About Art

Mehak Vieira is the Director and Founder of Jahmek Contemporary Art, a dynamic platform promoting a critical and provocative dialogue about artistic and visual expression in Luanda, Angola. Raised in Luanda, Viera founded the gallery alongside Jardel Vieira in 2018 with the vision of strengthening the artistic infrastructure in Angola for the next generation. Over the past five years, she has worked with emerging and established artists with ties to the country to build an ambitious program of exhibitions, events, fair presentations and more. Her leadership has gained international recognition of Jahmek Contemporary Art, building its reputation as a prominent player in the African contemporary art scene by exhibiting at major events including the Venice Biennale 2024, Art Basel 2022, Art Dubai 2022 and Arco Madrid 2021, among others. She and Zuckerman discuss not coming from an art background, the Angola art scene, being entrepreneurial, why their program matters for the country, elitism, access to information, archiving the narrative, legacy, love, art fairs, how things come together, courage, and why art matters!

British sculptor Antony Gormley’s (Sir Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA) work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with recent exhibitions at Musée Rodin, Paris (2023); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2022); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2022); National Gallery Singapore, Singapore (2021); Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Germany (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); Delos, Greece (2019); Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2019); Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); and Forte di Belvedere, Florence, Italy (2015) among others! Some permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, UK), Another Place (Crosby Beach, UK), and Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honors list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.He and Zuckerman discuss the state of the world, art as a form of witnessing, what can sculpture do, being in the world but not of it, moving through space with awareness, active meditation, what art is for, recognizing our own vitality, discovering ourselves as strangers, and the urgency and hopefulness of being alive right now!

Tess Lukey is co-curator of the inaugural Boston Triennial and Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Trustees of Reservations (The Trustees), the nation’s first and state’s largest land conservation nonprofit. Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member and lifelong New Englander, previously worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has also completed fellowships at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Hibben Center for Archaeology Study and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque. Lukey is also a traditional potter and basket weaver practicing the techniques of her own Indigenous community.She and Zuckerman discuss reciprocity, pairing artists and experts, how artists can address things in ways that no one else can, teaching people about making, her relation with clay, finger weaving, physically working with a place, being an artist, a maker, and a member, how art needs people, gaining family and realizing who she is, working with the land, guiding museums about respecting tribal sovereignty, her studio visit strategy, magical moments, making ceramics sing, and what can contain all the knowledge in the world!

American artist Charles Gaines’ body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms. In his drawings, works on paper and photographs he investigates how rule-based processes and systems construct the experiences of aesthetics, politics, and language. By employing multi-layered practices, including images, texts, and grids, as well as working in a serial character, Gaines examines image structures while critically questioning forms of representation.   He recently retired from the CalArts School of Art, where he was on faculty for over 30 years and established a fellowship to provide critical scholarship support for Black students in the M.F.A. program. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and around the world, most notably at Dia:Beacon, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum, Harlem NY, and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA. His work has also been presented at the 1975 Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2015. In addition to his artistic practice, Gaines has published several essays on contemporary art, including Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism (University of California, Irvine, 1993) and The New Cosmopolitanism (California State University, Fullerton, 2008). In 2019, Gaines received the 60th Edward MacDowell Medal. He was inducted into the National Academy of Design’s 2020 class of National Academicians and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2022. In 2023, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. He and I spoke about legacy, continuous learning, creating context and systems, paradoxes of perception, feeling versus intellectual exercises in art, the language of art and what is possible, tantric Buddhist art, chance as a method, philosophy of aesthetics, trees, and AI!

Nicholas Baume is the Artistic & Executive Director at Public Art Fund in New York City since 2009. A native of Australia, his career began in Sydney with Kaldor Public Art Projects and later the Museum of Contemporary Art. He was Contemporary Curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, before moving to Boston to join the Institute of Contemporary Art as Chief Curator. He and I discuss being artist centric, the American museum industry, the moment his eyes opened to contemporary art, how art can catalyze feelings you don’t know you have, creating moments of access, sharing art with the world and serving the public, what defines success, what public art needs, authentic experiences, fundamental values, civic scale projects, the importance of diplomacy, and risk taking!

