About Art

• 165. Cecilia Alemani

  Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City who is currently at work curating the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, titled Once Within a Time and opening in June 2025.  Since 2011, she has been the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City. From 2020 to 2022, she served as Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale, where she curated the acclaimed exhibition The Milk of Dreams, which received over 800,000 visitors. More recently, she has curated several exhibitions, including Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self, the Japanese painter’s first American retrospective, presented at Gagosian Gallery in New York (2023); Making Their Mark, the first public presentation of the Shah Garg Collection (New York, 2023; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2024); and Anu Põder: Space for My Body, Poder’s first solo exhibition presented outside of Estonia at Muzeum Susch, Switzerland (2024). Alemani also served as Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires in 2018 and was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Over the past twenty years, Alemani has developed expertise in commissioning and producing ambitious artworks for public space and unusual sites. She and Zuckerman discuss the act of learning, not being curatorially snobby, the rhythm of nature, giving up control, objects having their own life, the realness of cultural uncertainty, the 1948 Venice Bienniale and moving between the past and the future, female voices, the artist as client, the land of enchantment, and that art matters because it is our life!

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• 164. Jennifer McCabe

  Jennifer McCabe is a distinguished curator, educator, and museum director with over 20 years of expertise in leading cultural institutions, fostering innovative curatorial practices, and supporting artists. Currently, she serves as the Director and Chief Curator of the SFO Museum, the only airport-based institution accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. Under her leadership, the museum operates more than 25 exhibition sites throughout the San Francisco International Airport, engaging millions of visitors annually. Its acclaimed Aviation Museum and Library houses a permanent collection of over 160,000 artifacts documenting the history of commercial aviation.Previously, McCabe served as Director and Chief Curator of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, where her eight-year tenure garnered significant acclaim, including consecutive "Best Museum" awards from the Phoenix New Times. Her curatorial vision and writing delve into themes of intersectional feminisms, site-responsive art commissions, and groundbreaking artist interventions.She and Zuckerman discuss SFO, what one can do with all the time and headspace one had spent fundraising in a museum, bypass doors, how what she learns can be applied in other organizations, shaking up societal associations of craft, expanded perspectives, having an audience of millions, moments of pause, a journey through space, joy, incorporating breaks from art talk, being forever changed by parenting, seeing things through someone else’s lens, daily practice, the pause, and being your own support system!

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• 163. Claire Tabouret

  Artist Claire Tabouret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Motivated by a sensitivity to the passing of time and the floodgates of vulnerability opened by human relationships, Tabouret's painting practice is paced between periods of productive urgency and quiet reflection, and animated by layers, fabrics, and full, loose brushstrokes. Her hydrous palette is suspended somewhere in the ether between the synthetic hues of makeup and subdued tones of the earth, simultaneously referencing the natural and artificial ingredients of representation. Tableaux depicting bodies in confrontation, portraits, paintings of assemblies of people from young debutants to migrants at sea, and landscapes are often washed in color fields, alternately evoking ine possibility of anywhere and site specificity.She and Zuckerman discuss her studio practice and a typical day, where her ideas come from, living in California, comfort and risk, ‘fluff,’ motherhood, music, what art has to teach us, and her selection to design new, contemporary stained-glass windows for the newly renovated Notre Dame Cathedral.

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• 162. Stephan Jost

  Stephan Jost is an art museum director who is currently the Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. Previously, he served as Director of the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, and the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California. He also held curatorial positions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.  Jost serves as Past President and Nominating Chair on the Board of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and is also on the Board of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation. He previously served as Vice Chair on the Board of Hampshire College, where he was Board member from 2018-2022, as well as 2008-2016. He holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin in Art History. He is originally from East Lansing, Michigan and is a citizen of Canada, the USA, and Switzerland.He and Zuckerman discuss original intention, cultural urgency, having a young and diverse museum audience, when people fall in love with culture, why people care about art, being in the presence of great works of art, the optimism of the extraordinary, the innovation of decorative arts, the maintenance of power, keeping our humanity, how museums can build social cohesion, and the power of inconsistency!

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• 161. Carrie Scott

  Carrie Scott is an English American curator and arts commentator based in London. Over the past two decades, she has worked globally with galleries, artists, and collectors. She began her career as curator of the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University, later becoming Director of the James Harris Gallery and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York. In 2009, she launched Carrie Scott & Partners, collaborating with artists like Nick Knight, John Pawson and Walter & Zoniel. She has curated exhibitions worldwide, including in South Korea, Japan, London, and New York. In 2024, she founded Seen, a platform promoting emerging artists and transparency. She and Zuckerman discuss art and entrepreneurship, embracing messiness, the impact of people saying yes, expanding the artworld, how art makes you feel better, how art is not rewarded in society, Seen.art and understanding ourselves!

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