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About Art

Heidi Zuckerman

Heidi Zuckerman is a globally recognized voice in contemporary art and a passionate believer in how art can make life more better. On her podcast About Art, she has real, inspiring conversations with people she finds interesting—artists, collectors, creatives, and more—about their lives, their values, and why art matters. It’s about living artfully, seeing differently, and finding joy and connection through art—wherever you are on your art journey.

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26 episodes
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Avg 52 min
English

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Tuesday · 1 hr 1 min
Episode 231: It's More Than Just Art | Zanele Muholi
Zanele Muholi is a South African visual activist, photographer, and artist whose work documents and celebrates the lives of Black queer and trans people in South Africa and beyond. Through portraiture, self-portraiture, and an ever-expanding visual archive, Muholi creates images that honor identity, memory, community, and belonging while challenging histories of exclusion and invisibility. This episode is part of a special six-episode About Art series presented in collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair. In this episode, Heidi Zuckerman and Zanele Muholi discuss photography as an act of healing, the responsibility of creating images, portraiture, beauty, chosen family, visibility, love, and the importance of preserving stories for future generations. Together they explore how art can become a bridge between memory and hope.
September 8 · 45 min
Episode 230: The Invisible World | Mariko Mori
What if the divisions we see in the world are not actually there? In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Mariko Mori as part of a special six-part series presented in collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair. For more than three decades, Mori has created sculptures, installations, and immersive environments that bring together ideas we often consider separately: science and spirituality, technology and nature, the ancient and the future, the visible and the invisible. Mori traces this way of thinking back to her childhood in Japan, her father’s work as an inventor and engineer, the death of her father while she was an art student in London, and the questions about life, death, and existence that followed. She discusses Buddhism and Shintoism, prehistoric cultures, contemporary science, meditation, tea ceremony, nature, light, and her belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. At the center of the conversation is an idea of oneness. As Mori says, we create divisions between nations and cultures, between people, and between humanity and nature. But when we look at the Earth, those divisions disappear. Together, they consider art’s ability to make the invisible perceptible and to offer a different vision of the world—one in which connection, love, wonder, joy, and hope are forces with the potential to change how we see and how we live. “What we see is very little of what is as a whole.” — Mariko Mor
September 1 · 1 hr
Episode 229: We Are Here | Lita Albuquerque
What does it mean to understand ourselves as existing somewhere between the planet and the cosmos? In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Lita Albuquerque as part of a special series created in collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair. For more than five decades, Albuquerque has explored our relationship to the Earth, the cosmos, time, color, consciousness, and the natural world. Born in Tunisia, raised between North Africa and Europe, and based for much of her life in California, she describes how landscape became fundamental to the way she sees and makes work. Together, they discuss the desert as a place of discovery, the relationship between nature and culture, ephemeral art and what remains after an artwork disappears, and Albuquerque’s understanding of the Earth as “a sculpture in space” and the cosmos as an installation in which we participate every day. Their conversation moves between the immense and the intimate: astronomical time and everyday life, the movement of the planet and the feeling of the sun on our skin, creativity and freedom, remembering and forgetting. At its center is the possibility of another way of living—one grounded in attention, curiosity, presence, and the freedom to follow what we love. As Albuquerque says, “The more you slow down, the more you can hear yourself.”
August 25 · 53 min
Episode 228: Art Is a Receipt of Human Experience | Patrick Martinez
Patrick Martinez is a Los Angeles-based artist whose paintings, sculptures, and neon works transform the visual language of the city into layered reflections on memory, community, history, and belonging. Drawing on graffiti, signage, architecture, and everyday materials, his practice reveals the stories embedded in the urban landscape while asking us to look more closely at the world around us. In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman and Patrick Martinez discuss growing up in Los Angeles, graffiti as an artistic foundation, language as material, beauty and social reality, the importance of slowing down, and the ways artists preserve the experience of living through a particular moment in time. This episode is part of a special six-episode About Art series presented in collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair.
August 18 · 51 min
Episode 227: A Future Good Ancestor | Ronald Rael
In this special live episode of About Art, recorded in Aspen as part of a collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist, architect, designer, inventor, and educator Ronald Rael. Raised on a sheep and cattle ranch in southern Colorado, Ronald comes from a family that has lived in the region for seven generations. His work brings that history into conversation with the future, combining traditional adobe construction with robotics and new technologies while exploring borders, sustainability, cultural memory, and the meaning of place. Heidi and Ronald discuss growing up in an adobe house, preserving historic buildings, his celebrated Teeter-Totter Wall project at the U.S.–Mexico border, teaching, technology, and his desire to practice being both a good descendant and a future good ancestor.
