Reading the Art World

For the 30th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Gary Garrels, curator of the exhibition “Willem de Kooning and Italy” and editor of the associated catalogue, published by Marsilio Arte and distributed internationally by Artbook D.A.P..

In the interview, Gary provides insight into Willem de Kooning’s engagement with Italy in the 1950s and early 1960s, sharing how the artist was “steeped in the history” of the place. The book and the conversation between Gary and Megan zero in on a crucial, but unexplored, period in de Kooning's career.

“Willem de Kooning and Italy” is a beautifully illustrated accompaniment to the exhibition at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia (closes September 15, 2024). The exhibition is curated by art historian Gary Garrels and Anish Kapoor Foundation director Mario Codognato, and is the first to analyze the impact of de Kooning’s Italian sojourns on his later production. Bringing together 75 works belonging to the period from the late 1950s to the 1980s, such as the famous “Door to the River,” “A Tree in Naples,” and “Villa Borghese,” painted in 1960 in New York, it is the largest de Kooning retrospective ever organized in Italy.

Gary Garrels is a highly respected and influential curator for more than thirty-five years at major museums in the United States, including: Dia Art Foundation, New York, Director of Programmes, 1987-1991; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Senior Curator, 1991-1993; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, 1993-2000; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Chief Curator, Department of Drawings and Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, 2000-2005; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programmes, 2005-2008; and again at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, 2008- 2020. He is currently an independent curator living and working in New York, focused on projects of special interest.

PURCHASE THE BOOK:

In Italy: Marsilio Arte.
Internationally: Artbook D.A.P.

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For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

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"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications. 

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 29th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Richard Shiff, art historian and author of “Writing after Art,” published by David Zwirner Books.

Richard shares how he comes to understand an artist's work in a way that will inspire us to observe and understand artists and their processes more fully.

“Writing after Art” is an expansive anthology of Richard Shiff’s most influential writings, many of which have shaped the art world’s understanding of 20th and 21st century artists. These writings first appeared in exhibition catalogs for institutions including the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern, and they spotlight modern masters such as Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley and Peter Saul.

Richard Shiff is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at The University of Texas at Austin. His interests range broadly across the field of modern and contemporary art. His publications include Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné (coauthored, 2004), Doubt (2008), Between Sense and de Kooning (2011), Ellsworth Kelly: New York Drawings 1954–1962 (2014), Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Works on Paper 1969–2019 (2020), and Sensuous Thoughts: Essays on the Work of Donald Judd (2020). He is currently completing a comprehensive study of the art of Jack Whitten.

PURCHASE THE BOOK: 

David Zwirner Books

SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW AND HEAR INTERVIEWS:

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications. 

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

Music composed by Bob Golden

Join art advisor Megan Fox Kelly for a special podcast episode in which she shares three titles from her must-read list of recent art books and provides insights into how these fascinating publications inspire our experience of art. To hear interviews with top authors of other great new art books, don’t miss an episode of “Reading the Art World”.

SHOW NOTES
Episode Timestamps:
00:26 - My Must-Read List
01:20 - Fashioned by Sargent
04:02 - Georgia O'Keeffe: My New Yorks
05:52 - Martin Puryear: Lookout
07:46 - Coming Up! “Writing After Art” with Richard Shiff

PURCHASE THESE BOOKS
Fashioned by Sargent published by Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Georgia O’Keeffe: My New Yorks published by The Art Institute of Chicago
Martin Puryear: Lookout published by Storm King Art Center and Gregory R. Miller & Co

SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW AND HEAR INTERVIEWS
For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications. 

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 27th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Eva Respini, author of “Simone Leigh,” published by DelMonico Books in association with the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Eva Respini’s book offers a deep dive into the groundbreaking work of contemporary artist Simone Leigh, whose multidimensional artistry challenges conventions, and sparks meaningful conversations about race, gender, and identity. Through Eva's expertise, we'll uncover the complexities of Leigh's art, and gain a deeper understanding of its cultural significance.

