Installation view of Francis Bacon, Portrait of George Dyer Crouching (1966). Image courtesy Sotheby's.

Journalist Eileen Kinsella spoke with Megan Fox Kelly about her thoughts on the New York Spring art auctions, including implications for fewer collections from estates and what types of art are on the rise.

There are fewer collections coming from estates than in other years, and those estates are smaller, but material amassed by the late Miami collector Rosa de la Cruz and the screenwriter and producer Norman Lear collection will be closely watched, art advisor Megan Fox Kelly said. “The auction houses really built these sales brick by brick, consignment by consignment,” she said. “I don’t see collectors feeling compelled to ‘cash in’ right now by selling works they own unless an artist’s auction market looks particularly compelling.”

What’s trending right now? “We’ve seen a resurgence of interest in Impressionism after a period of it feeling rather flat,” Fox Kelly said. “New buyers are turning their attention to that market. It has to be the right picture, of course, but when something great and fresh to market comes up, we’re seeing pretty competitive bidding and new price levels.”

Read the rest of Megan’s thoughts at artnet here.

Leonora Carrington, Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945. COURTESY SOTHEBY'S

Journalist Abby Schultz spoke with Megan Fox Kelly about her thoughts on the New York Spring art auctions and and the implications for collectors.

New York-based art advisor Megan Fox Kelly agrees estimates for the upcoming auctions are fairly conservative, noting that none are “shockingly low” or “shockingly high.”

“We’re going through a kind of crazy time in terms of what’s happening in the world,” Fox Kelly says. “There just seems to be a bit of caution and with caution, a little bit of pullback.”

Read the rest of Megan’s thoughts at Barron’s Penta here.

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Listen to our latest podcast episode featuring Martin Gayford, art critic and author of Venice: City of Pictures, published by Thames & Hudson. Gayford’s book brings the richness and complexity of Venice's centuries of history to life with his rumination on the city’s paintings, sculpture, and architecture that are both familiar to us and new revelations.

The conversation shines a special spotlight on the magical, cultural city in advance of the Venice Biennale, opening April 20, 2024.

“So there were all these people passing through, actually almost the same piece of space, looking at exactly the same view. And so there were social connections, and it also established a reputation for what it really still has, which is being the city of art. It was a city where people who were interested in the arts were drawn to go and stay.”
– Martin Gayford

Martin Gayford is an author and journalist. He studied philosophy at Cambridge and art history at the Courtauld Institute of London University. He's written prolifically about art and jazz, contributed regularly to the Daily Telegraph, and also to many art magazines and exhibition catalogs. He was art critic of the Spectator from 1994 to 2002, subsequently at the Sunday Telegraph before becoming chief art critic for Bloomberg News until 2013.

Martin's publications and writings include studies of the lives and works of van Gogh, Gauguin, Constable, Michelangelo, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley and several beautiful collaborations with David Hockney.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Listen to our latest podcast episode featuring Leslie Ramos, author of Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take, published by Lund Humphries. Ramos’ book is a guidepost for cultural institutions, philanthropists, artists, galleries, and even financial advisors and public policy advisors on the importance of supporting the arts and doing it strategically.

And what I have found is that support does come at every level. And that if institutions manage to engage potential donors, and their mission is compelling and they can make a case for why they would need support, they will get support, even if not necessarily always at the million dollar plus level.
– Leslie Ramos

Leslie Ramos is a philanthropy and strategy advisor specializing in the arts and cultural sectors. She's the co-founder of the strategic consulting agency The Twentieth that provides independent expertise around giving, fundraising, collecting, and engaging with the arts ecosystem. Alongside her professional work, Ramos supports and holds voluntary positions in multiple arts nonprofits, and contributes to various international art media outlets, universities, commenting and lecturing on philanthropy and museum studies.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

The stand of Galerie Eric Coatelem at Tefaf Maastricht's 2024 edition. Photo by Loraine Bodewes. Courtesy of Tefaf

Journalist Riah Pryor spoke with Megan Fox Kelly about her thoughts on TEFAF Maastricht’s changes to the fair, specifically in regards to encouraging younger audiences.

There were also early signs that Tefaf’s efforts to welcome new generations of buyers were paying off. “There were young collectors at the preview days—not just the young curators but young private collectors. And they were engaging not only in the more contemporary art but in Old Masters, design, Asian art and antiquities, prints and works on paper,” says Megan Fox Kelly, the New York-based art adviser.