August 11 · 52 min
Episode 226: The Seriousness of Joy | Lily van der Stokker
For more than four decades, Lily van der Stokker has challenged conventional ideas about beauty, decoration, humor, and value. Through her wall paintings, drawings, and installations, she embraces qualities that have often been dismissed as decorative or feminine, asking us to reconsider what we take seriously—and why. In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman and Lily discuss joy, beauty, feminism, decoration, humor, public art, and the freedom to make work that resists expectation. Together they explore why kindness and optimism can be radical artistic choices and why art remains a place for experimentation, curiosity, and adventure.
August 4 · 55 min
Episode 225: Food Should Be Joyful | Sabrina Rudin
Sabrina Rudin is the founder of Spring Cafe Aspen and the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, a cookbook that combines recipes, personal stories, and practical guidance for creating a healthier, more intentional life. What began with one café has grown into a broader platform centered on nourishment, community, entrepreneurship, and the everyday choices that shape how we live. In this episode, Heidi and Sabrina discuss writing a cookbook, building a business from the ground up, motherhood, entrepreneurship, creativity, and why food is about so much more than what's on our plates. They talk about creating a life that reflects your values, raising children without fear around food, the importance of community, and the role of joy in healthy living.
July 28 · 46 min
Episode 224: Curiosity Is an Expression of Freedom | Tavares Strachan
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Tavares Strachan. Born in Nassau, Bahamas, Strachan works across sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and research-based practice. His ambitious projects draw from history, science, exploration, and cultural memory to illuminate stories that have been overlooked or omitted from dominant historical narratives. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Prospect New Orleans, and major museums and public collections around the world. Together they discuss curiosity, freedom, storytelling, exploration, failure, joy, magic, scientific discovery, and the responsibility of questioning inherited narratives. Tavares reflects on growing up in the Bahamas, the relationship between curiosity and freedom, why love is a choice, and how art expands our understanding of what is possible. A conversation about imagination, wonder, and the enduring human desire to make meaning through art.
July 21 · 43 min
Episode 223: Art Raises the Questions, Not the Answers | Bart van der Heide
Bart van der Heide is Director of Museion in Bolzano, Italy. Before joining Museion, Bart held leadership and curatorial positions at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstverein München. Throughout his career, he has championed museums as places where contemporary art, civic life, and community come together. This conversation explores museums as spaces of imagination, belonging, and public trust. Bart reflects on the exhibition that transformed his life, what artists have taught him about leadership, and why institutions must evolve from within to meet the needs of both their communities and the people who work inside them. Together Bart and Heidi Zuckerman discuss contemporary art, organizational culture, mutual aid, public responsibility, collective experience, and the evolving role of museums in shaping the future. A thoughtful conversation about leadership, imagination, and why art continues to matter.
July 14 · 54 min
Episode 222: Art Actively Gives Meaning to the Toil of Existence | Lisa Edelstein & Robert Russell
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with actor, writer, and artist Lisa Edelstein and artist Robert Russell. Recorded as they celebrate their collaborative exhibition Palace in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center, this conversation explores partnership, artistic practice, Jewish ritual, memory, storytelling, and the ways we create meaning through the objects, relationships, and traditions that shape our lives. Lisa discusses her evolution from actor to painter, drawing on family photographs to create intimate works that explore narrative, memory, and the Jewish experience. Robert reflects on his paintings of everyday objects, the sacredness of attention, and how ordinary things become vessels for history, devotion, and remembrance. Together they speak about creativity, discipline, vulnerability, seeing, collecting, marriage, and the experience of building individual artistic practices while supporting one another's creative lives. Lisa Edelstein is an actor, writer, and artist whose paintings transform family photographs into deeply personal explorations of memory, identity, and storytelling. Her work has been exhibited at Charlie James Gallery, Anat Ebgi, GAVLAK, and is included in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Robert Russell is a conceptual painter whose work explores memory, mortality, iconography, and ritual through paintings of everyday objects. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented by Anat Ebgi Gallery. A conversation about attention, making meaning, and the ways art helps us understand ourselves and one another.
