of it was that I didn't feel I had a choice. Because very early on I ended up in discussions that immediately tapped into emotions. People were bringing me what looked like simple problems, but underneath were emotions about, “Well, I want a title change or a raise”, or “I'm having trouble with this other employee in these ways.” Whatever the case may be, there was always emotion under it. 

One of the things I feel I've learned just in life, was you take the power out of things by naming them. And I do believe both Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, in particular, have kind of spoken to this. You have to name the fear; you have to name the thing. And there's a power in naming. Again, making these visible and legible. So that you can then decide what to do with the thing that you just named. But if you don't even name it, it's just kind of in the room, affecting how people show up and how they respond.

Charlotte Burns: 

How would you scale that? If you were running the Met[tropolitan Museum of Art]? How would you scale the lessons you've learned from a nonprofit? And I'm only saying the Met because it's one of the largest institutions. How would you scale that learning, bringing people along together, when there's so many people?

Kemi Ilesanmi:

That is a question that I am going to answer speculatively. The largest organization I've worked in is the Walker Art Center, so nothing even remotely like the Met numbers. And yet, I do feel it's a really important question, right?

Some of the things that I think we have done that I think can be scaled creatively is, number one, creating connective tissue between folks outside of crisis. You can't suddenly be in crisis and think, “Now we'll bond and become best buddies,” when they have nothing to build on. 

So one of the things we do, and we've been doing for years—and it is one of my absolute favorite rituals, traditions at the LP—is we have a weekly staff meeting and once a month, except August and December, we have a reading group and someone on staff, from intern to ED and everyone in between, rotated over the year, gets to select a poem, a podcast, a magazine article, a chapter from a book that we all get to read together and talk about. And I've learned so much from that. And we also have an icebreaker at every meeting, which I know, again, sounds really simple, but we've gotten to learn all kinds of fun things about each other over the years. 

Now that we're together, again, we are doing a monthly happy hour because we don't all work on the same days in the same way. And we were doing a quarterly art opening. You know, that's what a company picnic looks like. But once a year doesn't cut it.

We also do a lot of collective staff training around things that we want to understand collectively. We had a session with a woman named Piper Anderson, who is amazing and who was our Radical Imagination fellow last year, around conflict and communication. We were back in the office by then, but continuing to build out what trust looked like and felt like to us and tending the roots. Trust is hard to build and easy to dissipate. So you got to keep up the work. And just giving ourselves collective tools around communicating, workstyles, all those things that just kind of help you continue to learn about each other, and hopefully in a fun way, or a way that is certainly generative. It isn't always fun, but certainly a sense of we're doing this and we're in this together-ness has to be part of the system. 

We also provide coaching for all of our staff. I was the first person who got coaching at the encouragement of one of my board members, six or seven years ago. And then over the years incorporated every level of permanent staff or full-time staff. So now everyone has access to a coach. It's a significant investment of money and time. But, here's the beauty of it. Everybody has someone to turn to with an external lens on what they feel they're going through. But this is a lens on our professional life. I can go and say, “This happened at the office and this person said this. And this is what I think is happening.” And my coach goes, “Or, maybe that's not it.” [Laughs] 

Having an external person that we all get to talk to, reflect with and think about our work life and journey, has been worth every single dime we've spent, and it is definitely a significant financial investment. For me, it feels like part of the professional development of caring for folks, and allowing them space to grow without judgment.

Charlotte Burns:

I think that's so marvelous. It's so unlike the art world that I've worked in. [Laughs] I can't imagine what that would feel like. That’s so fantastic. And it comes back to your point of, you know, seeding the field and creating better structures. 

There's a lot of stuff around funding I want to ask you. So the initial concept for The Laundromat Project was to own and operate a laundromat, using those funds to run the non-profit, which is a really novel way of thinking about ownership and about space and about community. At the time the funds weren't in place. So you pivoted, becoming a sort of decentralized, citywide organization. And then, like you mentioned earlier, this idea of being a laundromat as a gathering space became more of a metaphor, realizing that not every project needed to actually exist in that realm.
And something you've done at The Laundromat Project is this idea of giving away grants to artists to be artists, to live—artist-directed funds that are unrestricted. And you guys started doing that in April 2020, with the Creative Action Fund for the alumni network, then of $500. And now that’s something that's in your practice, these micro-grants to artists in BedStuy, where The Laundromat Project now has its permanent base. 

What we're talking about really is how you support artists. What can we do to think more creatively about funding in terms of supporting artists at every level of the art sector? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

I worked at Creative Capital for eight years. And that's where I got really first introduced to thinking about money in a creative, innovative way. When I think about artists of color—Black, Latinx, Asian, indigenous, Arab American, all the folks—I know in my bones that they are vastly under-collected, under-written about. And how do you move to a space of abundance, which is something we think about at the LP. How do we create spaces that are for us, while also being like we deserve to be at the Met, and we're going to do the thing at MoCADA [Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts] and Recess and certainly Studio Museum, which is a major player, etc. So I'm always thinking on parallel tracks, I don't only feel like we need to be in the kind of tried and true predominantly White spaces. Although I appreciate that. 

I do think having communities of practice, communities where folks get to get together is important. So one of the things that we're really excited about, about having our space in BedStuy, is having a space where we can say, every third Wednesday, come on through and hang out and you're going to find other incredible artists, or just a neighbor who's interested in these conversations. To come together and find each other and just have unstructured joyful time over food, these are things that we think about. 

[Laughs]

And then for us giving people money to be that person—to be who they need to be, to make what they need to make, to create the spaces they need to create—does feel so central. At some point, you just have to say here are the resources. Money is one of the resources. Space is another huge one. Time is a different one that I find the most elusive, actually. 

What I love about a space like the LP or Recess or some of these other spaces that I think are seeding artists of color in particular with money, space and time, is that we're in the flow of life—their lives. 

And the more that we can put money into the hands of artists which, Ayesha is starting a strategic planning process, I know it always sounds boring, but it has been so incredible. The two processes I've gone through the LP, and I'm really excited for her process next year. And the central question is how do we build the LP as a community asset that builds wealth and possibility for all of our community, not just ourselves? And I think asking oneself that question—if every organization and arts entity asked themselves that, wow, what answers might that lead to? Because we're not all going to have the same answer. But I do know that money, time and space will be part of those answers. 

Charlotte Burns:

That is so interesting. Part of the HueArts Brown Paper, you found that, you know, through the data, but we know this, is that POC-arts entities face extra challenges in securing adequate funding in comparison to predominantly White-led arts entities. And that, those entities are extremely resilient and resourceful in the face of that long history of structural bias and under-investment. I guess it's kind of what you've been talking about, which is this sense of teaming together, of community, of seeding the future and abundance. How important is that sense of believing in abundance? 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

For me, it has been critical. It's been critical in my life. And it's been critical in my professional practice. 

I believe in writing things down. I believe in saying things out loud so that other people can join the dream, or assist and facilitate the dream, or ask you hard questions that sharpen the dream. 

And that mindset of abundance and possibility, for me, also feels really critical. And we've tried to lean into that, and really pulled it up as a value for the organization. So it is written, we know that this is something we lean into. A staff member can go, “Are we being abundant right now?” So we can hold ourselves accountable to a different way of thinking, and assuming that there's always a possibility. Sometimes things come up and we just lean into, “Okay, that seems crazy. And then it's like, wait, wait, but what if it isn't? How might we get there?” 

So, for me, part of feeling comfortable—more than comfortable, excited about the possibilities for the LP after my 10 years—is that there is money in the bank. There are new dreams to dream. There is a space. There's so many things that could happen. And I don't have to be the person who does it all. And because the organization grew in so many dramatic ways, I’ve run about three to four to five organizations in those 10 years. [Laughs] 

Every few years, it was something completely different; it was on a continuum. But managing 12 to 13 people is not the same as managing three. But wow, $2 million was not the same as $200,000. And it had new complexities and thoughts. So I'm just like, “Oh, my God, the possibilities are incredible.” I don't have to do it all. And that's something I really believe. I'm not doing the whole journey, I'm doing my part of the journey. And I feel really good about that. I'm like, I leaned into abundance, I leaned into the possibility. I built up to this spot, and Ayesha is going to take it to the next place. And I'm going to be at home. And I'm going to be there because I'm going to be a friend and supporter going forward. I'm certainly not severing ties forever, they’ll just be informal. But wow, I just already, like, have goosebumps at what I might be hearing. And so my favorite thing is that I'm going to be surprised. Like, “I wouldn't have thought of that. That's incredible.” “Wow, are you going to try that? That's great.” “Please. I can't wait to see where this goes.” 

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

But you've lived this practice, you know, you're not just saying, “If we had money, we'd give it away”. You literally did that. You were given $2 million out of the blue by MacKenzie Scott. You received an email that you thought was spam, like a lot of people. And you've said it was your MacArthur Genius moment, this moment of recognition in which you were seen and supported and not asked to do anything other than what you already were doing best. And your first instinct was to give away the money. 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

It was incredible. To receive the money to know that it was unrestricted. We gave them our bank account information on a Thursday, and by Monday, we had $2 million in the bank. I mean, there is just something head spinning about that. [Laughter] 

That sense of generosity. They said they had done their research and were really inspired. Ms. Scott was, you know, we were one of her lists that year. And it was a huge focus on arts organizations. It definitely was just indescribable. And it made us feel seen. There was just a sense of such deep affirmation. So that was just beautiful and it did feel, it just felt affirming. 

And my automatic instinct, I really cannot describe it as any other way, so I immediately started thinking, how do we give some of this away? Because other people helped us get here. How is it that if we win, everyone in our community wins? What would that look like? 

One part of that was, what can we do with this $2 million that will feed our community and feed the LP for the next 50 or 100 years? What's the decision we can make about this $2 million that will make us categorically different in a way that we are leading, but how will it expand our possibilities? So that's the $1.8 million, right? Are we gonna buy a building? Who knows, but it's meant to be a conversation about building wealth for our whole community in the long-term. And that's a discussion that Ayesha is going to get to lead going forward. 

I started doing a back-of-math-envelope, talking to a couple of board members, and was like, I think $200,000, if we broke off 10%—which is tithing in church—it'd be great to give away $50,000 in the same way that we received the $2 million. And we thought, should we do 10 organizations? And then we talked about it and it felt like $10,000 to five organizations would have more meaning. We wanted to be other people-of-color-based organizations. 

We sort of thought of ourselves at 2012, when I first became executive director; if someone had called and given us $10,000, I would have been over the moon. We wanted it to be money that was meaningful. We wanted to be organizations that we'd have a connection with. We wanted it to be city-wide, because our focus has been and continues to be city-wide, with main focus on central Brooklyn and BedStuy. So those are some of the things we're thinking about for that. 

Then we started writing lists. Who had been all the staff? Interns? We had to go digging, “We're like, who was that girl? Remember?” [Laughs] 

And we obviously gave it to all of the artists who had passed through and been part of the LP up until that moment. People, someone wrote back and said she was fixing her mother's roof. Someone bought a desk, her first desk, and she was really excited about it. Several people used it for projects. Someone, you know, went to a spa. Like people did whatever it is they needed to do. And it happened to arrive at the end of the year. So it's sort of in that, you know, holiday season. So it also just happened to be well timed. Because it took us a while to go through all the process. 

The other thing I'll just say that hasn't, you may not even know about this, is for the $1.8 million, we invested it, right? Because we want to make sure our money is working for us, while we think about and dream about what to do with it. We worked really hard to come up with an investment policy, which we had never needed before, that helps to create the world. 