Read Pryor’s full coverage in The Art Newspaper here.

On the occasion of TEFAF Maastricht 2024, Megan Fox Kelly was invited to participate in a panel titled The Thrill of the Chase: Stories of Great Discoveries in Art, presented by Artnet. Megan was joined by Dr. Jacques Schuhmacher (Senior Provenance Research Curator supported by The Polonsky Foundation, Victoria & Albert Museum); Will Elliott (Colnaghi Elliott Master Drawings, Founder, Elliott Fine Art); and moderated by Andrew Russeth (Editor, Artnet News Pro).

In this talk, the panelists analyze the competitive landscape of art collecting, including discussions about how the internet has democratized the search, authenticity and provenance concerns, and ways collectors can develop their connoisseurship.

Watch the panel recording in the video above or on TEFAF’s website.

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Listen to our latest podcast episode featuring Natasha Degen, author of Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol, published by Reaktion Books and distributed by The University of Chicago Press. Degen’s book provides a unique perspective on the accelerating convergence of art and fashion, and highlights how Andy Warhol anticipated the merging of the art and fashion worlds as we see them today.

As fashion looks to art in its designs and its presentation and its runway shows and its marketing, then maybe there is less distinction between art and fashion. And maybe that movement between the two fields is something that is more possible now than ever before.
– Natasha Degen

Natasha Degen is Professor and Chair of Art Market Studies. She is a recognized writer and critic, having contributed to publications including The New Yorker, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Artforum, and Frieze; she serves as a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal for Art Market Studies. Among other prizes, Degen received a $30,000 art criticism award from the Andy Warhol Foundation and a Luce Scholarship which sent her to Beijing for a year. She compiled and edited The Market (MIT Press, 2013), an interdisciplinary anthology tracing the art market's interaction with contemporary practice. 

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Listen to our podcast conversation with Joanna Moorhead, author of Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington, published by Princeton University Press. Her book tells the dramatic story of an artist who lived life on her own terms in a way that was radically modern for the 1930s, 1940s and later how her life and art are inextricably entwined. Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the vanguards of Surrealism—one of the few women artists in the largely male circle of artists of that movement. Challenging the conventions of her time, Carrington abandoned family, society, and her home in England to embrace new experiences and forge a unique artistic style in Europe and the Americas.

“She arrived in [Paris] the autumn of 1937, and it was this great moment to be in Paris because surrealism was in its mature moment, and everybody who was anybody in that Western art world at the time was there. Picasso was there, Dalí was there, Breton was there, Duchamp was there. Man Ray was there. All these big names of 20th century art.

There were a few other women, but they were mostly men, and Leonora was by far the youngest of the group. And that was her introduction, really, to this whole new world, a world in which she could be the person and the artist that she felt she'd been born to be.” – Joanna Moorhead

Author Joanna Moorhead's career spans decades in the world of journalism. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Observer, The Times (London), The Art Newspaper and many others. In her art writing, Joanna has cultivated a unique expertise for unraveling the mysteries behind artists' lives and their work, which led her to the heart of surrealist art, where she meticulously uncovered the fascinating story of Leonora Carrington, who also happens to be her distant cousin.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

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Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

Every holiday season, we love creating our list of some of our favorite art books for holiday gifting. This year, we are excited to share our list on Giving Tuesday as we will be donating proceeds from any book sales to Read To Grow, a not-for-profit whose mission is to promote language skills and literacy for children.

Which books will you add to your gift list?

Van Gogh's Cypresses

By Susan Alyson Stein

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, Van Gogh’s Cypresses is the first book to study the artist’s fascination with the “tall and dark trees.” This richly illustrated exhibition catalog tells the story of van Gogh’s initial investigations to his full realization of the motif in paintings such as The Starry Night.

Why I picked this: The book, like the exhibition, tells the story of the last years and months of Van Gogh’s life, and how his return again and again to the motif of cypresses continued to fascinate and sustain him.

