Art Scoping

We voyage across the Pacific to Sydney, to speak with Dr. Michael Brand, director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. We explore his outspoken commitment to indigenous art and artists, the massive and environmentally sensitive expansion of his museum well underway, his views on public support of the arts in both Australia and the U.S., and the challenges of restitution of art with disputed title—from his days as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum to today. He shares his experience in curating a major exhibition of contemporary art that was installed during the pandemic, intended to demystify the field and the process of collecting major works beginning in the late 1960s. We get a little insight into Sydney’s place in the cultural firmament, as distinct from Canberra and Melbourne, and follow his thinking about larger responsibilities facing the directors of the world’s leading museums.

Arts advocacy takes many forms. In this episode we hear from Alexander Bernstein, president of Artful Learning, and Vice President and Treasurer of The Leonard Bernstein Office. Alex has long championed arts-infused instruction in schools from Florida to Oregon. He comes to the cause naturally; the son of legendary composer, conductor, educator, and humanitarian Leonard Bernstein, Alex is active in extending his father’s legacy, sharing responsibility with his sisters Jamie and Nina in introducing a new generation to extraordinary, wide-ranging contributions across music and related disciplines through public speaking, advocacy, and multiple media platforms. We touch on the state of arts in education, the pandemic’s challenges for musicians, centennial homages to Bernstein including over 6000 events worldwide, and upcoming projects spearheaded by Steven Spielberg and Bradley Cooper.

Discerning museum curators today explore the fashion arts with an eye towards social and political lessons alongside an appreciation of design bravura. This episode’s guest, Petra Slinkard, is a leading voice in the new generation of scholars rethinking how to represent her discipline in compelling and timely displays. As the Director of Curatorial Affairs and The Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, she presides over massive holdings, dating back to the end of the 18th century, when sea captains returned from far-flung ports with evidence of other cultures. Holdings today updated with new acquisitions she discovers on Instagram. You’ll hear her candid thoughts about women designers only now being properly acknowledged, genderless fashion, the unsung heroes of textile conservation, public responsibilities in curating, mannequins in paintings galleries, and insights into how her field is ever-changing.

Curious about who keeps the art market functioning in the midst of a global shutdown? For answers we turn to Evan Beard, the Global Art Services Executive with U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. Evan leads the Bank’s outreach to private and institutional collectors, and shares insights into market trends, the Middle East art market, the genteel world of art lending, considerations when opening a private museum, how auction houses cajole collectors, the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, and the impact of installation art and transitory art experiences on collecting. If you’re a collector or just wondering how those billions of dollars of investments race around the globe, this episode is not to be missed.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, the world’s wealthiest, was shaped under the steady hand of Dr. John Walsh, a renowned scholar of Dutch art. In this episode we glean a bit about his work as a curator and director, and dive into topical matters: Museums during the pandemic, commercialization of exhibitions, his role as a witness defending Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center’s exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and its then director at a trial accusing them of promoting obscenity, decades-long neglect of advancing racial equity in museums, due diligence when researching antiquities collections, advice for new directors, and a brief preview of his forthcoming lectures on Rembrandt.

We are binging on shows over streaming platforms as never before during the pandemic. In this episode we turn to award-winning actress Sarah Wynter to learn how the film and television industry has navigated COVID-19, beginning with the March 2020 diagnosis of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in Sarah’s native Australia. We hear about shooting around shower curtains, love scenes with mannequins, how actors are staying in touch with fans and each other, cultural differences between Australia and the States, her reflections on playing the character Kate Warner opposite Kiefer Sutherland in 24, televised portrayals of terrorism, and her dedication to protecting people from gun violence through the organization Moms Demand Action. Follow her on Twitter and on Instagram.

The headlines are everywhere: Multiple museums are today selling artworks to cope with financial challenges brought on by the pandemic. In this episode, the past chair of the Professional Issues Committee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, James H. Duff, shares why and how AAMD arrived at restrictions on “deaccessioning” decades ago, and the impact of AAMD’s April 2020 resolution relaxing those restrictions. We discuss why so much art is typically in storage, and consider potential threats, including a mandate to capitalize collections—putting their fair market value on museum balance sheets—and the risk that private collectors will be discouraged from donating artworks to museums that might sell them to cover operating costs. Or the possibility that cash contributions to museums will decline once capitalized art collections are fungible—transforming the image of a museum from that of an educational institution to an entity with suddenly liquid holdings valued in millions or even billions of dollars.

Isolation is an unwanted obligation for everyone as long as the pandemic lasts, but for voice actors, it’s the preferred state of being year-round. In this episode we venture (virtually) into the recording booth at ButtonsNY, an approved recording facility that meets the Covid-19 Protection Guidelines of SAG/AFTRA, to speak with award-winning interdisciplinary performing artist and voiceover artist Danielle Quisenberry. We learn how she helps film and stage actors adapt to the rigors of voiceover work given the realities of shuttered cinemas and theaters, common misperceptions about the discipline, secrets of the craft, her training of talent at Edge Studio, and interdisciplinary projects she’s completed and those on the horizon. She’s coached multiple audiobook narrators, including the pseudonymous performer found here.

What can we predict about post-pandemic urban planning? For answers we turn to Aaron Betsky, director of Virginia Tech's School of Architecture + Design, and a widely published critic on art, architecture and design. We touch on the required adaptation of office buildings, prescient predictions he made two decades ago, the need to focus on ‘upcycling’, or repurposing building stock, expanded use of post offices, the need to rethink museum design, and urgent concerns bearing down on designers due to economic and racial disparity, climate change, and other pressures.

This episode has us bouncing from Harvard to Washington to the Netherlands to Mali, led there by Dr. Cynthia Schneider, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. She began her career with a PhD from Harvard in Dutch art, serving as Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, then a professor of art history at Georgetown University for two decades, during which she was appointed Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands by President Clinton, followed by her appointment as a Distinguished Professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. In addition to her teaching duties there, she is Co-Director of three endeavors: the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, MOST Resource; and Timbuktu Renaissance. Her recent and very candid assessments of the Trump administration’s diplomatic blunders are required reading.