Glenn Lowry became the sixth director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) in 1995. He has overseen the physical transformation of the Museum’s campus through two building campaigns that have more than doubled the size of MoMA’s galleries, quintupled its endowment, created an education and research center, and inspired a new model for the presentation of modern and contemporary art. Lowry has championed innovation, both onsite and online, to grow MoMA’s annual visitation to nearly 3 million in the galleries and 35 million across moma.org. He expanded the Museum’s curatorial departments, with the addition of Media and Performance, and supported MoMA’s intellectual growth by creating new research programs like Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (CMAP).
In 2000, he led the merger of MoMA with the contemporary art center PS1, and in 2015, he worked with Thelma Golden to introduce a joint fellowship program with the Studio Museum in Harlem for rising professionals in the arts. Lowry is a strong advocate of contemporary artists and their work and he has lectured and written extensively in the support of contemporary art, on the role of museums in society, and on other topics related to his research interests. He currently serves on the boards of The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Clark Art Institute, the Art Bridges Foundation and The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, as well as on the advisory boards of the Istanbul Modern and the Mori Art Museum. Lowry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a resident member of the American Philosophical Society.
He and Zuckerman discuss courting risk, creating the time to think, controlling the process, professional guidelines, the goal for museums to be independent and private enterprises, thinking that opens possibilities, being fearless, passion, and why art matters!

Cultural journalist Jori Finkel is based in Los Angeles and won the 2023 Rabkin Prize for excellence in the field. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and the West Coast contributing editor of The Art Newspaper, covering artists and the art world with particular attention to gender issues. Previously, she was a senior editor of Art+Auction magazine in New York. She developed and co-produced the Emmy-nominated 2018 PBS documentary Artist and Mother, working to flip the script that devalues art made by parents and establish an art historical lineage for artist-mothers. She is also author of the critically acclaimed book It Speaks to Me: Art that Inspires Artists, called “an argument for why art museums matter” by New York magazine. She speaks at museums and art fairs and appears on broadcasts and podcasts as part of her larger project of making contemporary art more accessible.

She and Zuckerman discuss turning an advocation into a vocation, opening doors for people, realizing your mission, being in the wrong place, communicating with people, advocacy, following her curiosity, the consensus making machine of the art world, ways of resistance, motherhood, artworks you keep coming back to, not complaining, taboos, female genius, the germ of something, and art as a safe space for dangerous thinking!

Los Angeles based, Australian artist Ricky Swallow uses ordinary materials to create precisely rendered objects that he then casts in bronze. The unique works that result are expressions not only of the objects’ constructed forms, but also of the process of transformation by which an inert grouping of things becomes a sculpture. Swallow is invested in equal measure in the making of things and the testing of concepts; in hands-on work with cardboard, tape, wood, and rope and the mediated potentials of the foundry; in the immediacy of craft and the austere elegance of geometric abstraction. He elicits a questioning state of mind by establishing geometries and juxtapositions that just manage to exceed what the eye perceives as possible. Like mysterious, hieroglyphic numbers or letters translated into three dimensions, his works are as indelible as they are evocative.
He and Zuckerman discuss how we see our own work, working against the logic of an object or image, when people remember your work, doing less, the availability of abstraction, meaning, conducting yourself with authenticity, sculptors as underdogs, being married to an artist, what makes him happy, space and order, meditation, the radical idea of doing nothing, figuring things out himself, a time-tested belief system, leaving your mark, not destroying anything, self-guided work, collecting, what is parallel to making!

Madeleine Haddon, Curator of V&A East, is a curator and writer whose work reexamines art historical narratives through contemporary lenses. Her interests and projects span both historical and contemporary art, from Nuestra Casa: Rediscovering the Treasures of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library to current commissions by contemporary artists for the new V&A East. Madeleine brings a critical and innovative perspective to the evolving role of museums for diverse audiences. She serves on advisory committees for Harvard Art Museums, Public Arts Trust of India, Photo London, CORA Foundation, and Athena Art Foundation.

The first building of V&A East, V&A East Storehouse, opens on May 31 and will house over 250,000 objects and 1,000 archives from the V&A’s collection. Through programs like “Order an Object,” visitors can request specific works and gain behind-the-scenes insight into how objects are stored and conserved. V&A East Storehouse will also feature the forthcoming David Bowie Centre, opening this September, showcasing the newly acquired archive of over 90,000 objects belonging to David Bowie.

She and Zuckerman discuss V&A East’s upcoming openings, including the phased development of a dynamic working museum store offering an innovative “order an object” service that reimagines public access to collections, the museum’s deep commitment to accessibility, community engagement, and inclusivity — as well as its new commissions program, designed to foster meaningful dialogues between historic collections and contemporary artistic practice, the evolving role of museums in the twenty-first century, and how institutions like V&A East are reshaping the ways audiences encounter, experience, and connect with art and culture.

Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City who is currently at work curating the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, titled Once Within a Time and opening in June 2025.  Since 2011, she has been the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City. From 2020 to 2022, she served as Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale, where she curated the acclaimed exhibition The Milk of Dreams, which received over 800,000 visitors. More recently, she has curated several exhibitions, including Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self, the Japanese painter’s first American retrospective, presented at Gagosian Gallery in New York (2023); Making Their Mark, the first public presentation of the Shah Garg Collection (New York, 2023; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2024); and Anu Põder: Space for My Body, Poder’s first solo exhibition presented outside of Estonia at Muzeum Susch, Switzerland (2024). Alemani also served as Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires in 2018 and was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Over the past twenty years, Alemani has developed expertise in commissioning and producing ambitious artworks for public space and unusual sites.

She and Zuckerman discuss the act of learning, not being curatorially snobby, the rhythm of nature, giving up control, objects having their own life, the realness of cultural uncertainty, the 1948 Venice Bienniale and moving between the past and the future, female voices, the artist as client, the land of enchantment, and that art matters because it is our life!

Jennifer McCabe is a distinguished curator, educator, and museum director with over 20 years of expertise in leading cultural institutions, fostering innovative curatorial practices, and supporting artists. Currently, she serves as the Director and Chief Curator of the SFO Museum, the only airport-based institution accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. Under her leadership, the museum operates more than 25 exhibition sites throughout the San Francisco International Airport, engaging millions of visitors annually. Its acclaimed Aviation Museum and Library houses a permanent collection of over 160,000 artifacts documenting the history of commercial aviation.

Previously, McCabe served as Director and Chief Curator of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, where her eight-year tenure garnered significant acclaim, including consecutive "Best Museum" awards from the Phoenix New Times. Her curatorial vision and writing delve into themes of intersectional feminisms, site-responsive art commissions, and groundbreaking artist interventions.

She and Zuckerman discuss SFO, what one can do with all the time and headspace one had spent fundraising in a museum, bypass doors, how what she learns can be applied in other organizations, shaking up societal associations of craft, expanded perspectives, having an audience of millions, moments of pause, a journey through space, joy, incorporating breaks from art talk, being forever changed by parenting, seeing things through someone else’s lens, daily practice, the pause, and being your own support system!

Artist Claire Tabouret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Motivated by a sensitivity to the passing of time and the floodgates of vulnerability opened by human relationships, Tabouret's painting practice is paced between periods of productive urgency and quiet reflection, and animated by layers, fabrics, and full, loose brushstrokes. Her hydrous palette is suspended somewhere in the ether between the synthetic hues of makeup and subdued tones of the earth, simultaneously referencing the natural and artificial ingredients of representation. Tableaux depicting bodies in confrontation, portraits, paintings of assemblies of people from young debutants to migrants at sea, and landscapes are often washed in color fields, alternately evoking ine possibility of anywhere and site specificity.
She and Zuckerman discuss her studio practice and a typical day, where her ideas come from, living in California, comfort and risk, ‘fluff,’ motherhood, music, what art has to teach us, and her selection to design new, contemporary stained-glass windows for the newly renovated Notre Dame Cathedral.

Stephan Jost is an art museum director who is currently the Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. Previously, he served as Director of the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, and the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California. He also held curatorial positions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. 

Jost serves as Past President and Nominating Chair on the Board of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and is also on the Board of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation. He previously served as Vice Chair on the Board of Hampshire College, where he was Board member from 2018-2022, as well as 2008-2016. He holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin in Art History. He is originally from East Lansing, Michigan and is a citizen of Canada, the USA, and Switzerland.

He and Zuckerman discuss original intention, cultural urgency, having a young and diverse museum audience, when people fall in love with culture, why people care about art, being in the presence of great works of art, the optimism of the extraordinary, the innovation of decorative arts, the maintenance of power, keeping our humanity, how museums can build social cohesion, and the power of inconsistency!

Carrie Scott is an English American curator and arts commentator based in London. Over the past two decades, she has worked globally with galleries, artists, and collectors. She began her career as curator of the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University, later becoming Director of the James Harris Gallery and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York. In 2009, she launched Carrie Scott & Partners, collaborating with artists like Nick Knight, John Pawson and Walter & Zoniel. She has curated exhibitions worldwide, including in South Korea, Japan, London, and New York. In 2024, she founded Seen, a platform promoting emerging artists and transparency. She and Zuckerman discuss art and entrepreneurship, embracing messiness, the impact of people saying yes, expanding the artworld, how art makes you feel better, how art is not rewarded in society, Seen.art and understanding ourselves!

Art collector and philanthropist Komal Shah, originally from Ahmedabad, India, migrated to the US in 1991 to study computer science in California. After completing her Masters at Stanford, she earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, eventually holding positions in the executive suites of Oracle, Netscape, and Yahoo. In 2008, Shah left the tech industry to focus on philanthropic pursuits. She then began developing the Shah Garg Collection with her husband and tech entrepreneur Gaurav Garg, solidifying a vision for the collection’s emphasis on women artists in 2014. Today, they are focused on amplifying the voices of women artists and artists of color through the Shah Garg Foundation.
She and Zuckerman discuss activism, mistakes, excellence, motherhood, ungendered works, the seduction principle, how only 12% of works collected by museums are by female artists and how women artists make $.10 on a dollar, how to build a collection, great artists, and the social reality of guilt!