Texas! We head to Fort Worth and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art to hear from its director, Dr. Andrew Walker. We touch on the wealth of arts institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and why the Carter, like most museums in the metro area, is free. We consider the Carter’s enormous photography collection, including the work of indigenous photographers, how the Carter has been transformed since the death of Ruth Carter Stevenson in both governance and management, the museum’s re-engagement with living artists and its broadened audience, the fluid definitions of what is American in American art, increasing the diversity of the collection, exhibitions, and audiences, current and future exhibitions, and how temporary experiences are challenging permanent collection orthodoxies.
Episode 66: Randall Suffolk
Museums across the U.S. are striving to reboot---addressing historic underrepresentation of people of color in board and staff leadership, collections, exhibitions and programs, and audience. Few have achieved what Atlanta’s High Museum has under director Randall Suffolk. In this episode we delve into the steps he took beginning in 2015 to take an already significant institution and turn its attention to what are today eagerly sought points of distinction. We cover his efforts to listen to prospective visitors, lower admissions fees, change the exhibition calendar and collection focus, and de-emphasize blockbusters--and how he brought his board and staff along to embrace changes in a bid to earn credibility. A recent study attests to the progress made over the last few years.
Episode 65: Tracy Roberts
Many Americans are pining for a return to Europe—and to Italy in particular. In this episode we check in with Californian-born ex-pat Tracy Roberts, Co-Founder and Vice-President of LoveItaly, dedicated to the preservation and appreciation of Italy’s unique cultural heritage. She has made Rome her home for decades, and we get an on-the-ground report about life there as the pandemic recedes, how museums have fared over the last year and a half, the mechanics of state-sponsored and commercial cultural patronage, along with updates on a series of projects addressing the conservation needs of museums, monuments, and churches.
Episode 64: J. Nicholas Cameron
A fan of “This Old House”? Then listen to Nick Cameron’s accounts of what it was like to oversee the care and updating of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s two million square feet, its fourteen-acre roof, and the whole exterior and grounds. As the former Manager of Operations and then Vice President for Construction at the Met for over two decades, Nick’s MBA came in handy while replacing antiquated procedures and systems, completing more than $850 million of construction, and navigating a sea of competing interests (and egos) to make the Museum into the modern facility we all enjoy today. Join this consummate back-of-the-house tour and your next visit to 82nd Street will be all the richer. Extra points if you can guess what Met staff used to call a “cheese”.
Episode 63: David Resnicow
As arts organizations make post-pandemic plans, they are struggling to find the right balance between optimism and the realities of reduced staff, revenue, and relevance. Enter strategy and communications guru David Resnicow, whose eponymous firm has for decades pulled arts organizations out of controversy, tilted institutional missions and rhetoric away from self-congratulation, and advised boards and staff on ways to privilege substance, ethics, and civic impact over empty spectacles, ticket sales and vanity.
Episode 62: Peter Dorman
Imagine being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs as easily as the back of a cereal box. This week we turn to Dr. Peter Dorman, one of the world’s most accomplished Egyptologists, to shed light on his background and training, his time as a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Tutankhamun exhibition, and his path from a naval officer in the Pacific to a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, to his years in Luxor, and then as a university president in Beirut, and now a scholar affiliated with two universities. We spare you the mummies and turn instead to epigraphy and philology—as well as his training with AK-47s and evasive driving skills to elude capture.
Episode 61: Alan Salz
One of the leading dealers in Old Master paintings and 19th century art is Alan Salz, director and head of paintings and drawings at Didier Aaron. We grapple with contemporary art’s domination of the art market, and come out with a note of optimism about interest in pictures from the past. Along the way we touch on the TEFAF art fair, the attribution of the Salvator Mundi to Leonardo da Vinci, what stops him in his tracks, the challenges of establishing authenticity and assessing condition, the downside of selling to art museums versus private collectors, the short-sightedness of runaway deaccessions, training in connoisseurship, and other topics.
