Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

By David Zwirner

What's Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast about?

What we talk about when we talk about art. Exceptional makers and thinkers across art, literature, film, fashion, music, and more come together to talk about what it means to make things today.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast episodes:

04.23.2024
Episode 67 | Grace Wales Bonner and Horace Ballard
Acclaimed fashion designer and curator Grace Wales Bonner is joined by the scholar and curator Horace D. Ballard. In a wide ranging conversation on art and fashion, they unpack the nuances of style, medium, and intentionality in art. In addition to...
03.27.2024
Episode 66 | R. Crumb’s Radio Music Hour
In this very special episode, artist and legendary record collector R. Crumb visits his friends and fellow rare music enthusiasts John Heneghan and Eden Brower to listen to 78 records from Heneghan’s sprawling collection. John Heneghan is a musician, podcast host,...
03.20.2024
Episode 65 | John McCracken and Minimalism Now with Cauleen Smith and Michael Govan
Artist Cauleen Smith and Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, join Helen for a live conversation in the garden at David Zwirner Los Angeles. Held on the occasion of the exhibition John McCracken, they explore...
03.06.2024
Episode 64 | On Hilma af Klint with Julia Voss and Briony Fer
An episode on the art and life of Hilma af Klint featuring art historian Briony Fer and af Klint’s biographer, Julia Voss. Briony Fer is an art historian and professor at University College, London, and curator of the 2023 exhibition Hilma af Klint &...
02.28.2024
Episode 63 | Claire Messud and James Wood
For the third interview in her series with creative couples, Helen spoke to the first couple of American fiction: literary critic James Wood and award-winning novelist Claire Messud.
02.21.2024
Episode 62 | Hua Hsu
Writer and critic Hua Hsu received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2022 memoir Stay True. Helen and Hua discuss the challenges of writing about the past as it was experienced as your younger self, and how writing itself is an act of...
02.14.2024
Episode 61 | Hank Willis Thomas and Rujeko Hockley
In the second episode in Helen’s interview series with creative couples, the artist Hank Willis Thomas and curator Rujeko Hockley get intimate about the unique challenges and rewards of being married and working in the same field.
02.07.2024
Episode 60 | On Vermeer
Was Vermeer really the artist behind some of his most well-known works? The question has lingered at the margins of art history for years and was resurfaced during the Dutch master's blockbuster retrospective at the Rijksmuseum in 2023. Helen invited writer Lawrence Weschler...
01.31.2024
Episode 59 | Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs's 2023 film Passages won wide acclaim for its portrayal of human desire. Helen goes deep with the filmmaker on the psychology of his finely wrought characters and the many influences that inform his work.
01.24.2024
Episode 58 | Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham
In the first episode of Helen’s series of interviews with creative couples, artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham give an unvarnished look into nearly five decades of partnership. The veteran artworld pair share how they’ve managed it all, from raising...
01.17.2024
Episode 57 | George Clinton and Lauren Halsey
Artist Lauren Halsey and George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic open up about their friendship, from their first meeting to ongoing and fruitful collaborations since. They discuss metaphor, the collective, and of course, the power of the funk.
12.13.2023
The Best Art of 2023
Helen and Steve Locke discuss the best—and most unexpected-–art shows they saw in 2023, from global exhibitions to gallery shows in New York.
11.22.2023
Manet's 'Olympia' Comes to New York
What does it mean to a painter of modern life? Helen & Steve Locke discuss artistic rivalry, leisure, and labor politics in Manet/Degas, a historic exhibition pairing two giants of the 19th century, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of...
11.08.2023
Criticism for Difficult Times | With Helen Molesworth
In dark times, reading criticism can be a ballast. In this mini-episode, Helen and Steve Locke return to some of their favorite texts and writers, from Walter Benjamin to W.E.B. DuBois.
09.27.2023
The Legacy of Ruth Asawa | Special Episode
On the occasion of Ruth Asawa’s solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, artists EJ Hill and Sarah Sze talk with Helen Molesworth about Asawa’s legacy. This episode features the late artist’s voice, courtesy of audio from the...
09.13.2023
Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Helen Molesworth | Special Episode
A special live episode hosted by Helen Molesworth, recorded in July at David Zwirner Los Angeles during Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again. Her first solo exhibition with the gallery, the presentation is now on view at...
05.10.2023
The Yayoi Kusama Phenomenon (Re-run from Season 2)
