Kecia Lewis as Miss Liza Jane and Maleah Joi Moon as Ali in Hell’s Kitchen. Marc J. Franklin
Alicia Cook, a resident of Manhattan Plaza on West 43rd once upon a time, changed her name to Alicia Keys in part because of the 88s on her piano and the doors they would unlock for her. That was 27 years and 16 Grammys ago, when she was just 16. Her debut album, Songs in A Minor, came out when she was 20 and won her the first five of those Grammys. These days she’s writing for Broadway. Her jukebox musical Hell’s Kitchen — now transplanted at the Shubert Theater four blocks away from the subsidized housing complex she grew up in — is a hometown favorite, winning 13 Tony nominations, one for each year Keys worked on the show. “Greatness can’t be rushed,” she’s said.
The show (with a book by Kristoffer Diaz) recounts a fictional facsimile of Keys’s budding years of creativity in the projects, sprinkling in new songs with her best-known r&b, hip-hop, and pop hits like “If I Ain’t Got You,” “Girl on Fire,” and “Empire State of Mind.” Maleah Joi Moon plays Ali, a 17-year-old girl in freefall, and Shoshana Bean is her single mom, but but a third character emerging from the sidelines proves to be the play’s most memorable: Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis), a no-nonsense teacher who sparks—and deepens—the teen’s musical talent, giving it focus and direction: Voila! a songwriter is born.
Two weeks ago Lewis got the Lucille Lortel Award and Actors’ Equity’s Richard Seff Award. Lastweek the Outer Critics Circle crowned her Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Musical. Yep, she’s up for two more yet-to-be-determined awards: the Drama Desk and the Tony.
Not only does Lewis strike a compelling presence in the show, she also makes her mark musically with a couple of Keys songs, “Perfect Way to Die” and “Authors of Forever.” The creative collaboration that went into making these songs stage-worthy cemented the bond between the singer and the songwriter. “She wants to know what your ideas are, what you’re thinking, how you’re building the character,” Lewis tells Observer of Keys. “And she was kind enough to share with me what she was thinking when she actually wrote those two songs—what was going on in her heart and mind—and then allowing me to bring out my own version of that, my own truth.”
Alicia Keys and Kecia Lewis attend the 77th Annual Tony Awards Meet The Nominees Press Event at Sofitel New York on May 02, 2024 in New York City. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions
Lewis comes to the role of a teacher and mentor with experience—she’s spent most of her days seesawing between teaching and theater. “Hell’s Kitchen is a perfect match for where I am in my life and my career,” she says. At the Atlantic Theater, she’s taught stage acting. She’s done some teaching at her alma mater, NYU, and conducted a master class at Juilliard. In leaner times, she’s even been known to work survival jobs at elementary schools.
Fortunately, there haven’t been a lot of those. Broadway and Off-Broadway have kept her busy, originating or creating or replacing—roles like Asaka in Once Upon This Island, “Mama” Morton in Chicago, the title role in Mother Courage, et al. The original cast of Ain’t Misbehavin’ revue reconvened for the 1988 revival, and she stood by for Nell Carter and Armelia McQueen.
When The Drowsy Chaperone arrived on Broadway in 2006, Lewis arrived flying a plane as Trix the Aviatrix. “That’s probably in my top five theater experiences,” she figures. “This was a cast of people who, half-kiddingly, considered ourselves the oldest cast on Broadway. The baby of our company was the star of the show, Sutton Foster. She was 30. The rest of us, mostly, were 45 and above, but there was a settled heart and spirit about that, an enjoyment and confidence about what we have been doing so long. That kind of atmosphere, on stage and off, made for an amazingly good time.” The cast hung out together because they enjoyed each other’s company. “On Sundays, Sutton brought in bagels and breakfast things, and we’d meet up before the matinee.”
Hell’s Kitchen’s Miss Liza Jane, her new favorite role, is a composite of several Manhattan Plaza people who help Alicia find her way. Audiences adore this character. Coming and going, Lewis gets her claps and her laughs. Lewis attributes the audience’s warm embrace to fact that almost everyone has had someone in their life like Miss Liza Jane. “A relative, a neighbor, a school administrator, someone who really saw you and believed in you and pushed you to be your best,” she says. “I have been blessed to have quite a few Miss Liza Janes in my life over the years. One in particular that I’m utilizing to create this character: a voice-and-diction teacher of mine in high school—she’s deceased now—Mrs. Koehler. I went to the High School of Performing Arts—the old one on West 46th—and a lot of my classmates would say, ‘Are you doing Mrs. Koehler? Is that Miss Koehler?’”
The film that made that high school famous—Fame—was shot in the summer of ’79, and Lewis didn’t arrive until September of ’79, along with Danny Burstyn, Helen Slater, and Lisa Vidal.
“This is my 40th year in show business!” she gleefully points out. “June 15 will be 40 years to the day when I stepped into the Imperial Theater—age 18—hired by Michael Bennett to begin my journey with Dreamgirls. Now—to have Hell’s Kitchen, to have this kind of role and have it all at this time—is full-circle for me. All this combined in my own life, matched with this character and this group of young people—so many of them making their Broadway debuts—it’s just perfect.”
Some of the plot of Hell’s Kitchen parallels Lewis’ own life, including the problems and worries of a single mom raising an artistically inclined child. Her son, Simon, is almost 21 and “continuing the theater tradition,” his mother beams proudly. “He’s going down the route of stagehand and, right now, is finishing his training at the Roundabout Theater Company’s Internship Program.
“Raising a kid in New York City is a herculean feat. I was lucky enough that I lived in Long Island, so I was a little removed from the city, but the problems still are there—and practically anywhere in this country: the racial undertones of raising Black children or biracial children. We have to train and protect our children with a hyper-vigilance other people don’t know about.”
When Lewis reaches the Shubert Theater every day, her motherhood comes to full bloom, given how many young people are in the cast. “I love that,” she admits. “I think, since I was young, the essence of who I am is a bit of a protector. I’ve always been that. I resisted it when I was young. I wanted to be the ingénue or the pretty girl boys wanted, but I’ve come to embrace and greatly appreciate when young people want to be around me as an older person. I think that’s special.”
The cast calls her Mama. “I didn’t tell them to call me that,” says Lewis. “It’s when they call me Legend that I begin to suspect they’re speaking code for ‘old actress.’”
X-Men ’97 has come to an end and fans want more. Or at least we want to know the truth about whether or not the X-Men wear wigs! Talking with directors Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley, I got to ask all the burning questions I had after the finale.
I asked both Yonemura and Conley about the episodes they each directed, the series as a whole, and then asked some important questions. Like whether or not they knew where Wolverine and Storm are. At the end of the final episode of the season, we get to see where some of the team end up. After Magneto used his power to destroy Asteroid M, it sends the X-Men into different points of time. Some to the future, others to the past.
