The Art Angle

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A weekly podcast that brings the biggest stories in the art world down to earth. Go inside the newsroom of the art industry's most-read media outlet, Artnet News, for an in-depth view of what matters most in museums, the market, and much more. 

  1. What Does It Take to Keep Art Basel on Top?

    3 days ago

    What Does It Take to Keep Art Basel on Top?

    This week the art world descends on Basel, a Swiss city on the Rhine River, where the latest edition of the world's most important modern and contemporary art fair is taking place. We're talking about Art Basel, of course. Its 290 exhibitors include all the top galleries of the world. It's a place where you can see and buy museum-quality Picassos and Warhols next to still-wet-paint by emerging artists, though there's not as many of those lately. Major collectors like Don and Mera Rubell are there, and so are celebrities like Kanye West and James Franco. At the center of it all is Noah Horowitz, who has been CEO of Art Basel since 2022. Noah and senior writer, Katya Kazakina, have known each other for years, throughout which he has stood at the helm of various art fairs, starting with the first online art fair called VIP in 2010. In 2011 he became the executive director of the Armory Show in New York and remained in that role for almost four years until 2015. He then advanced to Art Basel, becoming its head of the Americas, which put him in charge of Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art fair in the United States. In 2021 Sotheby's hired Noah to lead the gallery and private dealer services worldwide, but he stayed for just a year before returning to Art Basel triumphantly as its chief executive. Noah is also the author of the book Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market, published in 2011. For many years, Art Basel ran three art fairs, the original one in Basel, second one in Miami Beach, and the third one in Hong Kong, but in the last couple of years it added a fourth fair in Paris, and just this year another one in Qatar, raising questions about its expansion model and sustainability. It also introduced a new platform, Zero 10, for digital art, and the Art Basel Awards. Noah and Katya discussed the changing art market, digital art, and the strain art fairs place on mid-tier galleries.

    49 min
  2. Roberta Smith Still Has Notes

    11 Jun

    Roberta Smith Still Has Notes

    Roberta Smith is the exemplar of popular art criticism. For almost four decades, Smith was a familiar voice on the arts pages of the New York Times, serving for many of those years as co-lead art critic. Both feared and revered, she is known above all for close looking, precise description, and a style that’s accessible but serious. In 2019, she won the Rabkin Award for Lifetime Achievement. Smith moved to New York in the late 1960s, studying at the Whitney’s Independent Study Program and meeting her first mentor, the sculptor Donald Judd. In the early 1970s, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art and Paula Cooper Gallery, then began writing for various art magazines. In the 1980s, she began writing for larger audiences at the Village Voice, and then for the Times starting in 1986. Smith retired two years ago. This week, she is back because a film, called House of Criticism, about her and her husband, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, is making its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. Ben Davis took that as his cue to interview someone who has shaped the worlds of art-making and art-writing so deeply. Smith was nice enough to talk to him about her method, what she thinks people get wrong about the art world, and what she’s looking at now.

    40 min
  3. Re-Air: How Raphael Made—and Unmade—the Renaissance

    4 Jun

    Re-Air: How Raphael Made—and Unmade—the Renaissance

    This week we're re-airing a favorite episode featuring Kate Brown interviewing Ben Davis about the “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show is the first comprehensive international loan exhibition ever dedicated to him in the United States. There are 237 works in total—33 paintings, 142 drawings—and his Sistine Chapel tapestries. There are loans from the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, the Prado, the Uffizi, and the British Museum. Many of these works, according to the Met, have never been shown together, and some have never previously left Europe. Curated by Carmen C. Bambach, it took 17 years to assemble. No one quite captured divine beauty like Raphael did. But what is the story within the story of this artist who left indelible mark on western art? This week, we find out.

    39 min
  4. How Is Arts Patronage Changing?

    21 May

    How Is Arts Patronage Changing?

    During fair week in New York in mid-May, Andrew Russeth had the high pleasure of moderating a panel about the state of arts philanthropy at TEFAF New York. Joining him on stage at the Park Avenue Armory were two leading figures in American patronage, Sarah Arison and Michi Jigarjian. Arison was named president of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2024 at the age of only 39, making her the youngest person to ever hold that position. The president of the Arison Arts Foundation, she also chairs the board of YoungArts and serves on a variety of boards, including those of MoMA PS1 and American Ballet Theatre. Jigarjian is CEO of Work of Art Holdings and a partner at 7G Group. She is the force behind the culturally rich Rockaway Hotel out in Queens, and for 15 years led the Baxter St at CCNY as its president. A first-generation Mexican American, she is on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA PS1. During the panel, which was titled “Who Supports Art Now? Patronage in a Shifting Cultural Landscape,” Arison and Jigarjian charted how arts philanthropy has changed in recent decades and described how they and their peers are leading institutions and supporting artists in a period of tremendous uncertainty—and potential.

    38 min
  5. Does L.A's Bold New LACMA Museum Work?

    14 May

    Does L.A's Bold New LACMA Museum Work?

