92Y & MacDowell | The Relationship of Money to Art

November 1, 2021

At MacDowell we provide diverse artists—from emerging to distinguished—the freedom to create. Then other institutions, notably galleries and museums, bring their work to its various audiences. Concentrating on the work, we may not realize that how wide, how broad that public can be relates to resources of money and power. Three pivotal figures who bring artwork to the world discuss the differences that abundant resources can mean for how we, the public, see art.

Joining Nell Painter in conversation on big money, big power, and how we see art are Mary Schmidt Campbell (Executive Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem in its formative years, currently president of Spelman College), Lonnie Bunch (founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and currently Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) and Marc Payot (currently president of the international art gallery Hauser & Wirth).

92nd Street Y will host this free and public virtual conversation on November 1 at 7 p.m. ET.

Collage of six images. Four are portraits of event participants and the other two are the MacDowell and 92Y logos

Clockwise, from top left: Nell Painter by Dwight Carter, Lonnie G. Bunch III by Michael Barnes, Marc Payot by Sim Cannety-Clarke, and Mary Schmidt Campbell by Julie Yarbrough

Program Participants

Nell Painter, after a fulfilling career as a publishing Princeton historian (most notably as the author of The History of White People), began again in art school, a move eliciting a great deal of curiosity. In residence at MacDowell in 2016, she completed a memoir entitled Old in Art School, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle autobiography award. In 2017 she completed the series "You Say This Can't Really Be America" and in 2018 she published an art review of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power in the New York Review Daily. In residence at MacDowell in 2019, Painter created "Ancient Hair Book" and four installations on her studio wall for a project that will ultimately become an artist's book with the working title Were the Ancients White? Painter was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of MacDowell in 2020.

Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Previously, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Before his appointment as director of the museum, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society (2001–2005). A widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from the black military experience, the American presidency and all-black towns in the American West to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums. His most recent book, A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, chronicles the making of the museum that would become one of the most popular destinations in Washington.Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. In 2019, he was awarded the Freedom Medal, one of the Four Freedom Awards from the Roosevelt Institute, for his contribution to American culture as a historian and storyteller; the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from the Hutchins Center at Harvard University; and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.

Mary Schmidt Campbell is the 10th president of Spelman. She began her career as the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem at a time when the city of New York was on the verge of bankruptcy. Under her leadership, the museum became the country’s first accredited Black fine arts museum and a linchpin in the redevelopment of Harlem. She then served as commissioner of cultural affairs for New York City under two mayors, and from there entered the world of academia as dean of New York University’s renowned Tisch School of the Arts, where she served for over two decades. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her vice chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Currently, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she serves as a trustee of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and as a director of Unity Technologies. She is the author of the award-winning book, “An American Odyssey: the Life and Work of Romare Bearden,” (Oxford, 2018) and frequently speaks on issues of higher education and African American art and culture.

Marc Payot is President & Senior Partner of Hauser & Wirth, a renowned art gallery with locations in the U.S., Hong Kong, U.K., Switzerland, and Spain. Marc has over 20 years of experience in the art industry, and with Hauser & Wirth, is responsible for expanding the gallery from a small Swiss gallery to one of the largest and preeminent galleries in the world with over 250 employees. In 2004, Marc moved from Zurich to New York to establish its American presence and has since been overseeing the gallery’s activities​​in the U.S.​ ​Over the years, he has led the gallery’s growth to include philanthropic and community outreach programs. Marc is an arts patron and his engagement extends from education-focused organizations such as the children’s arts initiative Time in Kids NYC to major museums in New York such as New Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Marc had also served on the Selection Committee of Frieze New York for its art fairs from 2012 to 2016.