Manet/Degas

By Stephan Wolohojian and Ashley Dunn
With contributions by Stéphane Guégan, Denise Murrell, Haley S. Pierce, Isolde Pludermacher, and Samuel Rodary

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manet/Degas is the first book to consider the two artists’ careers in parallel—how their decisions overlapped, diverged, and shaped each other's artistic choices. This richly illustrated, in-depth study offers an opportunity to reevaluate preeminent artworks such as Manet's Olympia and Degas's The Absinthe Drinker.

Why I chose this book: Quite simply, a landmark exhibition and landmark book on arguably two of the greatest artists of the 19th century.

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence

Edited by Claudia Schmuckli

Published by DelMonico Books and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF), Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence features a new body of work by American artist Kehinde Wiley. The sculptures and paintings highlighted in this exhibition catalog expand on the artist’s 2008 series of a group of large-scale portraits of young Black men inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22).

Why I chose this book: Underlying the beauty and complexity of Wiley’s masterful images are powerful messages about social injustice that should awaken all of us.

Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988-2009

Preface by Elizabeth Smith.
Text by Douglas Dreishpoon, Suzanne Boorsch.
Roundtable with Katharina Gross, Pepe Karmel, Mary Weatherford.

Published by Radius Books in conjunction with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, this book is the first to explore the late period of Frankenthaler’s art and life and features over 90 plates and archival images from 1988 to 2009. In these later years, Frankenthaler’s practice evolved through the use of mixed media and diverse processes.

Why I chose this book: Like so many artists, Frankenthaler’s early work dominated the conversation about her career; yet her late work demonstrates an aesthetic confidence that is now being fully appreciated.

Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape

By Elliot Bostwick Davis

Published by Rizzoli Electa, Edward Hopper & Cape Ann illuminates the history of Edward Hopper’s years in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts in the 1920’s. This period is when Hopper first began to explore watercolor painting outside, and discovered one of his favorite subjects: houses and vernacular architecture.

Why I chose this book: The beautiful story of Hopper and his artist wife Josephine Nivison and her role in his burgeoning career is evidenced in this remarkable collection of early works.

Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature

Edited with text by Stephanie Mayer Heydt. Edited with illustrated chronology by Audrey Lewis. Foreword by Rand Suffolk, Thomas Padon. Text by Ellen E. Roberts, Karli Wurzelbacher, Ara H. Merjian

Published by DelMonico Books, High Museum of Art and Brandywine River Museum of Art, this exhibition catalog is the first major monograph of Stella’s nature paintings. The exhibition and book provide an overdue spotlight on the artist’s wide-ranging body of work that ranged from strikingly realistic to poetically visionary in its unique expression of the natural world.

Why I chose this book: Stella’s pure paintings of the natural world are pure joy—rapturous Modernist creations.

Catalogue Rothko Retrospective

Published by Fondation Louis Vuitton and Citadelles & Mazenod, this exhibition catalog highlights the first retrospective in France of Rothko’s art, bringing together 115 works from major institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Art, the Tate and the Phillips Collection, as well as from major international private acquisitions, including the artist's family collection. The works are exhibited in a presentation that closes resembles the artist’s wishes.

Why I chose this book: This once-in-a lifetime exhibition in Paris and accompanying book show us why we can never stop looking at and thinking about Rothko’s work.

Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph

By Richard Lacayo

Published by Simon & Schuster, I recently spoke with Richard Lacayo on my podcast series, Reading the Art World, where we discussed the careers of six great artists, including Monet, Renoir, Pollock, Hopper and Nevelson, many of whom produced some of their best works in old age.

Why I chose this book: Each chapter on each artist tells the story of their transformative inspiration and creativity in their later years.

All the Beauty in the World

By Patrick Bringley

Published by Simon & Schuster, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me provides an intimate portrait of the museum from the perspective of a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard. Readers follow Bringley as he guards delicate treasures, strolls the galleries, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care.

Why I chose this book: Bringley reminds us how visits to art museums can be transformative and inspiring experiences—-if we slow down enough to really look.

Your Brain on Art

By Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Published by Penguin Random House, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us illuminates the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts. Authors Magsamen and Ross provide research that shows how engaging with art for even short periods of time reduces cortisol—ultimately extending your life and improving your health.

Why I chose this book: We know that art inspires our lives—this book shows us the science behind the experience.

