Last week the Trump administration sharply escalated its impossible demands on the Smithsonian Institution. It's hard not to wonder when, rather than if this administration will come for the rest of our museums. With this in mind, Helen Molesworth invited Jill Medvedow, the former director of the ICA/Boston, for an explainer on how museums are funded, with the hopes of arming listeners with a deeper understanding of how it all works.

Jill Medvedow is director emerita at the ICA/Boston and a fellow at the Harvard Divinity School. 

Helen Molesworth and Steve Locke sort through the many exhibitions of the last year to highlight their favorites, from Jack Whitten at MoMA and Stanley Whitney at the ICA/Boston, to Bo Bartlett and Lisa Yuskavage. 

Helen Molesworth invites curator Mark Godfrey and artists Arthur Jafa and Steve Locke to discuss the work of Kerry James Marshall on the occasion of his acclaimed survey exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories is on view through January 18, 2026 and will travel next to the Kunsthaus Zürich in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Musée d’art Moderne in Paris, France.

Mark Godfrey is the curator of Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at the Royal Academy of Arts. He is co-director of New Curators, a one-year curatorial training program for international curators from lower socio-economic backgrounds. He was Senior Curator, International Art at Tate Modern from 2007-2021.

Arthur Jafa is an artist and filmmaker whose practice comprises films, artefacts and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. 

Steve Locke is a contemporary artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York.

Helen is joined by writer Francine Prose, artist David Salle, and photographer Neil Selkirk for a conversation about Arbus’s singular importance.

Francine Prose’s new novel, Five Weeks in the Country, will be published in May.

David Salle is a painter and essayist living in New York.

Neil Selkirk is a photographer and filmmaker and the only person to print the photographs of Diane Arbus other than the photographer herself.

Visit two exhibitions of Arbus on view this fall: Diane Arbus: Konstellationen is on view at Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany through January 18, 2026 and Diane Arbus: Sanctum Sanctorum is on view at David Zwirner London through December 20, 2025. 

An episode dedicated to Yayoi Kusama: arguably the most famous artist in the world and yet among the most indefinable, elusive, and transformative. Helen Molesworth is joined by scholar Jennifer DeVere Brody, art critic Johanna Fateman, and curator Catherine Taft to unpack the many versions of Yayoi Kusama—and her singular importance in 20th and 21st century art.

A global travelling retrospective of Yayoi Kusama opens at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland in October 2025; it will travel to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in Spring 2026, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in Fall 2026.

Jennifer DeVere Brody is Professor of Theater & Performance studies, and, by courtesy, African & African American Studies at Stanford University. A Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts Research supported her forthcoming book, Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis (Duke UPress, 2026). 

Johanna Fateman is a writer, co-chief art critic at Cultured Mag, and a member of the band Le Tigre. 

Catherine Taft is a writer and curator and deputy director of The Brick, a non-profit exhibition space in Los Angeles.

Helen Molesworth speaks to art historian and culture critic Jonathan Crary, whose recent books Scorched Earth and 24/7 constitute both a polemic against what he calls the “internet complex”—and a diagnosis of where society is now.

Jonathan Crary is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University and is a founding coeditor of Zone Books.

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.