We don’t know where Storm or Wolverine are. But Yonemura and Conley do. When I asked about whether they knew where they were, Conley coyly responded “Yeah” but did not give me more of an idea. Conley then went on to explain why the finale kept that information from fans. “I think we just don’t want to, we didn’t wanna give everybody too much at the same time. Hey, you gonna have to watch and find out. You don’t get all the answers. That’s way life works.”
Yonemura teased that they had to wait for answers too, saying “You’re gonna have to wait like how we had to wait.” Which, to be fair, we’ve all waited since 1996 for more of the X-Men but alas. We can wait a little more to know where Wolverine and Storm are.
Do you wear wigs? No I do not. Have you worn wigs?
Another thing we talked about is whether or not the X-Men wear wigs. When we see their costumes on Muir Island, they are all in class cases and there are…wigs attached. The team then use those costumes with those exact hair styles and it made fans wonder: Do the X-Men wear wigs?
Yonemura shared what they thought it meant and also explained how the drag community loved what was going on with the X-Men and their new looks. “Maybe,” Yonemura said with a laugh. “I mean, we never really think about it because I love to lean into Cartoon Logic sometimes, but we actually had a surprising amount of conversations around those mannequins that you see at Muir Island, where it’s like, ‘Okay, well I guess this is kind of a museum, so we should have the whole outfit there.’ And then they just happened to be like, ‘Oh, good. ’cause I need a costume right now. The other one burned up in at the mansion.’ It was really fun to play with that. And honestly, I love our drag community and the fact that a lot of queens reached out and were just like, ‘I love that they’ve got this outfit thing going on that they’ve got like skin matching mannequins that are already, and then the wigs.’ And so you know what, yes. Let’s just say that they go glam. I love that.”
You can see our full chat here:
Every episode of season 1 of X-Men ’97 is streaming now on Disney+.
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While acknowledging wonderful Canadian and Mexican tenors, here “American” refers to those born and/or raised in the United States. Our sopranos rose to opera’s highest ranks beginning in the late 19th Century. Record collectors treasure samples of early prima donnas Lillian Nordica, Olive Fremstad and Emma Eames; Massenet and Debussy wrote operas for Sibyl Sanderson and Mary Garden, while Geraldine Farrar and Rosa Ponselle attained fame that transcended the opera house. It took much longer for our tenors to achieve similar status.
The 1940s saw the rise of Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker, who incidentally were related by marriage, and American tenors began to attain the worldwide prominence that their soprano counterparts had long enjoyed. Although George Shirley and John Alexander performed primarily in the United States, others like James McCracken had to go to Europe to break through. Demanding Wagner and Strauss operas found assured proponents in Jess Thomas and James King, while the bel canto renaissance advanced by Maria Callas and Beverly Sills had to wait for years to hear equally stylish tenors like Rockwell Blake, Chris Merritt and Bruce Ford. Another of that era, Gregory Kunde, who made his professional debut in 1978, gradually transitioned from bel canto to the most dramatic French and Italian roles which he still performs—without resorting to transposed high notes!—at the major opera houses at seventy. Retired from leading roles, Neil Shicoff returns to the stage as the elderly Emperor Altoum in Washington National Opera’s Turandot this month.
Of today’s pride of tenors, Jonathan Tetelman has recently been the subject of great media attention. Born in Chile, adopted by American parents and raised in New Jersey, he recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut in circumstances that recalled Roberto Alagna’s almost exactly twenty-eight years earlier. Like Alagna, Tetelman arrived armed with an exclusive recording contract with a major label—a very rare asset these days. His deluxe pair of solo CDs on Deutsche Grammophon have been greeted with enthusiasm, so anticipation surrounding his debut was high. But unlike Alagna who belied the advance hype and stumbled in his first Met appearance in La Bohème, at his debut Tetelman garnered an ardent ovation by partnering Angel Blue in Puccini’s lesser-known La Rondine.
With his second CD devoted exclusively to Puccini, Tetelman told Observer that he “is perhaps one of the most challenging composers because the operas reside in between late bel canto and verismo. I consider myself lucky to have a voice that works well in his repertoire. However, planting my flag as a Puccini tenor also has its disadvantages. Representing myself as a diverse tenor can be challenging because I am often only asked for Puccini.”
The Met has done precisely that as Tetelman’s second Met role this season is Pinkerton, the cad who marries, then abandons the naïve geisha in Madama Butterfly. While the tenor will be absent from New York next season, he’ll record a new Tosca but also stretch his repertoire with a new Verdi role. “My next big challenge is coming this season at the Deutsche Oper, Don Carlo. It will be the four-act Italian version. I also believe that Verdi roles need their time, if not more, to mature. I have plans for Un ballo in Maschera, Il Trovatore, Luisa Miller and Aïda down the line, four to five years away.”
Though he missed the first Pinkerton performance, Tetelman is scheduled for this season’s final Met HD transmission to movie theaters in Madama Butterfly opposite weltstar Asmik Grigorian.
Running simultaneously with Butterfly at the Met is the return of Carrie Cracknell’s controversial staging of Bizet’s Carmen with a new cast featuring high-intensity tenor Michael Fabiano offering local audiences his Don José for the first time. Filling in his character’s backstory Fabiano believes “Don José was declining before the timeline of the opera begins, starting with a probable screwed up childhood and difficulty assimilating in his military unit. He seals his fate by punching his superior, throwing life to the whims of a woman and quickly leaving his personal and political leanings for a woman that he never thought he was capable or worthy of having ever before. His slope downwards is fast; he continues to be infatuated with a person who clearly doesn’t have the same interest in him that he has in her. Infatuation is a killer. The reason why I’m ambivalent about who is guilty is because Carmen knowingly brutally taunts him before and after the flower aria, and easily could leave.”
Fabiano has recently been moving into heavier roles like Calaf in Turandot and will appear at the Met next season in another iconic Italian role, his first-ever Manrico in Il Trovatore. But being a globe-trotting singer isn’t enough for him as he continues his close association with ArtSmart, an organization he cofounded. “I launched ArtSmart with the goal to find a pathway to income for young working artists. When I was young and studying, it was a struggle to find meaningful work that also helped pay the bills. Not only were we getting meaningful income into the pockets of working, younger musicians, we endeavored to see changes in the lives of our students because of direct, personal mentorship. I want to see our next generation thrive and to do so, we need to find access points that inspire them to greatness.”
Influential people clearly agree with Fabiano’s goals as earlier this year arts patron Maria Manetti Shrem pledged one million dollars in support of ArtSmart’s activities.
Often the tenor’s role is to fall in love with, then lose the soprano, but Carmen’s Don José is just one example of the malevolent personae that tenors are sometimes asked to portray. Veteran Brandon Jovanovich has become known for his searing portrayals of tortured souls like Hermann in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, which he portrayed earlier this year in a new production at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera. Jovanovich relishes those roles’ dramatic challenges.