So we both avoid things we don’t want: no tobacco, no fossil fuel, no prison industrial complex. But we also have invested in funds that invest in community development all around the country. We found a bank, Amalgamated Bank, that can help us think in that way, and we broke off a piece of it to put in our local credit union at the Brooklyn Co-Op credit union that invests only in our neighborhood of central Brooklyn--like they support homeowners and small businesses. So I like to think that some of, $10, of the LPs investment or $1,000 might be, you know, in that new coffee shop that happens to open up on the corner. That we helped make that happen. So we wanted to make sure that our values showed up in all the ways that we were going to spend and invest this money. So again, if we win, how can the rest of our community win as well?

Charlotte Burns:

There's so much more I want to ask you. But I guess what I'm going to have to try and get you to commit to is to come back in a year because I think that this conversation will be so different when you've traveled all around the world. And you will be bringing so many more ‘what ifs’ to us. I sort of feel like we're sending you off to an island with all of these big dreams. And it's very exciting. It's been a super inspiring and enjoyable conversation, Kemi. Thank you so much for being our guest. 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

Thank you so, so much. 

Charlotte Burns:

Thanks so much to Kemi Illesanmi for taking the time to talk to us before she headed out on her trip of a lifetime.

Join us next episode, we’ll be talking to the curator Cecilia Alemani, who was the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, the biggest exhibition in the art world.

Cecilia Alemani:

We want to see museums more diverse. We want to see museums and institutions represent the world as it is, which is certainly not a White world. But how do we get there? Is it by calling out? Is it by doing the hard job of doing exhibitions that might not be as popular as Damien Hirst? What are the solutions that are gonna get there?

Charlotte Burns:

That’s next time on The Art World: What If…?!

The 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.

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 2: Glenn Lowry

What if we separated who funds the museum from who runs the museum on a board level? In this episode, host Charlotte Burns welcomes Glenn Lowry, who’s been the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1995. He's led the institution through two vast expansions and, of course, periods of profound change.

This is a frank and revealing conversation covering a lot of ground. What if competition and collaboration were the same? What if museums refused to take in so many works of art? Join us for more.

New episodes available every Thursday.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns:

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! I’m your host, art journalist Charlotte Burns, and this is a series all about imagining different futures. We’ll talk about how we navigate the churn and change currently shaping culture. What are some of the biggest shifts that need to happen for art to stay relevant in a changing world?

In each episode we’ll be talking to some of the most interesting people in the art world, asking them ‘what if’? 

[Audio of guests]

This episode we welcome Glenn Lowry, who’s been the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1995. He's led the institution through two vast expansions, and, of course, periods of profound change.

 This is a frank, revealing conversation with Glenn, covering many ‘what ifs’. What if competition and collaboration were one in the same? What if museums refused to take on so many artworks? What if we separated who funds the museum from who runs the museum on a board level. 

 We started with the idea of one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ facing New York City.

Charlotte Burns:

Glenn, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. 

Glenn Lowry: 

It's a pleasure. 

Charlotte Burns:

So Glenn, here we are sitting in New York, the greatest art city in the world. We seem to sit together in New York every four years or so. And I was thinking, by the next time we do that, in four years time, New York is going to look completely different. Because the city is at the beginning of profound change. You at some stage will be leaving MoMA, Richard Armstrong is leaving the Guggenheim, the Met[tropolitan Museum of Art] is under new leadership. People are expecting changes in other big institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, perhaps the Studio Museum [in Harlem]. So there's this shifting, this changing of the guards. It's also happening in the market. There are legacy plans being drafted for galleries from Gagosian to Marian Goodman [Gallery] to Barbara Gladstone;  the closure of galleries like Metro Pictures. Often these changes are staggered. This is happening kind of all at once, in a five year period. It feels momentous. What if this is truly the end of a New York era?

Glenn Lowry:

Oh, I think it's always premature to predict the end of an era. Sure, there's a lot of change out there. We've gone through a lot of change over the last 24 months, perhaps even more seismic than the change that might occur over the next five years. And, you know, I have no idea what is going to happen in the future. But my sense is that what keeps a place like New York vital is this constant influx and outflow of extraordinary talent: artists, curators, directors, gallerists, writers. 

And change is actually inherently good, it's vitalizing. It's not a problem. And so, if the next five years see significant change in the leadership of museums, that just means there'll be new visions and new ideas that will propel those institutions forward. I think it's just almost a liberating idea that New York can be the kind of place that absorbs seismic change as part of its day-to-day operations.

Charlotte Burns: 

I agree. I think New York can absorb the change. It is a changing city; it always has been. But it does feel sudden and does feel like we're going to see a value shift, a change in the way the institutions are run and the threat and the way that they're funded and who supports them and the kinds of visions they bring to it. 

Do you feel excited by that? And who do you think of the new generation emerging you feel particularly inspired by?

Glenn Lowry:

Well, first of all, I think you have to remember that most of our institutions are actually governed by boards of trustees. And those boards are not changing with the same kind of frequency and dramatic shift in potential direction that the leadership is. And there's a reason for that, right? They provide not just governance, but the ongoing stability that long-term planning and thinking enables. 

So, one can talk about the number of directors who might change over the next four or five years. But if the boards of these institutions remain stable, the values of the institutions are not likely to change. And I don't necessarily see that there's going to be a dramatic shift in funding over the next five years, at least not with the institutions that I'm familiar with. 

And if Paris is any example of what can happen when several new directors come onto the scene, like Laurent Le Bon and Laurence des Cars, to name but two, it's really phenomenal, a new generation providing new leadership, but not necessarily dramatic change to the institutions in the first instance. If that happens in New York, how good is that?

Charlotte Burns:

In the time that we've done these interviews, I was looking back on our last one in 2018, and we called it ‘authority and anxiety’. And we talked about this flammable moment we were living in where, and you said it was very flammable not because of censorship, which we were discussing, but because people felt vulnerable. 

And that was before Covid, before we even knew what a pandemic would feel like; the changes in the world that we've seen, geopolitically; the overturning of things that we didn't imagine possible, like Roe vs. Wade, gun laws in New York. So sitting here today, is this moment more flammable? Is it a continuation or an escalation of where we were?

Glenn Lowry:

It's differently flammable. I think what's happened, certainly since 2016, is that a number of issues that were complicated have become toxic. We've just endured two years of a pandemic that created even further gaps in social and financial inequality. We now know that our world as we thought we understood it is far more fragile, far more vulnerable to autocratic decisions. Wars that seemed inconceivable now happen. We've lived through a racial reckoning and really seismic social rethinking about race and equity in this country that is deep and profound. So all those changes, of course, impact our civic institutions in deep and profound ways. 

What worries me is whether democracy itself will survive the next decade. Because it seems to me, among all the different forces at play, the intolerance of other people's opinions—the sense that if I lose, it was stolen from me, that only I can be right—presages a condition in which we lose all ability to negotiate difference. And democracies, after all, survive in their ability to do just that; to take opposing points of view and find common ground.

Charlotte Burns:

Especially in America, museums are one of the very few civic spaces where you can enact these kinds of conversations. It's perceived of as being a public entity, even if the ownership structure is very different. But definitely thinks of itself as being for the public as being a public good, a civic-minded institution. There's only really libraries that remain that way. And it feels like a lot of the issues that are happening in the world are coursing through the institutions and re-changing them because it is a space where democracy can, can take place; you can have these conversations.

Glenn Lowry:

You know, I think that one always has to be careful about the relationship between broader societal forces and what any one institution can or should do. We are collectively a network of civic spaces. We do serve a public good. We are no better or worse than the forces around us. And if we can create a space where art itself is the center of conversation, with all of the contradictory and complex issues that it raises, then we will continue to thrive. 

I feel very strongly that museums should not be places that provide answers. Museums should be places that provoke questions. And that answers come later. And if you go to a museum for certitude, you will ultimately be disappointed. But if you go to the museum to discover, to learn, to question, to think, then you will be energized. 

And I think that's our role, especially in a moment of complexity: to be a place where people with different questions, different concerns, can engage with works of art, and the artists who made them in ways that are deep and meaningful, and that help them locate themselves in a larger conversation. But we are not the larger conversation.

Charlotte Burns:

Who is MoMA’s public? What data do you track on the public? How do you know who's coming? Define MoMA’s audience as it currently is, and, you know, kind of look back, I guess, because it's grown enormously and shrank again during the pandemic.

Glenn Lowry:

And then grown again. So we do regular audience surveys. So we have a pretty good sense of who's coming and where they're from, and how old they are and what their gender is. And we do a regular zip code and country captures, people come in and out of the museum. So we're pretty accurate about sort of broad demographic sweeps. We’re less accurate, of course, on the more complex socio-economic questions that can only come from regular audience surveys. We only do two a year at this point. 

But our audience, since we reopened in late August of 2020, has clawed its way back to something approaching 75% or 80% of where we were pre-pandemic. Our baseline was about three million. And obviously, in the year of the pandemic, our audience shrank to about 650,000. We were closed for five months. And then when we reopened, there were severe limitations on attendance. 

Our hope is that this year, assuming no other catastrophic issues intervene, we’ll be very close to where we were pre-pandemic. That's the ambition.

Charlotte Burns:

You just talked about this idea of authority and anxiety and tolerance, essentially. And when I asked you your greatest anxiety in 2018, you said, “I feel a kind of closing off of possibilities across a full spectrum of political issues. So the question of authority becomes fundamental because we have to give each other license to imagine.” You said the biggest single issue was this question of how we navigate who has the right to speak, and for whom? “Is it possible for us to get out of our bodies, skins and minds and empathize with those who are different than us?”

At the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like there was a vulnerability to the conversation. So there was a painfulness to the conversations that people were having about race, gender, privilege, class, money in the art world, and we'd had a comfortable ride for a long time, kind of self perceiving as paragons of liberal democracy, but not necessarily embodying that. 

There is a strong and committed push towards progress in lots of different sectors. But what we're also seeing is a kind of backlash against that. I was speaking to a critic recently, who said, “Oh, you know, everybody thinks that things have gone too far, political correctness has gone too far.” 

A board member at another major museum recently, there was a big argument with the director, about, “I'm, you know, I'm not going to fund a woke museum.” And this was on a big board member call. And this is a very, very wealthy patron. 

So this is money. It's also critics, you know, it's a conversation that's happening. And that sense of being open and encouraging of progress seems to have curdled a little bit in on itself as things around us have returned more to normal. 

How do you grapple with that, because you, as a director of one of the museums with the largest endowments in the world, with an enormous staff, square footage, an extremely wealthy board, and huge attendance from all over the world, you're dealing with so many constituents who want very different things. How do you steer through that? 

Glenn Lowry:

Well, I don't know how you steer through that. You just hope that you can read the different issues well enough that you can make a series of rational judgments, because we're in new territory, or uncharted territory. 

In finance, there's a term when markets go up and or when markets crash, that there's a reversion to the mean. That ultimately, markets return to the mean average of where they were. And I think that's true about society that when we experience moments of enormous conservative thinking, ultimately, there is a moment when we move back to the center, when more liberal thinking permeates the way we live. And when we have moments of progressive thinking and progressive action, there's often a reaction to that, that pulls us back towards the center. 

So I'm not surprised that in the wake of all of the actions that have followed the murder of George Floyd and so many other Black and Brown men and women, that led to all sorts of new programs, new acquisitions, new positions, that there are also people who are concerned that we as a society may have gone too far. It doesn't matter whether you agree with them or disagree with them. They feel that, and so there's a counter-pull. 

And I don't even see these responses as necessarily setbacks. I see them as legitimate conversations that need to take place because people don't all agree about where we as a society should go. 

And I felt back when we last talked in 2018, and I feel it today, that if we can't have these conversations—if they become so polarized that they lead to divisiveness, political alienation, even violence—then we are going to fail as a society and that we have a collective responsibility to find a way to negotiate positions, and that we have to accept that we don't all get what we want, all the time. In fact, if you can even get some of what you want, some of the time, that is an achievement. 

