Artsy

On February 4th, the New York Times published a front page story entitled “Is the Met Museum ‘a Great Institution in Decline’?” The article ignited a ferocious public backlash against New York City’s most-visited institution and its director and CEO, Thomas P. Campbell. By the end of that same month, Campbell had announced his resignation—making his tenure as director the shortest since the Met’s fourth, Herbert Eustis Winlock, who presided over the institution from 1932 to 1939. Principal among the issues that led to Campbell’s resignation was a roughly $10 million budgetary deficit (public knowledge for a year or so prior to his resignation), which officials warned could swell to $40 million if immediate action was not taken. In a conversation with Artsy, days after his July 14th departure from the Met, Campbell was candid about the issues that contributed to that deficit—including his own ambition as director. But he also painted a far more nuanced picture of the circumstances surrounding the major gri

In May, documents leaked to the Guardian offered an unprecedented glimpse into Facebook’s inner workings: How do they think about moderating a range of controversial subjects, from violence to pornography? But those in the art world were particularly interested in the handful of slides detailing the social media giant’s policy on nudity in works of art. Facebook and Instagram have long been criticized for removing artwork containing nudity, a practice many interpret as censorship. On this episode, we dive into social media’s new role as the gatekeeper of what we see—and why fixing this system may prove to be impossible.

The saga of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally spans six decades, beginning in 1950s Vienna before making its way to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Minimalist painter Carmen Herrera sold her first artwork at age 89. Now, at age 102, her paintings fetch prices in the six digits. On today’s episode, we explore the growing demand for—and institutional presence of—long-overlooked women artists including Herrera, Carol Rama, and Irma Blank. How did these older, female artists push young men out of the art world spotlight?

Is it illegal to kill the president in an artwork? That’s what we wondered in May, when we saw first saw Alaskan assistant professor Thomas Chung’s painting that depicted actor Chris Evans holding Donald Trump’s severed head. And over the past few weeks, that question has taken on renewed significance with a series of creative works imagining Trump’s demise from a Kathy Griffin photoshoot to a performance of Julius Caesar by New York’s Public Theater. On this episode, we’re joined by New York University law professor Amy Adler to break down the limits of free speech in art—and answer one of Donald Trump Jr.’s tweets in the process.

At this year’s edition of Art Basel in Basel, which opened Tuesday to VVIPs, dealers were reporting multiple sales in the seven- and eight-figure range—a surprisingly strong start to the art world’s most important fair. On this episode, we explore what’s behind these big-ticket purchases and what it means for the wider art market. Plus, we’ll take a look at the best work on view in Basel this week.

What began as an April Fools joke on the website Reddit is now being hailed as the world’s largest collaborative artwork. Over one million users, armed with one pixel each, worked together over 72 hours to create a canvas that now contains everything from the American flag to the Mona Lisa. On this episode, we’re joined by Josh Wardle and Kevin O’Connor from Reddit to break down this massive online art project. Will this digital canvas end up in MoMA? And what can a dog wearing clogs tell us about the nature of internet collaboration?

The genre of “bad painting” is a slippery one. On this podcast, we discuss the label, which has been applied to a wide-ranging group of artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. What they share, wrote curator Eva Badura-Triska in an essay for the 2008 show “Bad Painting: Good Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, is a refusal “to submit to artistic canons.” So what exactly does that mean? Though artists from Francis Picabia to Rene Magritte are among early practitioners of “bad painting,” can the label continue to exist today, when there are no singular artistic canons to reject?

Last Thursday, a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for a formidable $110.4 million at Sotheby’s. It set a record for the New York artist, who both joined the exclusive “$100 million-plus club” and displaced Andy Warhol as the most expensive American artist at auction in one fell swoop. This week, we break down the sale—both what it means for Basquiat’s market going forward and whether it changes his place in the art-historical canon.

The 57th Venice Biennale opened last week, and on this episode we share our highlights from this year’s “Olympics of art.” How did Christine Macel’s central exhibition stack up against Okwui Enwezor’s in 2015? Was Anne Imhof’s exhibition for Germany—which earned the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion—all it’s cracked up to be? And beyond the Biennale, is Damien Hirst’s massive two-part Venice exhibition worth a visit?

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, and on today’s episode we delve into the history of this iconic work. Originally created to memorialize the bombing of a defenseless town during the Spanish Civil War, the painting has since become a universal symbol for revolutionary struggles. But even with this significant legacy—is Guernica really Picasso’s most important work?

The sixth edition of Frieze New York opened to VIPs on Thursday, with over 200 galleries hailing from 30 countries setting up shop on Randall’s Island through Sunday. Returning from the fair, our editors sat down to bring you the highlights.

Food and art have a long history, from 17th-century Dutch still lifes featuring bowls of fruit to Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell soup cans. On this episode, we explore how artists today are thinking about the subject with the help of Julia Sherman, photographer and creator of the blog-turned-book “Salad for President.” We’ll take a look inside the candyland studio of painter and master baker Will Cotton. Plus, what it’s like making salad with artists like Tauba Auerbach (and why William Wegman is no longer allowed to cook the Christmas turkey).

Does an artist have the legal right to protect the intangible messages of their artwork? That’s the question facing Arturo Di Modica, creator of Wall Street’s iconic bronze Charging Bull, which last month was joined by another, more diminutive bronze called Fearless Girl. Di Modica argues the addition—which stares down his bull—changes the message of his work and violates his legal rights. On this episode, we’re joined by two art lawyers to discuss the Visual Artist Rights Act, the U.S. law at the heart of Di Modica’s claim.

For the new collector, the proliferation of art fairs, galleries, and online marketplaces can be overwhelming to navigate. What’s the right way to break into collecting? (And what are the faux pas to avoid?) How exactly do gallerists determine the price of the work on display? And what’s the best place to buy art?

Feminist critic Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze” in 1975 to describe the ways in which women were objectified on camera when a man was behind the lens. In this episode, we tackle the “female gaze”—an opposing approach that offers a more authentic and nuanced understanding of femininity. We discuss the artists and photographers leading this movement, and the ways in which the proliferation of images through social media has allowed a new generation of women to become influential without the backing of the art world establishment.

The term “white cube” is ubiquitous in today’s art world. But who invented that label? And when did this method of displaying art first appear? On this episode, we trace the evolution of the white cube from the earliest public museums in Europe to 1930s New York.

Over the course of World War II, the Nazi party stole hundreds of thousands of works of art. Today, more than seven decades after the end of the war, there are still some 100,000 artworks that are missing. On this episode, we discuss the restitution of Nazi-looted art—that is, the ways in which these works are returned (or, in some cases, not returned) to the heirs of the original owners.

In this episode, our editors call in from China to report on this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong. Now in its fifth year, the Asian fair has finally come into its own alongside its sister fairs in Basel and Miami.

The Whitney Biennial’s 79th edition opens to the public on March 17th. It has been deemed a resounding success by many, managing to tackle America’s issues of race and class without gimmicks or oversimplification. On this episode, we discuss what curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks did right.