With higher education facing existential threat under the current administration, Helen Molesworth speaks to art historian, critic, and educator Darby English about the difficulties of understanding this precise moment and the importance of discourse, independent thought, and history.

Darby English is the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History at University of Chicago and the author of numerous books, including Among Others: Blackness at MoMA (2019), 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2016) and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (2007).

On the occasion of Joan Mitchell’s centennial year, Helen Molesworth speaks to artist Julie Mehretu and poet Eileen Myles about what Mitchell’s life and work means to them. 

Julie Mehretu, (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an artist who lives and works in New York City. Mehretu is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2025, the MacArthur Fellowship in 2005, and the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts Award in 2015.

Eileen Myles (they/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has made them one of the most recognized writers of their generation. Pathetic Literature (anthology) and a “Working Life” (poems) are their most recent books. They live in New York & in Marfa, Texas.

Visit the Joan Mitchell Foundation to learn more about their global centennial programming. 

Corrections: 

At 17:21 Helen Molesworth mentions the writer Jen Quilter; the correct name is Jenni Quitler.

At 22:53, it should note that Joan Mitchell used a device she called a "diminishing glass" to get a visual sense of works as if seen from a greater distance.

Explore Joan Mitchell (Yale University Press, 2021) for further research and reference.

Academy award-winning actor and writer Julianne Moore goes in depth on her craft, the art of filmmaking, and passion for design. 

Julianne Moore has starred in numerous award-winning films since the 1990s, most recently in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door.  

Celebrated architect Annabelle Selldorf on her life and work, which includes numerous cultural spaces, from commercial galleries to major museums. 

Selldorf Architects's most recent project, a critically acclaimed expansion of the Frick Collection in New York, opens to the public on April 17, 2025.

David Zwirner’s new Chelsea building at 533 West 19th Street, also designed by Selldorf Architects, will open May 8 with a solo exhibition by Michael Armitage.

Helen Molesworth invited artists EJ Hill and Sarah Sze to listen to archival audio interviews with Ruth Asawa and discuss her ideas and art.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, the first major posthumous retrospective of the artist, will be on view at SFMOMA from April 5–September 2, 2025 before travelling on to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, and to the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland.

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was a sculptor, educator, and arts activist who challenged conventional notions of material and form through her emphasis on lightness and transparency. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world since the early 1950s.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is on view at SFMOMA from April 5, 2025-September 2, 2025.

EJ Hill is a visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His show Brake Run Helix is on view at MASS MoCA through January 2024.

Sarah Sze is an artist based in New York. Her solo exhibition Timelapse just closed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and her show Metronome will open in November at OGR Torino, and at Aarhus, Denmark in 2024; she also has a forthcoming solo show opening at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2024.

A revealing look into the real life behind the icon and Warhol Superstar Candy Darling. Cynthia Carr, author of the acclaimed Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz discusses her newest biography: Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar. Carr is joined by MacArthur Fellow, singer-songwriter, and actor Vivian Bond, who narrated the audiobook.

Cynthia Carr is a New York-based writer and author of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz and Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar. 

Vivian Bond is the recipient of an Obie, a Bessie, The Lambda Literary award for best transgender non-fiction for their memoir “Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels,” a Tony nomination for “Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway,”and was recently awarded a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship. Bond has a series of upcoming shows May 6-11 at Joe’s Pub.

The history of a radical cooperative farm at Black Mountain College that defined both daily life and pedagogy at the birthplace of American art education. David Silver, an expert on the farm at Black Mountain college, tells the story of how Black Mountain students collaborated in order to survive. 

David Silver is a professor of environmental studies and urban agriculture at the University of San Francisco and the author of the newly released book, The Farm at Black Mountain College.

Helen Molesworth explores the life and work of Anni Albers in the artist’s own words, with rare archival interviews with Albers and insights from artists Kristine Woods and Diedrick Bracken and art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson.

Affinities: Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Paul Klee, a group show curated by Nicholas Fox Weber, director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, will be on view at David Zwirner 20th street gallery in New York from March 13–April 19. Weber is also the author of a biography on Anni Albers, forthcoming from Yale University Press in early 2026.

Kirstine Woods is an artist based in Brooklyn and professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Diedrick Brackens is an artist based in Los Angeles, known for his woven tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through the artist’s autobiography, broader themes of African American and queer identity, and American history.

Julia Bryan-Wilson is Professor of Art History and LGBTQ Studies at Columbia University.  She is organizing an exhibition called GUTSY: On Feminist Infrastructure that will open in November 2025 at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland. 

A conversation about the late artist Noah Davis, the sounds he left behind, and the ones he imagined. 

Join podcaster and curator Helen Molesworth, professor and writer Tina M. Campt, pianist and artist Jason Moran, and director and curator Paola Malavassi for a mix of sound, music, and ideas inspired by Davis’s paintings.

The Sound of Noah Davis was commissioned by DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam and produced by Besyv and FilmTone on the occasion of the exhibition Noah Davis. Special thanks to Karon Davis and the Estate of Noah Davis.

The exhibition Noah Davis, originally on view at DAS MINSK, Potsdam in Fall 2024, is currently on view at the Barbican Center through May 11, 2025 and will travel to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in summer 2025 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2026.

Credits: 

With: Helen Molesworth, Tina M. Campt, Jason Moran, and Paola Malavassi

A podcast commissioned by DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam on the occasion of the exhibition Noah Davis, 2024–25

Idea: Paola Malavassi and Helen Molesworth

Production: Besyv and FilmTone, Denmark

Producer: Mathilde Schytz Marvit

Interviews: Mathilde Schytz Marvit, Alexandra Kristjansen, and Bobby Salomon Hess

Editor: Alexandra Kristjansen

Sound Design: Bobby Salomon Hess

Music: Sofia Rønde Storck, Jonas Yagoubi, and Laurits Quist Bilén

Archival Audio: Noah Davis, lecture at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, 2011

Piano: Jason Moran live in his studio

Thanks to: Karon Davis and the Estate of Noah Davis

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times critic Wesley Morris comes on the podcast to unpack the long history and current state of artistic rivalries, from Leonardo daVinci and Michelangelo to Drake and Kendrick Lamar.