Show Notes
We're still in the city of angels for our second special episode asking 'What if LA is the future?' Join host, Charlotte Burns, as she drives from the East Side to Korea Town and out to Santa Monica. We visit the studio of artist and filmmaker, Cauleen Smith, whose life and work centers around building a better world. We also drop in on Kibum Kim, partner and co-founder at Commonwealth and Council - a gallery building a supportive community of artists - who wants to challenge the high-speed efficiency of the current art world model. Both embody what it means to live in the realm of possibility. "I guess what I'm doing is always looking to the relatively recent past of models where people really did do things differently quite successfully," says Cauleen. Tune in, and subscribe, for more.
More from 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 generations, geographies, and roles in the cultural ecosystem. Together, they reveal a field in flux. Charlotte and Allan look back at what they've heard — and ahead to where the art world is heading next. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.
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 the institution in 1968. One of the most transformative museum leaders of any era, Golden reflects on her career—from groundbreaking exhibitions at the Whitney straight out of college, to the mentors who shaped her, to her 25 years at the Studio Museum. She speaks about leading an institution that is at once hyperlocal and hyperglobal, and about building the structures and spaces that nurture generations of artists, curators, and thinkers. This new Studio Museum stands a testament to possibility, asking: What if we imagined and created the spaces necessary for art and ideas to truly flourish? Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.
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 financial shocks to a pandemic and the culture wars of recent years. Now, as Lowry steps down, he shares what it really takes to guide an institution through moments of upheaval and reinvention. He looks back on the lessons learned, the challenges ahead for the cultural sector, and the art of leadership: how ideas are tested, institutions reshaped, and futures imagined. Tune in as Lowry asks: what if museums had the courage to believe that the art that will come will be every bit as interesting and important as the art of the past? Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.
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 and profound. In this conversation with host Charlotte Burns, Sin Wai Kin talks about their creative process, their hopes of transforming the personal into the universal and the power of art and imagination to create spaces of freedom. Through the universes they create, Sin Wai Kin explores time, identity, and consciousness— inviting us to question the binary of reality and fantasy, asking: what if multiple things can be true at once? What if we could imagine different ways of being in the world? Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.
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 representation—and for collectors trying to buy wisely without feeding speculation? And why is keeping artists at the center of the conversation more urgent than ever? What if this reset isn't just a slowdown, but the beginning of a new art economy? Listen in for clear signals amid the noise—and where the art world could go next. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us @schwartzman.art for more, and subscribe to our Substack at artandschwartzman.substack.com. Find out more about The Art World: What If…?! Dive in at schwartzmanand.com/the-art-world.