Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

Helen Molesworth explores the life and work of Anni Albers in the artist’s own words, with rare archival interviews with Albers and insights from artists Kristine Woods and Diedrick Bracken and art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson.   Affinities: Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Paul Klee, a group show curated by Nicholas Fox Weber, director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, will be on view at David Z...

A conversation about the late artist Noah Davis, the sounds he left behind, and the ones he imagined.  Join podcaster and curator Helen Molesworth, professor and writer Tina M. Campt, pianist and artist Jason Moran, and director and curator Paola Malavassi for a mix of sound, music, and ideas inspired by Davis’s paintings. The Sound of Noah Davis was commissioned by DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam...

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times critic Wesley Morris comes on the podcast to unpack the long history and current state of artistic rivalries, from Leonardo daVinci and Michelangelo to Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

Helen Molesworth hosts a special episode, starting with a conversation with leading ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio and followed by an interview with artist Laurie Simmons and activist Maryhope Howland. Chase Strangio is the Co-Director of the LGBTQ & HIV Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  Laurie Simmons is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Connecticut and New York City...

As we turn the page on a quarter century, Helen Molesworth and the artist Steve Locke look back with a highly opinionated list of their favorite art shows of the last 25 years.

Helen Molesworth speaks to Dean Kissick, author of The Painted Protest, a polemic piece on the state of contemporary art in this month’s Harper’s Magazine that has had a lot in the art world talking. Dean Kissick is a writer, contributing editor of Spike Art Magazine, and a director of Earth.

Art historian and critic Hal Foster joins Helen for a live conversation on Richard Serra (1938–2024) at David Zwirner New York. They discuss Foster’s decades-long engagement with Serra’s work and the artist’s enduring legacy. This conversation was taped in Every Which Way, a major Richard Serra installation from 2015, on view at David Zwirner’s 20th Street gallery in New York from November 8–Decem...

We revisit an episode from Season 5, a conversation between artist Luc Tuymans and the eminent Yale Historian Timothy Snyder. The two discuss history, truth, and lies, and art’s singular ability to live between them all. Timothy Snyder is the author of the books On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom, among others, and Luc Tuymans is an artist who has been interrogating the power of images for decad...

Writer, curator, and editor Jarrett Earnest joins Helen to discuss his most recent edited volume of writings by the iconoclastic, enduring art critic Dave Hickey, titled Feint of Heart: Art Writings, 1982-2002. Out now from David Zwirner Books, wherever books are sold.

New Yorker critic Hilton Als joins Helen to discuss his exhibition, Alice Neel in the Queer World, on view at our Los Angeles Gallery through November 2nd, 2024. Alice Neel in the Queer World is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, edited and with a text by Als, as well as newly commissioned scholarship by Alex Fialho, Evan Garza, and Wayne Koestenbaum.

A conversation between the Academy award-nominated writer, producer, and director Luca Guadagnino and the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans on the relationship between painting and film. They muse on the specificity of light to their mediums, the role of the uncanny, and paintings and films as a mirror of who we imagine ourselves to be. Luca Guadagnino's latest film, Challengers (2024) is currentl...

Acclaimed fashion designer and curator Grace Wales Bonner is joined by the scholar and curator Horace D. Ballard. In a wide ranging conversation on art and fashion, they unpack the nuances of style, medium, and intentionality in art. In addition to her brand Wales Bonner, Grace Wales Bonner’s curatorial exhibitions include A Time For New Dreams, Serpentine Galleries London (2019) and Artist’s Choi...

In this very special episode, artist and legendary record collector R. Crumb visits his friends and fellow rare music enthusiasts John Heneghan and Eden Brower to listen to 78 records from Heneghan’s sprawling collection.  John Heneghan is a musician, podcast host, record collector. He and his wife, Eden R. Brower, play in Eden & John’s East River String Band with R. Crumb and Ernesto Gomez. Tune...

Artist Cauleen Smith and Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, join Helen for a live conversation in the garden at David Zwirner Los Angeles. Held on the occasion of the exhibition John McCracken, they explore the influence of Minimalism, a quintessential and often negated 20th century art movement. John McCracken will be on view at David Zwirner Los Angeles through Marc...

An episode on the art and life of Hilma af Klint featuring art historian Briony Fer and af Klint’s biographer, Julia Voss. Briony Fer is an art historian and professor at University College, London, and curator of the 2023 exhibition Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life.  Julia Voss is a curator, art critic, and professor and author of Hilma af Klint: A Biography. She is the co-curator, a...

For the third interview in her series with creative couples, Helen spoke to the first couple of American fiction: literary critic James Wood and award-winning novelist Claire Messud.

Writer and critic Hua Hsu received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2022 memoir Stay True. Helen and Hua discuss the challenges of writing about the past as it was experienced as your younger self, and how writing itself is an act of remembering.

In the second episode in Helen’s interview series with creative couples, the artist Hank Willis Thomas and curator Rujeko Hockley get intimate about the unique challenges and rewards of being married and working in the same field.

Was Vermeer really the artist behind some of his most well-known works? The question has lingered at the margins of art history for years and was resurfaced during the Dutch master's blockbuster retrospective at the Rijksmuseum in 2023. Helen invited writer Lawrence Weschler and art historian Claudia Swan to interrogate what is at stake—politically, financially, and art historically—in reattributi...

Ira Sachs's 2023 film Passages won wide acclaim for its portrayal of human desire. Helen goes deep with the filmmaker on the psychology of his finely wrought characters and the many influences that inform his work.

In the first episode of Helen’s series of interviews with creative couples, artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham give an unvarnished look into nearly five decades of partnership. The veteran artworld pair share how they’ve managed it all, from raising a family together to maintaining independent creative practices.

Artist Lauren Halsey and George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic open up about their friendship, from their first meeting to ongoing and fruitful collaborations since. They discuss metaphor, the collective, and of course, the power of the funk.

Helen and Steve Locke discuss the best—and most unexpected-–art shows they saw in 2023, from global exhibitions to gallery shows in New York.

What does it mean to a painter of modern life? Helen & Steve Locke discuss artistic rivalry, leisure, and labor politics in Manet/Degas, a historic exhibition pairing two giants of the 19th century, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 7, 2024.

In dark times, reading criticism can be a ballast. In this mini-episode, Helen and Steve Locke return to some of their favorite texts and writers, from Walter Benjamin to W.E.B. DuBois.