The Art World: What If...?!

As this season of The Art World: What If?! takes a break, Charlotte and Allan reflect on the conversations that have shaped it — from artists reimagining knowledge, time, and truth, to institutional leaders grappling with the frameworks that hold culture. Agnes Denes, Glenn Ligon, Sin Wai Kin, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Glenn Lowry, Thelma Golden, and Kemi Ilesanmi offered perspectives that span generations, geographies, and roles in the cultural ecosystem. Together, they reveal a field in flux. Charlotte and Allan look back at what they've heard — and ahead to where the art world is heading next. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.

In this episode, host Charlotte Burns sits down once more with Glenn Lowry during his final week as director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Over three decades, Lowry transformed MoMA—expanding its collection, reshaping its galleries, and reimagining what a museum, and "modern" itself, can mean. He has guided the museum through moments of crisis and transformation—from 9/11 and global financial shocks to a pandemic and the culture wars of recent years. Now, as Lowry steps down, he shares what it really takes to guide an institution through moments of upheaval and reinvention. He looks back on the lessons learned, the challenges ahead for the cultural sector, and the art of leadership: how ideas are tested, institutions reshaped, and futures imagined. Tune in as Lowry asks: what if museums had the courage to believe that the art that will come will be every bit as interesting and important as the art of the past? Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.

There is never just one way of seeing. And Nana Oforiatta-Ayim—writer, filmmaker, cultural historian, and institution builder—has spent her career proving exactly that. For Nana, who founded the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge in Ghana and curated the country's critically acclaimed first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019, art is not sealed off in white cubes but alive, porous, and connective. In this episode, she opens up about the journey from proving worth to claiming inherent value in conversation with host Charlotte Burns. She speaks about the victories and challenges of her groundbreaking projects, including the Mobile Museum—which brings art into kiosks on street corners and tours it through local communities—and the 54-volume Cultural Encyclopedia, which reorders and re-presents knowledge, narratives, and representations from across the African continent, the first of which launches this year. Fifty years after critic John Berger cracked open the canon of art history with Ways of Seeing, Nana is carrying the conversation forward with her own trilogy of books. She speaks candidly about reimagining Berger's radical gesture for our time, reckoning with the limits of Western paradigms, and building from indigenous knowledge systems, oral storytelling, and the land itself. What if the future of art looked more like a festival than a mausoleum? Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.

Kemi Ilesanmi is planting seeds for the future. Three years ago, she stepped back from running The Laundromat Project, took a gap year in which she visited 13 countries, and came back full of ideas and possibilities. Now she's an independent arts worker. A diaspora weaver. A connector of people and worlds. She says that five core values drive her work: Assume abundance. Foster connections. Multiply knowledge. Center joy. Manifest dreams. In this third conversation with host Charlotte Burns, Kemi reflects on building sustainable institutions, the women who shaped contemporary art across Africa, and why she believes in looking for "new suns" even in difficult times, sharing insights about the projects and people inspiring her now. The ecosystem needs tending, she says. The seeds need space to grow. What if we stopped trying to do it alone? Follow us: @schwartzman.art Website: www.schwartzmanand.com/

In this bonus episode, we're joined by the newly appointed director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Dr. Mariët Westermann, who is the first female appointed to the role. Mariët oversees the "constellation" of museums—four over three continents united, she says, in one mission, "to create opportunities for anyone to engage with the transformative and connective power of art and artists". Mariët is inheriting opportunities and challenges, and we delve into some of those, from the back histories to the budgets. She talks to us about the future of the museum—from plans for the opening of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to the nuts and bolts of balancing the books. One of the key changes Mariët advocates for is a shift in the institutional mindset. Rather than taking a defensive stance, where the museum might try to address gaps or criticisms reactively, she hopes for a move towards a more open approach. "We are learning communities," she says. "We're full of curious people. Artists are curious." All this and much more in this special episode, which brings to an end our second season.

What if you were embroiled in a public workplace controversy? And what happens on the other side of the headlines—would you walk away from your field, or would you reengage with it to try and improve upon it? This very special episode is a break from the norm. In it, we discuss museums and change—and what it takes to get to that change. We're joined by three curators—Mia Locks, director and co-founder of Museums Moving Forward; Fatoş Üstek, curator and former director of the Liverpool Biennial; and Laura Raicovich, writer, curator, and former president and executive director of the Queens Museum. Each of them has been through a public furor. In those moments, they have found a lack of institutional support and, afterwards, each has shifted from their previous career paths. But each has reengaged with the field in more ambitious and ultimately hopeful ways. Museums can't be taken for granted. But what does it take to create change? Tune in now for more.

In this episode, we visit the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama, including the newly opened Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre site on the banks of the Alabama River. We interview their founder, the lawyer and civil rights hero, Bryan Stevenson, who says that a founding narrative of racial difference was created in America that "was like an infection. I believe the infection has spread. We've never treated that infection and the consequences of it are still with us today." The US has never created cultural sites that have "motivated people to say, 'never again can we tolerate racial bigotry, can we tolerate racial violence, can we tolerate the kind of indifference to these basic human rights'. So, that's what we're trying to achieve." Hope and resilience inform the Legacy Sites. "I've always argued that hopelessness is the enemy of justice and that hope is an essential feature of what we do. I have to believe things I haven't seen," Stevenson says. "I think we need an era of truth and justice, truth and reconciliation, truth and restoration, truth and repair," Stevenson adds. "But we can't skip the truth-telling part."

For the second part of our interview with Koyo Kouoh, the chief curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA, we hear about how she has worked to overhaul the infrastructure of the institution internally as well as better connect the museum externally within Cape Town. Koyo talks about how "colonialism as an enterprise, as a model of global relating, has done a lot of harm that we are still mending and attending to." She says: "That is a field of thinking, a space of emotion and knowledge that I am deeply passionate about. And that is why my investment in the space of Black geographies is so profound."

Legendary art dealer Barbara Gladstone joins us for a very rare interview from the studio in New York. What would she do differently if she started a gallery today? "I probably wouldn't do it," she says. Barbara has been at the top of the business since the 1980s and now represents more than 70 artists and estates. She tells us how she started out with a small print business, and how things developed from there. We talk about art now, the future of the gallery, and what she would change about the art market, including the "idea that collecting is shopping, because I think that there is something that art adds to life," she says. "What is really interesting is that it's not over," she says. "It's not even over when the artist dies because there's constant evaluation and re-thinking going on. And when you put one work in proximity to another work 50 years later, something new can happen. I mean, I think that's why it's important."

In this episode, we welcome Jarl Mohn, the LA art collector and philanthropist who founded the E! Entertainment network in his professional life, among other impressive media and business ventures. Jarl became a DJ at a young age, partly in an attempt to escape the realities of life in a state foster home. Success in his professional career led him to the art world - which he initially distrusted as an industry "designed to take advantage of idiots like us". Jarl talks to us about what changed his mind, and how he ended up building two distinct art collections. An ardent Angeleno, he tells us how LA is the future of art and reveals his secret dream of pulling off a very slow heist involving Walter de Maria's 'The Lightning Field'.

Described as the "next generation of leadership", in this episode we welcome Salome Asega, the director of NEW INC in New York and an accomplished artist, whose work is at the cutting edge of creativity and technology. Salome's ability to look towards—and build—the future shines through in this conversation with host Charlotte Burns. Part of her work at NEW INC, she says, is about creating chance encounters for creative people that feel like "choosing your own adventure." What if we focused on new inventions, narratives and opportunities? Tune in for more.