The Conversation Art Podcast

Hunter College professor and author of The War of Art , Lauren O'Neill-Butler talks about: Her 12 years at Artforum magazine, including its balance between advertising and hard-core art writing, and how her chapter on Fierce Pussy was written while at Artforum; the classes on Activism she's taught at Hunter College, which were not to get students to become activists but to make them aware of its h...

Writer and Frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin talks about: His book tour for "The Wonderful World That Almost Was," which has been hectic; how he became familiar with Peter Hujar's work initially, and why his and Paul Tek's legacies really took off after their deaths; Peter's persona and personality as someone who could be as charming and engaging as can be, but also someone who flew off the han...

James Delbourgo, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of A Noble Madness: the Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now , talks about: Why he's written about contemporary art so extensively, as a history academic who's very interested in the present, going to galleries and wondering who collectors are right now, raising a lot of questions about archetypes for what would become...

John Byrne , author of " Useful Art- How Activist Artists Can Change the World ," and professor of Useful Art at Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design, talks about: The city of Liverpool and its art community, with about 20 total galleries, and how he fits into it; where he'll be book touring the book; a key framing in the book, being in a 'neo-liberal occupation' that we liv...

Boston-based photographer Jim Dow talks about: The Boston art community (which is often connected to the art school and universities) and why he's lived there the great majority of his life (he lives in the house he grew up in); he's a dedicated Mass-hole- there's an edge to people there and you have break that edge; how he navigates random passersby when he's photographing for long sessions with...

Hadley, Massachusetts and NYC artist Sarah K. Khan talks about: How it's a "little miracle" to have a studio (a former chick coop on a farm in the 5-college area of Mass.) after so many years working in kitchens and other spaces not dedicated to her work and where she can really spread out; her short films about the immigrant experience in New York via food trucks (particularly her Queens Migrant...

Artist and legendary street artist Robbie Conal talks about: His family history, including his two activist-and-politically inclined parents, his background in fighting the power; moving up to Los Osos (in San Luis Obispo County) as a permanent residence (back after the 2008 crash), but keeping a small place in L.A.; what he misses about not being in the city (he's lived in NYC and SF as well as L...

Napa, CA-based artist Arleene Correa Valencia talks about: Why she lives in Napa, CA, and the two distinct versions of the town, for the wealthy and for the poor ("you're either the owner of the vineyard, or you're working the vineyard," as she put it); how she's the first generation to not be working the vineyards, his dad having worked the vineyard for a period before transitioning to hand-paint...

London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins talks about: The flat where he's lived for 35 years, which is getting 'Wallace & Gromit' crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he's happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we're also...

Pasadena-based artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy talks about: Growing up between Wisconsin and a commune in Oregon, the latter which she describes as a complete commitment more than an experiment (the town was Wildeville, Cape Junction being the closest city); how you radically live out the life of Christianity, including giving away all their stuff, and how her father played in a Christian glam roc...

Camilla Taylor , Los Angeles artist, and curator of " My House Burned Down" (at Track16 Gallery ), talks about: Her childhood with complicated religious origins, between her Mormon LDS father and her mother who branched off to start her own organization (some might say 'cult,' per Camilla), and how art, for her and many artists, can often fit the functions that people are often looking for in reli...

Brooklyn-based artist and sometimes New Yorker magazine cartoonist Guy Richards Smit returns to the podcast eight years after his first visit to talk about: His admitted high self-regard, paired with self-awareness, which we identify as being rare; our respective experiences and takes on artist blowhards; his history with cartooning, going back to his obsession with gag cartoons, going back to a N...

In Episode 376, Alex and Theo Gribaudi-Plytas talk about: Their location in rural France, at the southern end of the Champagne region, where there are tons of vineyards, many of which they take friends from out of town to, and how even in their minimally populated area they see plenty of income inequality; how they met while living in London's version of dorms for art students, even though they we...