Episode 60: Sarah C. Bancroft
“A $7 Billion Philanthropic Force.” That’s an artnet headline describing artist-endowed foundations, and this episode sheds light on the leader of not one but two of them. Sarah C. Bancroft is Executive Director of the James Rosenquist Foundation and President of the Board of Directors of The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. She discusses her reliance on the Aspen Institute’s Artist Endowed Foundations Initiative, led by Christine Vincent, as well as recounting the core activities of these organizations, which include promoting research, exhibitions, and conservation of works by 20th and 21st century artists. We touch on copyright abuse, forgeries, and other concerns of AEFs, and are favored with her unique insights into the oeuvres, practices, and personalities of both Rosenquist and Diebenkorn.
Episode 59: Vishakha N. Desai
We check in with Dr. Vishakha Desai about her soon-to-be-released new book, World as Family: A Journey of Multi-Rooted Belongings (Columbia University Press). It’s part memoir, part exhortation to connect across borders, both geographical and attitudinal. Our conversation ranges from the pandemic’s hold over India to her beginnings in the museum field, the need for Americans to tolerate ambiguity, cultural appropriation, globalism v. nationalism, restitution of cultural heritage, the sunset of the ‘universal museum’, and other pressing issues of our time.
Episode 58: Thoughts on Deaccessioning
If after all the ink spilled on the topic of #deaccessioning, you’re still unclear what the fuss is about, here’s a short summary of the concerns of most art museum directors, excerpted from a presentation I recently made to the Federal Bar Association. We go back to the landmark decision in 1993 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to restrict the proceeds of art sales to buying new art, the softening of its stance in 2019, and the temporary lifting of restrictions against the use of deaccessioning proceeds by the Association of Art Museum Directors. We recap the swirling external forces bearing down on art museums today regarding the monetization of collections, and I close with the hope that art museums won’t discard obligations to preserving our shared cultural heritage and will instead turn to philanthropy to address pressing needs from DEI to operating shortfalls.
Episode 57: Dany Khosrovani
Dany Khosrovani tells the truth—truth in branding, marketing, and advertising. Founder in 2017 of The DKG Perspective, a consultancy for CEOs who are at crossroads, she previously spent decades at leading agencies including J. Walter Thompson, Bates Worldwide and Young & Rubicam, and her clients were top-tier companies. Oxford-trained, she shares a fresh and candid assessment of the need for a moral framework for museums, leadership challenges in the face of mounting public criticism of questionable business practices, shortcomings in addressing racial injustice, and the current wave of stated corporate concerns about issues like voter suppression. We touch on the “brands” of the UK and the US, and advice for museum directors and for corporate leaders, peppered with insights won over a brilliant career.
Episode 56: Michael Shnayerson
In this episode we turn to an accomplished chronicler of our times. Michael Shnayerson is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of eight books on a range of nonfiction subjects, including “Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art,” which lays bare secrets of the largest unregulated financial market in the world. His wide-ranging interests have taken him into multiple facets of the 20th century—including laboratories combating disease, Harry Belafonte’s recollections, a political dynasty, and most recently a page-turner about the notorious gangster Bugsy Siegel. He’s not done with the art world—we learn about a current collaboration with Alec Baldwin to delve into spectacular tales of modern art forgeries.
Episode 55: Nina Diefenbach
Raising money to support the arts is demanding in the best of times—let alone during a pandemic, and when so many are focused on social and racial justice. Our guest Nina Diefenbach is Senior Vice President and Deputy Director for Advancement at @The_Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. A century ago, Dr. Barnes had an abiding commitment to supporting his African American employees and students at @LincolnUofPA, the nation's first degree-granting #HBCU, and we learn how the Barnes has adapted to the last year’s many challenges along with facets of its exceptional offerings.
Episode 54: Dinah Casson
Museum directors and curators get the credit when exhibitions or collections open, but what about the museum designers? Look no further. We turn to one of the world’s leading exhibition designers, Dinah Casson. Her design partnership with Roger Mann since 1984, called Casson Mann, has completed high-profile assignments in the UK, US, Russia, Italy and the Middle East. We dip into her new book, titled Closed on Mondays: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, published by Lund Humphries, and learn about assignments from a proposed UNESCO museum of world heritage outside Turin, under the aegis of AEA Consulting, to the British galleries of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, to the Lascaux Cave in Montignac in the Dordogne.
