Helen Molesworth on Museums as Machines for Slowness

To Helen Molesworth, curating is much more than carefully selecting and positioning noteworthy artworks and objects alongside one another within a space; it’s also about telling stories through them and about them, and in turn, communicating particular, often potent messages. Her probing writing takes a similar approach to her curatorial work, as can be seen in her new book, Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art (Phaidon), which culls together 24 of her essays written across three decades. For nearly 20 of those years, Molesworth served in various curatorial roles at museums and arts institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and most recently, as the chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA). In the five years since her departure from MOCA, Molesworth has built a thriving practice as an independent curator, writer, and podcaster, notably as the host of the six-part podcast Death of an Artist, which was named a best podcast of 2022 by both The Economist and The Atlantic.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Molesworth discusses her lifelong engagement with the work of Marcel Duchamp; the transformative power of a great conversation; and the personal and professional freedom she has found in recent years as a roving, independent voice in the art world.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:25] Helen Molesworth

[03:50] Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art

[04:02] Marcel Duchamp

[04:09] “At Home with Marcel Duchamp: The Readymade and Domesticity”

[11:33] “The Creative Act”

[12:09] Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”

[17:22] Frank Stella

[17:28] John Baldessari

[21:56] Paul Lafargue

[22:32] Doris Salcedo

[29:50] Josiah McElheny

[35:23] Al Hirschfeld

[36:41] State University of New York at Albany

[36:43] Whitney Museum Independent Study Program

[36:48] Cornell University

[42:33] “One Day at a Time”

[46:57] Kerry James Marshall

[47:00] “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s”

[47:02] “Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957”

[47:41] Death of an Artist

[47:46] Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

[47:48] Recording Artists

[54:53] Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

[54:51] Carl Andre

[59:45] WBLS: The Quiet Storm