About Art

Simphiwe Ndzube stitches together a subjective account of the Black experience in past and present-day South Africa from a mythological perspective creating universes with his sculptures, paintings, and assemblages. Living and working between Los Angeles and Cape Town, South Africa, Ndzube’s work was recently on view in the California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art/OCMA. 

He and Zuckerman discuss the hero’s journey, magical realism,  mothers, play, love, community, opportunity, and apartheid.

This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at OCMA and includes some of their questions at the end of the episode.

Catherine Opie is an American photographer known for her portraits and landscapes that explore the complexities of contemporary life. Opie documents how individuals interact with the spaces they inhabit, expanding the dialogue on community, identity, and the marginalized subcultures of America. She was a recipient of The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Medal in 2016. Opie holds the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art at UCLA where she is a professor of photography.
She and Zuckerman discuss mapping humanity, writing in your head, the pain of losing a family, the healing that comes with motherhood, vastness, our intelligence as a species, the crisis of humanity, what makes a successful board experience, what it takes to be a good citizen, meditation within art practice, and how art is a the language of our culture!

Robert King “Bob” Wittman is a highly decorated former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who was assigned to the Philadelphia Field Division from 1988 to 2008. Having trained in art, antiques, jewelry and gem identification, Wittman served as the FBI's "top investigator and coordinator in cases involving art theft and art fraud". During his 20 years with the FBI, Wittman helped recover more than $300 million worth of stolen art and cultural property, resulting in the prosecution and conviction of numerous individuals. In 2005, he was instrumental in the creation of the FBI's rapid deployment Art Crime Team (ACT). He also was instrumental in the recovery of colonial North Carolina's copy of the original Bill of Rights in 2005, that had been stolen by a Union soldier in 1865. Wittman represented the United States around the world, conducting investigations and instructing international police and museums in recovery and security techniques. After 20 years with the FBI working against art theft, he worked as an art security consultant for the private sector. In 2010, Wittman published his memoir Priceless which recounts his career and activities while working for the FBI as an undercover agent.

He and Zuckerman spoke about what he thought would be fun about joining the FBI, fake Basquiats, being scared, provenance and good title, the Dr. No theory, 89% of museum theft being an inside job, protecting cultural property, doing deals in the art market, and why museums and monuments get destroyed!

Mónica Manzutto and José Kuri founded the gallery that united their surnames in Mexico City in 1999, and soon became an international reference for Latin America and to the world: kurimanzutto. The gallery helped plant the seeds of Mexico City’s thriving art scene. Recently the husband-and-wife couple expanded their North American presence to a 622 sqm New York gallery that their artists helped design.
We spoke about how they met, the Fridays workshop, Gabriel Orozco’s role in their founding the gallery, the original “rules” they set for the gallery, blurring the line between local and international, building artists’ careers, opening in a different era, staying close to artists, and the perspective that kids bring!

Neville Wakefield is a curator and writer interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. He offers that art is most successful, enlightening, and provocative when it goes beyond stereotypical labels and white spaces and is revealed in new spaces that suggest new paradigms. Previously MoMA PS1’s Senior Curatorial Advisor and Frieze Projects’ Curator, Wakefield is the co-founder of Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, Artistic Director of Desert X, and the force behind Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia.
He and Zuckerman spoke about starting as a writer, sailing, getting lost, no right or singular approach, embracing uncertainty, constructing your own narrative, the aesthetics of disappointment, lowering barriers of entry, and finding beauty in unexpected places!

Hilary Pecis makes paintings and drawings in which tableaus rich with interlocking fields of saturated color, geometric patterning, and bold linework provide views of sun-drenched domestic still lifes and landscape environments. Books crowding a coffee table, the remains of a dinner party, and terrains lush with Southern California succulents make frequent appearances in her work; these meticulously arranged interiors and vibrantly rendered exteriors amount to an overarching portrait of the self that identifies objects and locations as signifiers for human characteristics.
She and Zuckerman spoke about the importance of questions, her use of photographs, how we know and show ourselves, running, active versus passive practice, in between spaces, choice, what she thinks about, and how things come together!

This episode is a rare, live conversation between Zuckerman and artist Mark Manders recorded as part of an exhibition opening walk through in Los Angeles!

Derrick Adams is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Adams probes how the experiences and narratives of Black communities are reflected in and refracted by American history, entertainment, consumerism, iconography, and the dynamic relationship between personal identity and cultural environment. Expanding the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture, through scenes of normalcy and perseverance, he developed and presents an iconography of joy, leisure, and the pursuit of happiness.

Kelly Crow is a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering the ever-changing contemporary art market since 2006. Her work includes reports on sales at auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's and analyses of the funding and buying practices of the world's leading arts institutions, artists, and collectors. Extending her expertise beyond the newsroom, Crow has assisted in teaching journalism courses at Columbia University’s Graduate School, where she earned her master’s degree in 2000. Crow has been the recipient of a Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club of New York in 2009 for her profile on an FBI officer who reclaims stolen art and a Deadline Club Award for Arts Reporting in 2021 from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for her coverage of the digital-art boom. Now residing in Texas, Crow's decades-long insight and expertise into the art world have solidified her place among our time's most influential arts journalists.

Jeffrey Deitch has been a prominent player in contemporary art for over fifty years. Born in 1952 and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Deitch went on to study at Wesleyan University, turning his primary attention from economics to art history. As a college student, he opened his first gallery in 1972 in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1978 Deitch received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he authored his thesis on Andy Warhol as a business artist and sought to find synergy between aesthetics and economics. Such interest led him to Citibank, where he developed the art consultation division, the first professionally organized art advisory service attached to an international financial institution. Deitch has also contributed significantly to art criticism, becoming a regular columnist of Flash Art in 1980 and having his work published in Artforum, Garage, Interview magazine, and Paper magazine. In 1996, Deitch opened the Deitch Projects gallery in Soho, with shows including works from Vanessa Beecroft, Nari Ward, and Mariko Mori.