He finds that “one of the joys of singing the tenor fach that I do is being introduced to a myriad of psychologically complex characters. A “drive” or “obsession” that keeps this constant propulsion to the journey, this victimhood mentality that is buried in layers of rage, hate and indifference. These are just some of the traits I try to explore and highlight in my performances. Delving into the psychosis of each character is such a journey. When coupled with a great director and conductor, it seems almost transcendent to me. Plus, anytime you pull apart these deeply flawed characters you inevitably learn something about yourself.”
Next season, Jovanovich will star in the Met premiere of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick as Captain Ahab, one of the most famous characters in American mythology. “With Ahab, this idea of vengeance to the point of death seems so foreign and extreme, but in extrapolating these larger ideas and honing in on the underlying obsessive qualities that we each wrestle with to some degree, I can start to understand and “live in his skin” to some extent. It is this work that I absolutely love!”
Another exciting new role for Jovanovich will be yet one more obsessive, Paul in Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt which the Boston Symphony will present in concert in January 2025. “It is one of these rare gems that comes along only every once in a while. The score…oh my…it is just glorious. This thick, lush carpet of sound that washes over you. Korngold’s music satiates one’s soul in such a satisfying way.”
It was in another Die Tote Stadt during the 2019 Bard Summerscape that I last heard Clay Hilley who has in just a few years risen to become one of the world’s most in-demand heldentenors.
After his gloriously sung Korngold performance, I expected to hear much more of Hilley, but then the pandemic hit. “In retrospect, Covid was, if anything, a catalyst for my career. Because of so many cancellations at American companies, I was available to say ‘yes’ when Deutsche Oper Berlin called in February of 2021 to ask if I could take over Siegfried in their new Ring. The rest is history.”
The next year, the doomed hero Siegfried once again proved to be Hilley’s lucky role when on one day’s notice he stepped into the internationally televised premiere of a new Gotterdammerung (replacing the late Stephen Gould, another heroic American tenor) at the legendary Bayreuth Festival, which invited him back the following summer for Tristan und Isolde. Hilley will make his first appearance at the Vienna Staatsoper next year starring in a new production of Wagner’s Tannhãuser.
Once you’ve proven yourself in the heavy Wagner-Strauss repertoire, you may only be offered those operas, but next season in Berlin, Hilley will take on “a role I’ve yearned to sing for at least fifteen years: Calaf. Singing Laca in Jenufa this past January was a very rewarding experience—such great music, but the singing isn’t as strenuous as in Wagner/Strauss. Samson is another I ADORE, and I would love to do sometime Otello, Don Alvaro and Dick Johnson, as well as Les Troyens and La Juive, and also there’s Massenet’s rarely-performed Le Cid.”
Russell Thomas, best known for his sterling Verdi and Puccini portrayals, is lately beginning to also embrace heroic German and French tenor roles. Earlier this year Thomas sang the title role in Wagner’s Parsifal for the first time with the Houston Grand Opera where he’ll return in April 2025 for his first Tannhãuser. Richard Strauss beckons for his return to the Met in November’s long-awaited revival of Die Frau ohne Schatten in which Thomas stars as the Emperor. He follows that new role with another in Seattle when he tackles Énée in a concert performance of Berlioz’s epic Les Troyens à Carthage.
To my surprise, Thomas said, “Actually, performing Wagner was never really a goal of mine. I never thought it was a realistic option for me. Most of the tenors that sing this rep are white and heldentenors. I’m neither. I believe Tannhäuser is the perfect opera. It just works. The aspect of the role that give Heldentenors trouble is the higher tessitura. That is where my voice does its best work. When I was offered the role, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse: the opportunity to sing a dream role. These last couple of years Tristan has been on my mind and every chance I get I learn a few pages.”
Having starred in the Met’s four-act Italian Don Carlo in the fall of 2022, Thomas relearned the role in French for Hamburg’s Don Carlos. I was impressed by this devotional act: “I love Don Carlo(s). I think it’s a perfect opera in all its forms. I don’t feel like a singer has truly conquered the role if they’ve not performed the five-act French. My experience prior to Hamburg was only with the four-act Italian. I’m often called a great Verdi tenor, but because I had not climbed that mountain, I believed the accolade was premature.”
But Thomas hasn’t abandoned his core repertoire, as he recently sang Aïda’s Radames in Chicago and will soon correctly answer Turandot’s riddles for the Los Angeles Opera where he serves as Artist in Residence.
Another American making his mark in Verdi is Brian Jagde who earlier this year scored his biggest Met success so far as Don Alvaro in the new contemporary updating of La Forza del Destino. Earlier this season he had a similar Forza triumph at London’s Royal Opera.
Immediately following the Forza run, Jagde flew to Milan to make his long-delayed debut at La Scala as Turiddu in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. He offered: “I’m excited to finally make my debut. I’ve been fortunate to sing in so many of Italy’s legendary theaters, but I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. I find Turiddu to be certainly “quintessentially Italian” in the music and the story, but also at the same time he is like many men hailing from that period. Singing Turiddu at La Scala is a dream scenario, especially following so many great tenors who’ve performed the role before on that historic stage.” The unpredictable Latvian mezzo Elina Garanca was Santuzza at Jagde’s debut, but she withdrew from several of the following performances including the livestream.
After he returns to the Met next season as Radames, Jagde will introduce a new role there as Hermann, the desperate gambler in The Queen of Spades, his first Russian role which he’ll try out in Berlin. “I think my process in taking on anything new has always been to follow the trajectory of my voice and its natural path, with inspiration from tenors who had similar career trajectories from the past. Of course, I will continue to sing mainly Italian and French roles for a while—hopefully for my entire career! I’m not too surprised that my Hermann debut is happening soon, as many people over the years have asked me when I will sing this particular role. Hermann is a role I feel I can really sink my teeth into, with his powerful motivations and of course the beautiful arias and duets. The role sits in a range that is still comfortable to sing in as it’s not very low, but it also presents challenges I feel I’m now ready for in my development as an artist.”
Not every American tenor tackles the heavy 19th- and early 20th-century repertoire. Over the past decade, Ben Bliss has risen to the top ranks of the world’s Mozart tenors, especially at the Met where he starred in new productions of Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni. He’s only performed Tamino there in the Met’s brutally abridged, but widely popular English-language The Magic Flute. but next year he’ll finally get a chance to do a proper Die Zauberflöte there when Simon McBurney’s wildly inventive production returns. Bliss also excels with another 18th-century composer—Handel—in whose Semele the tenor will appear in 2025 as Jupiter in a new production, first in Paris, then in London.
