About Art

Robert Nava draws inspiration from sources ranging from prehistoric cave paintings to Egyptian art and cartoons to create hybrid monsters populating a mythical contemporary world. Rendered through a raw, energetic mixing of spray paint, acrylics, and grease pencil, his large-scale paintings of fantastical beasts exude a playful candidness that defies the pretensions of high art. An MFA graduate from Yale University, Nava builds on the gesturalism of Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

This week on my podcast “Conversations About Art” we are reissuing one of our earliest—recorded in October 2019–when I spoke with artist Seth Price. Price in addition to making paintings has designed a fashion line, written a novel, and made music.

Mike Kaplan is President and CEO of Aspen Skiing Company for the last 17 years. He recently announced that after 30 years with the company, that the 2022-23 winter season would be his last at the helm of the organization. Together he and Zuckerman in a completely unprecedented, brave, and innovative way collaborated to place art by world renowned contemporary artists on all lift ticket products and to integrate art into the company in unexpected places and ways.

Tamar Zagursky was born in Beer-Sheva, Israel in 1975 to an Israeli born Engineer father and an American born English teacher and translator mother. She grew up in a small town in the Negev desert and Zagursky served as a tank driver in the Israel army. From 2002 to 2020 she was the Director of Sommer Contemporary Art in Tel-Aviv, one of top galleries in Israel, curating exhibitions and representing the gallery at art fairs all over Europe and the United States. In 2029 she began to manage the studio of Guy Zagursky, a renowned Israeli sculptor and her husband. She also launched SIDDUR, an innovative line of Contemporary Judaica, all designed and produced by Guy.

She and Zuckerman discuss Judaica (ceremonial objects used in Jewish rituals), working with your life partner, organizing a table, female entrepreneurs, courage, contemporary spirituality, the value of awkwardness, and being a working mom in the art world. 

Christopher Y. Lew is Chief Artistic Director at Horizon Art Foundation and Outland Art. He has over fifteen years of experience working at American museums and arts nonprofits. He is a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he oversaw the emerging artist program and was co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial. At the Whitney, he organized Pope.L: Choir (2019), Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape (2018), and mounted the first US solo exhibitions for several artists. Prior to joining the Whitney, he was assistant curator at MoMA PS1. Lew has contributed to publications including Art AsiaPacific, Art Journal, Bomb, Huffington Post, and Mousse.

He and Zuckerman discuss art as a window into another world, spending time with things we don’t yet understand, being entrepreneurial, doing curatorial work in museums, being a parent, NFTs, transformational invitations, slowing down, and why should anyone care.

After more than a decade as an art dealer and gallery owner specializing in contemporary Southeast Asian art, in the last year Tyler Rollins founded a nonprofit organization nurturing connections between contemporary art and religious faith. The Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts is based in Charleston, SC and forefronts a focus on transcendence and orienting oneself to a higher power knowing that these can be a source of insight, illumination, and inspiration.

Following studies in Paris, Paula Cooper (b. 1938, MA) entered the New York art world aged 21 working at the World House Galleries on the Upper East Side. In 1964 she opened the Paula Johnson Gallery, where she showed work by Walter de Maria and Bob Thompson, among others. From 1965 to 1967 Cooper served as the Director of the artist’s cooperative Park Place, whose members included Mark di Suvero, Robert Grosvenor and David Novros––artists she continues to work with today. Paula Cooper opened the first art gallery in SoHo at 96-100 Prince Street in 1968 with a benefit for the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, showing works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold and Robert Ryman, as well as Sol LeWitt’s first wall drawing. Paula Cooper Gallery moved to Wooster Street in 1973 and then to Chelsea in 1996, and has consistently shown art that is conceptually unique and visually challenging. In addition to the artistic program, the gallery has regularly hosted concerts, music symposia, dance performances, book receptions, poetry readings, as well as art exhibitions and special events to benefit various national and community organizations. Of particular note was a series of New Year’s Eve readings of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake for twenty-five years until 2000, a ten-year series of concerts by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center that began in the early 1970s, and an annual concert by the S.E.M. Ensemble that continued until 2019. Cooper was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (1995) and the order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication (2002) followed by the order of Officier des Arts et des Lettres (2014). In 2003 Cooper and her husband, the publisher Jack Macrae, opened the independent bookstore 192 Books. Cooper continues to run Paula Cooper Gallery.

Katie Geminder, Co-founder & Chief of Strategy at Cent, has held senior-level strategy, product, and design roles at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Zynga and has advised some of the most successful startup founders in history, guiding business-critical decisions that shape company branding, messaging, user experience, product strategy, and design. She has consulted with C-suite executives at startups in a variety of verticals, including e-commerce, social media, entertainment, cyber, and blockchain.

She and Zuckerman discuss empathy, ubiquity and simultaneity, being a creator, meeting the unmet need, pattern matching, not being technical, NFT “crap,” explaining crypto, block chain and NFTs, scarcity, subjectivity and value, love of the untrained, leveling the playing field, the choice technology offers, and thinking differently.

On episode 79 we close out our second year of programming the “Conversations About Art” podcast!

If you listen in you know that Heidi Zuckerman loves art and artists. And that she really enjoys impactful conversations with interesting people about things that matter.

This episode is a compilation of excerpts from 10 guests featured in 2021. Part II offers the words and wisdom of Sonja Perkins, Matty Mo, Glenn Kaino, Kemi Ilensami, and Adam Pendleton. We know you will enjoy what you hear! Thank you so much for being part of our community!

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This episode is brought to you by Kelly Klee private insurance . Please check out their website: Kellyklee.com/Heidi and they will make a $50 donation to Artadia, an art charity I’ve recommended, per each qualified referral.

This episode is brought to you by

Best & Co. Please visit www.BestandCoAspen.com and use discount code Heidi2020 to receive 5% off of any item on the Best & Co. website.  If you are interested in creating a custom piece please email [email protected] and mention that you heard about Best & Co. on my podcast to receive the special discount.

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Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email [email protected]

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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests.Follow Heidi:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidizuckerman/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/heidizuckerman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-zuckerman-a236b55/...

The last two episodes of 2021 celebrate two solid years of the Conversations About Art podcast with compilations of excerpts from 10 guests featured in 2021. Part I offers the words and wisdom of Nicole Perlroth, Brad Cloepfil, Lily Stockman, Allison Glenn, and Beth Pickens. In another life defining year Zuckerman expresses her profound gratitude for the time, generous conversation, and community this podcast and these conversations have afforded and created!

***

This episode is brought to you by Kelly Klee private insurance . Please check out their website: Kellyklee.com/Heidi and they will make a $50 donation to Artadia, an art charity I’ve recommended, per each qualified referral.

This episode is brought to you by

Best & Co. Please visit www.BestandCoAspen.com and use discount code Heidi2020 to receive 5% off of any item on the Best & Co. website.  If you are interested in creating a custom piece please email [email protected] and mention that you heard about Best & Co. on my podcast to receive the special discount.

***

Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please email [email protected]

***

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests.Follow Heidi:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidizuckerman/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/heidizuckerman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-zuckerman-a236b55/...