And we have become such a polarized nation where the thinking is all or nothing. And I just don't believe that. I enjoy the give and take. I believe it produces better results that, of course, if you learn from somebody else's thinking, it's going to make your own thinking better. And in fact, the joy of living is discovering new possibilities. Then some of these threatening moments—where people feel that we've all become too politically correct, or wokeness has taken over America—diminish in importance, because it's not about wokeness. It's about doing the right thing. It's about understanding that in the ways in which you navigate that, you can help make this country better.

Charlotte Burns: 

Can you give any examples of things that you found threatening as ways of thinking that you've since encompassed into your practice and the way you work?

Glenn Lowry:

Well, look, I'm a self-identified Liberal Democrat. So I find some of the thinking on the hard-Right really frightening. But I'm willing to engage it. And I'm willing to listen. And I'm willing to recognize that some people really believe those hard-Right positions, and it's not going to work if I just simply ignore that. Right? And it's not gonna work for anybody to simply ignore somebody else's feelings and positions. We're going to have to encounter them and work thoughtfully, systematically and logically through the differences that we have. 

So, you know, take abortion. It's inconceivable to me that we're still stuck in this situation as a country, where you can have a Supreme Court that overturns Roe vs. Wade. It's just inconceivable. But that's not going to help, my feeling it's inconceivable. We have to go out and work, we have to go and recognize that if you believe in abortion rights, they are not God-given,  they’re hard fought. And as it turns out, in this country, they're constantly under attack. We have to recognize it's not good enough to say, “they're wrong, and I'm right.” You've got to engage with reality.

Charlotte Burns: 

Even if it's a reality that's distasteful to you. 

Glenn Lowry:

Precisely, if it's the reality…if all we do is operate in the realities that are pleasing to us, we live in an echo chamber, and we're going to make tremendous mistakes about our life, our sense of democracy, and the things we value. So this goes back to the question of tolerance.

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

I thought it was interesting you mentioned this idea of someone's emotions, because as a journalist, what I came to understand is that often what I thought was reporting the facts of a situation was actually just reporting people's feelings. Especially on things like progress, because there's so little data out there—it's not an industry that is very easily graspable. 

But we’ve spoken about the data studies that Julia Halperin and I do, the Burns Halperin report. When we did them, we were shocked to see the reality of progress was so limited. Looking at those figures is really disappointing because the reality, whatever our feelings are, we haven't, as a sector been engaging fully with that reality. And I'm not sure that we still are because overall, as a cultural sector, we haven't moved things a percentage. Grappling with the reality is different than grappling with the feelings, but we're living in a moment of heightened feelings. And so how do we create progress? How do you talk to your board about that? Do you set yourself internal markers? Do you believe in quotas? 

Glenn Lowry:

There are many different kinds of change. You can mandate radical change. But the problem with that is, the moment you move on to something else, or you change leadership, that change disappears. And so I think about change primarily through the lens of sustainable change; change that's irrevocable, that gets locked in. 

And that it's a kind of change that happens much more slowly. Because you have to buy in everyone who's involved, not just your staff, but your board and your public. They have to believe that the changes that are being made are foundational to the future of the institution. 

So, often, we want to see dramatic change, we want to see the dial suddenly go from zero to 60. But the problem with that is, it can just as easily go from 60 to zero. 

And if you start to look at change over longer periods of time, which can be very frustrating to those who feel disadvantaged. But if you look at change over a longer period of time, you can make a very substantial change in, you know, a decade, in five years. Whereas if you look at it in one year or two year increments, it might not seem that much. 

That's not a justification for failure to engage. How do you lock in sustainable change? What's the strategy in any one institution? Institutions are different. New York institutions operate in a very different environment than Houston institutions, which operate in yet a different environment than those in San Francisco. The public in Houston is going to be just dramatically different in makeup and in aspiration and in interest than the public in Boston. 

Each institution has to hold itself accountable, has to set for itself an agenda of where it wants to be on some spectrum of change. Define what the metrics of success are. Is it Y number of staff of color? Is it Z number of female artists? Is it by percentage? Is it by feel? Right? You can set all sorts of different ways to look at how you will measure your success. But you have to at least define what the terms of success look like. 

Charlotte Burns: 

What does that look like for you? When, you know, looking back, because you're coming to the end of your tenure at MoMA. So you're thinking about the legacy. Has your definition of success changed? Where is it now?

Glenn Lowry:

Well, first of all, I don't think about legacy, ever. It's just not something that interests me. 

And my definition of success hasn't changed that much since I arrived, which was to change the institution's way of thinking from, being the place that provided the answer to the question of “what is Modern art?,” to the place that constantly sees itself as a work in progress, asking the question, “what is Modern art or contemporary art?” 

And that is a mindset change. To be a place of questioning, of querying, of uncertainty; a place that felt more like a laboratory than a temple, that was welcoming and generous in its approach to the present, and discerning in its approach to the past. And where different publics could and would feel welcome. And to the degree that one looks back at my tenure, I hope that the sense would be that the museum changed a great deal during this time. And I'd be even happier if people felt the museum changed a great deal for the better during this time. But that's for others to judge.

Charlotte Burns: 

One thing that's changed so much is the internal structure of institutions and how power moves through them. When you first joined MoMA, the curators were the power force. 

You initiated weekly meetings with the heads of the curatorial staff to unite a frequently fractious team, and a “frequently fractious museum”, I think the quote was. John Elderfield, the chief curator at the time had said, “It's basically the old fiefdoms but the difference is basically that all the warlords now sit down at the same table.” 

You created six deputy director positions, including a deputy director for the curatorial department who was paid more than the chief curator themselves. That was a shift in the role and power of the curators. 

Often when you speak to creators now, they feel further away from the curating warlords of old and much closer to the fundraising departments. Meanwhile, the museums have become so much bigger and they have real estate portfolios that need funding. And so the boards have become richer and larger, and essentially don't have accountability structures really above them. 

So you've seen this shift from the power of the curators. Who has the power now? Where has that moved to?

Glenn Lowry:

So I didn't create the position of a deputy director for curatorial affairs. That was a position that existed when I arrived at the museum. 

I'm not someone who looks at power as the driving force of an institution. I, you know, it's not actually something that even interests me that much. What does interest me is how do you create a vibrant conversation across a largest number of staff members about the mission and values of the institution? How do you get people to participate, and to think holistically about the institution, rather than departmentally?

And so, when I arrived at the museum and it was described as a place of fiefdoms, that's not actually what I found. The chief curators who were there then were already talking to each other, and wanting to have a conversation across disciplines, but hadn't yet figured out how to do that in a regular way. 

And so if I was able to create a platform and a venue where those conversations could occur, and where we could test out different ways of working together, that was largely because that's what everybody wanted. It’s certainly what I wanted, but it wasn't successful because I wanted it. It was successful because people actually began to see that it was a lot more interesting to work with your colleague across disciplines than it was to work in some kind of isolation. 

Of course, over time, things change, and you give something up in order to get something, right? So in those in the model of the museum that saw it as a series of fiefdoms, each chief had his or her domain, her galleries, his galleries. And, in a way, nobody else was responsible for them but that person. But your territory was actually quite small and limited. So, if you want to operate at scale, when you start to look at all the different trade offs, you can begin to imagine that nobody loses anything in sharing. And you actually start to gain an enormous amount by doing so. 

So the ingredient that enables that to happen is trust. You have to trust your colleague, that he or she will listen to your concerns, will seek your advice when working with material that you know more about than she does or he does. It takes time to do that. 

I don't see that the power structure in the museum has changed a whole lot during the course of my tenure. It is still a place that recognizes that knowledge is a currency. And, if you want to talk about power, power lies with the ability to have a place where many people across many disciplines share a set of common values. 

And I still think of the museum as being curatorially driven, maybe not curatorially driven by warlords, but by a group of really interesting, thoughtful individuals who work together.

Charlotte Burns:

And obviously with the rehang, that's sort of embodied. You had this hang across media, bringing to light lots of overlooked work. And when I walk around the museum, I think it feels like a post-internet hang. 

Do you think you have found now a way of working in the institution that breeds collaboration? What was the formula? How did you get there? 

Glenn Lowry:

I hope we have. This goes back to thinking about this through the lens of sustainable change. We didn't do this overnight. We did this over literally two decades. We began in 2000 with an experiment, MoMA 2000, where we invited curators from every department to work together in a series of exhibitions to celebrate the millennium. 

And that was praised by some and roundly criticized by others as devaluing MoMA, fracturing the clarity of departmental thinking. But its real purpose was to begin learning how to work differently, because the one thing I really believe is that if you want to be an institution devoted to the art of our time, the present, then you have to be a place that changes all the time. That's why I think of ourselves as a work in progress. We're different in kind than a historical museum that's about preserving the past. We're all about engaging the present. And learning from that. And that many of the things we learned get absorbed, and even institutionalized, by historical museums, where we're constantly—or should constantly—be moving on. 

So we started with an experiment that some liked, some hated. Internally, it was controversial. Externally, it was controversial. But because we did this iteratively, and because there was a generational change of curators over this 20-year period, I think most of the curators if not all of the curators who were there today would say, this is how we want to work. Can we make it work better? Of course. 

But the idea that they sit down together and plot out what the gallery's will look like, what issues they will address, what acquisitions we will make that are strategic and amplify the conversations we want to have is part of a strategy that says these galleries are like laboratories, and they change with the time. This means everybody has to sit down together and hash it out. And the reward is a rich conversation and more interesting gallery. 

We’re the place that is going to give you the opportunity to think differently. And that's really important, from my perspective.

Charlotte Burns: 

How do you balance that though? You're a very competitive person yourself, by nature. You're a competitive cyclist, you ski competitively. How do you balance that natural instinct with the urge to collaborate and cooperate? Where is the competition? Who do you see as your rivals, as an institution?

Glenn Lowry:

Well, I'm inherently collaborative by nature, I love working with other people. I don't see that as in any way antithetical to also being very competitive. But by competitive I don't mean about winning in relationship to someone else, I mean, competitive in the sense of always wanting to do my best, to push myself. And if you want, by extension, the institution to outperform itself. And the only way you can outperform yourself is if you work with colleagues. You can't do this on your own. I don't see collaboration and competitiveness as being contradictory at all. This is a place that recognizes and values achievement, that you can…We hope our staff will want to do outstanding work because we're driven individuals.

[Music break] 

Charlotte Burns:

Let's talk a little bit about the funding. You grew your endowment over the time, you've been there from $200 million to more than $1 billion. 

Glenn Lowry:

When I arrived at the museum, the endowment was about $225 million. That's 1995. And today, it's about $1.7 billion. But to be clear, I didn't grow the endowment. An extraordinary group of people grew that endowment. First, our trustees. Second, we have a remarkable investment committee of the board that has advised our own internal investment team. Third, we have a really outstanding small group of individuals at the museum who have shaped that endowment. 

The growth in that endowment came from literally dozens of people working their tail off to make smart choices about investments, and really generous trustees who kept adding to the endowment because they understood that it was the long-term protection for the institution against the ups and downs of the economy.

Charlotte Burns:

So I think there's two things there. There's the funding and investments. And then there's the trustees. There was a recent article by the former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Tom Finkelpearl, with the artist Pablo Halguerra, and they talked about a different funding structure for museums. 

They said that museums should divest themselves from toxic philanthropy. The article asks what it looks like for museums to turn, and I quote “their billions towards positive good, instead of questionable investments simply for profit”. They state that seven in 10 museums don't have policies to guide investments towards environmental, social or corporate governance goals, or to ensure that the managers of those funds are themselves diverse. They suggest instead investing in local things like taxable municipal bonds, but helping build better public infrastructure, making it a priority to invest in cities. Scaling, maybe being smaller but having more sustainably invested funds.