July 7 · 51 min
Episode 221: Who Protects an Artist’s Legacy? | Daisy Murray Holman
Daisy Murray Holman is Executive Director of the Artists Legacy Foundation. She and Zuckerman explore the often unseen work of supporting artists beyond the present tense: archives, artists’ estates, preservation, catalogues raisonnés, and the emotional and structural care required to sustain artistic legacies over time. Murray Holman also reflects on the legacy of her mother, painter Elizabeth Murray, and what it means to inherit not only artwork, but responsibility. A conversation about care, stewardship, continuity, and why artists matter enough to protect across generations.
June 30 · 53 min
Episode 220: Within My Language in These Paintings, There's a Lifetime to Work Out - with Jennifer Guidi
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Jennifer Guidi. This episode was recorded live before an audience at the Orange County Museum of Art in conjunction with And so it is., Guidi's solo exhibition curated by Heidi Zuckerman. Born in Redondo Beach, California, Guidi received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Known for her luminous paintings that draw inspiration from nature, meditation, ritual, and the California landscape, Guidi has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in repetition, mark-making, color, and the exploration of consciousness. In this conversation, Heidi and Jennifer discuss artistic practice, meditation, motherhood, ritual, silence, creativity, nature, and the relationship between awareness and intention. They also explore the role of repetition in art, the influence of landscape on memory and perception, collecting, community, and the lifelong process of discovering one's own visual language. Together they reflect on inspiration, failure, trust, surrender, and the ways creativity can help us connect more deeply with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. A thoughtful conversation about art, awareness, and what it means to devote a life to making.
June 23 · 49 min
Episode 219: Art Changes Everything - with Diane Brown, RxArt Founder
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Diane Brown, founder of RxART. For more than twenty-five years, Diane has worked at the intersection of contemporary art and healthcare, commissioning leading artists to create projects for hospitals and medical facilities across the United States. Through RxART, artists including Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Rashid Johnson, Laura Owens, Rob Pruitt, Will Cotton, Mickalene Thomas, and many others have transformed clinical environments into spaces that support healing, imagination, and human connection. In this conversation, they discuss the origins of RxART, the relationship between art and healthcare, public engagement, philanthropy, empathy, access, and the growing body of research demonstrating the positive impact of art on physical and emotional well-being. They also explore childhood, fear, resilience, collaboration, neuroplasticity, the role of environment in shaping experience, and the ways artists help us navigate uncertainty through creativity, beauty, and wonder. At the heart of the conversation is a simple but profound idea: art is not separate from life. It has the capacity to comfort, connect, transform, and change how we experience the world around us. A thoughtful and inspiring conversation about healing, imagination, and why art matters.
June 16 · 59 min
Episode 218: "Nothing We Do Is Quick” - with Gemini G.E.L.
Ann Grinstein and Suzanne Felsen are co-directors and co-owners of Gemini G.E.L., one of the most influential artists’ workshops and publishers in the world. Founded in Los Angeles in 1966 by Stanley Grinstein, Sidney Felsen, and master printer Ken Tyler, Gemini G.E.L. has collaborated with generations of artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, David Hockney, Ellsworth Kelly, and many others, helping expand the possibilities of printmaking, editioned works, and artistic experimentation. In this conversation with Heidi Zuckerman, they discuss collaboration, craftsmanship, innovation, family legacy, risk-taking, and the unique relationships that develop between artists and master printers over decades of working together. They also explore the history of Gemini, the evolution of printmaking, artistic freedom, the role of experimentation, collecting, and what it means to sustain a creative institution for sixty years. A fascinating conversation about process, patience, trust, and the often-unseen collaborations behind some of the most important works of contemporary art.
June 9 · 53 min
Episode 217: Transformational, Not Transactional - with Susan Taylor
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman speaks with Susan Taylor, Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Since 2010, Susan has led NOMA through a period of transformation, growth, and institutional reflection, expanding the museum’s engagement with artists, audiences, education, and community while helping shape conversations around what museums can and should be today. In this conversation, they discuss leadership, cultural stewardship, community, resilience, contemporary art, public trust, education, New Orleans, nature, and the evolving role of museums in contemporary society. Together they explore the balance between tradition and innovation, the importance of local culture within global conversations, intergenerational engagement, the relationship between art and public space, and the idea that museums should be transformational rather than transactional. The conversation also touches on Hurricane Katrina, COVID, the NOMA sculpture garden, creative aging, spirit photography, Louisiana landscape painting, and the ways institutions can create spaces for connection, reflection, and belonging. A thoughtful and expansive conversation about museums, leadership, and the role art plays in shaping civic and cultural life.
