Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that delves into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market, and much more, with input from our own writers and editors, as well as artists, curators, and other top experts in the field.
Shockingly enough, we are now coming up on the one-year anniversary of the lockdown of the United States. At this point last year, a creeping dread had begun to blanket the globe. And then, in March, it happened: COVID hit the East Coast and fanned out across the country, and within weeks whole areas of society were slammed shut, like windows during a hurricane.
In the art world, as everywhere else, the costs of the closures were immediately palpable with widespread furloughs and job cuts across the sector, enormous projected financial pain, and predictions of museums and galleries alike going dark for good.
Facing this economic catastrophe, many pundits in the art world quickly looked back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, and in particular, the Works Progress Administration for inspiration on how to meet the moment today. With Joe Biden in the White House, hopes for such an ambitious federal project have peaked.
But do we really understand the lessons of the New Deal’s art projects? And are they really the example we should be looking to today? To discuss, Artnet News’s chief art critic Ben Davis joins the podcast to flesh out the triumphs and failures of the past, and help us understand what needs to happen in the future.
Listen above and subscribe to the Art Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or catch up on past episodes here on Artnet News.)
Listen to Other Episodes:
The Art Angle Podcast: 5 Steamy, Whirlwind Romances That Changed Art History
The Art Angle Podcast: MoMA Curator Paola Antonelli on Design for the Post-Pandemic World
The Art Angle Podcast: Artist Daniel Arsham on How He Built a Creative Empire
The Art Angle Podcast: 8 Predictions on How the Art World Will Shift in 2021
The Art Angle Podcast: Can Art Help End the Era of Mass Incarceration?
The Art Angle Presents: A Star-Studded Art History Game Show (With Kids!)
The Art Angle Podcast: Jeffrey Deitch on How to Succeed in the Art Industry
The Art Angle Podcast: I Survived Zombie Art Basel Miami Beach
The Art Angle Podcast: Why Awol Erizku Is So Much More Than Just Beyoncé’s Baby Photographer