Simone Leigh

Edited with introduction by Eva Respini. Foreword by Jill Medvedow.
Text by Vanessa Agard-Jones, Rizvana Bradley, Dionne Brand, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Malik Gaines, Saidiya V. Hartman, Daniella Rose King, Simone Leigh, Jessica Lynne, Nomaduma Masilela, Katherine McKittrick, Uri McMillan, Sequoia Miller, Steven Nelson, Tavia Nyong’o, Lorraine O'Grady, Rianna Jade Parker, Yasmina Price, Anni Pullagura, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Christina Sharpe, Hortense J. Spillers

Published by DelMonico Books and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Simone Leigh is the first major monograph of the artist’s sculptures, videos, installations and social practices exploring ideas of community, Black feminism and the African diaspora.

Why I chose this book: Multiple writers, scholars, artists, sharing their perspective on Simone Leigh’s multi-faceted work.

Vermeer

Edited by Gregor J M Weber, Pieter Roelofs and Taco Dibbits (all of whom work at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Published by Thames & Hudson,Vermeer was created to accompany the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The book is the first major authoritative study of Vermeer's life and work for many years, shedding light on all thirty-seven of his paintings. Richly illustrated using thoughtfully chosen printing materials, Vermeer is the definitive volume for any admirer of the Dutch masters.

Why I chose it: I love it for everyone, including me, who was unable to see the once in a lifetime exhibition.

Sotheby's Modern Evening auction in New York on November 13, 2023. Image courtesy Sotheby's.

Journalist Angelica Villa spoke with Megan Fox Kelly about her thoughts on the fall marquee New York auctions. Kelly shares that the “sober” environment—where prices are fair and bidding doesn’t climb to stunning heights—is good news for some.

Serious collectors often leverage such a “softer” auction environment as an opportunity to access works previously beyond their reach, said New York art adviser Megan Fox Kelly. She emphasized that a more tempered marketplace can put some buyers at a strategic advantage when they’re calculating acquisitions with mind-bending values. “It’s a buyer’s market,” she said.

At Christie’s, Monet’s Le Bassin aux nymphéas (1917-19) went for $74 million during a 20th-century evening sale. “Whoever bought that painting, the guarantor, bought it really well,” said Kelly. “It could have been a whole lot more.”

So, where is the market right now? Advisers downplayed the significance of short-term drops in overall auction sales as a metric for assessing the trade’s health. Compared to the 2008 recession, for instance, there is a far more global spread of buyers, said Kelly, meaning that the market’s recovery time from any given slowdown is now significantly shorter. The bottom line: “I think there is still a lot of discretionary money out there,” Kelly said.

Read Villa’s full coverage in ARTnews here.

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For this month’s episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly interviews Richard Lacayo, author of Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph, published by Simon & Schuster. The book highlights the careers of some of history’s finest artists — Titian, Goya, Monet, Matisse, Hopper and Nevelson — many of whom produced some of their best works in old age. As Richard’s book reveals, the importance of much of this late-in-life work would not be fully understood or appreciated until decades later.

"I wanted artists who, in their long life, did some of their most powerful art in their seventies and eighties. It doesn't have to be, by any means, their only powerful period. But, we all recognize now, they went out on a high note." — Richard Lacayo

Richard is one of the world’s leading art critics and he was a longtime writer and editor at Time Magazine. From 2003 to 2016 he was the magazine’s art and architecture critic. Richard has also written on art and architecture for People, Foreign Policy, and Graydon Carter's new online publication, Air Mail. In 2013, he delivered a lecture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on the late careers of artists, the topic of his latest book.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here.

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

Ed Ruscha, Securing the Last Letter (Boss) (1964). Image courtesy Sotheby's.

Journalist Eileen Kinsella spoke with Megan Fox Kelly about her thoughts on the November New York auctions. Kelly provides insight into the slower, more cautious pace of collecting, and highlights that the quality of works coming to the auction block are noteworthy.

“I would say that collectors are being more selective, more discerning in the last few months; thinking carefully about what they wish to add to their collections, whether this is the right artist, the right work, the right time to acquire,” said advisor Megan Fox Kelly. “And that is not a negative—I’m seeing a more thoughtful approach. Collectors are taking more time. There is less pressure for them to make quick decisions because the market in general is less frenzied.”

