Museum Confidential

In our first show recorded in front of a live audience, we explore what it means to be a curator with Philbrook Museum of Art Chief Curator Catherine Whitney and Gilcrease Museum Senior Curator, Laura Fry. Your grandmother probably went her whole life without saying she “curated” something. And while so many people these days claim to curate this or that, the only ones that can truly own the title are actual curators. Featuring cameos by comedian Pete Holmes, exit signs, and the National Mustard Museum.

We recently stumbled upon a fascinating blog post written last year by Graham Boettcher, Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama.

The headline read, “DIRECTOR RECKONS WITH ART MUSEUM’S UGLY PAST” and looks at the museum’s troubling Jim Crow-era policies in the first dozen years of its existence.

We sat down with Graham to discuss this and much more.

Museums have a problem. Too much stuff. But whereas you can take a few carloads to Goodwill or set up a yard sale, museums don’t have that luxury. Sometimes they end up building costly expansions just to contain the overflow. New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin visited museums of various budgets and sizes to see just how big a problem museum storage has become.

Time for our annual round table chat with three experts from different parts of the art world. The roster includes Hrag Vartanian, editor of the popular arts and culture website Hyperallergic, Philbrook Director Scott Stulen, and artist Sharon Louden who is currently putting the finishing touches on a brand new installation in the Philbrook Rotunda. The installation will be on view through the rest of 2019.

Less than 20 miles from Washington D.C., there’s a place called Glenstone. It was founded by Mitch and Emily Rales and opened in 2006. Last fall Glenstone took a big leap into the next chapter. But what is Glenstone? It’s an art museum. It boasts over 200 acres of grounds. It’s private. It’s free. Kids and chewing gum aren’t allowed (that’s a little controversial). They only allow a few hundred folks at a time. No pictures. No phones. But don’t be easily distracted by those shiny objects. Mitch and Emily Rales are after something different. On this episode we sit down with Emily (who also serves as Director and Chief Curator) to find out what.

For the #1 slot on his Top 10 Best Art Shows of 2018, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz selected an exhibition at the Guggenheim by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint titled “Paintings for the Future.”

“The most magnificent sight in New York this year was the drop-dead first gallery showing of kaleidoscopically colored, structurally complex, completely abstract paintings made in the first two decades of the 20th century by unacknowledged Swedish visionary Hilma af Klint.”

Since opening last October, it’s become something of an art world sensation.

We recently sat down with the show’s curator, Tracey Bashkoff, to check in and see how it’s going. The exhibition closes April 23, 20

Art conservation: It’s sort of a magic trick. But there are immensely talented people using skills and techniques passed down over generations alongside the latest technology. On this episode we chat with Julian Baumgartner of Chicago-based Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration. Julian has taken his family business into the 21st century by embracing new media, becoming a bit of a social media star in the process.

Close your eyes. Imagine a museum. Chances are we’re all seeing a variation on a theme. Open galleries, high ceilings, there’s a guard in the corner wearing a navy or perhaps maroon blazer. It’s quiet, it’s cold, it’s a museum. Those are the stereotypes of course, but you see where we’re going. Museums are, or at least, can be, much different. One of the places trying to change the way we interact with these spaces is The Underground Museum in Los Angeles. We recently sat down with the museum’s Director, Megan Steinman.

Several years ago, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria began inviting artists to sift through the museum’s more than 4 million objects and create exhibitions filtered through the artist’s own unique point of view.

 Recently, the museum asked Wes Anderson, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The Royal Tenenbaums”, and his partner, acclaimed designer, writer, and illustrator, Juman Malouf, to take on the same gargantuan task.

They ended up choosing 423 objects for the show. 350 had never before been publicly shown. We sat down for a transatlantic chat with Kunsthistorisches Museum curator, Jasper Sharp to talk about the show, how it came together, and much more.

Pulitzer Prize Finalist Mary Gabriel joins us to talk about her acclaimed new book, Ninth Street Women. After WWII, when names like Pollock and Rothko were entering the American mainstream, five women dared to enter this male-dominated space–not as muses but as artists. From their New York studios, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, they kicked open doors for themselves and everyone that came after. On this episode we get to know Lee, Grace, Helen, Joan, and Elaine.