But following his shattering Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress at the Met several years ago Bliss will continue venturing more often into operas of the 20th and 21st centuries. During the Bavarian State Opera’s summer festival, he will be Pelléas in a new production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, a role most often taken by lyric baritones. “Luckily for me, the lower part of my range seems to be ample for a role like Pelleas. I look forward to using this slightly different, deeper palate of colors to paint our picture in Munich. Interestingly, Debussy himself actually wrote a few augmentations for the role when it is sung by a tenor. They are little known, but I look forward to offering them to our conductor and music staff. I’ve never heard them in a recording so it could be interesting to explore them.”
Bliss opens the Met’s 2024-25 season with Grounded, an opera by Jeanine Tesori that had its world premiere just last year in Washington DC. The tenor offered that “as interpreters of an operatic repertoire that is largely ‘antique,’ it is a unique opportunity and challenge to give voice and life to a new piece. Not only because it is new itself, but because it will be an important piece in the patchwork of 21st-century opera defining itself, laying out a musical and dramatic landscape and language for the genesis in our living artform. Also, how fun to play a ranch hand instead of a prince!”
I’m grateful to these seven men who spoke to Observer, but they are far from the only Americans excelling on the international scene. The Met lately mostly offers just Puccini roles to Matthew Polenzani, but he shone as Florestan in Fidelio last fall in Hamburg, while next season he adds to his huge repertoire Mauricio in Adriana Lecouvreur for Madrid and Anatol in the National Symphony Orchestra’s long-awaited revival of Barber’s Vanessa starring Sondra Radvanovsky. When Stephen Costello appears in the Met’s Moby Dick as Greenhorn, he’ll be the only cast member recreating the role he originated at the opera’s very first performance in Dallas in 2010. It’s puzzling that Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra have programmed the widely performed La Bohème in June, but Costello will be their Rodolfo.
Sometimes tenors even team with each other as Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres did on their recent showstopping all-Rossini CD “Amici e Rivali” in which the pair trade comradery, insults and showers of high Cs!
Brownlee returns to the Met next year once more as Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the role in which he made his company debut in 2007. Spyres, on the other hand, has joined others in plunging into Wagner with his first Lohengrin in March in Strasbourg. He’ll continue that journey this summer with his Bayreuth debut as Siegmund in Die Walküre, a role he shares with Eric Cutler, a fellow Mozart/bel canto specialist who has graduated into more dramatic repertoire. Cutler will be yet another American to take on Die Tote Stadt when he stars in a new production of the Korngold next year in Zurich.
It can’t be an accident that the Richard Tucker Award, one of opera’s most prestigious and lucrative prizes and one bestowed by the foundation founded by the late tenor’s family, has been given to Polenzani, Cutler, Brownlee, Jovanovich, Costello and Fabiano. The next winner is due to be announced next month! One more tenor?
Candace Bushnell is still showing women a different way to think about themselves. Courtesy Candace Bushnell
More than once, Observer has called Candace Bushnell the ‘real Carrie Bradshaw,’ but by now everyone should know that her Sex and the City alter ego is only a small part of the ‘real Candace Bushnell.’ The fiercely feminist Bushnell is, in no particular order, an international best-selling author, celebrated novelist and successful producer. Her critically acclaimed one-woman stage memoir, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City” opens at the Café Carlyle tomorrow (April 23) for a limited run after stints at the Daryl Roth Theater and in theaters around the world.
Bushnell’s “Sex and the City” column, of course, originated in 1994 at this very publication (then the storied New York Observer broadsheet) before quickly morphing into a book, an HBO hit starring Sarah Jessica Parker, the first of two motion pictures and, eventually, an unstoppable cultural phenomenon.
Bushnell in her one-woman show, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City.” Photo by Jeremychanphotography/Getty Images
On a warm day in April, I met Bushnell off Madison Avenue for tea at the Carlyle’s Gallery. So much talent and so many stars have moved through its art deco halls, it seemed like the perfect spot to chat with the glamorous and witty OG Carrie Bradshaw. Bushnell, true to fashion form, was sporting a black blouse with elegant shoulder ruffles, black leather pants with silver zippers, yellow heels and a hot pink handbag. Not only was it thrilling to interview one of my feminist heroes, but as a former sex columnist for the Observer myself, I’d always felt I had big stilettos to fill. (Yes, she still wears Manolos.) And just like that…after actually meeting Bushnell, those shoes felt even bigger.
How did you end up with your iconic column in the New York Observer?
When I first came to New York at 19, I wrote a children’s book. I wrote for anybody and everybody I could write for. This is all part of my show, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City.” Then I wrote for women’s magazines, which was the precursor to “Sex and the City.” I was already writing about my Samantha, my Miranda, probably back in the eighties, but I always wanted to write a column. I had a column in Mademoiselle for probably a month or two months, and then the editor left or got fired or something, which was always happening. I started writing for the New York Observer and doing profiles for them, and the profiles were really, really popular. Everybody was talking about them. Then the editor-in-chief asked if I wanted to have my own column, which just put a frame around work that I’d already developed. I’d already developed my voice, and I’d already been writing professionally for 15 years when I got the “Sex and the City” column.
What was it like working with Peter Kaplan, the legendary editor-in-chief of the New York Observer?
It was a very male-oriented, Ivy-League-mentality kind of place. There was a lot of hazing and people were tough—they threw phones. Kaplan didn’t do that, but other people did. Publishing was a slightly violent business. But Peter was brilliant, and he would just say these things that you just realize, “Wow, that’s really it.” In those days, being an editor was a creative job. He felt like it was his job to somehow get the story out of the writer. It was a different mentality.
It wasn’t long before Bushnell’s New York Observer column became a book. Fadil Berisha
How quickly did your column “Sex and the City” take off? You became a star.
It happened right away. Again, I talk about that in the show. I think after I’d written five columns, I sold it to Morgan Entrekin [publisher of Grove Atlantic] as a book. Then the column was really like a serial book, which was obviously what I’d been wanting to write my whole life—a book. People faxed [the columns] to their friends in LA, so from the beginning I had Hollywood calling. ABC wanted it, HBO wanted it, Fine Line, New Line, some other probably movie company that doesn’t exist, and I flew out to LA. It was exciting.
What was it like navigating that?
I didn’t know anything about that business at all. It took me a while to sell it to Darren Star. They say publishing is or used to be a little bit of a gentleman’s business. There’s not that much money to be made. But in TV and entertainment, there’s a lot of money. When there’s a lot of money to be made, people are not, in general, equitable. Nobody gives you a good deal out of the kindness of their heart. The goal is to give as bad a deal as you can get away with, and that’s business. If you’re in it, you understand it, you know how to negotiate it, and you have power. Otherwise, if you’re an outsider, you don’t have that kind of insider access.
And it was sexist.
