What Art Podcasts Should You Listen To?

A shortlist of...11

Hi Everyone,

As always, thanks so much for subscribing, and thanks especially to those of you who have donated to support this project. (And please share the newsletter with others if you feel so inclined.)

This week I am recommending art podcasts.

I’m doing this because people often ask me which ones they should check out. I also recently realized it’s been a while since I surveyed what was being offered and I wanted to make sure I had a good sense of what was out there. Finally, I’ve always played with the idea of creating a podcast and wondered what might be additive in the current landscape.

There are now a lot of art podcasts—offered via Apple and Spotify and personal or organizational websites and other places—and the fact is that most of them are not great. From my perspective, I find this is because most of them, like a lot of other Internet offerings these days, serve up recycled information. (And this situation will probably get much worse with the growth of readily-accessible AI.) In the case of art podcasts, this recycled information most often focuses on how to make it as an artist (e.g. good business practices) or take good photographs.

Today I’m sharing a shortlist of 11 podcasts I think you should pay attention to. (Why 11? That’s what I ended up with :).) At the end of this list, I’m sharing others I thought were worth being aware of. The shortlist reflects my personal inclinations and I have chosen them because I believe they offer either unique content and/or they are well-researched and thoughtful.

Also, I want to say here how bad I find the experience of browsing podcasts to be. I wonder if others feel the same. As someone who has spent a lot of time focusing on digital curation strategies and art search in the past, it’s a bit crazy-making for me to see how bare-bones Apple and Spotify search is, especially for art-related content.

So below is my shortlist, and I accompany each choice with a brief rationale. As I am quite sure I have left some podcasts off, and/or that people might not agree with my choices, please, as usual, share your feedback with me.

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The Great Women Artists Podcast
Katy Hessel’s well-known podcast has a clear and necessary concept, great guests, and is always solidly presented. You know what you’ll hear each week and, according to reviews, GWA is a favorite for artists to have on while working in the studio. I’m curious though, with all of Hessel’s recent very-successful activities—especially her latest book, The Story of Art Without Men, and her Guardian column—how she will prioritize the podcast moving forward. It seems likely she is on her way to creating something like a Netflix series and I wonder how that will affect her time spent on the podcast.

The Week in Art
An authoritative, well-researched, award-winning international podcast. Features breaking art news, news about exhibitions and events, as well as insider insights—all from journalists at The Art Newspaper.

Death of an Artist
I recommended this outstanding project in my newsletter in December and I still agree with everything I said about it. I’m very much looking forward to what’s next from Helen Molesworth and I hope she teams up with Pushkin again.

The Modern Art Notes Podcast
I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve rarely listened to this podcast but it’s one of the most longstanding in the field. Why have I never invested time into it? I guess it’s never seemed as current as I wanted it to be or it never seemed to provide information I didn’t think I could get myself. Regardless, I am sure I am wrong about my pre-judging of it and I would have felt very strange not including it here as it’s got many fans and has had a pretty great selection of guests over the years. (N.B. I am going to use this newsletter as a catalyst to explore it again.)

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast
Featuring good guests, in a well-paced, well-researched format, Dialogues continues to be the best podcast offering from a contemporary gallery, though I am not sure which others exist. (Please share them with me if there are others you know of, and which are good :)). And it’s great to see Helen Molesworth continue to be hosting after the success of Death of an Artist. I’m very curious about what Dialogues will offer next season. I’d love to see something more concept-driven like a multiple-show series on one artist or one idea. Yet I assume the current flexibility of the podcast’s format is very helpful for the ever-expansive gallery, since it can adapt to its various and changing needs and the fast-changing nature of the contemporary art world.

Nota Bene: This Week in the Art World
Art world gossip! This show might gross you out or you might love it, but it is what it advertises itself as to be: “the podcast version of a boozy lunch at Sant Ambroeus in which adviser Benjamin Godsill and Vanity Fair art columnist Nate Freeman dish fresh art world gossip…peel back the curtain on auctions, galleries and fairs—and, critically, tell you where to eat and drink in every museum-stuffed port of call.” As someone who has spent 20+ years in the New York art world and has worked with Godsill and Freeman at different points, it’s definitely honest to who they are and it’s (for better or worse) how a good portion of the art world functions and speaks—and values VIPs and VIP events. There’s also insider information shared here (about people and organizations) that you absolutely won’t find on any other podcast. So I think (again, like others on the list) it’s fully worth being aware of, at the least.

A brush with…
Focused strictly on artists, this is another strong offering from The Art Newspaper. It features a great lineup of impressive artists at the forefront of artmaking. The last few months have featured Amy Sillman, Haroon Mirza, Alicja Kwade, and Nick Cave, for example.

The Art World: What If..?!
This show, hosted by Charlotte Burns—whose Burns Halperin Report I made the focus of my entire late December newsletter—asks what-if questions about the art future to important thinkers, creators, and innovators in the art world. It more or less holds to this concept and features an impressive and varied array of guests, mostly from New York, though they did a recent segment on the future of the LA art scene. Recent guests have been Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, Cecilia Alemani, Glenn Lowry, and Naomi Beckwith.

Art and Obsolesence
This is a podcast with a specific focus on art and technology, for those of you interested. Features a strong selection of artists, curators, and others engaged in this field, such as Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Arthur Jafa, Paola Antonelli, and Hito Steyerl.

Talk Art
This podcast is U.K.-based and features very entertaining dialogues between the hosts—actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament—and a special guest. Their guests are artists, curators, and gallerists, but sometimes actors, musicians, and journalists—which is refreshing. What’s also great is the show manages to make art conversation more accessible while still offering good insights into the world of art and treating art world issues seriously.

PROOF
I haven’t spent much time listening to this one, but it’s definitely unique as it’s the one podcast I have seen focused on NFT content. And this could turn you on or off. It seems promising as it’s hosted by the influential tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose. As well, in the brief time I have put into listening to it recently, I have appreciated its insights on various issues, such as Meta’s sunsetting of NFTs on Instagram, which I witnessed the launch of while working at Meta.

So that’s my 11. And here are some others I thought were worth knowing about, but didn’t make the shortlist. They are in no particular order.

1. Conversation Art

2. Art Slice

3. Photo Work

4. Immaterial

5. e-flux

6. Artcurious

7. The Art Angle

8. A Small Voice

9. Museum Confidential

10. Art Smack: Jerry Gogosian

11. Artelligence

12. Articulated

13. Bad at Sports

14. About Buildings + Cities

15. Serpentine Podcast

16. Art Sense

As usual, hoping this newsletter is helpful for you, and in this case, introduces you to one or more podcasts you didn’t know about. Please don’t hesitate to send feedback and have a wonderful rest of the week.

Best,

Matthew