June 2 · 50 min
Episode 216: “The Knowledge Is Waiting for Us” - with Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff
Anna-Maria is the Director of the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki, part of the Finnish National Gallery and one of the leading institutions dedicated to Finnish art from the 19th century to today. Previously the museum’s chief curator, she has organized major international exhibitions and is known for her scholarship on Nordic art, women artists, symbolism, and cultural history. In this conversation, they discuss museums, scholarship, curatorial practice, silence, attention, accessibility, and the evolving role of cultural institutions. Together they explore how art history is shaped, who gets remembered, the importance of networks and mentorship, and the responsibility museums have in creating meaningful dialogue between historical works and contemporary audiences. The conversation also touches on Helen Schjerfbeck, exhibition making, Nordic identity, women artists, esotericism, and the ways art connects knowledge with something more intuitive, emotional, and human. A thoughtful and expansive conversation about art, perception, and cultural memory.
May 26 · 31 min
Episode 215: About Art: Your Questions Answered
This week on About Art, Heidi Zuckerman answers questions submitted by listeners. Together, the questions became a conversation about creativity, collecting, burnout, beauty, confidence, museums, meaning, and how to live a more artful life. Some questions are practical. Some are philosophical. Some are deeply personal. This episode reflects the curiosity, thoughtfulness, and emotional intelligence of the About Art community — and the many ways art shapes how we see, feel, connect, and move through the world.
May 19 · 41 min
Episode 214: Art, Survival, and Choosing Joy - with Hank Willis Thomas
What does it mean to live a meaningful life—and how do we know what truly matters? In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman is joined by artist Hank Willis Thomas and curator Rujeko Hockley for a deeply personal and expansive conversation about attention, time, and the choices that shape a life. Beginning from a place of reflection—on family, career, illness, and change—they explore how priorities shift over time, what it means to be present, and how we learn to identify what is essential. The conversation moves fluidly between the personal and the universal: parenting, partnership, creative work, and the quiet but profound question of how we want to live. Hank speaks candidly about his recent experience with cancer and how it reshaped his thinking, while Rujeko reflects on turning 40, motherhood, and the evolving balance between ambition and fulfillment. At its core, this is a conversation about perspective—about joy, gratitude, and the possibility of choosing how we move through the world. In this episode, they explore: how life events reshape priorities and perspective the relationship between attention and meaning parenting, partnership, and evolving identity art as a reflection of how we live why joy may be the most essential form of privilege
May 5 · 56 min
Episode 213: Art, Healing, and Following the Truth Within - with Jewel
Jewel is a multi-platinum singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist whose work has reached millions. Over the course of her career, she has continually expanded her creative practice—moving between music, writing, and visual art, with a focus on authenticity, emotional truth, and self-expression. In this conversation, we move beyond any single medium. We talk about what it means to make something honestly—and what happens when you follow that impulse without needing it to make sense. We discuss creativity as a form of inquiry, art as a way of holding and processing experience, and how personal expression can become something shared. We also talk about intuition, storytelling, motherhood, and the role of art as a tool for healing. For Jewel, art began as—and continues to be—something personal, something necessary. This is a conversation about listening closely: to yourself, to your instincts, and to what wants to be made.
April 28 · 54 min
Episode 212: What the Art World Reveals About Us - with James Cahill
What does it mean to write about the art world from the inside? In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman is joined by writer and critic James Cahill to discuss his novel The Violet Hour and the psychological complexity of the contemporary art world. Drawing on his experience as both an art historian and gallery insider, Cahill reflects on the strange paradox of the art world—where even those at its center can feel on the periphery. The conversation explores how fiction can illuminate what criticism cannot, allowing for a deeper exploration of character, memory, and emotional truth. They discuss the ways art functions in our lives: as an escape, a mirror, and sometimes a veil. Through stories of artists, collectors, and curators, this episode considers how meaning is constructed—and why it often resists clarity. At its core, this is a conversation about ambiguity, perception, and the enduring power of art to hold complexity. About Art is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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