Eva served as the Curator and Co-Commissioner for the 2022 US Pavilion’s presentation of Simone Leigh at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. It marked the first time a Black woman represented the United States at the Biennale, and Leigh won the 2022 Golden Lion for her groundbreaking work.

Eva organized the highly successful mid-career survey of Simone Leigh's works, which opened at the ICA/Boston in April 2023 and will tour across the United States through 2025. In addition to the insightful writing from multiple perspectives of 22 contributing scholars and collaborators of Leigh's, the book is beautifully illustrated with plates that feature Leigh’s critically acclaimed work for the Biennale and works made throughout her career.

See an album of Simone Leigh’s Biennale exhibition.

Eva Respini is Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Between 2015-2023, Respini was Deputy Director and Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA/Boston). Prior to her tenure at the ICA/Boston, she served as Curator at the Museum of Modern Art for more than a decade in the department of photography. She currently teaches a seminar on curatorial practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Other universities where she has taught and lectured include School of Visual Arts, Columbia University; Yale University’s School of Art; and the School of Visual Arts, New York. Eva has published numerous books and catalogues and her writing appears in museum publications and periodicals. She received a BA and MA in art history from Columbia University and was a 2014 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase “Simone Leigh” at Delmonico Books.

Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 26th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Martin Gayford, author of “Venice: City of Pictures,” published by Thames & Hudson in November of 2023.

Their conversation shines a special spotlight on the magical, cultural city in advance of the Venice Biennale, opening April 20, 2024.

Martin Gayford’s book brings the richness and complexity of Venice's centuries of history to life with his rumination on the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of that city that are both familiar and unfamiliar to us, revealing in his writings entirely new ways to think about those objects, buildings, and stories of the city that have captivated artists and visitors for hundreds of years. Since the advent of the Venice Biennale in the 1890s, the city has become a shop window for the contemporary art of the whole world.

Martin Gayford is an author and journalist. He studied philosophy at Cambridge and art history at the Courtauld Institute of London University. He's written prolifically about art and jazz, contributed regularly to the Daily Telegraph, and also to many art magazines and exhibition catalogs. He was art critic of the Spectator from 1994 to 2002, subsequently at the Sunday Telegraph before becoming chief art critic for Bloomberg News until 2013.

Martin's publications and writings include studies of the lives and works of van Gogh, Gauguin, Constable, Michelangelo, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley and several beautiful collaborations with David Hockney.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.
 
Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our "Of Interest" page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase “Venice: City of Pictures” at Thames & Hudson.

Music composed by Bob Golden.

For the 25th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Leslie Ramos, author of “Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take,” published by Lund Humphries in October 2023.

This book is a guidepost for cultural institutions, philanthropists, artists, galleries, and even financial advisors and public policy advisors on the importance of supporting the arts and doing it strategically. During the pandemic, art museums and institutions faced a crisis of funding. But even recently as we've moved toward recovery, political and social critiques, and cuts in government funding in the U.S. and internationally, have put many museums — even the largest like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art — in really challenging positions.

Leslie Ramos is a philanthropy and strategy advisor specializing in the arts and cultural sectors. She's the co-founder of the strategic consulting agency The Twentieth that provides independent expertise around giving, fundraising, collecting, and engaging with the arts ecosystem. Alongside her professional work, Ramos supports and holds voluntary positions in multiple arts nonprofits, and contributes to various international art media outlets, universities, commenting and lecturing on philanthropy and museum studies.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase "“Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take” at Lund Humphries.

Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 24th episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Natasha Degen, author of "Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol," which was published by Reaktion Books in London just last year.

"Merchants of Style" explores the accelerating convergence of art and fashion, looking at the interplay of artists and designers – and the role of institutions, both public and commercial – that has brought about this marriage of aesthetic industries. Natasha Degen argues that one figure more than any other anticipated this moment: Andy Warhol. Beginning with an overview of art and fashion’s deeply entwined histories before picking up where Warhol left off, "Merchants of Style" tells the story of art’s emboldened forays into commerce and fashion’s growing embrace of art.

