About Art

This is the second “Ask Me Anything” episode with our founder and host Heidi Zuckerman, a globally recognized leader in contemporary art, a prolific content generator, and a fierce advocate for Why Art Matters! In addition to being the first woman to build two art museums and raising nearly $200M dollars for museums, she has had hundreds of courageously authentic conversations with artists and other people she finds interesting that are featured on five years and 150 podcasts and in four volumes of her Conversations with Artists book series. She also recently authored Why Art Matters: The Bearable Lightness of Being “your bed-side table masterclass in how to find a way towards understanding ourselves thru art.”
In this episode she answers audience questions that range from those about the practices of the art world to who Heidi would love to have dinner with and on her podcast. It’s another deeply personal share from a woman who encourages us all to live our values and to connect with art to make our lives better!

Melissa Chiu is Director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary art. Since her appointment in 2014, she has advocated for contemporary art through the Museum’s exhibitions, acquisitions, and public programs, with landmark exhibitions of work by some of today’s most important artists. A native of Australia, Chiu earned her bachelor’s degree in art history and criticism from the University of Western Sydney in 1992 and her master’s degree in arts administration in 1994 from the University of New South Wales. She completed her Ph.D. with a dissertation on contemporary Chinese art at the University of Western Sydney in 2005. Chiu has authored and edited several books and catalogues on contemporary art, and has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Museum of Modern Art, and other universities and museums.
She and Zuckerman discuss radical accessibility, running our nation’s Museum of modern and contemporary art, the difference between TV and museums, the humility of motherhood, and learning from artists.

Art historian and curator Anne Radice. Radice previously served as Director of the Division of Public Programs at NEH. Prior to joining NEH in July 2018 she served as Executive Director of the American Folk Art Museum. From 2006 to 2010 Radice served as Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Her previous government positions include Acting Deputy Chairman for Programs and Special Advisor to the Chairman of NEH, Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Education, Acting Chairman and Senior Deputy Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Chief Arts Advisor for the U.S. Information Agency, and Curator for the Architect of the U.S. Capitol. Radice is a recipient of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal, the Forbes Medal, and the NEA’s Chairman’s Medal. She holds an MBA from American University, a PhD in art and architectural history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, an MA from Villa Schifanoia School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, and an AB from Wheaton College.
She and Zuckerman engage here in a deeply personal conversation about living a life of service, “the general public,” true leadership, listening, and leading with your heart.

Los-Angeles based artist Diedrick Brackens is best known for his woven tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through the artist’s autobiography, broader themes of African American and queer identity, as well as American history. Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South and European tapestry-making to create both abstract and figurative works. Bracken’s work the reasoning beast (2021)—currently installed in OCMA’s exhibition Color is the First Revelation of the World—exemplifies Bracken’s intimate use of color and material, where washed in hues of black, blue, and purple, a figure embraces a goat to soar through the night sky.
He and Zuckerman discuss his relationship to craft, weaving, and storytelling, how he starts, breaking rules, why cotton matters, Texas, his titles, abstraction and figuration, and what role hope and empathy play!

Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers has made art that activates for more than 30 years. Bowers works in a variety of mediums, from video to colored pencil to installation art, and explores pressing national and international issues. Her work combines an artistic practice with activism and advocacy, operating as chronicler of contemporary history. A passionate ecofeminist, the symbiotic relationship between women and ecology is a recurring theme in her work, central in Femme Trans-Corporeal Fantasy (Victory to the Goddess) (2023), a monumental work on cardboard that entered OCMA’s collection in 2023.
She and Zuckerman discuss her relationship to craft and how it impacts her relationship to activism, feminism, her drawing practice, engaging with the public, what she most values, aging, doing less, And what questions art should be asking!

