Museum Confidential

A dispatch from the Phoenix Art Museum where we recently traveled to speak with acclaimed conceptual artist, Charles Gaines prior to the opening of a new retrospective.  Charles Gaines: 1992–2023 runs through March 9, 2025.

This special episode of MC was recently taped before a live audience at Philbrook Museum of Art. Our host Jeff Martin is joined by on stage by interdisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, Brooklyn Museum curator Kimberli Gant, and Philbrook Chief Curator Kate Green. They speak in detail about why and how today's museums are diversifying (or attempting to diversify) their collections. Presented in partnership with Tulsa Town Hall.

What makes American art "American"? Let's discuss. On this episode we welcome back Philbrook curator, Susan Green to chat about the new exhibition, "American Artists, American Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976." It's a sweeping, varied exhibition offering more than 100 masterworks -- by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Thomas Moran, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, and many others. It runs through December 29, 2024.

On recent trip to Washington, D.C. we stopped by the National Gallery of Art to chat with curator Kanitra Fletcher about a new show she was preparing to debut, the first show dedicated to Haitian art in the history of the institution. As with most things in life, timing is everything. Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti opens September 29 and runs through March 9th. www.nga.gov

On our Season 9 debut we talk with Stephen Reily, attorney, entrepreneur, and former Director of Louisville’s Speed Art Museum about REMUSEUM, his ambitious new project to reimagine what museums can be.

Psyche! We’re not actually unmasking Banksy on this episode, but we are taking a closer look at the recently-opened museum in New York City dedicated to the famously anonymous street artist/activist. William Meade is the Executive Director of the Banksy Museum in Manhattan and we have no idea if he knows Banksy’s true identity. For all we know he could actually be Banksy! It’s all a bit complicated.

On the final installment of our ART FAIR DIARIES trilogy, Philbrook Chief Curator and roving MC correspondent, Kate Green takes us to the land of John Hughes movies and deep-dish pizza. Welcome to EXPO CHICAGO.

Acclaimed artist Chris Ramsay’s work deals with big, universal subjects: time, space, impermanence, what we discard, and what we choose to keep. Now, after receiving an incurable cancer diagnosis, Chris is confronting the biggest questions of all.

For this new installment in our Art Fair Diaries series, Philbrook Chief Curator (and occasional roving Museum Confidential correspondent) Kate Green reports from the biggest art fair in one of the world's biggest cities. Welcome to Mexico City.

Our guest is curator Allison Glenn; we previously spoke to Glenn a few years ago about her Breonna Taylor-inspired show, "Promise, Witness, Remembrance." Now Glenn is curating a multi-venue, multi-day, multi-focused convening titled Sovereign Futures, which runs April 4th through the 7th. Per the Sovereign Futures website, various "artist-led projects will explore themes of sovereignty through...food, land, speculative futures, and histories of the place that is now called Oklahoma."

Our guest is acclaimed journalist Bianca Bosker, who tells us that -- when it comes to which topics she chooses to investigate and cover -- she's "obsessed with obsession." Bosker's latest book is "Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See." She was a security guard at the Guggenheim. She worked in a commercial gallery. She was a studio assistant to an emerging artist. What Hunter S. Thompson did with the Hell's Angels, Bosker does with Art History majors.

A recent headline in The New York Times read: To Save Museums, Treat Them Like Highways. There’s no shortage of conversations about museum funding models. But after reading this one, arguing that museums should be thought of more like infrastructure, it was time for another. On this episode we speak to one of the piece’s co-writers, Laura Raicovich, former Executive Director of New York’s Queens Museum.

The Nevada Museum of Art invited us out for a live show in Reno with acclaimed indigenous artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. Futurism and speculative fiction are just two of many terms that describe Luger’s unforgettable work and the special exhibition, SPEECHLESS. On this episode we chat with Luger and Apsara DiQuinzio, the Museum’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon just nabbed ten Oscar nominations, including one for Costume Design. But how do you authentically take people back to the Osage Nation of the 1920’s? How do you get every detail just right? Meet Julie O’Keefe, the Osage Nation wardrobe consultant hired to do just that.

On our first episode of 2024, we chat with the co-directors of an acclaimed new PBS American Masters documentary on legendary New York painter, Edward Hopper. “Hopper: An American Love Story” has it all; lonely people in rooms, quiet city streets, difficult relationships, and plenty of secrets revealed.

Art Basel Miami Beach, the biggest international modern/contemporary art fair in North America, took place earlier this month; thousands of art dealers, artists, collectors, curators, and art aficionados showed up. Kate Green, the Chief Curator & Nancy E. Meinig Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at Philbrook Museum of Art, was among those attending this very active and multifaceted annual event (or series of events). At our request, Green kept an audio diary while she was there. She joins us on MC to share her diary and discuss this gala expo more generally.

You probably know Sharon Stone the actress. It’s time you get to know Sharon Stone the ARTIST. Over the past few years, the Oscar nominee has turned painting into a dedicated daily practice. On this episode we talk about inspiration, early museum experiences, a new exhibition, and so much more.

We travel to Pittsburgh’s Miller Institute of Contemporary Art (Carnegie Mellon University) for the special exhibition, IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC, a fascinating collection of sounds, scores, sculptures, video, live performances, and more. First up we have a big picture chat with the ICA’s Director, Elizabeth Chodos before a deeper dive with acclaimed curator Candice Hopkins and Pulitzer Prize-winning artist/composer, Raven Chacon. IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC runs through December 10.

Every object holds a story. That’s the idea behind the thought-provoking new Philbrook exhibition, TRADE & TRANSFORMATION. Curator Kalyn Fay Barnoski (Cherokee Nation enrollee, Muscogee descent) originated and organized the exhibition. On this episode she joins us to chat about how she came to create it. Trade & Transformation is on view through December 30. Details at Philbrook.org.

In 2008, a catastrophic flood shut down the art museum on the University of Iowa campus. 15 years later, the museum has finally reopened with a new building, new name (The Stanley), and a new catalog created in partnership with the legendary Iowa Writer’s Workshop. They invited us up to chat about all of it.