On the occasion of Yayoi Kusama’s new exhibition at David Zwirner New York, we revisit a conversation on the legendary artist’s effect on culture at large with two experts on art in the digital landscape: Jia Jia Fei, a digital...
04.24.2023
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Helen Molesworth on Gerhard Richter | Special Episode
In this live episode, Helen and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh discuss his new book, Gerhard Richter: Painting After the Subject of History. This conversation was recorded in the exhibition Gerhard Richter, on view at David Zwirner through April 29th. Gerhard Richter: Painting After the Subject...
04.12.2023
How Picasso Was Sold to America | Special Episode
On the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, Helen speaks to the writer Hugh Eakin about his new book, Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America, a behind-the-scenes look at the dealers, writers, and curators who helped bring the artist—and...
03.22.2023
Episode 56 | Barbara Smith and Meg Onli
Helen speaks to the legendary Black lesbian feminist scholar Barbara Smith and Meg Onli, co-curator of the 2024 Whitney Biennial, about identity politics in the art world today, the role of criticism, and questions of cultural appropriation. Barbara Smith is the...
03.15.2023
Episode 55 | Nicholson Baker
Helen talks to writer Nicholson Baker about how history is written, and the continued relevance of his World War II book Human Smoke (2008). Baker is the author of numerous books, including Vox (1992) and The Mezzanine (1988) and was the recipient of the National Book Critics...
03.08.2023
Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Peyton (Re-run from Season 6)
We revisit one of the most popular episodes of Season 6, a conversation with the artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Petyon, on the occasion of their recently announced solo debuts with the gallery. Rirkrit’s show The Shop opens at David Zwirner Hong...
03.01.2023
Episode 54 | Jonathan Anderson
Creative Director of LOEWE and founder of JW Anderson, Jonathan Anderson, speaks with Helen about his innovative approach to fashion, from collections that are equal parts cultural commentary and artistic play, to pushing gender boundaries and materiality, to redefining the...
02.22.2023
Episode 53 | Cecilia Alemani
A post-mortem on the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, with curator Cecilia Alemani. Cecilia and Helen Molesworth discuss the unique challenges of mounting an exhibition at scale in the COVID era and what it was like being the...
02.15.2023
Episode 52 | Sarah Schulman
The novelist, playwright, activist, and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman discusses her most recent book, Let the Record Show, A Political History of ACT UP New York [1987-1993], a landmark document of the activist response to the AIDS crisis. Schulman describes...
02.08.2023
Episode 51 | Jon Gray (Ghetto Gastro)
Jon Gray, co-founder of the Bronx-based collective Ghetto Gastro, talks to Helen Molesworth about the collective’s work at the intersection of the culinary world, hip-hop, fashion, art, activism, and community building.
02.01.2023
Episode 50 | Why You Do What You Do with Brendan Dugan, Johanna Fateman and Ebony L. Haynes
Host Helen Molesworth calls art writer Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), gallerist Brendan Dugan (Karma Gallery) and the curator,and writer Ebony L. Haynes (Senior Director of 52 Walker) to discuss how they carved their unique paths in the art world and what...
01.25.2023
Episode 49 | Luca Guadagnino and Michaël Borremans
A conversation between the Academy award-nominated writer, producer, and director Luca Guadagnino and the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans on the relationship between painting and film. They muse on the specificity of light to their mediums, the role of the uncanny,...
12.14.2022
Best of 2022 | With Helen Molesworth
As we close out the year, Helen calls up her dear friend Steve Locke to carry on the tried and true tradition of end-of-year lists. It turns out there was a lot to love in 2022. Mentions: -Lynne Tillman, Mothercare -Craig Drennen at...
12.07.2022
What Does Art Have to Do with Climate Change? | With Helen Molesworth
In this episode, Helen Molesworth calls an old friend, the painter Alexis Rockman, to try and understand the art world’s reaction to recent acts of museum vandalism perpetrated by Just Stop Oil, putting them in context with theories on environmental...
11.30.2022
On Art and Poetics
Lucas Zwirner returns as host for a conversation with the MacArthur award-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and the renowned critic and scholar of avant-garde poetry, Marjorie Perloff. On the occasion of Peter’s new book of poetry, Draw Me After,...
11.16.2022
Let’s Talk About Appropriation | With Helen Molesworth
Following recent controversies in the art and fashion worlds, host Helen Molesworth and the artist Steve Locke, a returning guest, sit down to talk about a subject that has been thorny for as long as there have been arguments about...
11.02.2022
Seeing the 90’s Everywhere Right Now | With Helen Molesworth
In the premiere episode of a new series hosted by Helen Molesworth, the curator and writer talks with her friend the artist Steve Locke about the re-emergence of art and culture of the 90’s, and why certain ideas, obsessions, and...