Tony Marsh is an artist and educator who earned his BFA in Ceramic Art at California State University Long Beach in 1978. After graduating he spent three years in Mashiko, Japan at the workshop of Tatsuzo Shimaoka. Marsh completed his MFA at Alfred University in 1988. He teaches in the Ceramic Arts Program at California State University Long Beach where he was the Program Chair for over 20 years. He is currently the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at CSULB. He was named a United States Artists Fellow in 2018, an honor awarded to outstanding contributors in American Arts and Letters. His work is the collections of museums across the globe including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Art and Design, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of Art; Gardiner Museum of Art, Toronto; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Jose Museum of Art; ASU Art Museum Tempe; the Foshan Museum of Contemporary Art, Foshan, China; and the Orange County Museum of Art.
He and Zuckerman discuss being a teacher, making art, making a real impact, doing things with your whole heart, the influence of his mom, living and training in Japan, things that are encoded with success, how simple things are hard to make, marriage vessels, fertility vessels, and appropriate shapes, suspending time, magic, failure, craft, notions of taste, and taking no out of your vocabulary!

Stephen Reily is the Founding Director of Remuseum, an independent research project housed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which seeks to promote innovation among art museums across the United States. An attorney and entrepreneur, Reily served as Director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky from 2017 to 2021 where he invigorated a newly renovated museum with a mission of public service and dramatically increased both contributed revenue and accessibility. Under his leadership, the Speed introduced a new “Speed for All” free family membership for anyone for whom cost is a barrier to entry; initiated its first paid internships; issued its first annual Racial Equity Report, specifying the museum’s standing and commitments on staffing, acquisitions and exhibitions, programming, and more. During his tenure, the Speed worked with Guest Curator Allison Glenn and Community Engagement Strategist Toya Northington to present the exhibition “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” cited as a model of relevance and innovation as the museum responded in real time to the killing of Breonna Taylor and a year of protests in Louisville. A longtime supporter of museums and the arts, Reily currently serves on the Boards of the Creative Capital Foundation and the American Federation of Arts.
He and Zuckerman discuss museums as legacy businesses, the unsustainable nature of the current economic model of museums, innovation, the Director’s role, artists and what we can learn from them, new ideas and initiatives, what’s working, and of course why art matters!

Mehak Vieira is the Director and Founder of Jahmek Contemporary Art, a dynamic platform promoting a critical and provocative dialogue about artistic and visual expression in Luanda, Angola. Raised in Luanda, Viera founded the gallery alongside Jardel Vieira in 2018 with the vision of strengthening the artistic infrastructure in Angola for the next generation. Over the past five years, she has worked with emerging and established artists with ties to the country to build an ambitious program of exhibitions, events, fair presentations and more. Her leadership has gained international recognition of Jahmek Contemporary Art, building its reputation as a prominent player in the African contemporary art scene by exhibiting at major events including the Venice Biennale 2024, Art Basel 2022, Art Dubai 2022 and Arco Madrid 2021, among others.

She and Zuckerman discuss not coming from an art background, the Angola art scene, being entrepreneurial, why their program matters for the country, elitism, access to information, archiving the narrative, legacy, love, art fairs, how things come together, courage, and why art matters!

British sculptor Antony Gormley’s (Sir Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA) work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with recent exhibitions at Musée Rodin, Paris (2023); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2022); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2022); National Gallery Singapore, Singapore (2021); Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Germany (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); Delos, Greece (2019); Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2019); Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); and Forte di Belvedere, Florence, Italy (2015) among others! Some permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, UK), Another Place (Crosby Beach, UK), and Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honors list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.
He and Zuckerman discuss the state of the world, art as a form of witnessing, what can sculpture do, being in the world but not of it, moving through space with awareness, active meditation, what art is for, recognizing our own vitality, discovering ourselves as strangers, and the urgency and hopefulness of being alive right now!

Tess Lukey is co-curator of the inaugural Boston Triennial and Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Trustees of Reservations (The Trustees), the nation’s first and state’s largest land conservation nonprofit. Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member and lifelong New Englander, previously worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has also completed fellowships at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Hibben Center for Archaeology Study and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque. Lukey is also a traditional potter and basket weaver practicing the techniques of her own Indigenous community.
She and Zuckerman discuss reciprocity, pairing artists and experts, how artists can address things in ways that no one else can, teaching people about making, her relation with clay, finger weaving, physically working with a place, being an artist, a maker, and a member, how art needs people, gaining family and realizing who she is, working with the land, guiding museums about respecting tribal sovereignty, her studio visit strategy, magical moments, making ceramics sing, and what can contain all the knowledge in the world!