Art Problems

Andrew Russeth knows art. As Editor-in-Chief at Artnet News and a critic for nearly two decades, he sees more art than almost anyone in the art world. In this episode, he and Paddy Johnson dig into what keeps a career going over the long haul and why even artists with name recognition still have career gaps to fill. His most repeated advice may also be the most commonly dismissed: you have to have fun.

Andrew Russeth won the Rabkin Prize for visual arts journalism in 2019 and was previously executive editor of ARTnews.

Links and resources mentioned in the podcast

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Additional Reading

Andrew Russeth, “Jordan Wolfson Is Opening a Major Show at Gagosian. He Does Not Want to Talk About It,” Artnet News, 2026

Jason Farago, After a Career Reshaping the Museum of Modern Art, its Influential Curator Steps Down, New York Times, 2026 

Artnet News, “The Best Artworks We Saw in 2025,” Artnet News, 2025

Andrew Russeth, “Maverick Painter and Critic Walter Robinson, Who Helmed Artnet Magazine, Is Dead at 74,” Artnet News, 2025
Andrew Russeth, Massimiliano Gioni will Lead the New Museum, Artnet News, 2026

Andrew Russeth, “How Anicka Yi’s Science Experiments Are Expanding the Boundaries of Art,” W Magazine, 2018

Beeple and Jordan Wolfson, Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast, Episode 32

Rozalia Jovanovic, Say Hello to Jordan Wolfson’s Terrifying Animatronic Dancer at David Zwirner, 2014

Chris Wiley, The History of Zombie Formalism, Artnet News, 2018

Frank Benson, Wolfson, Animation, Masks, DisMagazine, 2012

Artists

Jordan Wolfson

Korakrit Arunanondchai 

B. Wurtz

Louise Lawler 

Anicka Yi

Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach

Simon Dinnerstein, The Fulbright Triptych

Galleries, institutions and publications

Clearing

Feature Inc. (Hudson)

Colab and the Times Square Show

Art-Rite reprint, Primary Information

New Museum

MoMA

Writers

Ben Davis

Annie Armstrong

Andrew Russeth

Desserts

Il Laboratorio del Gelato

Morgenstern’s

Chim Chim

The Little One

Marcel at Sotheby’s

Sugar Sweet Sunshine

Billy’s Bakery

Fortunes Ice Cream

Chefs

Natasha Pickowicz

Other names mentioned

Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Sadie Coles HQ, Richard Prince, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Jasper Johns, Peter Halley, John Currin, Jordan Casteel, Amy Sherald, Pace, Esther Schipper, Jeffrey Deitch, Carlo McCormick, Charlie Finch, Jerry Saltz, Howard Halle, Bill Arning, Dave Hickey, Sarah Douglas, Jared Kushner, Will Heinrich, Magnolia Bakery

What makes an art fair successful? Sales. Crowds. Fairs that give people a reason to come back. This fall, artist William Powhida, Netvvrk Director of Operations Penny Retica, and I walked New York's fair week to see which ones do that job. We went to the Spring Break in the old CBS News offices, Independent 20th Century, The Armory, and Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. One of them left us with some serious FOMO. 

Guest credits
Artist William Powhida
Netvvrk Director of Operations, Penny Retica

Artists/Projects Mentioned:

Spring Break
https://www.springbreakartshow.com/
Kara Sheffler & Joanna Herr, Tiki Bar
David Molesky, Prone to Bruise
Christopher Chan & Lindaluz Carillo, Soft Bruise
Kutay Tufekci, Roselynn Sadaghiani, & Richard Medina in Fool Me Can’t Get Fooled Again
Alice Herbert, HOUSE ARREST
Matthew Cronin, Catalina Tuca, & Joseph Wilcox, Afterimage, curated by Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen

Independent 20th Century
https://www.independenthq.com/
General Idea
David Hammons
Jenny Holzer

Armory
https://www.thearmoryshow.com/
Dorian Langberg
Michelle Grabner
Darvish Fakhr
Embajada Gallery
Katarina Riseing
Alba Triana

NY Art Book Fair
https://nyabf2026.printedmatterartbookfairs.org/
African Art Book Fair, The Pan African Library Will Not Be Colonized
Book Arts Solidarity Network, MAKEREADY
A, Lukas, Stop Hiding Behind Masks
Precious Okoyomon, The Pleasure Principle
Black Sheep, Riso Lantern

Additional Reading
Valentina Di Liscia, "Independent 20th Century, the Mise en Abyme of Art Fairs," Hyperallergic, 2026
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Verso, 2024
Activating the Transformative Potential of Commons in the Arts

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Mike Ryczek flew to New Orleans to see his work hanging in the kind of gallery he'd always aspired to. Dinner with the other artists went fine. Then came the gallery crawl the next day, and he froze: four galleries deep without talking to anyone, thirty minutes standing beside his own paintings waiting for someone to approach, and finally the Irish goodbye and some consolation fried chicken. 

In this episode, the two of us talk about the moments an art career makes you feel like an imposter, and I share my own recent version of his story, because these feelings don't retire with experience. What changes is how you recover.

Mike is a painter in Dedham, Massachusetts who has held gallery representation for over a decade, won a $15,000 Mass Cultural Council grant, and still interrogates every achievement for the trick behind it. Our conversation stays close to what an art career feels like: from the whiplash of rejection and reward arriving back to back to the self-belief it takes to keep assigning yourself work few people see. There’s no strategy in this episode, just the facts of the profession. 

Relevant Links: 

Mike Ryczek
Creative Capital
Mass Cultural Council

Have you ever struggled to figure out exactly where your art fits? Or maybe you’ve tried to write an artist statement only to find it one of the hardest tasks you’ve ever had to do. Today’s guest, Jennifer Sharpe, a multimedia artist and experimental filmmaker, has a way of making those problems vivid and infinitely relatable. 

In this episode, we talk about how a continuously shifting cultural landscape affects artistic practice. Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen multiple online communities collapse and rebuild. Jennifer came away convinced that while platforms vanish and institutions wobble, the relationships you build are the only durable asset an artist has. 

This conversation wanders in the best way. Racehorses, vagabonds, cave paintings, jobs, and a whole bunch of other ideas you wouldn’t think have anything to do with artists, but really do.

RELATED LINKS

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday, July 21, 7:00 PM EST

Jennifer Sharpe

The art world tells artists that if you just keep going, eventually something will break for you. But persistence can also keep you stuck. If you don’t know something’s broken so you keep doing the same thing, you won’t grow.

That's what happened to Gin Stone. Gin is a Cape Cod artist who did what she was supposed to do. She kept going. And she stayed stuck because she didn't have the right help. In this episode, she talks about the gallery show that made her realize she had nothing to say about her own work, the overhaul that followed, and the grant she landed just last week for a sonification project built on 2,000 years of geological data.

 

RELEVANT LINKS:

Free Info Session, How to Get on a Museum’s Radar, Tuesday July 21, 7:00 PM EST
Gin Stone