10.25.2022
Inside ‘The Red Studio’: Ann Temkin with 6 Artists on Matisse | Special Episode
In this special episode produced and hosted by the painter Lisa Yuskavage, six artists—Joe Bradley, Carroll Dunham, Rashid Johnson, David Reed, Sarah Sze, and Charline von Heyl—give Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern...
09.23.2022
Death of an Artist: The Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre Story | Special Episode
A special preview of a new podcast miniseries, Death of an Artist, hosted by the curator and art historian Helen Molesworth, who will also be hosting new episodes of Dialogues, coming very, very soon. For more than 35 years, accusations of...
03.30.2022
Episode 48 | Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Peyton
The artists and former partners on what it means to be an artist now—and what it meant when they emerged in the New York art world of the 1990s. Tiravanija, who will have his first exhibition with the gallery in...
03.24.2022
Episode 47 | Edwin Frank
The editorial director of New York Review Books and editor of NYRB Classics explains the origins and cult status of the incredibly popular series. Since its founding by Frank in 1999, NYRB Classics’s mission has been to reintroduce out-of-print gems...
03.16.2022
Episode 46 | Jed Perl and Joshua Cohen
A conversation that parses the nuances of the question: Does art have to be political to be important right now? With the art critic Jed Perl, who just published Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts, and the novelist...
03.09.2022
Episode 45 | Jerry Saltz and Ellie Rines
A conversation about the art of looking. The Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic and author Jerry Saltz, of New York magazine and the bestselling How to Be an Artist, and the influential young gallerist Ellie Rines, of New York’s 56 Henry,...
03.02.2022
Episode 44 | Amy Sillman
The celebrated artist on the role of art criticism today, and how she probes and ultimately goes beyond the limitations of her painting in her other practice as a writer. This episode with Sillman, who in 2020 published Faux Pas,...
02.23.2022
Episode 43 | A Scientific Theory of the Art World
What does evolutionary science have to do with the art world? A fascinating conversation with Richard Prum, a leading thinker in evolutionary ornithology who has developed a theory that impacts how we think about artistic genius, radicality, and the art...
02.16.2022
Episode 42 | Amalia Ulman and Maggie Lee
A conversation with two exciting artists taking their multimedia practices onto the movie screen. Ulman, whose work combines video, performance, and the Internet in fluid ways, recently released her critically-acclaimed first feature film, El Planeta. A hit at the Sundance...
02.02.2022
Episode 41 | Angela Davis and Hilton Als
The activist and author Angela Davis and the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and curator Hilton Als in conversation about one of their favorite subjects and dearest friends: Toni Morrison. Early on in her career, Morrison worked as a kind of activist...
07.14.2021
Episode 40 | Luc Tuymans and Timothy Snyder
A conversation about the slippery slope from Donald Trump’s lies to the extinction of American democracy—and art’s ability to break through fascist monoliths. The eminent Yale historian Timothy Snyder is the author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and...
07.07.2021
Episode 39 | David Byrne and Marcel Dzama
Two of the most playful, expressive artists we have on their creative process, trying new things, and the art of being a great collaborator. The former lead singer of the Talking Heads, Byrne is an artistic polymath, making stage plays,...
06.23.2021
Episode 38 | What Does Figuration Smell Like?
A conversation about the art of scents with the perfumer Frederic Malle. The latest in a storied French fragrance family, Malle—whose grandfather launched Christian Dior’s fragrance line, and whose uncle is the great filmmaker Louis Malle—had ambitions of being an...
06.16.2021
Episode 37 | Lorraine O’Grady
The 86-year-old legend gets personal about a lifetime translating her singular voice to the world. While the major retrospective of her work currently at the Brooklyn Museum has cemented her reputation, Lorraine O’Grady did not discover herself as an artist...
06.09.2021
Episode 36 | Kate Zambreno
How does an artwork change as the person looking at it does? Kate Zambreno, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction and the author of the acclaimed 2020 novel Drifts, details the pleasures and discovery of returning to an artist or...
06.02.2021
Episode 35 | Simphiwe Ndzube and Zakes Mda
A conversation about the art of telling stories with the South African artist Simphiwe Ndzube, who works between Cape Town and Los Angeles and whose first solo US museum exhibition opens this month at the Denver Art Museum, and the...
05.26.2021
Episode 34 | Rachel Kushner
A conversation about life as art with the author of The Flamethrowers. Few merge writing about art and writing about life the way Rachel Kushner does. A former editor at Artforum and Bomb, she’s deeply interested in memorializing the culture...

