Can’t Miss Podcasts
Whenever I have a long drive ahead I like to listen to a few podcasts and these are the ones I recommend about the art market. It is a mix of the lives of artists, massive fraud scandals and in depth analysis of how the art market works.
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I think this three-part series from 2021 is still the most comprehensive understanding of how the art market works from an outsider’s perspective. After explaining all of the players and how the market works, it explores the massive disruption currently underway in the art market.
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The biggest scandal to rock the art market recently was the Knoedler Gallery’s multi-year scandal selling (very good) fake artworks for many millions of dollars to the world’s top collectors. This podcast will leave you sitting in the parking lot at your destination to hear what happened next.
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There are two seasons of Death of an Artist thus far, the first focusing on the early tragic death of Ana Mendieta and the second on the artist Lee Krasner, who also happened to be the wife of Jackson Pollock. While the first season includes true crime–did her husband Carl Andre kill her or didn’t he?--I think the biggest question this podcast poses is if you can ever separate the lives of artists from their work.
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I can't recommend podcasts and not mention my own! I did a talk for the Hustle Fund Angel Squad on the comparison between angel investing and art collecting. Please don’t let phrases like “portfolio construction” scare you, the two really do have a lot in common.
Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective Open at SFMOMA
I recently attended the opening of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective at SFMOMA which was featured on the front page of the New York Times. As this article elaborates on much further, the rise to posthumous appreciation by the art world is a rare and beautiful story. I was at Christie’s in 2013 when the selling exhibition of her work was staged, and at the time she had little recognition outside of the Bay Area. It was remarkable to reflect that it was only 12 years ago and its is a rare arc of a career trajectory to follow. Her retrospective is now touring from her hometown to MOMA, the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Foundation Beyler–truly the hit list for any artist’s retrospective. The exhibition features over 300 works and focuses on her signature looped-wire sculptures but also her public artworks, drawings and prints. I plan to use this map to visit all of her public artworks in the Bay Area.
I recently attended the opening of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective at SFMOMA which was featured on the front page of the New York Times. As this article elaborates on much further, the rise to posthumous appreciation by the art world is a rare and beautiful story. I was at Christie’s in 2013 when the selling exhibition of her work was staged, and at the time she had little recognition outside of the Bay Area. It was remarkable to reflect that it was only 12 years ago and its is a rare arc of a career trajectory to follow. Her retrospective is now touring from her hometown to MOMA, the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Foundation Beyler–truly the hit list for any artist’s retrospective.
The exhibition features over 300 works and focuses on her signature looped-wire sculptures but also her public artworks, drawings and prints. I plan to use this map to visit all of her public artworks in the Bay Area.
2024 Favorites and 2025 Predictions
2024 Highlights and 2025 Art World Predictions
Favorite Shows of 2024
Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective which I saw both at its host institution the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Hammer Museum in LA in December. Its final stop is the Philadelphia Museum of Art Feb 8 -June 1, 2025, so for all my East Coasters, you still have a chance to see it this year.
Keith Haring: Art is for Everyone seen at the Walker but curated by the Broad and seriously half owned by Masterworks, this exhibition showed how much Haring infused art into every aspect of his life to really prove art is for everyone. Shout out to Sotheby’s installation of his subway drawings in November as well.
Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom curated by LACMA - I learned so much about an artist and practice I knew so little about, a true testament to having a survey show, as the impact of his work is much greater when viewed together.
Honorable Mention: All women all the time in the Bay Area rn: Mary Cassat at the Legion, Tamara Lempicka at the de Young (did not feature the strongest examples), Making their Mark show at BAMPFA and Amy Sherald at SFMOMA with SECA winner Rupy C Tut.
2025 Art World Predictions
I like to start out the year with a few predictions, mostly for the opportunity to hold myself accountable at the end of the year and reflect on how things panned out.
1. The gap between the primary market and secondary market will become smaller. It is currently relatively substantial as people sit on their hands while they wait to see if the auction prices will improve in 2025.
2. A strong artist-run online marketplace will emerge that will finally solve this problem: “How do I buy art from emerging artists at accessible prices?
3. I truly hope that somebody figures out how to run a successful art fund, but I mostly hope that people interested in art as an asset class just start buying art for their own collections-a great art collection is illiquid and time consuming but will ultimately have the best returns-plus you get to live with it.