A compilation episode of the answer to the question "why does art matter?" Thank you for being apart of our community, and we will see you in the new year. Happy holidays!

Dr. Shauna Shapiro, PhD, is a best-selling author, clinical psychologist and internationally recognized expert in mindfulness and self-compassion. She is a professor at Santa Clara University and has published over 150 papers and three critically acclaimed books, translated into 16 languages. Dr. Shapiro has presented her research to the King of Thailand, the Danish Government, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Summit, and the World Council for Psychotherapy, as well as to Fortune 100 Companies including Google, Cisco Systems and LinkedIn. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Oprah, NPR, and the American Psychologist. Dr. Shapiro is a summa cum laude graduate of Duke University and a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, co-founded by the Dalai Lama. Her TEDx Talk, The Power of Mindfulness, has been viewed over 3 million times.

She and Zuckerman discuss mindfulness, meditation training in Thailand, looking for the magical, self love, how subtle is significant, beginning again, loving awareness, attitude of flexibility, kind attention, intentional practice, glimmers and micro moments of goodness, hardwiring happiness, finding love, how art connects us to what we have forgotten, what it means to be human and free!

Alex Anderson lives and works in Los Angeles, California.  Anderson uses the delicate medium of ceramics as his main vehicle to explore the sublime experiences that make up both the man-made and natural worlds, as well as deeper, more complicated issues of race and cultural representation. His artworks combine a dexterity in the medium with a confluence of baroque imagery and compositions, Japanese pop art references, and current contemporary fashion and design trends in order to probe the depths of reality, illusion and identity.
He and Zuckerman discuss his relationship to ceramics, reflectivity and sparkle, what it means to be alive in the present moment, the metaphysical aspects of light, empathy, history and research, personal motivation,
perfection, beauty desire, and the human condition!

Marine Tanguy is the CEO of MTArt agency. At the age of 21, Tanguy became Europe’s youngest gallery manager, working for Steve Lazarides, Banksy’s discoverer. By 23, she launched her first gallery, De Re, in Los Angeles. Inspired by talent agencies like CAA and UTA, Marine founded MTArt Agency in London in 2015 at age 25. MTArt, a Certified B Corporation, is now the leading talent agency in the art world, working with global organizations and cities, nurturing an international community of art-lovers and collectors as well as diverse brands ranging from Apple to Hyundai and even the World Cup. The agency has expanded to the US and Middle East, earning recognition on the Sunday Times Power List. Supported by investors like Frederic Jousset and Saul Klein, MTArt was valued at over £35 million in its last fundraising.
Tanguy is a passionate advocate for the role of the artist in our society, she wishes for art to become a part of our everyday experience. She published her first academic paper age 27 years old with Warwick University supporting a new way to value public art projects within cities. She also published her first book with Penguin encouraging a more active participation in our visual culture, all the while teaching visual literacy. Her talks include three TED Talks on how to transform cities with art, how social media visuals affect our minds and how harmful are the visual biases we see daily.
She and Zuckerman discuss her talent agency for artists, diversified revenue streams, visual literacy, visual pollution, artist selection criteria, consensus, vulnerability in leadership, and what she’s excited about!
This episode is sponsored by Jil Sander.

Mary Weatherford is one of the leading painters of her generation, exploring and expanding the legacies of American abstraction. Over the last three decades, Weatherford has developed a rich and diverse painting practice: from early target paintings in the 1990s based on operatic heroines, to expansive, gestural canvases overlaid with neon glass-tubing that have been a presence in her work since 2012. With a physically embodied approach to painting, Weatherford explores abstraction as both a formal language and a poetic, personal mode of engagement with the world.
She and Zuckerman discuss making paintings for other people, failure and not showing for 5 years, paintings of nothing, how she invented the neon, the physicality of her process, pursuing pink, story telling, and the continuum of art history.

Shamim Momin is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington. In this role since 2018, she has overseen the Curatorial Department and organized numerous exhibitions, including the museum-wide group exhibition In Plain Sight, as well as major commissions by Tala Madani, Gary Simmons, Kelly Akashi, Donna Huanca, Diana Al-Hadid, and others. Prior to joining the Henry, she was director, curator, and co-founder of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), a nonprofit public art organization committed to curating site- and situation-specific contemporary art projects. In that role, Momin organized over 100 exhibitions, projects, and programs with more than 300 artists, presented across the United States and internationally. Previously, Momin served for more than ten years at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) co-curating the 2004 and 2008 Whitney Biennials and overseeing the Contemporary Projects series. In addition to her extensive publication history, she serves regularly as guest lecturer, panelist, and advisor for a wide array of organizations and events. Momin was Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Art for Williams College for the 2007 and 2008 Semester in New York program, and is currently Affiliate Professor of Art at the School of Art, Art History and Design, University of Washington.
She and Zuckerman discuss life transformations, never not thinking about something, founder’s fatigue, regret, being useful, learning to listen,   accepting the world, personal responsibility, purpose driven work, humanity, being a mom, mentorship, what the next generation sees, and art as a means to be human!

California-based artist Ed Templeton is known for his interdisciplinary practice, most notably of photographs documenting people and street life of Huntington Beach, California, intimate portraits of his wife, and paintings depicting the psychological complexity of American suburbia. He first gained recognition as a teenage skateboard prodigy in the late 1980s and taught himself to photograph on the fly while actively touring for competitions. All of Templeton’s subjects come from his own life: “Everything I’ve ever shot has just been on the path that I’ve been on, be it skating or travel or street photography.” Blurring portraiture and landscape, Templeton works across photography, painting, and drawing to explore the ugliness, banality, and beauty of the familiar everyday world.

He and Zuckerman discuss permission, looking at ourselves, what’s weird about Orange County, finding skateboarding, the absence of free will, seeing things before they happen, managing fear, the flow state, mining his own archives, hyper reality, and collaborating with his wife!

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.