What do you think of that? What is MoMA’s stance on ethical funding? Let’s kind of separate out board members for a second, but in terms of the investments, would you invest in oil, for instance? Are there guidelines in those senses around the investments in the endowment?

Glenn Lowry:

We use an ESG filter for our investments in our endowment. And it's not perfect. It's a set of guidelines. It's not absolute. But I think it's important that institutions invest in ways that are consistent with their values.

Charlotte Burns: 

In recent years, we've seen lots of articles about toxic philanthropy. The Sackler name has been removed from institutions around the world, in some places quicker than others. In Britain, it is still not happening at the same speed as it has in America. 

MoMA has had its own pressure. There was a lot of pressure from artists and other activists about the chair Leon Black's financial ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

He decided he wouldn't stand for reelection. He remains on the board. Artists were very outspoken about this. Ai Weiwei told The New York Times that he would be ashamed to be associated with MoMA unless it took a firm position. And he hoped that if it didn't, they wouldn't have his works in their collection. Michael Rachowitz was one of 150 artists who spoke out saying, you know, he believed that Mr. Black should step down from the board altogether. 

So there, you're really in the middle of the constituents that we've been discussing—the people who were helping fund the institution, and then the artists saying, “we're at odds with this.” 

What if there was a different way of doing it? Do you think about that? And are you working towards that?

Glenn Lowry:

Well, I'm a pragmatist, first of all. So I admire activists. I often believe in the causes that they espouse. But in the end, I'm a pragmatist. And that is just where I come out. I like to get things done. And I recognize that I don't have all the answers, and neither do the activists. Nor do the trustees. We live in a world of compromises. 

And I respect the positions that many artists take and have taken, either in support or against the museum. That is their right. It doesn't mean that every one of those decisions is something we're going to do. We listen, we respond, we react, we change, when appropriate. But we live in a free world that actually values debate and discussion. 

So the fact that there are groups of people who believe ardently that we shouldn't do this, or we should do that, doesn't mean we're going to do either of those things. It just means that there are groups of people who believe that. We're going to listen. Where it is appropriate and where it makes sense, we're going to adjust and act and where it isn't, we won't. And we're not perfect either. 

And in the same way that, if we start to believe that trustees whose political positions are different than ours, or whose financial investments don't align with our values, are no longer welcome in our institutions, I think of that as fascism. I don't think of that as progressive liberal democracy. I think of that as fascism. “I don't like what you do. I disagree with what you do. Therefore, you are excluded.” That's a bad place for us as a society to be. 

We're a heterogeneous society, made up of people who have multiple sets of interests, and that if we can align someone's financial support with the values of the institution, that's a good thing because it doesn't matter whether they're of the progressive left or the reactionary right if they're supporting the programs and artists we believe in. At least for me. I know that for some people, that's absolutely anathema. That it is viscerally difficult to imagine someone whose politics or investments you despise or dislike supporting the programs that you want. I just don't feel that way.

Charlotte Burns: 

Do you feel that situation’s got worse, politics has become more extreme? And there's two questions in there really. One is the polarity that we discussed at the top of the show. Having people on boards who had slightly different political opinions from you maybe was different in that moment when everyone really believed that capitalism would encourage democracy rather than authoritarianism, in the kind of peak years of that, in the early 2000s. 

But the other question is, then, the governance…So a funding is one thing. Using the funds from a supporter to increase the activities of the museum and align with museums’ values, is a different thing than the governance of the museum. And is it possible to separate that because of course, the boards run the institutions? Do you think that would be wise or unwise? It's not the model that we have.

Glenn Lowry:

The issue around governance and funding probably varies institution by institution. So the core expressions of financial support at a place like MoMA are reflected in the acquisitions we make and the exhibitions we produce. Our board has no say in the exhibitions we produce. That is really driven from the bottom up by our curatorial staff. 

Acquisitions at a place like the Museum of Modern Art, because they involve assets of the museum, are ultimately board responsibilities. And so they are made through acquisition committees, which are made up of trustees and outside individuals who share an interest in a field—photography, architecture and design, painting and sculpture, and so on. 

They're called trustee committees because they're chaired by a trustee. But in fact, most of those committees are made up of more outside members than they are of trustees. And curators propose acquisitions. Trustees and committee members can't propose acquisitions; curators propose acquisitions, and trustee committees then either approve them or reject them. 

And I think that's a pretty healthy system. There are mechanisms that in one case, ensure that there's no trustee influence. There's oversight, like we set a budget every year, we make projections about attendance, and if we fail to meet our budget or fail to meet our projections around attendance, you know, trustees have the right to say, “are you sure you had the right program and what are you doing next year?.” But in my time, they've never interfered, never said, “Don't do this show or you must do that show.” 

And on the acquisition side, it's a very balanced group of individuals who have to agree with each other to make an acquisition possible. A trustee can't override the decision of the committee as a whole. 

On the governance end, we happen to have in this country a system of primarily private institutions. We can change that if we want to nationalize them. Or we can create new national institutions that are governed differently. But the structure here is one in which government has basically said culture is not going to be in our domain. That's for private individuals who think it's important to support. And so we've built an extraordinary network of private institutions across every discipline imaginable, that are governed by boards, that are self-perpetuating, because they ultimately own those institutions. 

The institutions operate in the public trust. There is a source that oversees the governance of institutions, and that's the attorney general of each state. So our board does have a higher authority that can step in and say, “you have a problem and you need to fix it.” And, episodically, attorneys general do step in when called upon. So it isn't like they that the board has a free hand in everything it wants to do; it has to abide by the laws of the state, laws of the country and by the practices of good governance. And it's held accountable, rightly, by the media on the one hand, and the public on the other hand and the attorney general of each state. So, there are checks and balances, even in that largely private structure. Everything comes with its benefit and its drawback, right? 

The system we came up with was to enable private individuals to create institutions that became self-supportive through the ongoing engagement of those individuals and their successors. 

And that's what I mean by I'm a pragmatist. I can live with that. I see its advantages. I love working with our trustees, I love working with our staff. We encounter lots of complicated, often divisive issues that we have to work out together. But when I think about the commitment that our trustees have to the institution and its staff, I'm always amazed at how devoted they are. So that's where I come out on this.

Charlotte Burns:

There's been a lot of talk through the pandemic, about staff, about staff safety, and this idea of care and what safety means, which means physical care, obviously, but also the work environment, in so many different ways. 

Of course, safety for you at MoMA became a very real thing. There was a stabbing incident and two staff were stabbed. How does that change the institution? And weirdly, we'd spoken about this on our last podcast. You said, “I know, as a director of an institution, when your staff feel threatened by physical violence, you have to take that very seriously. It's a reflection of the breakdown of our society. It's not a normal process.” That must have been an extremely shocking, very violent thing to go through, that makes you recalibrate everything.

Glenn Lowry:

That stabbing was the most horrific incident that I have ever had to live through and work on. And we like to believe that museums are places of engagement and of culture, of enlightenment, whatever that might mean. But they're places that also attract people who have really serious and difficult problems and when that crosses over into the kind of violence that unfolded, and that resulted in two remarkably young, wonderful staff members being stabbed. And a third one who was lucky enough not to be stabbed, but for all intents and purposes, lived through that as well. Plus a security officer who had to intervene as best he could, you have traumatizing experiences that are just so beyond anything any of us have ever encountered or know how to deal with. 

So we've spent a lot of time healing. And it's not something that happens overnight. It may not even be something that happens over months, it may be something that happens over years. We had a lot of meetings across staff, with therapists, with, you know, with colleagues. With anyone who wanted to talk about these incidents, to just begin the process of understanding what happened. To also understand that we need to ensure it doesn't happen again. So there's training, so people know what to do. And that training has to be so routine that it's instantaneous, that you don't even think about it. 

Increased security. We have returned to working with paid detail from the New York police, paid detail or off-duty police officers armed, in uniform, who report to us. We had paid detail pre-pandemic. We instituted that after the Bataclan attacks in Paris in 2016. Several of us got together and said, “Oh my God, this could happen in New York. So what do we do?” And the first thing you do is, you make sure that you have really secure perimeters. 

We live in a society now where it is obvious that violence can and will occur almost anywhere. We need to make sure our public and our staff are safe when they are at the museum. I feel really strongly about that. 

Does it make me happy to see the amount of security that we now have to provide? No, of course not. I still have a naive notion that anyone who comes to a museum comes there to be engaged with the art and the last thing they would ever think about was a violent act. But that's just not true anymore. 

So it has become a huge preoccupation at the museum to make sure that we do the right thing. And that we can anticipate what might happen in the future. 

Charlotte Burns: 

It's such an experience of trauma to go through for you and all of the staff there. 

Obviously to have paid New York police, in a moment where policing is such a hot topic and the relationship between, you know, the authorities and communities just seems extremely fraught. To navigate that while the museum is trying to be more open to have more people feel comfortable in that space...

Glenn Lowry:

Look, I think this is not as complicated as that. Honestly, Charlotte, if you look at it through at least the lens I use, which is one of being pragmatic, we have to run an institution, the institution is in the middle of midtown New York. It attracts millions of people a year. We don't know who those individuals are. We don't run credit checks, and we don't run security background on them. We live in an increasingly violent society. And the police are part of the civil network that protects us all. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. Should we constantly be looking at ways of reforming the police, not defunding them, but reforming the police so that they do their jobs better, of course, we should. But in the absence of any other solution, to leave our public and staff unprotected when we know that violence can and will occur is unconscionable. It's not actually a complicated choice.

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

We're gonna have a slight change of conversation, I want to ask you about the volume of art. So I was we looked in our 2022 report, we found that 338,496 works, had entered the collection of the 31 museums across America that we survey in that 1- year period. And I was thinking about the sustainability of all this stuff that's in the museums? Should we carry on bringing everything into the institutions? How do you house all of that? 

Glenn Lowry:

Well, I think that one of the greatest challenges for American museums, and I've been very vocal about this, is to change from being places of acquisition to being places of program. That, if the 20th century saw the dramatic growth of collections across the vast majority of American museums because America had capital—there was a lot of art out there and we were prosperous throughout most of the 20th century, and so we built enormous collections. And we trained ourselves to keep building those collections. We built endowments that can only be used to buy more art. So we perpetuate the problem. 

I have been arguing for 20 years now that the 21st century should be about programming. That we should be diverting all that energy that goes into acquisitions, to doing more on the programming side. To produce more and better programs that reach larger and more diverse audiences. That's where our energy should be. 

Not that we should stop buying works of art. I don't believe that for a moment, but that we should shift the balance of what we spend our discretionary funds on from acquisition to program, and that we should start thinking more collaboratively about sharing our collections. That you don't have to own everything you display. That you can in fact be far more rigorous in what you acquire, and that we should be celebrating deaccessioning, not castigating it. That deaccessioning is a process by which we should be able to lighten our load, so that we can program better. And even though the new guidelines are more generous, but still very restrictive about the use of funds, the idea that once entered, a work of art can never leave the museum, I think, doesn't really make sense at the end of the day. Any more so that once a work of art entered the church, it could never leave the church. Well, 500 years later, it did leave the church. So works of art are created. They are owned, they change ownership, they come to museums, but they can also move on. And a work of art that is never seen in storage has become invisible, even if it has a digital image online. 

Charlotte Burns: 

You refer to the new rules. You were on a task force of 18 museum directors that determined these new rules that hadn't changed this 1981. They've relaxed a little bit now, but there's still a lot of guardrails on them, You can use it to defray the cost of caring for the collections, but still not for staffing or infrastructure in that way, or program. How much more do you want the rules to be relaxed? 

Glenn Lowry:

I believe strongly that the guidelines around deaccessioning at the AAMD [Association of Art Museum Directors] should be changed to allow for the use of funds to be directed towards program. 

