Museum Confidential

In our first show recorded before a "live" audience, we explore what it means to be a curator with Philbrook Museum of Art Chief Curator Catherine Whitney and Gilcrease Museum Senior Curator Laura Fry. The word is used all the time of late, but your grandmother probably went her whole life without claiming to have "curated" anything. And while so many people today claim to curate this or that, the ones who truly own the title are, of course, actual curators.

We recently stumbled upon a fascinating blog post written last year by Graham Boettcher, Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama. The headline of the post reads, "DIRECTOR RECKONS WITH ART MUSEUM'S UGLY PAST." Boettcher's piece looks at the museum's troubling Jim Crow-era policies, which occurred in the first dozen years of its existence. We recently spoke with Boettcher about this, and much more.

Museums have a problem. Too much stuff. But whereas you might take a few carloads of personal surplus to Goodwill, or maybe just set up a yard sale, museums don't have that luxury. Sometimes they end up building costly expansions just to contain the overflow. New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin visited museums of various budgets and sizes to see just how big a problem museum storage has become. She's our guest.

Time once again for our annual round-table with three experts from different facets of the art world. The roster includes Hrag Vartanian, editor of the popular arts and culture website, Hyperallergic; Philbrook Director Scott Stulen; and artist Sharon Louden, who is currently putting the finishing touches on her brand-new installation in the Philbrook Rotunda. Louden's installation will be on view for the rest of 2019.

Less than 20 miles from Washington, DC, there's a place called Glenstone. It was founded by Mitch and Emily Rales and opened in 2006. Last fall, Glenstone took a big leap forward. But what, exactly, is Glenstone? It's an art museum, with 200+ acres of grounds. It's private. It's free. Kids and chewing gum aren't allowed, nor are taking pictures or using cell phones. What is Glenstone, as a museum, trying to do? Emily Rales, who also serves as director and chief curator of Glenstone, tells us all about it.

For the #1 slot on his list of Top 10 Best Art Shows of 2018, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz selected an exhibition at the Guggenheim by Swedish artist Hilma af Klint titled "Paintings for the Future."  He wrote, "The most magnificent sight in New York this year was the drop-dead first gallery showing of kaleidoscopically colored, structurally complex, completely abstract paintings made in the first two decades of the 20th century by [this] unacknowledged Swedish visionary.

Art conservation. It's sort of a magic trick. But when you look closer, you find immensely talented people using skills and techniques passed down over generations alongside cutting-edge technology. On this episode of Museum Confidential, we chat with Julian Baumgartner of Chicago-based Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration. He's taken his family business into the 21st century by embracing new media...and has become a bit of a social media star in the process.

Close your eyes. Imagine a museum. Chances are, we're all seeing variations on the same theme. Open galleries, high ceilings, a guard standing in the corner wearing a blazer. These are stereotypes, of course, but you see the point here. Museums DON'T have to be quite so stereotypical. One place that's trying to change how we interact with museum spaces is The Underground Museum in Los Angeles. We recently sat down with that museum's director, Megan Steinman.

Years ago, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria, began inviting artists to sift through its 4 million or so objects and then create exhibitions filtered through each artist's unique point of view. Recently, the museum asked filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner Juman Malouf to jointly take on this gargantuan task. We speak with the Kunsthistorisches Museum's curator, Jasper Sharp, to learn how the Anderson-Malouf show (which closes in April of 2019) was dreamed up, put together, and more.

On this installment of Museum Confidential, we visit California's High Desert with our roving correspondent, Preston Poe (of The Preston Poe Show podcast). As we often say, there are many kinds of museums. One of them is a tiny, refurbished photo-processing booth in Joshua Tree, which is now dedicated entirely to crochet. The museum's founder, as you'll hear, knows how to spin a yarn or two. And rightly so.

Legendary filmmaker and so-called "Pope of Trash" John Waters has a brand new project in his beloved hometown. On view through January 6, 2019, at the Baltimore Museum of Art, "Indecent Exposure" is the first retrospective of Waters' visual arts career, featuring more than 160 provocative photographs, sculptures, and video/sound works. We sat down to chat with him about the show, the 30th anniversary of "Hairspray," and a few other things.

In our special Halloween episode, we step into the macabre with acclaimed writer Mark Dery, author of the new biography, Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Genius and Mysterious Life of Edward Gorey. Often called the “Grandfather of Goth,” Gorey (who died in 2000) influenced Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snicket, and countless others. 

We all scream. The Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) is attempting to blaze a trail in the museum world. But sometimes that's a rocky road. First up, we chat with Madison Utendahl, MOIC's Head of Content and Social. And then, and for an entirely different take on the emergence of "Instagrammable" or "Pop-Up" museums, we call up Amanda Hess, Critic-at-Large at The New York Times. 

Museums aren't always meant to be enjoyable experiences. That doesn't mean they are not important and essential. On this episode, we sit down with Dr. David Pilgrim, founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan. The museum was born out of his personal collection, one that began decades ago, when Dr. Pilgrim was growing up in Alabama. Our podcast also profiles a recent art project utilizing the Confederate flag.

This episode offers a chat with Alexis Light, the Senior Manager of Media Relations and Marketing at The Frick Collection. She is that NYC museum's thought leader when it comes to public relations, marketing, and social media content. Also in this pod, we begin an occasional feature called "At a Museum in America." Our far-flung, gallery-going correspondent for this new feature is one Preston Poe, an independent curator, artist, and songwriter who also hosts "The Preston Poe Show" (which you can access at prestonpoe.com).