Reading the Art World

For the 47th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, about "Vermeer's Afterlives," published by Princeton University Press.
Vermeer's Afterlives traces how Vermeer, who died in 1675 and was largely forgotten within decades, was reconstructed by the critics, forgers, poets, and novelists who encountered his work over the following two centuries. Yeazell argues that the quiet, enigmatic Vermeer we revere was shaped as much by the process of recovery as by the paintings themselves: by the order in which his canvases were reattributed, by the near-absence of biographical record, and by the frameworks critics brought to an artist they were meeting for the first time.
The conversation moves through those afterlives in full: Théophile Thoré, the French journalist who encountered Vermeer in The Hague in 1842 and assembled a catalogue—more than three-quarters of which no longer holds—but whose act of naming shaped what Vermeer would become; Han Van Meegeren, whose forged Supper at Emmaus was declared the greatest Vermeer ever painted because it supplied a scholarly gap critics had convinced themselves was waiting to be filled; and the writers who have tried to narrate the stories his paintings leave untold. The conversation closes on Proust, who Yeazell argues grasped what most literary respondents missed: Vermeer's paintings stage acts of looking, not storytelling.
For anyone interested in Dutch Golden Age painting, the history of artistic reception, or how a body of work accumulates meaning across time and discipline, this episode is essential listening.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth Bernard Yeazell is Sterling Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at Yale University. Her books include "Picture Titles: How and Why Western Paintings Acquired Their Names" and "Art of the Everyday: Dutch Painting and the Realist Novel," both published by Princeton University Press. Her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.
PURCHASE THE BOOK
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691277820/vermeers-afterlives
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"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 46th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Georgina Adam, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper, about her new book NextGen Collectors and the Art Market, published by Lund Humphries in association with Sotheby's Institute of Art.
Adam argues that the generational shift now underway is different from those that came before it—not just in scale, but in kind. Younger collectors grew up online, which has reshaped how they discover and evaluate art, who influences their taste, and what they're willing to buy. Their conversation covers the collapse of traditional connoisseurship, the geographic expansion of the collector base into China, India, and the Middle East, and whether galleries, auction houses, and museums are adapting fast enough to a generation that collects very differently from the one before it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Georgina Adam is the former Art Market editor of The Art Newspaper, where she is now editor-at-large. She is a contributor to the Financial Times Life & Arts Section, lectures at Sotheby's and Christie’s institutes in London and regularly participates in panels about the art market.

PURCHASE THE BOOK
https://www.lundhumphries.com/products/nextgen-collectors-and-the-art-market