The way I would do that is to stipulate that any work of art deaccessioned, that wasn't used by another work of art, the funds would be put in an endowment, and the draw on the endowment would allow for program. In other words, you never burn the value. You convert the value of a work of art into an endowment that could support program, but it could also support more acquisitions. There’s nothing that would preclude it. 

But I just think at the end of the day, that is going to have to happen. We are a large organization with many different points of view. We arrived at this as a next step. And I'm sure that over time, there will be further conversations and there will be further changes as the membership of the AAMD sees fit. We all had to come to a point that we could agree on. And so we did.

Charlotte Burns: 

You also talked about this idea of sharing collections. Do you think that will be a thing that museums might be less rivalrous about their holdings and actually have a kind of national sharing program?

Glenn Lowry:

Many of us already collaborate with other institutions in the acquisition of works of art and in the sharing of our resources. So this is not new, I just think we need to see it done at a more elevated and regular level. 

And a perfect example, the Museum of Modern Art had collection galleries and one of the unwritten rules was that only collection could be shown in the gallery. So if you needed to show something, you had to own it. 

If you really step back and think about it, how many times are you going to use it? And is it truly necessary to own everything you display? That feels to me like a very old model. We want to tell new stories. We want to engage new artists, we want to take risks. And therefore we want to have a backbone, a frame, that is our collection, but we want to constantly amplify it with works of art that we don't necessarily own or perhaps could never own, because they're already owned by another institution. 

Charlotte Burns: 

So Glenn, you're more experienced probably than anyone I've ever interviewed about museums and running MoMA at the level you have for all these years. What if you could change the model? What if you could make it different? What would you do now with the experience you have? How could it be better?

Glenn Lowry:

I think we need to imagine ways that we can expand the expertise that are on boards. And that's not just about diversity, it's about different forms of knowledge. Because I think at the end of the day, there's a simple rule that I believe in, which is no institution can be better than its board. So we want outstanding boards at our institutions, so we can have outstanding institutions. So I think, thinking about how to make boards even better than they are.

Charlotte Burns: 

How do you do that?

Glenn Lowry:

I think those are discussions that boards have to have within themselves and perhaps with leadership at institutions. And to…you said, what would I like to see? Doesn't mean that I will see it. But I'd like to see, you know, a more robust conversation across all of the boards of museums that look at how to engage new and different forms of knowledge. 

I would like to see us ensure the viability of the kind of program that we've developed, which sees our collection as an ongoing series of exchanges, intellectual, programmatic, artistic. That's very hard to do. It's very labor intensive, and it's very costly. So I'd like to see that truly locked in. 

I'd like to see us have the resources to continue to expand the knowledge base of our staff. We just started a program through the Ford Foundation of inviting senior scholars from different disciplines to be resident at the museum for a year, to just animate our conversations. I'd like to see how we can make that even more entrenched within the work we do so that we are truly a place of ideas. 

You know, and I want to make sure, I'd like to see us have the resources to live our dreams. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what I would love all of our institutions to do, to be sufficiently well resourced that they can live their dreams.

Charlotte Burns:

So Glenn, what are your plans? Do you have a sense of when you might be thinking of stepping away from being the director of MoMA? How do you feel about that?

Glenn Lowry:

You know, I get on my bike every weekend a couple times during the week and I ride as hard as I can. And I go to work and I work as hard as I can. And that's what I think about.

Charlotte Burns:

If you could pick your successor, do you think about that?

Glenn Lowry:

It's really not up to me to pick my successor. As I told you, I don't think about legacy. I try to be focused in the day. Focused in the moment, in what I do. And I have a lot of confidence that our board will pick an outstanding person who will do an even better job, and I think that will be fabulous.

Charlotte Burns: 

You began as a specialist in Islamic art, do you think you'd return to that? Do you see yourself staying in museums? Would you like to go to run another institution? Or is that just the last thing you could imagine? 

Glenn Lowry:

No, look, I've had a fabulous run at one of the greatest institutions in the world. And I've loved every moment of it even…I can't say I've lived every moment of the last few years. But it has been a really thrilling time, I've learned an enormous amount. And I still learn an enormous amount from staff and our trustees and the artists I get to work with. And that's just invigorating. You know, the next…Whatever comes next will happen. And I've, I suppose, been lucky enough that that next step has appeared at the right moment. And the board will be quite clear sighted in when it feels my time is up. You know, we all have an expiration date. I probably have lived long past mine. And that's fine.

Charlotte Burns:

Do you have a sense of what you want to do next? Are you just going to get on your bike and think about that then?

Glenn Lowry:

I’m going to get on my bike and I'm going to think about that. I still am deeply interested in the Middle East, I do a lot of work on contemporary art in the Middle East. That's a field that retains a lot of interest and focus for me. But there are a lot of other things I'm interested in too. So you know, the future will bring what it does.

Charlotte Burns: 

So the other thing I wanted to ask you is, how being a parent has impacted your creative practice.

Glenn Lowry:

Patience, which is not necessarily something that comes naturally to me, is truly a virtue. That if you want your children to learn and to grow, you have to understand the speed at which they can do that. This isn't your speed, it's their speed. And I think being a parent teaches you an enormous amount about humility. Which is a good lesson for all of us to have.

Charlotte Burns: 

What are the things you stand for, if you were going to define them. What do you believe in?

Glenn Lowry:

The belief first and foremost that art is one of the most important human creations and that we, as a society, have a responsibility to ensure that we have a climate in which art can be made, that celebrates human creativity, that celebrates dreaming. Integrity, I hope. Community and collaboration. And above all a respect for knowledge and expertise.

Charlotte Burns:

Glenn, I think there's a perfect end to the show, thank you so much. 

Glenn Lowry:

It’s a pleasure.

[Music break]

 Charlotte Burns:

Thanks again to Glenn Lowry for sharing his deep insight into the art world and its futures. And for helping us think about so many ‘what ifs’. 

Join us next time. We’ll be talking to Kemi Ilesanmi, community amplifier, and the extraordinary now-former executive director of The Laundromat Project, which has trained and commissioned more than 200 artists. Our conversation covers her belief in abundance, the power of everyday art and—of data.

Kemi Illesanmi: 

No one has actually called me a data nerd. So I really appreciate that. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's a highest compliment. 

Kemi Illesanmi: 

I accept. One of the things that really drove me in putting HueArts together was a dream of what it might look like for a young person of color, who wants to make a life working with culturally specific, as in people-of-color-run arts organizations. 

That, in this moment, would feel like an incredibly bold statement. And it shouldn't.

Charlotte Burns:

That’s next time on The Art World: What If…?! 

 The 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. 

The Art World: What If…?!, Episode 1: Naomi Beckwith

“Not just what if—but what are we missing?” In the first episode of this new podcast, host Charlotte Burns is joined by Naomi Beckwith, the deputy director and Jennifer and David Stockman chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Someone actively working to recalibrate the field in the most exciting and dynamic ways, Naomi starts this episode with science before moving on to museums—and how we can create change. What if our textbooks were Black? What if we decentered the Western world in conversations about art? Tune in for more. 

New episodes available every Thursday.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns: 

Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?! 

I’m your host, art journalist Charlotte Burns, and this is a series all about imagining different futures. We’ll talk about how we navigate the churn and change currently shaping culture. What are some of the biggest shifts that need to happen for art to stay relevant in a changing world?

In each episode, we’ll be talking to some of the most interesting people in the art world, asking them ‘what if’? 

[Audio of guests]

In this episode, we welcome Naomi Beckwith, the deputy director and Jennifer and David Stockman chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 

Over the years, I’ve been a journalist, if ever I have something difficult to think about, Naomi is someone I like to try to talk to because she is such a precise and a completely independent thinker. Naomi is not someone who says what everyone else does, instead, she approaches art and the industry on her own rigorous terms. 

Naomi and I began our conversation with something that inspired her from an early age—the link between science and art…

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns: 

Naomi, thank you so much for joining me today.

Naomi Beckwith: 

Hi, Charlotte, you're very welcome. I'm thrilled to be here.

Charlotte Burns:  

So, I wanted to start in a slightly unusual place, which is in the world of science, because you didn't intend to be an art person. You initially trained as a scientist. And prepping for this conversation, I watched a PBS interview with you. You were talking about how you'd written a paper on the Italian scientist Enrico Fermi, who came to America to work on the Manhattan Project. And then later, you realized there was a monument to that process in Chicago's Hyde Park by the artist Henry Moore. And you talked about how the sculpture [Nuclear Energy (1963-67)] represented the new possibilities and the shiny new world of this tech—but also meant that something we didn't know was coming. 

And that seems like an apt place to start this interview amidst great change, great potential and, also deep uncertainty. 

Naomi Beckwith: 

You're right, it actually is an interesting crossover from the world of science into art for me because both, essentially, if they're doing their work right, are dealing with questions of the unknown. And I think that's perfectly appropriate for a podcast called, What If?! 

Essentially, I grew up in this neighborhood with this monument, and it was something quite different from many of the other monument-like things that I'd seen around. There were plenty of Grecian figures in and around the South Side of Chicago. There were men on horses—of course, as usual—roaming around the city. But here, outside the Library at the University of Chicago, was a sculpture that was completely abstract. 

But if you can imagine it, Henry Moore loved the idea, as did the rest of the St. Ives group, of a kind of abstract language that was fielded through the forms one could conceive of in nature. Biomorphic forms that looked a little bit, in this case, like maybe a knuckle, a bone structure, something that had a big rounded top, and then an overall rectangular form with a void in between. 

And it was this shape that, on the one hand, reminded me of the mushroom cloud. I am a child of the ‘80s. I grew up in utter terror of nuclear annihilation. I’m sad that we find ourselves pondering these questions again. But I was also a child that knew that the more that you began to play with forms, the more that you could neutralize it. 

And I think this is what Henry Moore was doing—trying to give us the sense of the shape of a nuclear reaction, but also understanding that if you harness it in the correct way, you could do something with this great power. This great potential. This thing that could, of course, destroy us, but could also give us endless energy. That could also be a sign of our intelligence and our curiosity. And that could also lead us into a future that we couldn't imagine before. 

What on earth are we going to do with the knowledge that comes after that? And what on earth are we going to do with the power that we still hold?

Charlotte Burns:  

Well, they're great questions, indeed. What are we going to do? 

I'm going to bring it slightly into a more prosaic space by asking how you bring that to bear, your scientific background. As the oceans rise and temperatures increase, what can the art world what can museums learn from the scientists? You're at the head of leadership now in a major institution. How much is this spoken about? 

Naomi Beckwith:  

If anything, there's been sort of two divergent conversations around this. Really, you know, our survival as a species, and then the role of art institutions inside of those conversations. 

The first conversation is really how do we, as museums, just do better as global citizens? How do we reduce our carbon footprint? How do we recycle the majority of our materials? These are things that have been coming to us, both in terms of municipal pressure but also been long-standing conversations internally. 

We've been working very deliberately and diligently with external groups and are part of a consortium of museums answering this very question. You don't hear about it because it's not sexy, right? It's not sexy to talk about the cardboard we use. It's not sexy to talk about our waste management systems. Nobody wants to hear that. The mundanity of it isn't dazzling. And that's okay. Because, in many ways, it is our mundane actions and our carelessness in our mundanity that has gotten us to this current crisis. 

On the other hand, there is a very public sort of conversation that we're seeing, which is this series of protests that you see with, for instance, [Just] Stop Oil and tomato soup going on a Van Gogh. I forget at which museum people were gluing themselves to the surfaces of framing. This is another kind of forced conversation that we have, but it's a conversation that really asks, I think, a very key question around this climate crisis, which is where do we turn our attentions? And where do we turn our resources as a society? 