Back in 1995, women did not have the same kind of power that they have now in Hollywood. It was very different, and there’s a bit of an attitude of—I mean, the whole world was like that, right?
I read that you consulted on the HBO series “Sex and the City” up until Mr. Big got married, and then you felt you no longer related to Carrie. Why is that?
I tell that story in the show, too. At the end of the second season, Carrie and Mr. Big have a bumpy relationship. They break up, they get back together again, and then Mr. Big dumps Carrie and marries somebody else. Somebody he thinks is marriage material—meaning more conventional and less trouble, which is exactly the same thing that happened in my real life. I thought that that was maybe the end of the series, and it fit with my thesis that guys like Big come and go, but your girlfriends are always there for you. But then it’s not over, and they want to make another season, so they have Carrie have an affair with her now-married ex-boyfriend, Mr. Big. And as I say, that’s when a part of me “un” became Carrie Bradshaw because to me it wasn’t feminist. I’m sort of the opposite of that.
Let’s talk about “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City.” How did the show come about?
I met David Foster and his manager, Mark Johnson, and then we had a meeting. Mark said, “Why don’t you try to do a one-woman show?” I was like, “Why not? What do I have to lose?” I wrote it at the beginning of 2020, and then I started working with [director and choreographer] Lorin Latarro. He found there were Broadway people who were interested, they raised money, and we ended up workshopping it at Bucks County Playhouse. And then we brought it Off-Broadway to the Daryl Roth Theatre, which seems crazy to me. Like what?! Then it closed because of Covid.
Have you always had an interest in acting?
I had some interest in it, but it was kind of brief, and it was a long time ago. When I first started doing [the show], it was more like doing a dressage test than writing a book or an article. It’s performative. It’s choreographed, you say this here and say that there, but then there’s another aspect of being creative within that medium, which is an interesting thing to explore and figure out. There are timing aspects, certain ways that you say certain lines, and it’s very physical. It’s not just me standing up with a microphone. There’s a set. There are little props. There are little tiny skits. I fall off the couch, and it’s fun to do. I actually love doing it.
Sex and the City just came out on Netflix. How do you think it resonates with today’s 20-something audience?
I can only speak from my experience, which is that I have so many young women come up to me as they have been doing for the last twenty-five years saying that Sex and the City saved them, inspired them and changed them, but mostly gave them a different way to look at their lives. And I’ve had women from all over the world say this to me. For a lot of young women, it’s like a rite of passage to watch it when they go to college. These 20-somethings are watching it on Netflix, but there was a whole generation before them of 20-somethings that watched the DVDs with their new friends in college.
Fans tell Bushnell SATC saved them, inspired them and changed them, but mostly gave them a different way to look at their lives. Courtesy Candace Bushnell
I feel like Sex and the City made talking and writing about sex less taboo and more mainstream.
I didn’t write about very much sex at all. There were some things in there like threesomes, but it wasn’t graphic in any way. I always felt like I was writing about power structures between men and women and heterosexual relationships. I thought I was really being much more of a social anthropologist.
On a panel, you said that Sex and the City is feminist because it’s like, “Hey, you know what society? We are single women in our thirties and guess what, we’re getting on with it, we’ve got our friends, we made a different kind of family… there isn’t something wrong with us because we don’t want to follow the narrow prescriptive life of what society tells women they can and should do.”
The women were pretty courageous [back then], I have to say. I knew a lot of single women, and there was a real camaraderie. We had to look out for each other. It was a man’s world, but also New York City was a place where—and here’s why I wrote Lipstick Jungle which I always thought was the next step after Sex and the City—ambitious women make it. There are a lot of really successful women here, and that to me is the most interesting thing. That was what was edgy. Now that there are more successful women, there’s a freedom and you’re allowed to be ambitious. Whereas before you couldn’t. It was like Martha Stewart and Anna Wintour and Tina Brown, but people wrote horrible things about them all the time. If you were a woman and you were successful, you were also going to be punished.
Why do you and SO MANY people today still love talking about Sex and the City?
I don’t talk about it, but a lot of other people want to talk about it, and that’s great. I talk about my new work, the show that I’m doing, feminism, being your own Mr. Big and all the things that drive me as a writer, performer and a creative person in the world to do what I set out to do from the beginning, which was to try to show women a different way to think about themselves and their lives outside of the patriarchy. That’s been my mission since I was a kid. It still is.
I think that we’ve all been sold the fairytale of the knight in shining armor, and that’s problematic.
It’s problematic because being with a man can be physically dangerous for women. There are some really unpleasant truths about heterosexual relationships that we don’t acknowledge. And I think going for the guy who’s going to take care of you or the rich guy—this guy who’s going to be in love with you—can happen if you have the right circumstances, but if you don’t have a lot of the right circumstances, it’s maybe not going to happen. And so instead of spending your time investing in something that ultimately you can’t control because you can’t control how somebody feels about you or what they’re going to do for you, but you can control, hopefully, who you are in the world and, hopefully, the ability to make money and look after yourself. There’s a lot of pride in that.
But then there’s also the pay gap. The system is rigged against women.
If you look numerically at the 1%, only 3.5% of the 1% are women who made their own money. And to be in the 1%, you need to have a net worth of $11 million. Think about how many billions [that is]—think about all of the men who have more than $11 billion. Okay, so 96.5% of the women in the 1% are married to a rich man or inherited the money. That is wrong to me.
The writer and producer considers herself a social anthropologist. Harold Mindel, courtesy Candace Bushnell
You’ve chronicled NYC’s rich and powerful. I get the sense that you have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the rich. I certainly do.
New York is filled with rich people. There’s huge income disparity. I feel like it’s a problem. And it’s certain business practices that have been allowed in the last thirty years. I mean, there have been legal changes to how you can do business, and I think as a journalist you’re supposed to turn a little bit of a questioning eye towards the rich. You’re not really supposed to be one of them.
Like Truman Capote.
Truman Capote, Dominick Dunne, Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. These are classic topics for journalists. Of course, now we live in a different time. That was a time when people kind of revered the written word. There was a real status to that. Now there’s a real status to being an influencer. Our value system has changed. We live in an attention economy where it’s really all about getting attention. I mean, Carrie Bradshaw today would be Emily in Paris.
It’s not easy being an artist in the City.
It really isn’t. I mean, that’s sort of the tricky thing about New York. It needs to be a place where if you have a lot of creativity and artistic ability, you can still live here and you don’t need a zillion dollars. When I moved here in the late seventies, it felt really expensive, but somehow you believed you could inch up the ladder and kind of get there. Now it feels like a lot of these places are way out of reach. It’s a big difference if something is $2 million and something is $20 million. So many people came to New York in the late seventies and early eighties—like Cynthia Rowley. She was like, “I just made clothes out of my tiny studio apartment downtown.” She sewed clothes, and then a store said they wanted them. When I first moved here, you had to be creative and interesting, but you didn’t feel like, “Oh, I need to live in the best place” because everybody lived in a crappy place.