Bjorn Geldhof is Director of the PinchukArtCentre. Founded in September 2006 by businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk, the PinchukArtCentre is an international hub for contemporary art committed to developing the Ukrainian art scene while generating critical public discourse as a whole. Since war broke out in Ukraine in 2022 they have held important exhibitions including When Faith Moves Mountains, a major group exhibition with over 45 artists opening 143 days after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, focused on Ukraine as a country open to the world and celebrating its deep roots and relation to Europe. The PinchukArtCentre invests in the next generation though the Future Generation Art Prize and the PinchukArtCentre Prize, awards for young contemporary artists aged 35 or younger. Their collateral Venice Biennale project this year, Daring to Dream in a World of Constant Fear, will be held at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac from April 20th until August 1st, 2024. The exhibition weaves a tapestry of stories and dreams gathered from artists affected by war globally.He and Zuckerman discuss sharing risk, how art saves lives, art not as leisure but also essential part of living life, cultivating a next generation of artists, changing the way people think, the urgency of making art, offering the opportunity to speak, think and feel, knowing that today can be your last day, the urgency of having great thoughts, the role of hope, and the opportunity to dare to dream!

Digital content creator Amanda McCreight specializes in digital storytelling, utilizing photography and filmmaking as her medium to challenge conventional norms, guide discourse, and foster meaningful connections. McCreight started the brand Aytuhzee noting that she “wanted to create a persona around feeling free to try everything from A to Z. Aytuhzee is many things…the Full Expression of whatever medium I’m feeling called to!” Additionally, she is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of All Day Running Co. where she collaborates with entrepreneur Jesse Itzler to curate immersive wellness and running experiences. Together they craft unforgettable events that leave participants not only with memories, but also with a newfound sense of empowerment. McCreight is a self-described lover, dreamer, and existential thinker dedicated to living the full spectrum of life’s color and emotions in art and in business.She and Zuckerman discuss course correcting your life, saying yes, living a life full of color, finding middle ground, creating brands, giving things your all, flow state, balancing consumption and creation, what we deserve, a vision board coming to life, the first yes, speaking things into existence, public pitching ideas, practicing looking, and why art matters!

Since the early 1990’s, Charles Long has explored the possibilities of sculpture through a rich vocabulary of materials, colors, images and shapes. Incorporating references to art history, popular culture, nature and his own experiences, Long’s work embraces modernist convention as a means of connecting inner and outer realities, forming pathways between one’s mental and bodily experiences and the surrounding environment. Through his many bodies of work over the years, the artist has consistently confronted formal parameters associated with sculpture as obstacles to push beyond, seeing modernism’s trajectory as unfinished and full of possibility.He and Zuckerman spoke about metaphysical research, why things are happening, the secret of teaching, refinding art on his own terms, psychedelics, Donald D. Hoffman of UC Irvine, “wisdoms of the masters” and access to pure being, what it’s like to die, what he has to offer, wanting everything he makes to be sacred, not finishing anything, and making art that you don’t have to talk about!

New York-based writer LJ Rader is the person behind the social media account ArtButMakeItSports, which features images of sports compared to fine art. He works full-time in the sports world as a Director of Product at a sports data and technology company.He and Zuckerman discuss his curatorial choices, unique moments, a sports related lens, sports equality, feedback he gets, his favorite artists, his image filing system, feelings on AI, meme fuel, the legacy of art, and of course why art matters!

American artist Rodney McMillian’s paintings, sculptures, videos, and performances address the African-American experience while examining race, gender, and class in a broader political context. Aspects of his work negotiates between the body of a political nature and the politic of a bodily nature. McMillian modifies familiar and found objects into new – he offers an alternative reality that reveals how past ideas relate to the present. He is now a professor of sculpture at the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA. McMillian’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The Orange County Museum of Art, among others.He and Zuckerman discuss the role of chance in his paintings, intimacy and residue, what landscape can mean, issues of class and taste, retitling, existing within uncomfortable contexts, “hitting it on the one,” napping, the physicality of making art, the present moment, working with a voice coach, and the thrill of accomplishing hard things!