Obviously, I agree that we are well within, I think, a decade of sheer, irreversible terror in terms of the way the Earth will or will not function. And while I very much agree that we need almost a kind of desperate stunt to call people's attention to it, I don't agree that it's a zero-sum game between culture and climate. Thinking about it as either the arts or the climate, thinking about Van Gogh's sunflowers or mashed potatoes, I think, lacks; lacks serious imagination. We have all the resources and power to do both. And we shouldn't be pitting one against the other.

Charlotte Burns:

An interesting thing related to this in terms of museums is, of course, museums preserve the past and in very specific climate-controlled conditions. And what we've experienced over the past several decades is this boom in museum building, and in terms of our travel around the globe as a kind of community, but also the expansion of museums domestically. When we think about that—this idea of phenomenal growth of institutions that have gone from, you know, maybe 30 or so people inside an institution, like the Guggenheim, to now corporations spanning the globe, like the Guggenheim—how do we think about collections? 

And this is a kind of two-pronged question because, on the one hand, there's always the imperative to grow more. And right now, we can discuss that in the lens of diversity, and the time it would take, the drive and scope and capital investment it would take, to grow the collections of the Guggenheim, for instance, to achieve any kind of equity or parity. 

And on the other hand, there's this sense of so much stuff. When we look at the annual acquisitions across major American museums, the number of works coming in as gifts, specifically, is enormous. It's about 60% of the figures that we look at in the Burns Halperin report. So it kind of makes us scratch our heads and say, well, museums are talking a lot about equity and parity, and they are trying to do the work. And then directors and curators will say to us, well, there's this tide of gifts coming in that means that we're kind of dampened in what we can achieve. 

Is there a moment in which we have to say, Okay, are museums just taking too much stuff in? Do we have to rethink accessions? Both from the point of view of achieving parity and equity and, and also from the point of view of sustainability. Can we keep growing?

Naomi Beckwith:  

First of all, every museum has to be judicious around what their mission is. We're always going to be offered far more objects than we ever can absorb. 

I think we want to take museums at their word when they say they want to conserve culture. Now, there have been so many challenges to what that means. There's so many challenges to what we define as culture. And so all those kinds of challenges, I do believe, actually, if anything, has allowed museums to think about an expansion of their remit, which I don't think is the same as growth for growth's sake. 

That said, it is the case that we are all limited in the ways in which we can acquire. I think it behooves every museum to look very deeply at those missions and decide for themselves, where are we going to focus energies? We not only have limited physical space where we have to hold everything, but there's a limit to what you can ship where. There's a limit as to why you should be shipping. And there's also a limit to your mission; your mission is not just there to be an all-embracing thing, your mission is there to focus. 

You and I have spoken very much about the fact that there are calls, in these renewed missions, in these growth of collections based on a real, almost maniacal, need to conserve things, which I don't think is the problem. The question is how. We know that in those calls for equity and diversity, we’re still looking for the end game. 

The question for us, really, I think, for all museums, is if diversity is going to be a goal of yours, what are you looking for? Are you looking for a kind of parity in your collection, assuming that your collection is primarily Western Europe and North America? Are you looking for a kind of specific percentage representation? I don't know. 

But I do know that if I look at the collections of many museums, especially around North America, you're going to find if you're not a culturally specific institution, that your collection is pretty much 85% White and the vast majority of that White men. So what do we do about that? 

I also realize that many institutions have taken very specific steps to then remediate that. And the steps sometimes have been incredibly radical. We see stories of massive, major de-accessions of work that bring in millions and 10s and hundreds of millions of dollars toward the goal of diversifying collections. But if you were to look again at those numbers, and let's say the first time in which I looked at those numbers was around 2013, 2014, if you were looking at those numbers again today, you will find that they've barely budged. And I do think this is where simple math helps here to do the analysis to realize that when you have thousands of work in your collection, buying 10 works a year or buying 15 works a year, it's not going to put a dent in your statistical numbers overall. 

So if we are reaching certain percentages, if we are reaching a real parity in the collections, those are the goal, if we're even reaching majority people of color in the collection, we need to understand that it will take many years, many decades, and millions and even billions of dollars to actually reach those goals of parity. If it took you 50 years to get to 85% White Men, it's gonna take you 50 more to get to a kind of balance. And I do hope that my colleagues and I begin to really get a grasp on the long-tail enterprise that this is going to be.

Charlotte Burns: 

I want to dive into that with you, this idea of the mechanisms that we need to ensure this, and actually, that's something you said to me in one of our last conversations, you said this is like the climate. There's a need for immediate action. But this is also going to outlive us, not only our tenures but our existence on this planet. And we're talking about the same stakes really, with what museums are and who they're for, and how they prepare themselves to be more than sort of precious jewels as they move forward through time. 

But also thinking about change. I think you're totally right when you look at the contextual totals that, of course, you know, buying 10 works this year and 20 works next year isn't going to make a dip in your overall collection. But it should make a difference. What we should be seeing in the data is that, if we look at the data of the last five years, or 10 years or 12 years, we should be seeing, if we just focus on accessions, we should be seeing greater change there. And we're not really seeing that either. I mean, the biggest volume of collecting of work by women peaked in 2009. For Black Americans, it peaked in 2015. Our latest study shows that those results are both around a fifth of what they should be if you look at the demographics of America. And the figures are especially compounded if you are a Black American female-identifying artist, in which case, the problem is around 13 times as bad as it should be. And so we're not actually even really seeing that shift in terms of acquisitions. 

Which gets us to your first part of what you were saying; why are we doing this? Is it representational? Is it reputational? Is it a means to an end? You know, why should museums do this? And are they having that conversation?

Naomi Beckwith:

So, first of all, thank you for reminding me of my climate analogy. It is true, you know, we have a planet burning, but we also have, in many ways, museums burning. They’re not literally burning. They’re burning, I think, with a hope from the public, that we would be able to demonstrate a better way of being in the world, a better citizenship, a better cultural responsibility. This is the kind of burning question that people are throwing at us. And absolutely, you know, like the climate, we're gonna have to do long-term changes in order to stabilize and then move on in a kind of happy cohabitation with the world. 

When we ask why we're doing this, I think it's a bigger question than just numbers and statistics. I think it's a question of what does it mean to actually engage with culture now, in the world where we do not have the kind of luxury to act like a little village anymore? 

We all now have too much access to information. We have too much access, I think, to critical thinking around how we receive information to then uphold one kind of model of cultural excellence as the model for the entirety of the world. That's just not going to work anymore. 

And I do believe that, from well, at least in the case of my colleagues, we've all come to understand that, right? So when I began to do work, like advocate for Black artists, I'm not advocating for Black artists just for the sake of having more Black artists in the collection, which, yes, I do want. What I'm advocating is for a broader conversation around what culture does and means and how it can function. What begins to happen if you stopped looking at, let's say, painting as the highest form of art, and think about it in terms of sculpture, or performance, or the interrelation of media, what kind of stories do we tell about human history and human excellence if we just began to kind of, if not invert, at least pivot some of the foci that we have in our cultural conversation. 

I also think that, in many ways, this question of bringing in these other narratives, making other artists and other kinds of objects visible, has been too much of a success in which, in the media, especially the social media sphere, there's so much more visibility for queer artists, artists of color, much more celebration of women, especially we began to look retrospectively at artists of a certain age, that kind of revival of the careers and the presentation of the careers of artists within their 70s, 80s and now even 90s, right? These are the things that we're seeing rising to the fore of, I think, our kind of media imagination. And when you see that, right, when you see so many incredible Black artists on the cover of magazines and on billboards, then you begin to imagine that we've come to a better place. So the danger is to equate, then, that kind of media visibility with equity. And that's not the same thing. And I do believe that's why people are shocked when they hear the numbers, but at the same time, right, imagine a much more equitable and equal world. 

I’ll also say one thing too; don't underestimate the number of objects that an institution brings in, year by year. 10 objects a year, 15 objects a year, for an institution, my size is fairly normal. Yes, we get massive tranches of other gifts. We, of course, like many institutions, rely on incredibly generous people. But you know, we're talking about collecting work in the dozens, not hundreds, year after year. 

So I think even for a lot of art professionals, when you say 10 to 15 works a year by POC artists, that sounds radical to them. But again, as I said before, that doesn't put a dent into the work that you have to do. That becomes step one of a multi-generational task.

Charlotte Burns: 

There was a symposium about the future of collecting at the Whitney [Museum of American Art], and you talked about the stubborn percentages and the need for new interpretive strategies.

Naomi Beckwith:

What we are asking really is, what do these objects do once they join the family of the collection? Right? It is basically like intermarriage. If you have an intercultural marriage, you should then have intercultural exchange. And that's what I mean by new interpretive strategies, right? Greenbergian formalism will not work on the Khartoum school. Don't try it! [Laughs]

So the question then becomes, how do we make sure that we bring in new voices and new forms of knowledge, as well as new objects? That's going to be paramount.

It's also the case that we work in museums, clearly, because we're thinking of a future beyond ourselves. But we have to imagine ourselves, if we're going toward a future of a different kind of collection profile, then we have to imagine ourselves then doing the work of making sure that that collection profile happens. It also has to be about cultivating young collectors now, to imagine a different remit for what may be even right now against the grain of the market. It also means really training people to broaden their own perspective on collections now. We have to be sort of active partners, with our patrons, with our supporters, up with our market friends and asking questions. How do we do this long work of making sure that we are going to see this long-term growth in diversity in our collections?

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns: 

The market right now has become the biggest voice in the room in most rooms that we're in, and museums can't really separate themselves from that because they're funded by trustees, and most trustees are collectors and there's a spiral. How do we move away from that dominance of the market? Because we hear from curators that, as they advocate to buy a work, say, by an older artist, who's being rediscovered as they become a nonagenarian—if you outlive them, you might find success—they spoke to us of their frustration that you can do the work, you can bring in the scholarship, you can even have the exhibition, but the market creeps in because it creates a sense of urgency around certain figures. How do you, as the chief curator, navigate that?

Naomi Beckwith:

It's really funny. I love the way you describe it as a spiral, right? This shows with spiral, and I'm in a building that is a spiral. But I think you've mentioned in terms of a downward spiral, maybe.

Charlotte Burns:  

Well, I meant certain curves of repetition, perhaps.

Naomi Beckwith:

I think there's a way to turn it into a vicious, not a vicious, sorry, but a virtuous cycle. [Laughs] Maybe I’m making a Freudian…

Charlotte Burns:

Freudian slip there. 

[Laughter]

Naomi Beckwith:

Exactly! Exactly. Listen, you know, the market is dominant because it's glitzy, and it has things that people understand, like numbers. I mean, let's also understand it's graspable. My job, and the job of my colleagues, is to do something that gets people to grasp the ineffable. I think every curator hopes to do that, and some are better than others, I'll just be real. 

But at the end of the day, you're a) not going to win every battle, but b) you have to build the trust of your patrons and supporters. There is a reason why you've ascended to the position that you're in. You have to find the language and the ways and the means to advocate for that which is important to you. And it's not going to be the same for every person.

There is always going to be a person who's only interested in the market. But I don't think any board or any support group of an institution is wholly comprised of people like that. They are people who are there because they care about objects, and they care about future, and they care about the reputation. So if you begin to talk about the ways in which an artist has reconfigured your mind, and reconfigured the language of art, and maybe done something that was the root of what is the white-hot market now that we ignored some time ago? These are the conversations that are worth having. 

But I'll also say, look, the market is not everything to everyone, either. There are plenty of artists who want to sell, obviously, but they are still looking for that validation inside of institutions. They're still looking for the publications. They're still looking for scholarly respect. I don't know any artist who wants to die with nothing but sales and no retrospective. Right? Nothing but sales and no survey. 