Marcie Begleiter, an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology , where she recently did a 4-week residency, including collecting biological specimens/samples; how her time and relationship with the residency evolves over those four weeks, which has lead to artistic breakthroughs; how she likes deadlines, and can...

Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D'Andrade, author of the graphic novel "The Murder Next Door," talks about: His first graphic novel, The Murder Next Door, including what led him to finally making a graphic novel after being a big fan of them for a long time; studying fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts back in the 1980s, and then going back to the same school, now called simply...

In Episode 373, Molly Rice & Rusty Thelin , co-founders of RealTime Arts in Pittsburgh, talk about: The especially niche field of their work, which is the performance of live theater that aligns more with visual art and doesn't really check any of the 'theater' boxes, and how they have interactive elements but don't confront the audience the way a lot of performance art does (they describe a "lot...

In Episode 372, the 1 st half of the conversation with Amsterdam-based painter and photographer Claire Witteveen , she talks about: Her putting off painting initially in favor of photography, for reasons both practical and related to insecurity, partly based on her mom being an artist who juggled that and being a mother; how she can feel completely disconnected from her photography (mainly when it...

Gabrielle de la Puente , half of the art critic duo The White Pube , talks about: A few things people outside of the UK need to know about Liverpool, where she's based; the origin story of the White Pube, when Gabrielle and Zarina were in art school together; the reputation of Central Saint Martins , the art school where they met, including where it was when they started school, which was already...

After learning about the Lights Out Meta campaign, a boycott on all Meta platforms from January 19th thru January 26th, 2025, it sounded like a good idea, and after reading about it more extensively, I think it's a necessary one. Here are the articles I quote from in this one-off boycott episode: Meta's pivot to the right sparks boycotts and calls for a user exodus and- Lights Out Meta: R.E.M.'s M...

Founder of the SCOPE Art Show , Alexis Hubshman talks about everything from its size (approx. 300,000 sq ft of exhibition space), to the number of galleries exhibited (95 from 27 countries) to how he makes the fair run smoothly; his support of new and emerging galleries, giving many of them rent-free booths, subsidized by their corporate sponsor partnerships; how he sees the accessibility of the a...

In the latest OLD NEWS roundup with Emily Colucci of Filthy Dreams, we start by revisiting our prior, charged exchanged about Louis CK, in which Emily was admittedly a bit of an apologist for him, which alienated some listeners- in this case, while we don't land on the same page, we do air out our respective perspectives, and Emily dubs herself a contrarian. This leads to a brief discussion of the...

In Episode 368,  Tulsa Kinney , artist and now former founding editor of Artillery magazine, talks about: Why she sold the magazine after running it for 18 years, including burnout but also how impersonal she feels the art world has become since its more modest size when the magazine began; the lack of support she/the magazine received from many galleries, while receiving support from institutions...

In our continued dissection of the OLD NEWS, Emily Colucci and I discuss: Indicted former art advisor Lisa Schiff and her upcoming bankruptcy auction, to be conducted by Phillips; how Paul McCarthy is slowly throwing out his immense artwork, WS (White Snow) , because he can't store the work any longer, and how he failed to get any museums to buy the work, ultimately deciding to throw the work out...

In the latest round of OLD NEWS with former guest Emily Colucci (creator of the art & culture website Filthy Dreams ), we cover: cancel culture through the lens of James Franco (who was part of our original recording back in 2016) and Louis C.K.; Cai Guo-Qiang's botched fireworks performance at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of PST Art's 'Science and Art'-themed mega-art event, includin...

The Conversation is doing an Open Call for future guests of the show (thru Oct. 10 th )- if you're interested in being a guest, please submit here: "The Conversation Art Podcast" - Guest Open Call (jotform.com) Brooklyn artist, former hardcore-band singer, and recurring figure in Bianca Bosker's 'Get the Picture'), Liz Ainslie talks about: singing in the scream-core band Give Up while she was in c...