Fox Kelly underscored the quality of the material on offer. “There are really exceptional examples at each house: the great Joan Mitchell and the Monet Nymphaes, the Cézannes and Gorky at Christie’s, and the extraordinary material from the Landau collection at Sotheby’s,” she said. “The fact that there are fewer estates being sold this season is more a matter of circumstance than a reflection of a retracting market.”

Read Kinsella’s full coverage in Artnet here.

For this episode of our podcast "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with art historian and author, Diana Seave Greenwald, about her recent book, “Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life,” was published by Princeton University Press. The book is a fascinating new biography about legendary art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner, who remains somewhat of an enigmatic figure. Diana seeks to separate fact from fiction with her in-depth research and what emerges is a multifaceted portrait of a trailblazing collector and patron of the arts—from Italian Renaissance paintings to Chinese antiquities—who built a museum unprecedented in its curatorial vision.

“ I hope they'll understand that Isabella Stewart Gardner is someone who was often at the vanguard of her time, and that her museum is continuing to try to do that, that part of her legacy is to be bold and to be out in front. I think often people think of the Gardner Museum as a place that's frozen in time, and we're not. And we try to honor her legacy in that way, and I hope it's a fun read for them." — Diana Greenwald

Diana is an art and economic historian and is the William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. She received a D.Phil. in History from the University of Oxford. Before doctoral study, Diana earned an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from Oxford and received a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Columbia University. She is considered an expert in nineteenth-century American and French art.

This new biography inspired the exhibition “Inventing Isabella”, which opened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA on October 19th and runs through January 15th, 2024.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple.

Order the book here.

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

Journalist Brian Boucher compiled the definitive list of the world’s top 75 art professionals for ARTnews. Within this list, he named Megan Fox Kelly Art Advisory one of the top 10 art advisors in the world.

“Having advised since 1989, New York’s Megan Fox Kelly began her career as a curator, and describes her work as curating collections ranging from vintage photography to postwar and contemporary art. She has served numerous institutions and estates, including the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. She’s a frequent go-to expert on the art market for papers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.”

Read the full list here.

For the 20th episode of our podcast "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Susan Davidson, author of the new book “Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting,” published in August by Hatje Cantz. Reading the Art World. The book accompanies an exhibition at The Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien in Vienna— the first presentation in more than a quarter century to fully examine the mastery of Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), a major figure who shaped postwar art.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for me to delve into an aspect of Motherwell's work that I hadn't really thought of beyond the Elegies which everybody knows. And so, I became really focused on showing the complexity and the development of the work and taking us away from what everyone thinks they know and presenting works that hadn't been seen quite so often or other series " — Susan Davidson

As an art historian and curator, Susan Davidson is an authority in the fields of surrealism, abstract expressionism and pop art. In her previous role as Senior Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Susan oversaw the stewardship of the institution's collection in addition to organizing notable exhibitions that include Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, John Chamberlain, Jackson Pollock's Paintings on Paper and Peggy and Kiesler: The Collector and the Visionary. Prior to joining the Guggenheim's constellation of museums, Susan was collections curator at The Menil Collection in Houston. Susan has deeply engaged with the work of Robert Rauschenberg, serving as their curatorial advisor to the artist from 2001 until his death in 2008 and as a board member to the Rauschenberg Foundation from 2009 through 2014.

The book and exhibition highlight the abstracted-figurative works that dominated Motherwell’s first decade of painting as he emerged in the New York art world in the early 1940s. The exhibition will travel to the Bank Austria Kunstforum Vienna on October 12th and runs through January 14th, 2024.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple.

Order the book here.

Learn more about the podcast Reading the Art World here.

On the occasion of The Armory Show 2023, Megan Fox Kelly was invited to participate in Artnet News’ panel, The Future of the Art Market, which was also published as an episode of Artnet’s podcast, The Art Angle.

The panel included Megan, Susanne Vielmetter (Owner and Director of Vielmetter Los Angeles), and Alain Servais (Collector and Founder of Servais Family Collection). The panel was moderated by Eileen Kinsella, Senior Market Editor of Artnet News.

Listen to the episode below and read more here.

Image: Village Green.

Artnet News’ inaugural half-year edition of the Intelligence Report paints a clear picture of today’s art market by the numbers, with a wealth of eye-opening data points. Megan Fox Kelly contributes to the report’s ‘Marketplace: The Best Seller List (Impressionist and Modern)’ category.