Finally, tell me about performing at the iconic Café Carlyle.
So many legendary people have done shows here; it’s incredible. Also, it’s just a very, very New York thing to do. I’ve been on stage and also in the audience, and it’s a super intimate experience—one that you really can’t get anywhere else. It’s just a really special room, and it has the original wallpaper. It has a really, really small stage, and people are right here. You feel like you’re in somebody’s living room. That’s kind of what New York is all about, isn’t it? These one-of-a-kind, one-time experiences.
Andrew Warren and Ava Dash at the Save Venice Ball. Marcy Swingle
It’s Friday night, and a highlight of the gala season is on the calendar: Save Venice’s Un Ballo in Maschera, an event I always look forward to. The glitzy soirée, which focuses on raising money dedicated to the artistic preservation of Venice, Italy, is, fittingly, held at the Plaza Hotel. While the non-profit organization hosts several galas, the New York iteration is always special; this year, it fell on Friday, April 12.
Tonight’s date is Ava Dash, one of my best friends and, luckily, one of those girls who is surprisingly easygoing, because we both ended up last-minute winging our looks for the evening—shockingly enough, they worked out quite well, if I do say so myself. When I say I was texting my salesperson at Saks at 5 p.m. looking for the perfect McQueen blazer, I’m not exaggerating. Luckily, Ava and I had a good starting place, as Julian Polak of Maison Spoiled texted Ava and me photos of sparkling diamond options to tie our outfits together, and base the looks around—I ended up basing my look around a white gold-and-yellow diamond brooch Julian picked for me.
For Ava, I pulled a vintage, circa-1980s couture Calvin Klein marigold gown from my late grandmother’s collection, and tied the look together with tan Rachel Roy shoes and a bejeweled Judith Leiber monkey bag. Sometimes I do miss being in fashion, because I always love when my girlfriends let me style them. A few photos later, and we hopped in an Uber and were off to the Plaza.
Ava Dash. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com
We arrived just in time for the last moments of cocktail hour, and my inner Kris Jenner came out, making sure Ava, the 24-year-old daughter of Damon Dashand Rachel Roy, was photographed by everyone.
Now, onto the actual event, which was sponsored by Oscar de la Renta and the Gritti Palace, a Luxury Collection Hotel. The sold-out event, themed La Primavera and attended by over 400 guests, raised more than $1.2 million for the preservation of historic art and architecture in Venezia.
As someone who has attended charity galas since I was 14 years old, I’m confident that I know a thing or two about how to do them right. The key to this event was the backdrop, which meant having it decorated and transformed into a Venetian garden by Save Venice co-chair and event engineer Bronson van Wyck and his team, Van Wyck & Van Wyck. With Bronson on decor, there isn’t much left to worry about, especially with Nathalie Kaplan’s consultancy agency, NGK Global, handling logistics. She’s the queen of these society charity galas, which are her speciality. And with corporate sponsors like Chaneland Gucci,the night was bound to be a success.
Ivy Getty, Emily Ratajkowski and Nicky Hilton. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com
Aside from Ava, of course, some of the other best-dressed attendees included Tina Leung (in an Oscar de la Renta Barbie-esque sheer crystal top and pink silk bow dress),Di Mondo (in a blue hydrangeas-covered creation with butterflies and a matching mask),Ivy Getty(in a sheer, embellished Oscar de la Renta gown and Bulgari jewels) and Natalie Jackson (in a classic black Vivienne Westwood gown and over-the-top butterfly mask). And let’s not forget about van Wyck’s peacock cape. Other fashionable attendees included Emily Ratajkowski, Jenna Lyons, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Anna van Patten, Julian Schnabel, Huma Abedin, LaQuan Smith and Ezra J William, to name just a few.
After the cocktail hour came to an end, Ava and I headed to our seats for the dinner.Laura KimandFernando Garcia, the co-creative directors of Oscar de la Renta, presided over the Ceremony for Outstanding Masks; Jordan Roth, Andy Yu and Lisa Sher-Chambers won the three prizes.
Paolo Lorenzoni, Bronson van Wyck and Lisa Sher-Chambers. Deonté Lee/BFA.com
It was an incredibly, glamorous evening, and in the midst of the festivities, I caught up with Ava on what she’s up to right now.
Observer: What’s the latest with you?
Ava Dash: I just moved back to New York. After graduating college at LMU in L.A., I’m excited to be back in the city and focusing on modeling as well as television projects.
What’s next for you, career-wise?
I recently worked with PETA, launching a campaign advocating for the welfare and well-being of animals. This has always been a priority to me, and working with their team has taught me so much. I am also very grateful to have just signed with a new modeling agency in New York City.
Why the switch from L.A. to New York?
I was born in New York and I moved to L.A. with my family when I was 14 years old; I did high school as well as college there, and was ready for a change. I wanted to elevate my career and experience my 20s in the city. The experiences that I can have in New York City, I just wasn’t having in L.A.. The New York lifestyle is so spontaneous; I was walking around Soho with friends and kept running into people we knew, adding to our group, and a magician stopped us and did an impromptu show. This type of thing never happens in L.A., where you’re just driving from place to place.
What’s your favorite part of New York?
Being able to walk around and meet new people. The feeling of endless possibilities drew me back to the city where I was born. Literally whatever you’re into, you can find the best of it in this city.
We’re at Save Venice—what other charitable causes are important to you?
The well-being of children is the most important. My mom and I co-authored a young adult novel [96 Words for Love, published in 2019] and gave the proceeds to girls rescued from sex trafficking in India. I am also very passionate about the well-being of animals, and have traveled to Thailand to work at a sanctuary for rescued elephants.
Ava Dash, Andrew Warren, Julia Moshy, Sarah Shatz and Natalie Jackson. Deonté Lee/BFA.com
What has been your favorite part of the night thus far?
I love people-watching and seeing how people come together for a theme. There is so much devastation that happens in Venice every year, so I am proud to be a part of a community that cares about this cause.
The event was beautiful! The food was delicious, the drinks were flowing and I love that the dance floor was packed throughout the night. It seems like everyone enjoyed themselves in helping to raise money for the historical and fabulous city of Venice.
Rate the decor one to 10?
It’s quintessential old school New York—9/10.
Who’s best dressed that you’ve seen tonight
Me!
I must ask—boyfriend or single lady?
Single lady! Trying to channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw with my recent move.
Well, on that note—anyone you’d immediately say yes to going on a date with?
Though a noted scholar of Mediterranean culture, history and religion, Katherine Fleming’s love affair with the region was initially less than academic. “I could try and hook up a highfalutin’ academic answer,” she told Observer. “But the real bottom line is that when I was a teenager, I dropped out of college and took a job as a waitress at a Taverna in Crete.”