So it also behooves us to tell our supporters that we actually sometimes have to remember that we are the goal and not the sales. We are the prize, and why are we the prize? Because we actually have the foresight and maybe a little bit of discernment to really think about what's going to be important into the future. Or at least we have the foundation and the platform to create importance for the future. I think we can't underestimate our power. Just like Henry Moore, I guess we'll just say.

Charlotte Burns: 

I love that. You also talk about your trustees there. One of the kind of ‘what-ifs’ of this show is thinking about that idea of governance. What if we could separate governance from funding? Would you advocate for something like that? 

Naomi Beckwith:

Something about that sounds incredible. I have to think about this just a little bit. What if we could? Yes, I actually think that could be interesting. 

But if I were to give a counterexample, which I don't know well, the question is, is it that much better, let's say, in a European context, where funding might be coming from the state and governance might come from other people? I don't know. Right? 

It's really a question about where do you put your energies? And then what do you get back from those energies? How much time do you spend really trying to justify the moves that you make with your supporters? And, you know, institutional leaders? Do they trust your vision? Right? Do you have a vision? 

But I do agree, right, that the boards have become the primary source of funding for institutions. And while I don't have a total distrust of that, I actually think it puts a lot—an incredible amount—of pressure also on the board. Right? I don't think they enjoy being in that position. But they feel responsible. So many of them rise to the occasion.

Charlotte Burns: 

Talking about leadership, you're back in New York now, you're at the Guggenheim, which is about to undergo a change in leadership with the departure of the longtime director, Richard Armstrong. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that new direction, how that's feeling internally. 

But also, I want to talk to you about New York itself. It's about to undergo this enormous generational shift. You have, obviously, Richard at the Guggenheim, at the Met[ropolitan Museum of Art], there's a new leadership structure in place. There's change expected in institutions all around the city from MoMA [Museum of Modern Art], possibly New Museum, possibly Whitney, possibly Studio Museum [of Harlem], there's a lot of talk in the air about change coming in the next several years. 

And this is also happening in the market if you think of legacy plans happening around kingpin galleries like Gagosian, Gladstone, Goodman, the closure of Metro Pictures, galleries like that. 

So it seems that this is an unprecedented moment of sudden, rather than staggered, generational change and new leadership vision. We're in the moment before the enormous change, and it feels like it could be momentous. New York is the center of the art world and still is the hub of activity. What do you feel about that big generational change? 

Naomi Beckwith:

Yeah, it's a surprising one. Honestly. This sounds really naive. But I don't think I saw it coming so quickly. But you're right, it does feel like something's on its way, though. You know, look, I'm not trying to kill any icons or running institutions out. [Laughter] I wish you all long and healthy careers. But that said, it did feel we do see something on the horizon. 

You know, yes, there's an exciting—a super exciting—generation coming. And I do think they're going to grapple with very different questions around institutions than the generation that has been, you know, my educators and my leaders for the entirety of my career in education as of now. 

And it first starts with, I think, the deep questions that this current generation had to grapple with, probably over the last 25, 30 years. How do we sustain institutions when the state just plummeted in support? How do you talk about culture in the realm of a globalizing world? Right. Those, I think, were the big questions. How do we sustain ourselves? How do we become global? 

The generation to come really still have to, I think, grapple with those; we just talked about this idea of patronage and who's supporting the institution. We have, of course, talked about the idea of institutional survival in the climate crisis. 

But I also think the bigger question now is citizenship and the role of museums now, when you have a world, especially a Western world, that is so deeply cynical about the possibility of nationhood, and the possibility of public space, and civic belonging. So there's a reason why, when someone wants to get attention, they walk in a museum and they tape themselves or glue themselves to a famous painting. 

It feels as though museums are almost the last site by which we can surface all these questions around our future. It's a scary thing, but it's not, I think, an uninteresting one. Why are museums the last public space? And what becomes the responsibility of a museum as the last public space? 

I am not someone who's so Pollyanna, who believes that art and museums will change the world. But I do believe they can, right? I do believe they can become the sites where we begin to imagine change. I do believe they can become the sites where we can literally talk safely around certain ideas. I do believe they are the sites, especially through artists, that allow us to deal with our anxieties personally and politically. So why not take advantage of that platform? And imagine what the museum can be in trying to hold this world together that is still grappling with its own post war legacy.

Charlotte Burns:  

I think that’s so interesting. And it's only going to happen if museums can change themselves, of course, first, which is a big responsibility. How do you go about thinking about that, and how much of that is rooted in this sort of balance between local placemaking and global thinking? And by which, I don't mean globalized in this sort of, which is a business word, really. More the idea of cosmopolitanism. 

Naomi Beckwith:

I don't see a distinction between the two, honestly. And I think my model for that really comes from my sort of Southside of Chicago upbringing in, you know, a kind of post-Black Power, pan-Africanist way. 

Two things really came out of that, and one is, for my kind of education with the capital E—the breadth of the way that I've learned to navigate the world—there was no distinction between me imagining myself as a kind of political figure, and imagining myself as a cultural figure. This project of Blackness and Blackness and formation was about a kind of being able to exist in an American polity, with an identity formation that had been informed by certain cultural practices, real and imagined. Right? Real: the food. Imagined: you know, a kind of, I don't know, a sartorial relationship to Africa. [Laughs] Everyone running around in Kente cloth, right, and dashikis, right? 

So these things were one in the same for me. But it also engendered a second thing, which is to say that, in that relationship to Africa—again, both real and imagined—there are Africans in my family, right? But though, at the same time, there was a kind of fantasy of Africa as a place inhabited wholly by kings and queens, right, there was no underclass. [Laughs] And all those kings and queens had been then denigrated in the Atlantic crossing to the States. That was, again, a fantasy. But what it began to engender was a real curiosity and relationship to the African subcontinent. So by the time that I am sort of rising with my interest in art and culture, and Okwui Enwezor becomes one of the dominant voices around cosmopolitanism, he makes perfect sense to me. 

The locality of the version of a cosmopolitan Africanism, on the South Side of Chicago, was exactly the thing that allowed me to imagine then not only relationships to the African subcontinent but the relationship to what we now call and probably shouldn't call the global South. These were shared understandings of our unfortunate relationship to a narrative of cultural teleology in the north that needed to go. That then becomes a global, international, cosmopolitan project that sat right beside those little African dance classes that I took on the South Side.

Charlotte Burns: 

You spoke recently to me about this idea, you sort of lamented a little bit this sense of cosmopolitanism on the wane in the cultural imagination these days. Can you talk a little bit about how you're experiencing that?

Naomi Beckwith:

Yeah, I do think that there's a way in which people are trying to revive the local at the expense of the cosmopolitan, but not in relationship to it. I'm thinking about a kind of deep interest in a kind of Black study that really wants to focus just on the US, a very specific kind of historic moment, maybe right after the abolition of slavery. And I'm not saying it's not a problem historically; I'm deeply interested in it. But I began to really wonder what happens when we lose the idea that there wasn't just a distinct Black culture that grew up in a crucible of one site, i.e., the American South, or became the American South. But there had always been these cultural exchanges with Africa, and the Caribbean, and North America, all the way up to the quote-unquote emancipation of slavery, right? That never stopped. I think we have a way of fixing some of these narratives around what certain places and what cultures are at present, when in fact, there's always going to be swirl and exchanges at different understandings. 

There's something, I think maybe about my own instincts, that feels as though if we're not thinking about any kind of cultural moment as a continuum and as an exchange with other peoples, other languages, other cultures—and we're not imagining what happens in both that collision and that melding—then we're probably not really doing a very good job of grasping what's happening. 

One of the reasons I constantly go back to someone like Okwui Enwezor, besides this sort of capacious genius in general, is because, for him, there is no shame in history. There is no shame in colonialism in Africa. Was it a problem? Yes. But it's not something that he needed to be ashamed of. He's much more interested in what happens when you take these kinds of colonial structures and try to overlap it over a pre-existing cultural and political hegemony that already existed in Western Africa. And what strange surprises begin to come out of that? What happens when you try to recuperate that in decolonization?

He was not ashamed of the Nazi past of Haus der Kunst. And that it was, in many ways, a Nazi design project. And so, instead of sort of sweeping it under a proverbial rug, he was much more interested in what happens when we talk about that design project. And when we talk about where objects literally went, how it passed through the Haus der Kunst, and how that actually can be helpful in restitution projects. 

This idea that we don't have to kind of recoup a glorious past in order to give ourselves credence, but we need to actually not be ashamed of what's happened and begin to grasp it for ourselves and talk about the possible worlds that can come from that.

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns: 

I guess what you're talking about is, what if we could imagine different futures? And this is your point of the spiral that I know you've talked about as being such a part of your practice, this idea of, again, not a downward spiral, but a reaching back and forward at the same time, and having that relationship between the both of them. 

And you mentioned as well, growing up, you're born and raised in the South Side of Chicago, you came of age in the 80s, in the wake of the Black Power movement, and you you attended a very experimental public school that fostered high academic achievement in its pupils, 98% of whom were Black American. 

And a sad thing about this is that you had no idea that as soon as you left school, that Black history would no longer be part of your formal education anywhere else. That's also a kind of huge, what if, like, what if that continued? There are models that have worked that just haven't been expanded or developed or picked up enough, you know, this is, you're a product of something very specific in so many ways.

Naomi Beckwith:

You know, in many ways, my education was like a fish in a fishbowl, you don't realize that not everyone else has undergone the same thing. I just assumed even White people knew about Black history, obvi. [Laughs]

Actually, I didn’t. I did know it was something distinctive, but I didn't know how much till much later. And I, I agree, there have been models in terms of trying to create new citizens. I mean, that was a project in new citizenry. Again, not at all distinct from cultural history and arts and imagination, those two things always went along with each other. We have to keep doing that work. And in fact, I did a whole series for the BBC called What If My Textbooks Were Black? And I walked through certain kinds of cultural histories, centering Black figures in that culture history and had conversations with people across disciplines—dance, music, literature—beginning to recoup a notion of American history. 

I also believe that there doesn't have to be some massive exchange, i.e. that we throw out all the history books—or maybe we do throughout the history books, we can rewrite some of them. [Laughs] We don't throw out the history, right? No shame. But we need to explain those histories. We need to really begin to either understand how we can talk about, let's say, in my context, American history, with the contributions of immigrants, because that's what we all are, right? 

I'm kind of tired of living in a country where people constantly turn to me and ask where I'm from. They don't turn to people with white skin and ask them that question when my family has been here for hundreds of years. So what is that presumption of Blackness as foreignness? So what if we began to teach our history in a different way? That doesn't presume that Whiteness is the norm? Which it is actually not and hasn't been for quite some time? 

What if we began to do a kind of cultural education that allows us to imagine that there are all sorts of forms, not even integrated in the market, that allow people to understand what aesthetics are, what beauty is, what object-making is, what community means? What if we actually spend time archiving and researching those things? 

And again, not against object-hood, but along with. And if we do that, we might have, let's say, a better understanding of the work like an artist like Nick Cave. We are dazzled by these objects. But those objects have a very specific material history to them. So I'm really interested in a kind of model that is always about expansion, always about asking that question: what are we missing? Not just what if, but what are we missing? And that takes that as the core of its intellectual enterprise, rather than one that starts with certainty and begins to say, this is the best, this is the greatest, and this is the only way forward.

Charlotte Burns:  

I love as well how this extends back, this is something so formative for you because you've spoken about growing up in such a vibrant cultural scene where the object was just one thing that was one part of that creativity and imagination and the value of creativity and culture. So it was art, it was dance, it was performance, social spaces, and so much more were enmeshed. And then you spoke about how when you became a museum professional, you were sort of like, oh, wow, we're just talking about the object?

