Spirit and Intimacy in Art

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 Choice - Spirit Movers at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023) with accompanying publication Dream in the Rhythm: Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection (2023). Grace is currently leading a four-year research project, titled Between Critique and Hope, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. 

Horace D. Ballard is the Theodore E. Stebbins Curator of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums, where their work investigates the art, ideas, and visual cultures of the United States and the Americas. They are the author of numerous publications, most recently Mary Ann Unger: To Shape a Moon from Bone (Williams College Museum of Art, 2022), and “Wet-into-Wet: Passages of Time and Tradition before 1880,” in Into the Light: American Watercolors, 1880-1990 (2023) edited by Hoffman, Grasselli, and Stewart for Harvard Art Museums.