Artelligence Podcast

Esther Kim Varet founded her gallery Various Small Fires as project space in her Los Angeles home. It has since grown to have a location in Seoul, Korea with plans for another—as she announces in this podcast—to open soon in Dallas, Texas. In this podcast, Kim Varet talks about her experience as the child of immigrants with strong ties still in Korea, her conservative Baptist education and her own experience with art and how that has informed her role as a gallerist. After a brief experience as a partner in a New York gallery, Kim Varet discovered in Los Angeles that her personal experience—from her background to the artists she was interested in to her own ties to Korea—could become a valuable asset in growing her gallery.

A partner at Mnuchin Gallery since 2013, Sukanya Rajaratnam has played an important role in connecting some of the world’s most respected collectors with artists whose work has been previously overlooked or undervalued. Trained in finance but finding her way into the art world, Rajaratnam explains that although she is self-taught in art history and deal-making, her experience looking for value in the financial world has been instrumental in her role as an art dealer. In this podcast, she talks about the exhibitions Mnuchin Gallery has put on for artists like Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, Lynda Benglis, Mary Lovelace O’Neal and more.

Mari-Claudia Jiménez is Chairman, Managing Director & Worldwide Head Business Development Global Fine Arts, Sotheby’s. In this podcast, she connects the challenges of 2020 to the incredible art market successes of 2021. The pandemic revealed a new market environment where in-person viewings are no longer requisite for sales but digital and AR technologies are key. Jimenez explains that big market players like Sotheby’s focus on global reach. The notable growth in Asia is having a broader effect on the market as collectors are no longer strictly bound by the former collecting categories but they view luxury goods and a diverse variety of artworks as essential elements of their fine art collections.

editing & original music by Colin Ketchen

In this episode, we hear from artist Sharon Hayes, who is currently exhibiting her work, My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of its New Grit Art in Philly Now show. Hayes is connected to Philadelphia by virtue of her professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work uses photography, film, video, sound performance and text to interrogate the intersection between the personal and the collective. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial, Documenta and the Venice Biennale.

She’s interviewed by artist James Allister Sprang, whose own work combines elements of photography, sound installation and poetry. He tells stories that draw from black, radical and experimental traditions. He has shown work or performed at the kitchen, the Brooklyn Museum, Storm King Art Center, the Public Theater, Baryshnikov Art Center, the Apollo Theater and many other institutions.

Valerie Cassel Oliver discusses her latest trailblazing exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse.” Illustrating, through the frame of Southern hip-hop, how early 20th-century Black visual and sound aesthetics helped shape contemporary Southern art, music, and a material culture of customized cars and personal adornment, Cassel Oliver’s show is an exemplary expression of her curatorial vision.

Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Francis Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to this position, she spent sixteen years at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, where she was senior curator.

Even as it adapted to changing market conditions imposed by the pandemic, Phillips gained ground in auction totals, global reach, and the number of high-value lots it sold. At the same time, it furthered its long-held reputation as the auction house that creates markets for new artists. Phillips CEO Edward Dolman talks about the importance of Asia in the art market’s future and his company’s alliance with Poly Auction in China. He also speaks about the new Phillips auction rooms and exhibition space in New York, and provides insight as to how Phillips maintains its read on the pulse of the emerging art market.

Art writer, curator, fashion figure and man about town, Antwaun Sargent discusses the May/June 2021 issue of Art in America which focuses on New Talent. In the 1950s and 60s, Art in America ran a series of regular features and issues that sought to identify up-and-coming artists whose work would be lasting and meaningful for the future. Instead of approaching the idea of New Talent as a singular benchmark, Sargent talks about how he took the approach of assembling a group of artists and writers who could better show the multiplicity of what New Talent means. Sargent argues against the idea of equating the idea of New Talent with youth. Instead, this issue features artists ranging from painters Deborah Roberts and Amy Sherald to photographers Tyler Mitchell and Clifford Prince King and artists working in different media like Precious Okoyomon or Allana Clarke or Qualeasha Wood. Above all, the issue brings new voices into the conversation about art. “We talk about audiences all the time,” Sargent says, “but we’re still allowing all of that to be defined by a very limited number of folks. This magazine is an opportunity to push back against some of those notions—about what a critic can be, about what an art writer can be.”

Robert Mnuchin, a retired banker who became an art dealer, reflects on his career as an organizer of insightful and original exhibitions. In an era when galleries have expanded across the world with multiple venues and large sales teams, Mnuchin remains a committed individual dealer advising and supporting clients in their acquisitions. Mnuchin’s unabated passion and a record of groundbreaking shows that gather works rarely seen together by a single artist—some lent by leading museums and collectors—has won him the confidence of the world’s best-known collectors.

Presented by The Macallan.

Artsy CEO Mike Steib joined the platform for galleries and collectors only eight months before Covid-19 shut down the global art market. The pandemic has isolated most galleries from their collectors. Without gallery shows or the huge influx of visitors at art fairs, Artsy has worked to fill the gap with new tools for both client galleries and collectors seeking engagement. Despite the coronavirus-constrained art market, Steib believes the greatest opportunity in art lies in expanding access and participation.

Presented by The Macallan.

The 2020 auction season—a wild ride of improvised sales amid strong but elusive demand—closed out with Asia driving the market for a wide range of artists. Koji Inoue, Senior Director of Sales for Hauser & Wirth in the Americas, and Kim Heirston, a private art advisor, help us make sense of the bidding. Hong Kong Saves the Art Market is part of our ongoing Auction Reaction series.