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 genera...

In this episode, Allan Schwartzman sits down with Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, ahead of the November opening of the museum's first purpose-built home. Rising seven stories and spanning 82,000 square feet on 125th Street, the new building is rooted in the aspirations and vision of the artists, activists, philanthropists, and Harlem residents who founded...

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 fin...

Artist Sin Wai Kin constructs fantasy worlds to show how storytelling doesn't just reflect reality—it creates it. Through characters like 'The Storyteller', and works that present us with newsreaders in parallel universes or boy band members embodying the marketed self, their practice threads the line between frightening and funny, stretching language to places where it becomes both meaningless an...

After a long, news-filled summer, host Charlotte Burns reconvenes with founder Allan Schwartzman to take stock of an art market that feels… different. From major shifts at the auction houses and slowing sales at international fairs to a mounting list of gallery closures, this episode digs into the forces reshaping today's market. What does contraction mean for artists—especially those losing repre...

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, a...

Glenn Ligon makes art that asks us to look again. An artist, writer, and curator, his practice moves between the studio and the gallery, the page and the public sphere, spanning painting, neon, print, installation, and beyond. From text-based canvases grounded in the words of James Baldwin to glowing neons that play with the idea of America, and from intimate drawings to monumental works, Glenn ex...

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. Multipl...

Longtime podcast collaborators Allan Schwartzman and Charlotte Burns sit down for a conversation about an art industry in profound flux. After almost a decade of podcasts tracking how everything has changed, the duo is now looking ahead—and the view is complex. In this frank conversation, they discuss everything from the art market to museum models, to artists history has overlooked. This is a rec...

The artist Agnes Denes saw it coming. Machines taking over. Technology converging with consciousness. History on a pendulum swinging perilously back and forth. In this intimate conversation recorded with host Charlotte Burns in Denes' downtown Manhattan loft apartment and studio space, they talk about her work. When Denes wrote about these things more than 50 years ago, it was prescient, unsettlin...

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...

Join us for the  almost final episode of this season where we welcome back our incredible team of editorial advisors who guide, suggest — and even challenge — what we've discussed this series. Joining us are Deana Haggag (program officer at the Mellon Foundation), Mia Locks (curator and co-founder of Museums Moving Forward), Jay Sanders (curator, writer, and director of Artists Space), and of cour...

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-fou...

This time, we're joined by the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, just before the opening of her major new exhibition 'Monuments of Solidarity' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "This exhibition spiritually uplifts people," she says. "It inspires people to be the change they need, but it also inspires them to be better human beings. To look beyond the self, to look beyond individualistic desires,...

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....

This time we welcome Karen Patterson, the Executive Director of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The organisation immediately became a major player when it launched in 2022, announcing plans to give away up to $20 million a year to arts organisations, thanks to a $440 million bequest from Ruth DeYoung Kohler. We delve into the what-ifs of philanthropy, the foundation's ethos, and its ambitious in...

"The market is poised for a big fall, so it's more 'when', than 'what if'," says Allan Schwartzman, founder of the podcast. He's back on the show to talk all about the state of the art market and the broader implications of its changing dynamics for the artists and for the cultural landscape at large. "Greatness doesn't grow at the same rate as a population does," says Allan. "Greatness is extreme...

We welcome back Kemi Ilesanmi, the former executive director of the Laundromat Project and one of the standout stars of our first season. In season one, Kemi was just about to head off on the trip of a lifetime around 13 countries, including ten in Africa. She promised to come back and tell us how the trip changed her 'What Ifs.' "I'm looking for freedom of movement, freedom of ideas, and freedom...

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 mendi...

Joining us from Cape Town in South Africa is Koyo Kouoh, the chief curator and executive director of Zeitz MOCAA for the first in a two-part special. Originally destined for a career in finance, Koyo talks about her journey into the art world, and from Basel in Switzerland to Dakar in Senegal, where she founded RAW Material Company in 2008. She tells us about her move to South Africa in 2019 to ta...

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 devel...

"West African culture is starting to become the future" says Phillip Ihenacho, the director of the newly established Museum of West African Art. What if you built a new museum in West Africa, where a glorious ancient history contrasts with a brutal colonial one? What if we really considered the full meaning of restitution and repair? Can a cultural organisation build a stable financial future by b...

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...

What if we write our own histories? What if we create the change we seek?  In this episode, we talk to the President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, Hoor Al Qasimi, under whose watch, Sharjah has become one of the most influential centers for cultural creation and research in the Global South. From revamping art biennials to creating new universities, overseeing architectural triennials, r...

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...