About Art

For this special extended episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman sits down with Roberta Smith for an expansive conversation about looking, judgment, beauty, pleasure, criticism, marriage, retirement, and what it means to spend a lifetime paying attention to art.

For more than 50 years, Roberta Smith has been one of the defining voices in American art criticism. She joined The New York Times in 1986 and became its first woman chief art critic before retiring in 2024. Her path began with the Whitney Independent Study Program, working with Donald Judd, and discovering a vocation that would place her in conversation with generations of artists and audiences.

Roberta describes this conversation as her “exit interview,” and she and Heidi take their time. They discuss how to know what you think when you stand before a work of art, why looking requires rigor, and how encountering unfamiliar work can overturn even deeply held convictions. Roberta reflects on outsider art, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, the changing art world, and the responsibility of critics, curators, and dealers.

They also explore the language of criticism, the power of writing for a public audience, the importance of passion in curating, and why beauty, taste, and pleasure deserve to be taken seriously. Roberta speaks candidly about gender, her marriage to fellow critic Jerry Saltz, the loss of a professional identity after retirement, and the possibility of finding a new relationship to the work she loves.

At the heart of the conversation is Roberta's conviction that looking is an active, transformative experience—and that we must remain willing to be surprised, challenged, and changed by art.

“Pleasure is its own form of knowledge.”

Artist and writer Hunter Biden joins Heidi Zuckerman for a conversation about making art, confronting fear, finding beauty, and the difference between the life that happens to us and the life we create.
Hunter has been drawing and making things since childhood, although painting became the center of his life much later. He talks about the daily practice that began during his recovery, the materials he first worked with, and how showing up at his painting table each morning gradually changed his relationship to himself and the world around him.
He and Heidi explore the difference between making art and sharing it, and why revealing something deeply personal can require a different kind of courage. Hunter reflects on the fear that shaped many of his earlier decisions, the freedom he experiences when painting, and what it means to choose how he reveals himself after so much of his private life has been exposed publicly.
Their conversation also considers the distinction between art and therapy, the unexpected joy and color that emerge in his work, and the ways mistakes can become the most beautiful parts of a painting.
They discuss Mark Rothko, mythology, universal truth, and the possibility that art connects us to experiences and emotions extending far beyond our individual lives.
Ultimately, Hunter describes how painting allows him to transform the weight of the past into material for creation, remain present, and build a life around something that gives him purpose and joy.

Artist Refik Anadol joins Heidi Zuckerman for a conversation about art, nature, memory, imagination, and the new forms of creativity made possible through technology.
Refik describes data as an artistic material—a way of giving form to memories and information that would otherwise remain invisible. He and Heidi talk about his early fascination with computers, his desire to make the invisible visible, and the role dreaming and imagination play in his work.
Their conversation moves deeply into the natural world. Refik shares his experiences with the Yawanawa people in the Amazon and a profound idea offered to him there: for them, nature is their AI—a living intelligence humans have not yet fully understood. He considers whether technology might now help us listen more closely to the natural world rather than move further away from it.
They also discuss an extinct Hawaiian bird whose final recorded song appears in DATALAND, his personal connection to memory after losing his uncle to Alzheimer’s, what it means to collaborate with a machine, and the responsibility artists have to help us see differently.
At the center of Refik’s work is a belief in art’s ability to transform perception—and his hope that what we make can leave meaningful memories behind.

Ryan Stanier joins Heidi Zuckerman for a conversation about access, permission, play, and what happens when we question the ways people have traditionally encountered art.
Ryan founded The Other Art Fair after watching artist friends struggle to find meaningful opportunities to show and sell their work. After 15 years and 100 fairs, he stepped away and eventually began asking what he would do differently if he started again.
His answer is Fair Play, a new artist-led fair built around a different economic model and a belief that encountering art can also be social, surprising, and fun.
Ryan and Heidi talk about why galleries and art fairs can still feel intimidating, how to break down barriers to entry, and the difference between telling people they are welcome and creating an environment in which they actually feel free to participate.
They also share stories about nudity, tattoos, defacing art, unexpected experiences, and the importance of creating spaces for adults to play.

Artist Rashid Johnson joins Heidi Zuckerman for a deeply personal conversation shaped by their long friendship and history of collaboration.
They talk about the difference between doing and being, and Rashid’s growing belief in the importance of becoming what he calls a “pauser”—someone willing to make room for patience, reflection, and even idleness in a culture that continually rewards action.
Rashid reflects on success and the difficulty of allowing ourselves to acknowledge when we are genuinely good at something. He questions the performance of humility and considers honesty as a more useful measure: being able to recognize both what we do well and where we fall short.
Their conversation moves through anxiety, freedom, peace, joy, regret, failure, middle age, parenthood, and love. Rashid talks about learning to understand anxiety as a tool rather than simply a condition, why joy feels more achievable to him than happiness, and why love and peace contain far more complexity and rigor than we sometimes allow them.
They also discuss Casa Gràcia, the residency Rashid helped create in Menorca, and what becomes possible when artists and writers are given time and space without the expectation of producing an outcome.

Chloë Catán is the executive director of the Lassonde Art Trail, a public art experience set within the landscape of Toronto’s new island and waterfront park.

In this episode of About Art, Heidi Zuckerman and Chloë discuss the origins of the trail and what it means to build art into people’s everyday lives. They explore the relationship between art and landscape, the possibilities and complexities of creating art in the public realm, and how artists can respond to the histories, ecology, and changing conditions of a particular place.

Chloë shares how growing up surrounded by music, theater, literature, and visual art shaped the way she sees, including an early encounter with Matisse that taught her that if she looked at an artwork long enough, something could be revealed.

Heidi and Chloë also talk about walking, discovery, slowing down, creating multiple entry points into contemporary art, and the choreography of encountering artworks in a landscape. Their conversation considers how public art can become part of the life of a city—and how seeing something differently can change our relationship to the world around us.

Heidi Zuckerman speaks with artist Danielle McKinney, whose intimate paintings depict women absorbed in moments of reflection, rest, reading, music, and contemplation.

Richly atmospheric and emotionally resonant, McKinney’s work draws on photography, film, literature, music, and memory while leaving space for viewers to bring their own stories to each painting.

In their conversation, Heidi and Danielle discuss solitude, imagination, beauty, motherhood, observation, and the emotional life of painting. Danielle speaks about growing up as an only child and finding an early home in books and storytelling; her transition from photography to painting; and why being alone can offer a way to reclaim what is sacred.

They also talk about music and silence, self-doubt and imperfection, learning to get out of one’s own way, and the women who inhabit Danielle’s paintings—women who are alone but not lonely, who do not perform for the viewer, and who, as Danielle says, “are not afraid to be seen.”

This conversation is the final episode in a special six-episode About Art series presented in collaboration with the Aspen Art Fair.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.