Natasha Degen is actively engaged in the current thinking at the intersection of art, culture, and commerce. A highly regarded curator, critic and author, Natasha is Professor and Chair of Art Market Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She earned an AB from Princeton University and an MPhil and PhD from University of Cambridge where she studied as a Gates Scholar. She edited "The Market,” (MIT Press, 2013), an interdisciplinary anthology tracing the art market's interaction with contemporary practice, and she has contributed to publications including The New Yorker, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Art Forum and Frieze.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase "Masters of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol" at Reaktion Press. 

Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 23rd episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Joanna Moorhead, the author of "Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington," published by Princeton University Press.

"Surreal Spaces" tells the dramatic story of an artist who lived life on her own terms in a way that was radically modern for the 1930s, 1940s and later, and the book reveals how her life and art are inextricably entwined.

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the vanguards in the history of women artists and the history of Surrealism. Challenging the conventions of her time, Carrington abandoned family, society, and her home in England to embrace new experiences and to forge a unique artistic style in Europe and the Americas.

Leading readers on a personal journey across Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Mexico, "Surreal Spaces" describes the places and experiences that would become etched in Carrington’s memory and be echoed, sometimes decades later, in her art and writing.

Author Joanna Moorhead's career spans decades in the world of journalism. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times (London), The Art Newspaper and many others. In her art writing, Joanna has cultivated a unique expertise for unraveling the mysteries behind artists' lives and their work, which led her to the heart of surrealist art, where she meticulously uncovered the fascinating story of Leonora Carrington, who also happens to be her distant cousin.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com and subscribe to our new posts at the bottom of our Of Interest page.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase "Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington" at Princeton University Press and at Barnes & Noble and at specialty art bookstores.

Music composed by Bob Golden.

For the 22nd episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Richard Lacayo, author of “Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph,” published by Simon and Schuster.

Richard Lacayo is one of the world's top art critics and he has been a long-time writer and editor at Time magazine. From 2003 to 2016 he was the magazine's art and architecture critic. Richard has also written on art and architecture for People, Foreign Policy, and Graydon Carter's new online publication, Air Mail. He's the co-author, with George Russell, of “Eyewitness: 150 Years of Photojournalism,” and in 2013 he delivered a lecture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on the late careers of artists, the topic of this book.

“Last Light” tells the stories of the late careers of six of history's greatest artists — Titian, Goya, Monet, Matisse, Hopper and Nevelson —  and shows how they continued to push themselves and the boundaries of their art-making right up until the end. As Richard’s book reveals, the importance of much of this late-in-life work would not be fully understood or appreciated until decades later.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com and subscribe to our new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase “Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph” at Simon & Schuster and at Barnes & Noble. 

Music composed by Bob Golden.

For the 21st episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Diana Seave Greenwald, whose latest book, "Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life," was co-written with curator Nathaniel Silver, published by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and distributed by Princeton University Press.

Isabella Stewart Gardner, who lived from 1840 to 1924, assembled an extraordinary collection of art from diverse cultures and eras — and built a Venetian-style palazzo in Boston to share these exquisite treasures with the world. But her life and work remains shrouded in myth. Separating fiction and fact, this book paints an unforgettable portrait of Gardner, drawing on her substantial personal archive and including previously unpublished findings to offer new perspectives on her life and her construction of identity.

Diana Seave Greenwald is an art historian and economic historian. An expert in 19th century American and French art, she is currently William & Lia Poorvu curator of the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Prior to joining the Gardner, Diana was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., working in the departments of American and British Paintings and Modern Prints and Drawings. She received a D.Phil. in History from the University of Oxford. Before doctoral study, Diana earned an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Columbia University.

"Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications.

Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com and subscribe to our new posts.

Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly

Purchase "Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life" at Princeton University Press or at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Music composed by Bob Golden.