Fleming, who grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, picked up modern Greek during her “wild, well-spent youth” on the island—a skill that in subsequent years came in handy in her studies of the humanities. “Since I had Greek, I wound up following a course of study that made it possible for me to make use of and deploy it,” she said. But for all the hinted-at shenanigans, the scholarly path she eventually followed didn’t come out of left field for Fleming, the daughter of a literary critic and Episcopal priest. After her adventures in Greece, she earned degrees at Barnard University, the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley before going on to work as a lecturer at several California universities and eventually becoming provost of New York University in 2016.
Today, however, Fleming works in an entirely different field. Since 2022, she has been president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world’s wealthiest arts institution with an $8.6 billion endowment as of last year. She oversees the Los Angeles-based organization’s Getty Foundation, Getty Research Institute, Getty Conservation Institute and its two museums—alongside the 1,400 employees employed by them. Fleming was hired as a strategist to help unify the Getty’s various entities. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a public-facing cultural institution in the 21st Century because it can mean something pretty different from what it meant even twenty-five years ago,” she said.
A new definition of access for art institutions
One of those shifts includes evolved ways of thinking about who should have access to fine art museums. Located in Brentwood and Malibu, the Getty Center and Getty Villa respectively showcase pre-20th-century European art and Greek and Roman antiquities from the Getty’s more than 125,000-piece collection. “The organization is going through the process of trying to think really carefully and creatively about what it means to be wealthy, on top of a hill made of marble, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in L.A.,” says Fleming. “We have to make that place as welcoming as possible to as many people as possible and to really make the people of the city of L.A. aware of it as theirs.”
A view of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Shane Gritzinger/FilmMagic
By emphasizing both physical and online visitor experiences, Fleming hopes the Getty will become representative of the kinds of institutionally neutral places that one can visit for a moment of reflection. This is especially important “in an increasingly chaotic world,” says Fleming, when “people are trying to tell people what to think and how to think about things.” In addition to ensuring visitors can interpret holdings in their own ways, without an assumption that one must have attained a certain level of education or have a particular knowledge base to truly appreciate artwork, Fleming wants the Getty museums to be “a kind of public square” where people can gather to enjoy the architecture and ocean views.
Other priorities include investing in the Getty’s public resource features, such as educational programs and teacher curriculums, and continuing major cataloguing and digitization initiatives like its work on the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. The producer of magazines including Ebony and Jet, the publishing company’s trove of images is co-owned by the Getty and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and stands as one of the most significant depictions of Black culture in the 20th Century, with pivotal snapshots of famous figures like Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and Billie Holiday. “I’m very proud to be at an organization that owns that archive and is actively working to make it as widely accessible as possible—and effectively saving that archive from going into private hands,” Fleming said.
Exploring new models of ownership
The Getty CEO is also proud of her decision to commit $17 million to Pacific Standard Time, an arts initiative that brings together institutions across Southern California on a five-year cycle. Renamed PST, its next edition will kick off this September with an emphasis on interactions between art and science. Another major move made under Fleming’s leadership occurred in 2023 when the Getty and London’s National Portrait Gallery jointly purchased the 18th-century Joshua Reynolds painting Portrait of Mai (Omai), which depicts the first Polynesian to visit Britain. “We are in a world in which increasingly we have shared services, we have things that rest on the premise that lots of people should have access to the same goods,” said Fleming. Acquired for $62 million, the work will travel between the two institutions for exhibitions, research and conservation.
The courtyard of the Getty Villa in Malibu. Nick Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images
Fleming’s enthusiasm for experimenting with ownership models extends beyond collaborative purchases. She cited fractional ownership platforms such as Masterworks and Artex, which offer the opportunity to acquire portions or shares of fine art, as key evolutions in an art market increasingly populated by investors and rising prices. “I don’t know yet what I think of them—it’s too early for me to make a judgment,” she says. “But I find it really, really interesting.”
Her own artistic inclinations reflect her commitment to culture in Los Angeles. Fleming is particularly excited about the rise of L.A.-based artists, like Getty Prize winner Mark Bradford, who are playing a role in shaping the city’s artistic evolution. Other influential creators include Lauren Halsey, whose installations in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles address local issues and offer critiques of gentrification, and Catherine Opie, whose photography documents Californian subcultures and queer communities. It’s the artists who are driving the region’s thriving cultural growth, said Fleming, as opposed to “the ecosystems of institutions that sell or curate or present their art.”
Amid an especially dynamic time for the Los Angeles arts community, Fleming believes the Getty needs to continue evolving and strengthening its commitment to the city it has long invested in. Fostering collaboration across the region and expanding its open-access resources are key elements of that mission—as are its plans to turn its physical campuses into more inclusive and welcoming sites. “In a place like L.A., which is so atomized and internal, people are in real need of it.”
Walk me through your own decision to do this—to use Orchid’s technology on yourself.
I mean, I started the company because I wanted to test my own embryos.
Because of your mom, or because of who you are as a person?
Both. Reproduction is one of the most fundamental things in life. It’s like you die, taxes, and, you know, people have kids.
You always knew you wanted to have kids.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
How old were you when you were like, “I should be able to sequence my embryos”?
I don’t think it was sequence my embryos specifically. I’ve always had an interest in genetics. I’ve always had an interest in fertility and reproductive tech.
Even as, like, a teenager?
I remember one of my applications for the Thiel Fellowship definitely had a version of Orchid on there.
That was, what, over a decade ago, and a lot of prospective parents still rely on the same genetic testing we used back then.
I would consider it negligent to use the old technology. Because you’re by definition missing hundreds of things that could have been detected. Parents who are not told that this new technology exists are being done a huge disservice and will probably be suing if their child ends up with a condition.
You think that’s a legitimate lawsuit?
Of course. If your doctor doesn’t tell you that there’s a way for you to screen for your child to not have a condition that would be either life-threatening or life-altering for them—I mean, it’s already happened. [Parents have been suing physicians for failing to perform genetic tests since the late 1980s.]
How much does an Orchid screening cost?
It’s $2,500 per embryo.
And presumably you’d be screening several embryos. What about for families that can’t afford that?
We have a philanthropic program, so people can apply to that, and we’re excited to accept as many cases as we can.
Your clientele, at the moment, must tend toward well-off optimizers—people who really fuss about numbers.
I guess you’re right. I mean, I don’t know.
Do you ever worry about that? Giving people, like, more things to worry about?
No, no, no. I think it’s the opposite. For the vast majority of our patients, it reduces worry.
There must be exceptions.
There are some people who, I agree, are kind of anxious. And I just don’t think they should do any genetic testing.
Oh yeah?
I mean, everyone’s different. It’s just that I want to expand the menu of choice. You get to choose your partner. You get to choose when and if you have kids. This is, like, this is your kid. Why would you censor information about that?