What's Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast episodes:

Episode 67 | Grace Wales Bonner and Horace Ballard

Episode 66 | R. Crumb’s Radio Music Hour

Episode 65 | John McCracken and Minimalism Now with Cauleen Smith and Michael Govan

Episode 64 | On Hilma af Klint with Julia Voss and Briony Fer

Episode 63 | Claire Messud and James Wood

Episode 62 | Hua Hsu

Episode 61 | Hank Willis Thomas and Rujeko Hockley

Episode 60 | On Vermeer

Episode 59 | Ira Sachs

Episode 58 | Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham

Episode 57 | George Clinton and Lauren Halsey

The Best Art of 2023

Manet's 'Olympia' Comes to New York

Criticism for Difficult Times | With Helen Molesworth

The Legacy of Ruth Asawa | Special Episode

Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Helen Molesworth | Special Episode

The Yayoi Kusama Phenomenon (Re-run from Season 2)

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Helen Molesworth on Gerhard Richter | Special Episode

How Picasso Was Sold to America | Special Episode

Episode 56 | Barbara Smith and Meg Onli

Episode 55 | Nicholson Baker

Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Peyton (Re-run from Season 6)

Episode 54 | Jonathan Anderson

Episode 53 | Cecilia Alemani

Episode 52 | Sarah Schulman

Episode 51 | Jon Gray (Ghetto Gastro)

Episode 50 | Why You Do What You Do with Brendan Dugan, Johanna Fateman and Ebony L. Haynes

Episode 49 | Luca Guadagnino and Michaël Borremans

Best of 2022 | With Helen Molesworth

What Does Art Have to Do with Climate Change? | With Helen Molesworth

On Art and Poetics

Let’s Talk About Appropriation | With Helen Molesworth

Seeing the 90’s Everywhere Right Now | With Helen Molesworth

Inside ‘The Red Studio’: Ann Temkin with 6 Artists on Matisse | Special Episode

Death of an Artist: The Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre Story | Special Episode

Episode 48 | Rirkrit Tiravanija and Elizabeth Peyton

Episode 47 | Edwin Frank

Episode 46 | Jed Perl and Joshua Cohen

Episode 45 | Jerry Saltz and Ellie Rines

Episode 44 | Amy Sillman

Episode 43 | A Scientific Theory of the Art World

Episode 42 | Amalia Ulman and Maggie Lee

Episode 41 | Angela Davis and Hilton Als

Episode 40 | Luc Tuymans and Timothy Snyder

Episode 39 | David Byrne and Marcel Dzama

Episode 38 | What Does Figuration Smell Like?

Episode 37 | Lorraine O’Grady

Episode 36 | Kate Zambreno

Episode 35 | Simphiwe Ndzube and Zakes Mda

Episode 34 | Rachel Kushner

Other shows like Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast: