About Art

For more than four decades, Lily van der Stokker has challenged conventional ideas about beauty, decoration, humor, and value. Through her wall paintings, drawings, and installations, she embraces qualities that have often been dismissed as decorative or feminine, asking us to reconsider what we take seriously—and why.

In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman and Lily discuss joy, beauty, feminism, decoration, humor, public art, and the freedom to make work that resists expectation. Together they explore why kindness and optimism can be radical artistic choices and why art remains a place for experimentation, curiosity, and adventure.

Sabrina Rudin is the founder of Spring Cafe Aspen and the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, a cookbook that combines recipes, personal stories, and practical guidance for creating a healthier, more intentional life. What began with one café has grown into a broader platform centered on nourishment, community, entrepreneurship, and the everyday choices that shape how we live.

In this episode, Heidi and Sabrina discuss writing a cookbook, building a business from the ground up, motherhood, entrepreneurship, creativity, and why food is about so much more than what's on our plates. They talk about creating a life that reflects your values, raising children without fear around food, the importance of community, and the role of joy in healthy living.

This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Tavares Strachan.

Born in Nassau, Bahamas, Strachan works across sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and research-based practice. His ambitious projects draw from history, science, exploration, and cultural memory to illuminate stories that have been overlooked or omitted from dominant historical narratives. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Prospect New Orleans, and major museums and public collections around the world.

Together they discuss curiosity, freedom, storytelling, exploration, failure, joy, magic, scientific discovery, and the responsibility of questioning inherited narratives. Tavares reflects on growing up in the Bahamas, the relationship between curiosity and freedom, why love is a choice, and how art expands our understanding of what is possible.

A conversation about imagination, wonder, and the enduring human desire to make meaning through art.

Bart van der Heide is Director of Museion in Bolzano, Italy. Before joining Museion, Bart held leadership and curatorial positions at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstverein München. Throughout his career, he has championed museums as places where contemporary art, civic life, and community come together.

This conversation explores museums as spaces of imagination, belonging, and public trust. Bart reflects on the exhibition that transformed his life, what artists have taught him about leadership, and why institutions must evolve from within to meet the needs of both their communities and the people who work inside them.

Together Bart and Heidi Zuckerman discuss contemporary art, organizational culture, mutual aid, public responsibility, collective experience, and the evolving role of museums in shaping the future.

A thoughtful conversation about leadership, imagination, and why art continues to matter.

This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with actor, writer, and artist Lisa Edelstein and artist Robert Russell.

Recorded as they celebrate their collaborative exhibition Palace in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center, this conversation explores partnership, artistic practice, Jewish ritual, memory, storytelling, and the ways we create meaning through the objects, relationships, and traditions that shape our lives.

Lisa discusses her evolution from actor to painter, drawing on family photographs to create intimate works that explore narrative, memory, and the Jewish experience. Robert reflects on his paintings of everyday objects, the sacredness of attention, and how ordinary things become vessels for history, devotion, and remembrance.

Together they speak about creativity, discipline, vulnerability, seeing, collecting, marriage, and the experience of building individual artistic practices while supporting one another's creative lives.

Lisa Edelstein is an actor, writer, and artist whose paintings transform family photographs into deeply personal explorations of memory, identity, and storytelling. Her work has been exhibited at Charlie James Gallery, Anat Ebgi, GAVLAK, and is included in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Robert Russell is a conceptual painter whose work explores memory, mortality, iconography, and ritual through paintings of everyday objects. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented by Anat Ebgi Gallery.

A conversation about attention, making meaning, and the ways art helps us understand ourselves and one another.

Daisy Murray Holman is Executive Director of the Artists Legacy Foundation.
She and Zuckerman explore the often unseen work of supporting artists beyond the present tense: archives, artists’ estates, preservation, catalogues raisonnés, and the emotional and structural care required to sustain artistic legacies over time.
Murray Holman also reflects on the legacy of her mother, painter Elizabeth Murray, and what it means to inherit not only artwork, but responsibility.
A conversation about care, stewardship, continuity, and why artists matter enough to protect across generations.

This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Jennifer Guidi.

This episode was recorded live before an audience at the Orange County Museum of Art in conjunction with And so it is., Guidi's solo exhibition curated by Heidi Zuckerman.

Born in Redondo Beach, California, Guidi received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

Known for her luminous paintings that draw inspiration from nature, meditation, ritual, and the California landscape, Guidi has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in repetition, mark-making, color, and the exploration of consciousness.

In this conversation, Heidi and Jennifer discuss artistic practice, meditation, motherhood, ritual, silence, creativity, nature, and the relationship between awareness and intention. They also explore the role of repetition in art, the influence of landscape on memory and perception, collecting, community, and the lifelong process of discovering one's own visual language.

Together they reflect on inspiration, failure, trust, surrender, and the ways creativity can help us connect more deeply with ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

A thoughtful conversation about art, awareness, and what it means to devote a life to making.

This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Diane Brown, founder of RxART.

For more than twenty-five years, Diane has worked at the intersection of contemporary art and healthcare, commissioning leading artists to create projects for hospitals and medical facilities across the United States. Through RxART, artists including Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Rashid Johnson, Laura Owens, Rob Pruitt, Will Cotton, Mickalene Thomas, and many others have transformed clinical environments into spaces that support healing, imagination, and human connection.

In this conversation, they discuss the origins of RxART, the relationship between art and healthcare, public engagement, philanthropy, empathy, access, and the growing body of research demonstrating the positive impact of art on physical and emotional well-being.

They also explore childhood, fear, resilience, collaboration, neuroplasticity, the role of environment in shaping experience, and the ways artists help us navigate uncertainty through creativity, beauty, and wonder.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple but profound idea: art is not separate from life. It has the capacity to comfort, connect, transform, and change how we experience the world around us.

A thoughtful and inspiring conversation about healing, imagination, and why art matters.

Ann Grinstein and Suzanne Felsen are co-directors and co-owners of Gemini G.E.L., one of the most influential artists’ workshops and publishers in the world.

Founded in Los Angeles in 1966 by Stanley Grinstein, Sidney Felsen, and master printer Ken Tyler, Gemini G.E.L. has collaborated with generations of artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, and many others, helping expand the possibilities of printmaking, editioned works, and artistic experimentation.

In this conversation with Heidi Zuckerman, they discuss collaboration, craftsmanship, innovation, family legacy, risk-taking, and the unique relationships that develop between artists and master printers over decades of working together.

They also explore the history of Gemini, the evolution of printmaking, artistic freedom, the role of experimentation, collecting, and what it means to sustain a creative institution for sixty years.

A fascinating conversation about process, patience, trust, and the often-unseen collaborations behind some of the most important works of contemporary art.

This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Susan Taylor, Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Since 2010, Susan has led NOMA through a period of transformation, growth, and institutional reflection, expanding the museum’s engagement with artists, audiences, education, and community while helping shape conversations around what museums can and should be today.

In this conversation, they discuss leadership, cultural stewardship, community, resilience, contemporary art, public trust, education, New Orleans, nature, and the evolving role of museums in contemporary society.

Together they explore the balance between tradition and innovation, the importance of local culture within global conversations, intergenerational engagement, the relationship between art and public space, and the idea that museums should be transformational rather than transactional.

The conversation also touches on Hurricane Katrina, COVID, the NOMA sculpture garden, creative aging, spirit photography, Louisiana landscape painting, and the ways institutions can create spaces for connection, reflection, and belonging.

A thoughtful and expansive conversation about museums, leadership, and the role art plays in shaping civic and cultural life.