Episode 53: Nina Del Rio
We check in with Nina Del Rio, Vice Chairman, Americas, at Sotheby’s, for an inside look at how the art market performed during the past year. She concurs with recent assessments of a drop in market volume, but contends that the bottom line wasn’t as affected as all might assume. We delve into how objects make their way into private sales versus auctions, a farewell to printed auction catalogues, a surprising prediction about the future of glamorous in-person evening sales, the impact of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in the art market, museums’ reassessments about mission affecting their participation in the market, and how AAMD’s loosened deaccessioning guidelines has revealed a deep divide among museum leaders regarding the disposition of funds realized from art sales. She also notes an increasing appetite among private collectors to be the stewards of their own holdings--or to insist on restrictions prohibiting deaccessioning.
Episode 52: Jerrilynn Dodds
There are endlessly conflicting views about cultural authority these days. For perspective we need an enlightened scholar to sort it out--and find her in Sarah Lawrence College Professor Jerrilynn Dodds. From the inapposite definitions of Islamic and “Western” art and architecture permeating our language, to the decolonization of the curriculum, we touch on Spain’s medieval history, the mythology of a common European identity, the misguided trope of American ‘exceptionalism’, why Hagia Sophia’s return to its function as a mosque should surprise or offend no one (she exuberantly dresses me down for singling it out as a political gesture), the social activism of today’s youth, her favorite state-sponsored architecture, and other kernels of good-humored wisdom. You’ll be amply rewarded, with no tuition bill to follow.
Episode 51: Franklin Sirmans
Miami is a harbinger of changing demographics in the United States, and we’re lucky to have as today’s guest Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our conversation ranges from PAMM’s navigation of the pandemic to the impact of Black Lives Matter on art museums, the need for staff and boards to reflect a museum’s community, the representation of indigenous people in museum programming, reservations about deaccessioning as a path to diversifying collections, the shifting priorities of collection-building versus offering temporary experiences, and the stereotype of Miami and L.A. as sybaritic settings for culture.
Episode 50: Charles Saumarez Smith
We head to the UK to hear from Sir Charles Saumarez Smith about his new book The Art Museum in Modern Times. Former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Royal Academy, he reflects on contests of authority bearing down on museum leaders, ranging from the influence of private wealth, to restitution claims, the assault on the canon of art history, and the failure of museums to address the legacy of slavery and prevailing discrimination. He discusses the preparation of future directors, purging endowments of investments in regressive industries, challenges to the primacy of permanent collections, the ‘anti-woke’ agenda of Boris Johnson’s government, the dearth of educational collaboration among museums online, the ascendancy of a commercial paradigm over public access, and his hopes for the future of museums.
Episode 49: Bruce Mau
Bruce Mau is a globally renowned problem-solver. In this episode we touch on some of his past and upcoming achievements, including a new documentary about his extraordinary influence in the design sector and beyond, to have its world premiere at the upcoming SXSW. We discuss his insights in Designing for the Five Senses, his new book MC24, his childhood in Canada, the origins of his landmark exhibition and publication Massive Change, memorable experiences of working with globally renowned leaders and innovators, and his thoughts on design practices and life as the pandemic recedes.
Episode 48: Lisa D. Freiman
Dr. Lisa Freiman reflects on the recent forced resignation of the chief executive of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (for now clinging to the nickname @newfields) along with her major exhibition of the work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, her role as Commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion in the 2011 Venice Biennale, which presented new works by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Alfredo Jaar’s extraordinary Park of the Laments in the 100-acre sculpture park she devised, and a recent project she curated at the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health. Candid, insightful, and passionate, she addresses the institutional culture of art museums and encourages more resolve in tackling persistent discrimination and resistance to change.