In the Impressionist and Modern category, the Artnet News team reports that “Rarity and freshness are the names of the game in this segment of the market, which encompasses work by artists born between 1821 and 1910. The five best-performing paintings had never appeared at auction before.”

In the Imp-Mod category, as in many others, “we are clearly moving into a period of correction following the turbulence in the financial markets,” said art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. “Not a sharp swing, but some price sensitivity and more discretion in buying.”

Read the full Intelligence Report here.

In the 19th episode of our podcast, Reading the Art World, we are speaking with Nora Burnett and Amy Whitaker about their latest book, The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy, published this year by Rizzoli Electra and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

The authors explain the concepts of NFTs in the art world and the underlying technology of blockchain, including their origins, their surprising connections to the history of artmaking and art collecting, and their potential to radically reshape the art world.

"I think on a structural level, we're definitely going to see more and more artists getting behind some of the aspects of blockchain with regard to retaining ownership and having some equity stake in their work. But then on the creative side, I think that's also a place for experimentation.” — Nora Abrams

Amy Whitaker, is an an Associate Professor at New York University, as well as a prolific writer, artist and thinker who's focused on the relationship between art and markets and the impact that emerging technologies are having on the art market. Amy holds a BA from Williams College with honors in political science and art, an MFA in painting, an MBA, and a PhD in political economy. 

Nora Abrams is the Mark G. Falcone Director at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. She's among the youngest museum directors in the country, coming to that role after nearly a decade as the museum's Lead Curator and Director of Planning, organizing over 30 exhibitions. She's written and spoken about the relationship between NFTs and conceptual art in the 1960s and '70s. Nora earned her BA at Stanford University, her MA at Columbia, and her PhD at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here.

Learn more about Reading the Art World here.

In the 18th episode of our podcast, Reading the Art World, we are speaking with President and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss about Why the Museum Matters, published by Yale University Press, as part of an ongoing series “Why X Matters,” in which prominent scholars critics and authors make the case for the importance of a single subject.

Since 2017, Dan has been at the helm of the MET, responsible for the overall leadership of the Museum, including establishing its key strategic, institutional, and capital priorities. There is currently a moment of reckoning for many museums, in which they're asked to respond to questions about diversity and inequality, their funding sources, their collections, exhibitions and programming, and how to meet the changing expectations of their audiences and communities. Dan makes a powerful case for why museums will continue to be essential to any society, why they matter as stewards of culture, places to generate new ideas, to build communities, advance learning and understanding, and create spaces of beauty and permanence.

“ There's something of a paradox… on the one hand, the popularity of museums — public support for them has never been higher — and at the same time, the public critique of museums has never been higher, and it caused me to think about, 'How do we find a way forward? What are the issues that are most central to what we do?'"— Dan Weiss

As a scholar of art history and seasoned leader, Dan provides a unique perspective on the issue of the museum. He received his BA in Art History and Psychology from George Washington University, MBA from Yale University, and PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Western Medieval and Byzantine Art, where he also was Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Through his various leadership roles, he’s seen how the role of the museum has evolved.

“The connection I was hoping to draw is that these people who lived so many thousands of years ago, who seem, in some ways, so alien to us, were not so alien, that in fact, they had the same kind of concerns we do, and that for them, as for us, art helps to provide a sense of their own identity. It helped to define their own culture, it helped to present the ways in which they made art and collected art, helped them to find a connection to the world around them in ways that isn't very different from what we do today, and if we know that and we can hold on to that, then maybe we have a little more humility about our own sense of where we fit into the grand sweep of human history.” — Dan Weiss

Listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple

Order the book here.

Learn more about Reading the Art World here.

On the occasion of TEFAF New York 2023, Megan Fox Kelly was invited to participate in a panel titled Setting Standards for Art Advisors. Megan was joined by Sean Kelly (Owner, Sean Kelly Gallery), Colin B. Bailey (Director, The Morgan Library & Museum), and moderated by Sarah Douglas (Editor in Chief, ARTnews).

In this talk, the role of art professionals in the formation of private art collections are discussed from various angles. The three panelists shed light on their thinking from the perspectives of a public institution, a contemporary gallery, and an art advisor—how can these different players assist collectors in the building of their collections, and what standards should collectors expect from advisors?

Watch the panel recording here.