JULIAN LENNON

JULIAN LENNON

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Singer-songwriter · Documentary Filmmaker · Founder of The White Feather Foundation
Photographer/Author of Life’s Fragile Moments

I think a lot of joy comes from helping others. One of the things that I've been really focusing on is finding that balance in life, what’s real and what’s true and what makes you happy. How can you help other people feel the same and have a happier life? I think whatever that takes. So if that's charity, if that's photography, if that's documentary, if that's music, and I can do it, then I'm going to do it.

From Venice Biennale to the Pritzker Prize

From Venice Biennale to the Pritzker Prize

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Conversation with MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO Exec. Director · Pritzker Architecture Prize
Fmr. Exec. Director · Venice Biennale · Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture

When I started and I had to decide what to do in life - because I was working with museums, in exhibition design, and on the restoration of buildings - and then at some point, I had the chance to arrive at the Venice Biennale and my whole perspective changed. And it changed because I was working with living artists and architects. Until that moment, I was working around Old Masters, works in museums, and things that were there with the aura of history. And all of a sudden I was dealing with living architects and artists, and this was, for me, the most incredible experience. So I decided to leave all the rest, because I was doing quite a lot at the same time, and to concentrate on the Biennale.

RALPH GIBSON

RALPH GIBSON

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Award-winning Photographer
Leica Hall of Fame Inductee · Recipient of the French Legion of Honor

I wouldn't be able to effectively delineate where my life ends and photography begins. They're one and the same. If my eyes are open, I'm seeing. If I'm seeing, I'm essentially in that valence within which, or from within which come the images. In that book, Self Exposure, one of the things I did realize as I was writing it: all autobiographies are chronological and anecdotal. That's the way they unfold. And I realized that there were certain decisions I had made along the way that were crucial. And there was really only a handful of them. But I was very fortunate because I had that initial desire to be a photographer. I don't even know if it was a desire. I think it was something much further beyond that. I would have to say it was more of a...I didn't really choose photography, it sort of chose me, you know. I mean, nolo contendere. I just did what I knew I had to do. There was a sense of devoir, you know, you just do it. Claude Lévi-Strauss the great social anthropologist has made this sort of thing clear: Society changes and with it the context through which we observe something has changed as well. And so I like the role of art in society and my relationship to my society and to art in my society. Now I'm interested in this phase of my life and how does the mind influence the mind? 

ERIC FISCHL

ERIC FISCHL

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Artist

The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.

APRIL GORNIK

APRIL GORNIK

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Artist · Environmentalist
Co-founder of The Church · Arts & Creativity Center
Co-director of Sag Harbor Cinema Board

I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to be a message per se. I'd rather people look at the natural world and see the heartbreaking beauty of it and sense its fragility and its impermanence and their own impermanence and fragility and then have a response to that rather than say, you know, you have to act, you have to do something. I would hope that would inspire action rather than to cudgel them with a directive.

Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre

Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre

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Conversation with JACQUES FRANCK · Art Historian for Louvre Museum & Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at UCLA

Da Vinci certainly must have been very well organized because you can't make so much work without a base in the organization of your life which is very strict. You can't go and penetrate such high intellectual spheres unless you're a man of good. Do you understand what I mean? To have some ideal of perfection, beauty, and humanity inside yourself…Art is art, and that's all. To me, art is the expression of beauty, and beauty is something like the sun, shall we say. An absolute.

SIRI HUSTVEDT

SIRI HUSTVEDT

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Novelist and Essayist

The reason I think you should read in these other disciplines is because it will help you in your own work. Now I really mean that. I think what has happened with the fragmentation of disciplines is that when problems arise. ...the people working in the discipline are unable to see avenues out of the problem that they would easily see if they had worked through problems in other disciplines.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

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Conversation with DWANDALYN R. REECE, Ph.D.
Acting Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs
Curator of Music and Performing Arts

This museum, this institution has a long history and actually, the idea of a museum goes back to maybe 100 years ago when Civil War veterans wanted a monument recognizing the service and the sacrifice of African Americans during the war effort. It wasn't until the mid-late 80s when congressman John Lewis with some other colleagues started to bring forth the idea that the Smithsonian needed to have a presence to recognize the significance and contributions of African Americans to the history of this country.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

National Museum of Women in the Arts

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Conversation with Director SUSAN FISHER STERLING

I came to work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts thirty-two years ago. I really took to the idea that the museum was controversial, that a lot of men said, "Why do you need a women's museum? There are so many other museums. Why do women have to be separated?"