And so this has been a concern in your practice for a long time, you know, from your exhibition, “The Freedom Principle[: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now]”, specifically looking at jazz and experimental music in the 60s, especially in Chicago, and the influence of that on contemporary culture. And now, of course, visitors to the Guggenheim, between now and April, can go and see the amazing survey of works by Nick Cave. So tell us a little bit about that strain of thinking in your practice.

Naomi Beckwith: 

I'm not the only one doing this work. And that's exciting. I just think that that's part of that generational shift. I think many of us either weren't raised with the same kind of academic presumptions. And many of us, of course, again, don't have a shame about where we've come from. Even if we weren't raised in the depths of those kinds of academic presumptions. I'm not ashamed of a wonderful sort of working-middle-class background on the South Side of Chicago again, I thought it was vibrant. So I just want to share it. There is a real glee in talking to people about the beauty of the free jazz movement. Because, you know, where would we be without it, we'd be a much poorer world. 

Charlotte Burns:

It's also, you know, the everydayness of it. It's the conversations, it's the music, it's the food you eat while you're talking about the music you're listening to or dancing to. And it is life, rather than a relic of a life past, which is a shift, I think, that you're right is a generational one. 

Naomi Beckwith:

Let's not forget that that's not new, also, to the Western art project. That was exactly the shift that got us the great Modernism enterprise of the 19th century. That's the shift that got us genre painting. That's the shift that got us Manet, right? The question is, whose mundanity is going to be, quote-unquote, valued? 

Charlotte Burns: 

I love that. Will you remain in museums? Do you see your future in the institution?

Naomi Beckwith: 

Yes. I hesitated because I have no crystal ball. I wish I did. If I did, I’d work in the markets. [Laughs] But look, there is only one site that I can think of that allows you to do multiple really incredible things. To sit with objects. And it is amazing to be able to sit and stare at something for a long, long time. It is amazing to have the benefit to study something in-depth and make friends with something. 

It is also amazing to come together with colleagues who are all about the mission of the care for history through objects. That people are trained to tell stories. That there are incredible resources put to the idea that art objects are important. And it is unusual to be in a place that is wholly committed to sharing that with the broadest possible public. 

And I don't think there is an institution that has really worked to rethink itself over the centuries, moving from these kinds of really idiosyncratic gentleman's collections to one that really begins to ask questions around civic practice and civic life. There’s something so incredibly important and exciting about that. And I can't imagine another institution that would do that for me.

Charlotte Burns:

It's really interesting because it's sort of like the job that museums said they wanted but didn't really apply for. 

Naomi Beckwith:

[Laughs] 

Charlotte Burns:

And then now they're sort of landed with it because there's been this complete shrinkage in the public sphere, otherwise, of spaces, which is why you see, like you say, these big arguments around monuments and museums, because where else are you going to go? 

Do you think they're up to the challenge? Can you think of museums doing that work well right now?

Naomi Beckwith:

I think it will take some training. I don't claim to have all the answers to, you know, how to engage with this new pressure of the expansion of our civic roles. I think we have to begin to reimagine ourselves a little bit. We have to reimagine our public as very different from that kind of enlightenment subject. 

I think we still have to reclaim some of that space from the white-hot market and and tell a compelling story about why we exist. So it'll take some work, but I don't think we have a choice. 

Look, you brought up a very important example of the destruction of monuments. Most of the people who took that statue of Colston down and threw it in the river will not be able to give you a disquisition on the importance of monuments, right? But they do understand symbolic value. And we, as museum professionals, are the keeper of symbolic values. And we need to respect people's understanding of that and walk with them through that. 

But I also want to think about the ways in which, when the world began to open after the pandemic, or when I was living in the city in the wake of 9/11, how many people ran to the Met? How many people went to museums? People still trust us, and it doesn't look like trust. But I think that agitation and advocacy inside our spaces is a sign that they're really looking for us to help them also navigate all the symbols thrown at them, especially when those symbols come in the form of death and destruction.

Charlotte Burns:

I think you're right, that's so true. That’s where people go to find that connection with—communion, I guess—with other people's emotions, whether past or present. 

[Music break]

Charlotte Burns:

So I'm going to ask you a couple of ‘what ifs’ just to round us out. 

Naomi Beckwith:

Okay.

Charlotte Burns:

I was watching one of your videos that you've done. It was a show called My Chicago, and you're driving around Chicago. You were talking about the role of a curator as being a translator, and the host said, a lot of people just say they don't understand that it makes them feel uncomfortable or stupid. And you said yeah, this happens every day of my life. And I thought, well, what if art didn't make people feel uncomfortable or stupid or lacking in some way?

Naomi Beckwith:  

Art doesn't make people feel stupid. People just don't trust themselves. So I think the question is, what if we actually help people trust themselves in the face of something that felt bigger than them? And I think if we did that, we’d probably be better able to talk to each other about things, right, we'd be able to talk to each other in this kind of social space of political agitation, and we’d definitely, I think, be able to talk to each other much more cogently around cultural exchange.

Charlotte Burns:

Okay, another question for you. What if the canon didn't matter? By which I mean artists today, not all of them find the canon to be totally relevant anyway to them. What if it doesn't matter?

Naomi Beckwith:

Every artist has a canon that matters to them. I think first, it's important to talk about multiple canons. No artist, or at least one I find compelling, sprouts from the head of Zeus fully formed. Every artist is looking at something that came before them. The ones I find the most compelling are the ones who are the most self-aware around that. So I think the question is, what if we took a little bit more time to understand what those canons are that are important to that particular artist and then begin to judge for ourselves whether or not this is something we want to engage with.

Charlotte Burns:

What is the ‘what if’ that motivates you?

Naomi Beckwith:

That's a good question. The ‘what if’ for me is, what would I do if I had unlimited resources? 

But I think that's a utopic. What would I do? This sounds really selfish but I’d build other Guggenheims. [Laughs] They wouldn’t look like this one, though, and they probably wouldn't be in the form of Abu Dhabi. But I'm really interested in what would it mean to have a proper network of museums, right? Not just distinctive ones but a network of museums doing that work of cultural exchange, as we do on a small level now at the Guggenheim, sharing exhibitions. But you know, what if we were a multi-sited institution that thought of itself much more unitarily? 

What else would I do with unlimited resources? I’d do a lot of conservation work. I’d do a lot of arts training. I’d do a helluva lot of professional development for people who don't traditionally have access to the arts. 

But I also think it's very important to not ask the question about winning the lottery. But also imagine, what am I going to do with what I have now? And again, in that spirit of not being ashamed of what might be perceived as not enough, or a lack, but really understanding, I still have a gift. I have a gift in this position, I have a gift in this incredible institution, I have the gift of access to a wealth of incredible colleagues who have intelligences beyond my imagination. What are we going to do with it now?

Charlotte Burns:

What is the Guggenheim going to do with it now?

Naomi Beckwith:

Right now, I think we're going to open Abu Dhabi. And we're gonna ask the question, ‘what if the center of our conversation around art isn't going to be cited in the Western world?’ What are the stories that we're going to tell when we have a global collection in the Middle East? And what, then, is our responsibility to the growing stories that are going to come out of that amazing remit?

Charlotte Burns: 

Naomi, this has been a true pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. 

Naomi

You're welcome. 

Charlotte Burns:

I always love our conversations. 

Naomi Beckwith:

I also always love our conversation Charlotte, and really, really look forward to more and thinking about what happens if we don't just change the numbers but begin to change our hearts and minds.

Charlotte Burns:

I think that's a perfect, perfect question to end us on. 

Naomi, thank you so much for joining us.

Naomi Beckwith:

Til soon. You’re welcome. Bye bye.

Charlotte Burns:

Thank you once again to Naomi Beckwith for that conversation and for helping us untangle some fascinating ‘what ifs.’ Naomi is a next-generation museum leader, someone actively working to recalibrate the field in the most exciting and dynamic ways. 

Next time we’ll be talking to Glenn Lowry, who’s been the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1995. We talk about his concerns about democracy itself, divisiveness in culture, among many other things. 

Glenn Lowry:

If we start to believe that trustees whose political positions are different than ours, or whose financial investments don't align with our values are no longer welcome in our institutions, I think of that as fascism. “I don't like what you do. Therefore, you are excluded.” That's a bad place for us as a society to be. It doesn't matter whether they're of the progressive left or the reactionary right if they're supporting the programs and artists we believe in. 

Charlotte Burns:

That’s all coming up in the next episode of The Art World: What If…?! 

The 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.

Introducing The Art World: What If…?!

What if we reimagined everything in culture, from painting to patronage? Tune in to The Art World: What If…?! to hear some of the leading thinkers, creators and innovators in the art world rethink the system, exploring the consequences with wit, wisdom and humor. 

Join art journalist Charlotte Burns and world-renowned art advisor Allan Schwartzman as they exclusively interview museum leaders, collectors and artists including MoMA director Glenn Lowry, Guggenheim deputy director Naomi Beckwith, non-profit leader Kemi Ilesanmi, curator Cecilia Alemani and Sandra Jackson-Dumont, the director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and many others over the course of the series.

From the team behind In Other Words and Hope & Dread, The Art World: What If…? is brought to you by Schwartzman& for Art& and produced by Studio Burns.

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns: 

Hello, I’m Charlotte Burns, an arts journalist.

Allan Schwartzman:

And I’m Allan Schwartzman, an art advisor.

Charlotte Burns:

And this is a brand-new podcast series from the makers of In Other Words and Hope & Dread.

Allan Schwartzman:

It’s called The Art World: What If…?!

[Audio of guests]

Charlotte Burns:

Each week we'll be joined by fascinating people—innovators in art and culture—from museum directors and other leaders to curators, collectors and artists. 

Naomi Beckwith:

It’s true. You know, we have a planet burning, but we also have, in many ways, museums burning. 

Allan Schwartzman:

Our conversations are with today’s leading thinkers and creators, among them Naomi Beckwith, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Kemi Ilesanmi, Glenn Lowry, and Cecilia Alemani. And others whose names may not be as familiar to you yet.

Glenn Lowry:

If we can’t have these conversations, if they become so polarized that they lead to divisiveness, political alienation, even violence, then we are going to fail as a society.

Charlotte Burns:

We’ll be asking our guests to imagine different futures for the art world. We’ll be asking them, “what if?”

Allan Schwartzman:

This show is driven by the need to look now at culture from different perspectives because we’re on the precipice of dramatic cultural and historical change that we’re probably not able to see. We want to shift our perspectives—and yours. 

Kemi Ilesanmi:

There’s a power in naming. Making things visible and legible so that you can then decide what to do with the thing that you just named. [Laughs]

Charlotte Burns:

Once we’ve named it, how do we navigate it? What are some of the biggest shifts that need to happen for art to stay relevant in a dramatically changing world?

Glenn Lowry:

If you go to a museum for certitude, you will ultimately be disappointed.

Cecilia Alemani:

Can we look at what’s been happening since the pandemic as a sort of, a new wave coming through the art world?

Allan Schwartzman:

So what are these new waves? How do we overcome some of these complex issues? And how do we talk? How do we think about value?

Naomi Beckwith:

Listen, the market is dominant because it’s glitzy, and it has things that people understand, like numbers. My job, and the job of my colleagues, is to do something that gets people to grasp the ineffable. 

Cecilia Alemani:

What if financial values was no longer the way we talk about success?

Charlotte Burns:

What if art and culture can change the world?

Kemi Ilesanmi:

You have to name dreams so that the universe can figure out how to help you make them happen. So if we don’t invite people to even name the dream, they can’t get to where they need to go.

Allan Schwartzman:

The Art World: What If…?! will be available weekly from January 12th, when you can listen to three bonus episodes right away. 

Charlotte Burns:

The Art World: What If…?! 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. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.