    Los Angeles has a new museum. Or a new vision for an old one. One of the most important museums in the country, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has just debuted a long-awaited new building. It’s designed by the revered Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. It cost three quarters of a billion dollars to realize. And long before it opened to the public last month, it has been controversial, for a whole host of reasons. It debuts with LACMA’s charismatic director Michael Govan promising not just a new LACMA, but a new vision for how museums show art and relate to the public. Ben Davis went out to Los Angeles to see the new building last month, and spoke to culture critic Carolina Miranda. Miranda has the gift of being both a sharp observer or L.A. art and a gifted translator of sometimes esoteric museum and architecture debate. She has published an analysis of Zumthor and Govan’s vision means for CityLab, called “For Better or Worse, the New LACMA Is an Instant LA Icon,” and she is here with me today to talk about what LACMA means for the city and for museums now.

    39 min
  6. What Biennials Reveal About the Art World

    30 Apr

    What Biennials Reveal About the Art World

    We talk a lot about biennials. Art is in some ways a very local, in-person thing. Yet artists and creators and writers are also part of a global conversation, looking at and thinking about each other across borders, and these big, recurring art festivals can serve as an opportunity or a prompt to think about what that bigger conversation. One of the biggest, the Venice Biennale, is coming up next month. It’s centered around a show called “In Minor Keys,” curated by the late curator Koyo Kouoh. My colleague Jo Lawson-Tancred recently had an article looking at the artists in that show, comparing where they were from and how old they were to the last several editions, to see how the art conversation was evolving. Meanwhile, Ben Davis just published a big project this week, looking at the last four years of art biennials around the world, from the big ones in places like Istanbul, Gwangju, São Paulo, Sharjah, and Venice, to smaller or more experimental ones. He gathered all the names of artists to find out who has shown the most around the world since the 2022 Venice Biennale four years ago. Some are familiar names, some were total surprises. With Venice soon to open, Ben speaks with Jo to talk about what we’ve learned from our different projects about where the global art conversation has been and where it might be headed.

    31 min
  7. Re-Air: The Young Painter Curators Are Rushing to Work With

    23 Apr

    Re-Air: The Young Painter Curators Are Rushing to Work With

    This interview with the painter Taina H. Cruz first came out for the opening of the Whitney Biennial, and on the occasion of the opening of Greater New York at MoMA PS1, where Cruz is also featured, we're resurfacing it. This is a lot of attention for an artist who is relatively young (born in 1998), and who just earned her MFA from the famed Yale School of Painting last year. She’s worked in a variety of media, but is known now for paintings often featuring images of Black female figures with a moody, woozy, sometimes unsettled or unsettling atmosphere. Sometimes Cruz works in suggestions of African American and Caribbean folklore, or intimations of horror and fantasy. Sometimes, she’s played on the images of celebrities like Halle Berry or Tyra Banks. Sometimes she reworks her own personal photos of neighbors from New York. Since Cruz is an artist that the curators of these big shows are looking to, critic Ben Davis, wanted to get a sense of the influences—from art and otherwise—that are shaping her approach to art, and what she makes of all the attention.

    41 min
  8. One of the Art Market's Biggest Secrets, Revealed

    16 Apr

    One of the Art Market's Biggest Secrets, Revealed

    What a difference 12 months makes! After years of declining sales in the auction realm, there are finally signs of life. The Artnet Intelligence Report: The Year Ahead 2026 reveals that global auction totals were up 13.3 percent in 2025 versus 2024. The full report, rich with new findings, is now available as a crisp PDF. The price? Free. (We hope that its contents will inspire you to subscribe to Artnet Pro, and to partake of the Artnet Price Database.) In the report’s cover story, “Dark Mode,” Artnet’s Art Detective columnist, Katya Kazakina, delves into the intriguing and shadowy world of private auctions, where big-league paintings (and cars, jewelry, and more) trade behind closed doors, for enormous sums. In some cases, only certain collectors are invited. Many in this clandestine business seem to enjoy it, and Kazakina charts the major players and their strategies. Meanwhile, in wide-ranging interviews, an auctioneer (maverick Joe Maddalena), an auctioneer-turned advisor (powerhouse Patti Wong), and an auctioneer-turned dealer (rainmaker David Schrader) share their insights on the changing state of play in public salesrooms. And Margaret Carrigan, who helms The Back Room newsletter for Artnet Pro, marshals data to explain the state of play in the art industry. There is more: Here’s the download link once more. On this week’s Art Angle podcast, Kazakina sat down with Andrew Russeth, Artnet Pro’s editor, to discuss private auctions, the Intelligence Report, and what to expect at the big May sales in New York.

    37 min
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A weekly podcast that brings the biggest stories in the art world down to earth. Go inside the newsroom of the art industry's most-read media outlet, Artnet News, for an in-depth view of what matters most in museums, the market, and much more. 

Information

  • Creator
    Artnet News
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    366
  • Copyright
    2019 ©
  • Show Website
    The Art Angle

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