When Volta NY kicks off next week, artnet will be bringing together art market experts, museum and gallery directors, and art critics for a series of lively conversations on a variety of art world topics including how we collect digital art, the future of New York’s art scene, artists in Cuba after the resumption of relations with the U.S., and the role of art criticism today.

It starts Friday, March 6 at 6 p.m., when Claudia Calirman, assistant professor of art history at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, will head up a panel on Cuba’s art scene and the potential effects that the normalization of relations between the island nation and the U.S. will have on artists in Cuba (see How Will the New U.S. – Cuba Ties Affect the Art World? and Why is the Havana Biennial Afraid of Tania Bruguera?). Bronx Museum director Holly Block will weigh in, along with Elvis Fuentes, an art history PhD candidate at Rutgers University, and Gabriela Rangel, visual arts director at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, New York.

Saturday, March 7 at 1 p.m., Cornell DeWitt, artnet’s vice president of business development, heads up “An Insider’s Guide to New Ways of Collecting Art,” a discussion of new methods of collecting art whether in the white cube or online. He’s joined by art advisor Karen Boyer and Westwood Gallery co-founder James Cavello.

On Saturday, March 7 at 4:30 p.m., artnet News columnist Paddy Johnson helms “Art and the Cloud,” a discussion of collecting digital art featuring controversial art advisor and collector Stefan Simchowitz (see Is Stefan Simchowitz a Blessing or a Nightmare?), collector David Diamond, independent curator and consultant Myriam Vanneschi, and Transfer Gallery founder Kelani Nichole.

Sunday, March 8 at 1 p.m., artnet News’s national art critic Ben Davis will lead a discussion of gentrification and the role artists play in the phenomenon, asking whether New York’s art scene can survive. (Though he’s penned an essay entitled Why I Believe New York’s Art Scene Is Doomed, he hopes there’ll be an argument for its endurance). Clocktower curator John Ahearn will be one of the combatants, as will Hunter College urban affairs professor Tom Angotti and Ann Fensterstock, author of Art on the Block: Tracking the New York Art World From SoHo to the Bowery, Bushwick and Beyond.

Sunday, March 8 at 4:30, artnet News editor in chief Benjamin Genocchio will lead staff critics Blake Gopnik and Christian Viveros-Fauné in a conversation about how in the Internet age, anyone has the ability to sound off in public about art—the question is, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The panels, which are organized in partnership with GalleryLog, will take place during New York’s Armory Arts Week, next door to the Armory Show on Hudson River’s Pier 90.