Art Scoping

Designing museums and concert halls demands a blend of experience, talent, and vision. Richard Olcott, Design Partner at Ennead Architects in New York City, brings the right blend and a sense of play to a serious profession. In this episode we learn about whether, in the face of the pandemic, clients are still lining up (they are), museums will return to business as usual (they won’t), and how the Spanish Flu of 1918 was central to the birth of modernism and the International Style of architecture (wait, what?). We discuss digital tools, the blight of ‘supertalls’ casting shadows across New York’s Central Park, indoor vertical gardens and other moves towards sustainability, whether ‘open office’ designs are doomed, and multiple other topics.

What do James Brown’s album Sex Machine and the Renaissance sculptor Donatello have to do with protecting the art of our time? Find out in this wide-ranging conversation with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, the Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and for over a decade the Founding Director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums. For nineteen years she served as Chief Conservator of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, where she founded the Artists Documentation Program, consisting of interviews with artists about the technical nature of their art. The consummate artist whisperer, she has pioneered new forms of conservation treatment, is an influential mentor for the field, and presides over the care of a globally renowned collection of modern and contemporary art.

An archaeologist who today digs on the northern coast of Turkey at the site of Sinop, Prof. Alexander Bauer of Queens College-CUNY reflects on ancient examples of sculptural desecration, and paints a vivid picture of the daily life of a scholar in a sun-drenched archaeological site revealing 4,000 year-old finds with trowel and brush in hand. We hear about the mechanics of archaeology as so-called controlled destruction, leading-edge technology in service of uncovering the past, the promise of well-preserved shipwrecks 2,000 meters below the surface of the mysterious Black Sea, and George Orwell’s sage assessments of the power of history in determining the future. Close observers will detect evidence of his exuberant young sons Finnegan, Felix, and Alex in the background, and all listeners will be repaid for time spent listening to his candid assessment of the future of archaeology.

Across the former Confederate states and around Europe, statues are being pulled down by cranes and crowds, as protests about symbols of racism and hate blanket the globe in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For some context we turn to Dr. Victoria S. Reed, Sadler Curator for Provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is one of a handful of full-time curators in the U.S. tasked with researching the ownership history of objects offered to and in the museum’s collections—and is an expert in sorting out the evidence informing legal, ethical, and moral claims on artworks. We discuss collections built from colonial plunder abroad, Nazi loot, objects caught up in the illicit trade in the U.S., and what it will mean for museums to decolonize both their holdings and their attitudes.

We turn to an artist for insight in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons shares powerful observations and draws us into her unique worldview, leavened in her Nigerian roots, her years in Cuba, and her life today as Professor of Fine Arts and Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. She has participated in the biennials of Venice, Dakar, and Johannesburg, in Documenta 14, and in multiple other major exhibitions worldwide, with works by her in over 30 museums, ranging from the Museum of Modern Art to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Why don’t American artists have the same rights as artists in Europe? This week we speak with Janet Hicks, Vice President and Director of Licensing of the Artists Rights Society, or ARS. We discuss what protections are in and not in current U.S. copyright law, the kinds of uses ARS licenses for reproduction, the premise of so-called moral rights, a prospective resale royalty that would compensate artists for works sold by later owners, why artists—unlike collectors--don’t get to deduct the fair market value of their works if they donate them to museums, and how that might change, the state of artist-endowed foundations, and how film and television rights to show artworks are negotiated.

Who’s responsible for the promulgation of human knowledge? If you answered Wikipedia, think again. Our guest this week is Jennifer Crewe, director of Columbia University Press, and immediate past president of the 150-member Association of University Presses. The first woman director of an Ivy League university press, she reveals the business model of academic publishing, trends in book-buying during the pandemic, the politics of subsidizing the public face of research, digital platforms, and much else

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden provides a critical platform for contemporary artists in America’s capital. Leading the Hirshhorn since 2014, Dr. Melissa Chiu joins the podcast, sharing details about her early years in Australia, directing the Asia Society Museum in New York, the future expansion of the Hirshhorn, the likely fate of global art programming in the wake of the pandemic, performance art in an age of social distancing, and the U.S. model of cultural patronage.

Venture into the back room of one of New York’s most closely followed art galleries in this week’s episode. David Lewis, the principal and director of David Lewis Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, shares his optimistic views on the roiling art market, reveals the fault lines among auction houses, mega-galleries, and the rest of the art world, and provides an indispensable primer on the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of contemporary art since the 1970s (bring a dictionary).

Award-winning novelist April Reynolds Mosolino joins the podcast, discussing growing up in South Dallas, her first novel titled Knee-Deep in Wonder (Henry Holt and Co.), and her responsibilities as the Michele Tolela Myers Chair in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. We delve into many topics, including life in New York City during the pandemic, the heroism of today’s previously unsung heroes risking illness in the service industry, and her forthcoming publications, including a second novel, The Preacher King.