MARK SELIGER

MARK SELIGER

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Photographer

I always tell people the worst picture can ever take is one you don't take. And that is a simple philosophy. If you don't go out there and do the work, then you will never know. You may think there's going to be another great snowstorm. You might think there's going to be another great moment where a block is going to have a certain kind of rhythm or a culture is going to have a certain amount of innocence or a musician is going to be as reluctant or vulnerable or sympathetic. You just have to embrace the moment and do the work.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre

UNESCO World Heritage Centre

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Conversation with MECHTILD RÖSSLER · Director 2015-2021

It's a very unique instrument. It has now 193 countries, which have ratified it. The idea of this convention is really unique because it is about heritage of outstanding universal value.

The New Museum

The New Museum

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Conversation with Fmr. Chief Curator Richard Flood
International Leadership Council and Ideas City Initiative

When you're looking, really look very, very hard at the new. Look very, very hard at what challenges you. If you're bothered by it, go deeper. So it was "Don't take the easy way out and say 'I love that'. 'Why do you love it?' 'I just feel it.' No, unacceptable. Just feeling it is not enough, if you're a responsible party. If you're a member of the public, fine, have whatever kind of experience you want, but if you're a professional, know why you're doing it.

The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection

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Conversation with Director Ian Wardropper

I firmly believe that the arts should be a part of everybody's education. It's not just learning the history of art, but it's about opening up creativity as a means that can be useful to somebody throughout one's life.

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology

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Conversation with Director & Chief Curator Valerie Steele

Like many of us, I was always personally interested in fashion as a means of communication and masquerade, but it was in graduate school when a classmate of mine did a report on two scholarly articles about the Victorian corset that I suddenly had an epiphany, and I realized that fashion was a part of culture, and I could study fashion history.

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST

HANS-ULRICH OBRIST

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Curator · Writer · Artistic Director of Serpentine Galleries

I’ve always thought that curating has to do with junction making. I’m always thinking of ways to bring people together and make connections between different worlds. I think, if we want to address the big question or challenges of the 21st century, it's very important that we go beyond the fear of pooling knowledge and move beyond these silos of knowledge to bring the different disciplines together.

Mia Funk

Mia Funk

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Founder of The Creative Process

What is very important to me is to create work that is meaningful, to reach beyond my particular concerns to speak to others and their concerns and interests, to do something that inspires the next generation and which is larger than myself.

AMI VITALE

AMI VITALE

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Award-Winning Photographer & Filmmaker
Executive Director of Vital Impacts

When are we all going to start to care about one another? Because all of our individual choices do have impacts. And I just think the demands that we place on this planet, on the ecosystems, are what are driving conflict and human suffering. In some cases, it's really the scarcity of resources, just like water. In others, it's the changing climate and the loss of fertile lands to be able to grow food. But in the end, it's always the people living in these places that really suffer the most. All of my work today, it’s not really about wildlife, and it's not just about people either. It's about how deeply interconnected all of those things are. People and the human condition are the backdrop of every one of the stories on this planet.

PETRA CORTRIGHT

PETRA CORTRIGHT

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Artist

I think to pursue mystery and beauty, these things are a bit subjective, so you can't really tell people exactly what it shouldn't be about. And also I have to preserve these things for myself. I primarily make the work for myself, so if I don't have some questions that are unanswered, even for me, then there's not really an interest to like keep going otherwise. So it's also sort of protection and a preservation mindset that I have about leaving things really open for other people and for myself.

LEE JAFFE

LEE JAFFE

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Artist, Musician, Poet
Author of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads

Jean-Michel Basquiat's combination of words and images, this visual poetry, just from a cultural standpoint has been so important. When I met him in 1983, black people were not allowed in the art market, pretty much. And you see that he broke down this barrier, which opened the door for all this multiculturalism within the art market. And you can't diminish the importance of that at all. It's helped to give a voice and an audience to all these incredible artists that might not have had that.

MAX COOPER

MAX COOPER

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Electronic Musician · Fmr. Computational Biologist

As technology becomes more dominant, the arts become ever more important for us to stay in touch the things that the sciences can't tackle. What it's actually like to be a person? What's actually important? We can have this endless progress inside this capitalist machine for greater wealth and longer life and more happiness, according to some metric. Or we can try and quantify society and push it forward. Ultimately, we all have to decide what's important to us as humans, and we need the arts to help with that. So, I think what's important really is just exposing ourselves to as many different ideas as we can, being open-minded, and trying to learn about all facets of life so that we can understand each other as well. And the arts is an essential part of that.