PARTNER
This episode is sponsored by Neuberger Wealth, a firm with a founding story at the intersection of investing and the arts. Neuberger Wealth provides individuals, families and their charitable organizations with comprehensive wealth management solutions, from investments across public and private markets to wealth and estate planning, fiduciary services, and philanthropic and family governance advisory. With the experience that only comes from advising across generations, they understand that the most meaningful financial lives are built around purpose. Learn more at neubergerwealth.com.
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For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.
Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly
"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 45th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with William E. Wallace, an internationally recognized authority on Michelangelo, about his new book “Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius,” published by Princeton University Press.
The book makes a case scholars have long resisted: that the forty-year rivalry between Michelangelo and Titian was genuinely reciprocal. Wallace shows that Michelangelo—far from the untouchable master receiving Titian's admiration from a distance—was the first to encounter Titian's work, the first to react, and in certain respects the more transformed by it. Kelly and Wallace’s conversation covers the two artists' actual meetings: Venice in 1529, Rome in 1545; the encounter at Alfonso d'Este's studiolo in Ferrara, where Michelangelo came face to face with Titian's mythological paintings and responded by producing the most erotic work of his career; and the role of Pietro Aretino—Titian's closest friend and, as Wallace puts it, the social media champion of the Renaissance—in shaping and publicizing the rivalry's terms.
The episode closes on the two Pietàs: one by each artist, produced in old age, in which competition gives way to something closer to mutual recognition.
For anyone interested in Renaissance art, the history of artistic rivalry, or how reputation is made and managed across a lifetime, this episode is essential listening.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
William E. Wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author and editor of nine books on Michelangelo, has consulted for the Vatican on the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and has served as a principal consultant for three BBC television programmes on Michelangelo. He is the recipient of fellowships at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the American Academy in Rome.
PURCHASE THE BOOK https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691266572/michelangelo-and-titian
SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW AND HEAR INTERVIEWS:
For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.
Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly
"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 44th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with András Szántó—cultural strategist, writer, and longtime observer of museums and markets—about his new book, "The Future of the Art World: 38 Dialogues," published by Hatje Cantz.
The book brings together 38 conversations with artists, curators, sociologists, philosophers, collectors, gallerists, and institutional leaders—what Szántó describes as a “stained-glass window” onto the art world’s possible futures. Rather than advancing a single thesis, the dialogues map the pressures shaping the field: the dominance of mega-galleries and the squeeze on mid-sized dealers, the erosion of traditional art criticism and what may replace it, the precarious economics of artistic careers, and whether today’s system is evolving gradually or approaching a more fundamental realignment.
Their conversation takes up the scale of the global art world—some 300 art fairs, more than 100,000 museums, and a market approaching $60 billion—and asks whether that expansion has altered the system in kind, not only in size. They discuss the role of the art advisor within an increasingly complex ecosystem, the importance of criticism in sustaining the values the market depends on, and whether artificial intelligence may emerge as a new connective tissue for engagement with art. Szántó is cautiously optimistic, pointing to developments such as the emergence of gallery districts in Tribeca, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s new building, and the reopening of the Frick—while remaining clear-eyed about the structural headwinds ahead.
For those working within the art world—as well as those seeking to understand it—this conversation offers something rare: the breadth of 38 dialogues distilled into a single, considered one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
András Szántó, PhD, advises museums, foundations, educational institutions, and leading brands worldwide on cultural strategy. He has directed the Museums of Tomorrow Roundtable at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, and The Art Newspaper. Born in Budapest, he lives in Brooklyn.
PURCHASE THE BOOK
https://andras-szanto.com/book/the-future-of-the-art-world-38-dialogues/
Note: click the “ask a question” button to see the AI feature mentioned in the episode. 
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For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.
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"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden

For the 43rd episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Francine Snyder, Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, about her recently published book "I Don't Think About Being Great: Select Writings by Robert Rauschenberg," co-published by the foundation and Yale University Press.
Their conversation reveals a side of Rauschenberg that many don't know: his relationship to language and writing. Despite self-identifying as dyslexic, Rauschenberg kept a substantial body of written work—correspondence, artist notes, testimony, speeches, and fragments—which he labeled in his own hand as "file RR writing." Snyder discusses the editorial choice to preserve Rauschenberg's misspellings, cross-outs, and grammatical idiosyncrasies rather than correct them. These visual elements function like collage—intentional word play and phonetic experimentation. The book presents 100 writings selected from nearly 900 in the archive.
They discuss several key texts, including Rauschenberg's 1963 artist statement declaring "it is extremely important that art be unjustifiable"—a phrase he arrived at by crossing out "justifiable" in earlier drafts. This refusal of explanation aligns with his resistance to fixed meaning and his insistence that viewers bring their own interpretations. The conversation also addresses Rauschenberg's activism, from founding Change Inc. in 1970 to provide emergency support for artists, to advocating for artist resale royalty rights and NEA funding, to launching ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange) in the 1980s to foster artistic dialogue across borders.
For anyone interested in postwar American art, artist archives, or how foundations steward intellectual legacy, this episode offers insight into an artist whose relationship to language was as experimental as his visual work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Francine Snyder is Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, where she has worked since 2015. She specializes in artist and museum archives and in fostering research and scholarship on contemporary cross-disciplinary creative practices. Major initiatives under her leadership include the foundation's Fair Use Policy to reduce barriers to image use, the Archives Research Residency program, and expanded digital archives.
PURCHASE THE BOOK https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300282566/i-dont-think-about-being-great/
SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW AND HEAR INTERVIEWS:
For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.
Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly
"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.
Music composed by Bob Golden