Art Scoping

Candor is a precious commodity in the cultural world. So often it’s just easier to keep your true feelings to yourself so as not to foreclose opportunity or risk ostracism. Candor is not in short supply for Mark Lamster, the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, among other perches in the academy. In this episode he calls out some of the legitimate societal pressures facing architects and architecture today, projects and firms that warrant his accolades, the waning authority of the...

Today’s arts philanthropy is being guided by new voices. Bahia Ramos shares her approach to funding, beginning with the fact that she collects art as a form of advocacy. A Brooklynite, she is director of arts at The Wallace Foundation, where she has sought to respond to the needs of artists and arts organizations of color during the pandemic. Part of a new $53 million grant initiative to develop the capacity of arts organizations of color is to develop a clear understanding of future needs....

Social activism and museum directing---ICA Boston director Jill Medvedow manages to leaven her professional responsibilities with a conscience, and teaches us much in the process. We delve into her stewardship of the 2022 US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, featuring artist Simone Leigh--and we learn why and how she put the ICA Watershed together, her selection as the subject of an MIT case study about how she aligned stakeholders to realize the ICA Boston by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, her...

Global in outlook and experience, Dr. Dorothy Kosinski has since 2008 directed the storied Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. We are treated to her insights into how radically the art museum field has changed over the last year and a half, her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion years before it became the norm, her views on the kind of training and background required for directing museums today, and her prior experience as a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art, buoyed by the...

Public art is as challenging and rewarding as it sounds. Subject to the opinions of all, from passersby to art critics, there is ample room for debate about each and every installation. In our first episode this fall, we turn to Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Chief Curator since 2013. With a distinguished curatorial career in museums, she took on the exciting opportunity to commission works for one of New York City’s most...

The last word goes to Patricia Marx. A staff writer for The New Yorker, she’s the unofficial voice of New York City, and was apparently seconded briefly to the Montana State Tourism Board. We are rewarded with her colorful travelogue of a recent trip to a friend’s ranch in or near Yellowstone (wholly unclear which), and her deep and abiding gratitude for the lockdown’s inducement of uninterrupted reading. We hear tales of literary betrayals, creative uses of empty office towers, NYC’s...

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is the flagship museum for our nation’s art, and Stephanie Stebich, its Margaret and Terry Stent Director, has led it since 2017. We touch on the two new museums recently authorized by Congress that will join the Smithsonian’s other 19 museums, why SAAM successfully attracts a large number of repeat visitors, the importance of creating a sense of connection and community for museum visitors, balancing local audiences with those from far away, how...

John Rossant is a globe-trotting polymath, an evangelist for thoughtful urban and transportation design, and author with Stephen Baker ofHop, Skip, Go: How the Mobility Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives. As Executive Chairman of PublicisLive he produced, among other things, the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos (yielding an address book with mobile numbers of the privileged and of potentates in far-flung capitals). He reprises facets of a career spent evaluating and...

Museum directors rely on lawyers to help their institutions address sometimes thorny issues. What if your museum’s director is a lawyer herself? Listen to the thoughtful approach of Dr. Jill Deupi to her job as the Beaux Arts Director and Chief Curator of the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum. Her doctorate in art history and facility with several languages add up not just to an impressive résumé but also wide-ranging interests and insights. We cover the distinctive features of...

#Nashville is hot. Much larger than Atlanta, its metro population is surging, and this vitality is reflected in multiple ways. In this episode we hear from Susan Edwards, the director of its Frist Art Museum since 2004, and learn about the institution’s origins in an Art Deco post office and its trajectory to become of the South’s most vital museums, along with the city’s philanthropic culture, its stubborn identity as a democratic stronghold in a reliably Republican state, the challenges it...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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,...

“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...

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...

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...