But this still makes a lot of people extremely uncomfortable. There’s a fear, so often, around anything that touches reproduction. Are we, I don’t know, afraid of playing God or something?
Every other time we examine something, we develop—we develop insulin, right? We’re like, “That’s great!” It’s not like you’re playing God there. But you actually are, right? You’re creating something that didn’t exist before.
I got to chat with Fallout executive producer Jonathan Nolan and cast member Michael Emerson, who’ve worked together before on Nolan’s first TV series, Person of Interest, where Emerson played Harold Finch for five seasons.
In Fallout, Emerson plays a mysterious character known only as “Wilzig,” a man being pursued by several entities in the Wasteland, who has a connection to a prominent organization in Fallout lore.
It’s well known that Nolan is a huge fan of the Fallout series. For some creators, it’s daunting to try to adapt something they love so much, and so they prefer “not to touch it.” So, I asked Nolan what it was about his experience of playing this series of games that made him feel like he had to be the one to bring this world to live action.
“I don’t know that it was about feeling that it had to be me, but I certainly had never experienced anything like the tone of the games,” Nolan says. “The retro-futurism of it. The violence of it. The political commentary of it, and the humor of it. I’d never felt all of those things brought together. So that, for me, felt like something I would be excited to share with, I’m not going to say a ‘larger audience,’ but maybe the audience including people who hadn’t had the opportunity to play the games and people who had and wanted to see another chapter in this story.”
Staying firmly in spoiler-free territory, I had to ask Emerson what drew him to this project and the role of Wilzig, especially since his participation in the story is … interesting, to say the least.
Of course, Emerson was drawn to “the pedigree of the project” and the fact that it was being put together by people he loved working with. “It looked like it might be kind of a summer vacation lark. It was a little more than that when push came to shove, but it was an adventure! And it was good fun. And technically amazing!”
Emerson seemed like a kid describing a great summer vacation when he went on to say, “And I got my foot blown off! And other indignities!”
“Not just your foot! Not just your foot, sadly,” Nolan chimed in.
Seriously, y’all. Wilzig’s whole deal is bananas. We can expect his presence to be “felt through the season.”
While both Nolan and Emerson hope that those who have no experience with the Fallout games might be inspired to try the games by watching this show, they are very clear that this is not a show “for the whole family.”
“Leave the kids at home,” Nolan says. Considering how many body parts explode on this show? That’s probably for the best.
Fallout arrives on Prime Video on April 11. Check out my full interview with Nolan and Emerson at our TMS YouTube channel:
Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She’s been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she’s back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she’s writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.
“’Museums Without Men’… ‘The Story of Art Without Men’… these are tongue-in-cheek attention-grabbing titles. Because it raises awareness: why museums without men?” Katy Hessel tells Observer. Championing a fiercely feminist re-reading of art, past and present, is Hessel’s signature. If you’re not familiar with her name, you’re likely familiar with her work. She is behind the Great Women Artists podcast and a runaway-hit Instagram account (@thegreatwomenartists), in addition to having published the best-selling The Story of Art Without Men. Said book—a compendium of women artists from the Renaissance to today in direct response to E.H. Gombrich’s women-absentee The Story of Art—was mostly championed for its corrective historical narrative, shrugging off the occasional dismissive accusations of being “tinged with the boosterism of girlboss feminism.”
To celebrate Women’s History Month, Katy Hessel launched Museums Without Men, a new but ongoing series of audio guides highlighting women and gender non-conforming artists in the public collections of international museums. The series launched with five participating institutions. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art were first, and the Hepworth Wakefield in England, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Tate Britain soon followed.
Observer recently spoke with Hessel—who was included in our 2023 list of The Most Influential People in the Art World—about making museums accessible, non-binary artists to know, and thinking more carefully about museum captions.
To start, how did these guides come to be?
The Met was first—it was only sort of meant to be a one-off thing that I was doing with them. The guides are created for lots of different reasons. One was the fact that when you go into museums, oftentimes you’re overwhelmed by the number of works on display, and what you really want to do is spend time with seven or eight works—as much as it kills you—but really sort of get into it and leave the museum being like I really looked at something properly today. The whole point of my work is to get as many people into the museum as possible.
Hessel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Aurola Wedman Alfaro / Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Whenever I go to museums, obviously I always look at the label and see if it’s a woman, because that’s how I’ve discovered and learned about so many artists. Not only does that bring me into these artists’ lives and work but it also makes me realize how many women artists are being collected by these institutions—and reveals the shocking gender imbalance.
You communicate through many media: an engaged Instagram, a book, a column in The Guardian, a podcast. Are these guides a complement to what you’re already doing? Or do you see this as something separate?
I always think: what can I give people that will help them? Instagram serves a purpose, which is a daily dose of artists or artworks; it’s very condensed, it’s surface level. The book is a compilation of everything. It breaks my heart to have written just 400 words on Cindy Sherman—it shouldn’t be allowed—but you could also go to my podcast and listen to an episode with William J. Simmons, who’s one of the leading scholars on Sherman. The podcast is a whole hour to learn about an artist: it’s with a world expert, or it’s with the artist, and it’s hopefully this fantastic insight. It’s about saying to people, no matter where you enter from: welcome. You can go as deep—or not—as you like.
Do you think men will pick up the guides too?
I think it’s for everyone. There’s nothing inherently different about art created by a different gender; it’s more that society and gatekeepers have prioritized one group in history.
The National Gallery—not that I work with the National Gallery yet—has 1 percent women artists. However much I wish I could take out all the works and replace them with women artists, or make it equal, I can’t do that. What we can do is draw attention to these different artists in the museum and hopefully that will help. It’s a tiny way to raise awareness for the visitor, to realize that there’s more work to do, to introduce new names—and also for the museums to be like actually, we really need to focus on our representation here. They’re just missing out on great works.
But how do we get men to feel implicated? Men may acknowledge it’s unfair that parity is far from being reached in a museum setting, as elsewhere, but that may not necessarily galvanize them to listen. I imagine with other media you’re involved in, it’s primarily women who are engaging?
It’s definitely majority women—but I engaged with so many male curators for this, and museum directors who were men and who were supportive of it. I hope that it’s for everyone. Curator Furio Rinaldi at the Legion of Honor, with whom I worked closely on the Mary Cassatt and the Leonor Fini work is curating the first-ever North American solo exhibition of Tamara de Lempicka, who was one of the most incredible artists of the 20th century yet has never had a major solo show in the U.S.
“Museums Without Men,” “The Story of Art Without Men”—these are tongue-in-cheek attention-grabbing titles. Because it raises awareness: why museums without men? Well, because historically most of these museums were Museums Without Women. And so, we need to talk about that. I want to invite everyone in because it’s about introducing people to artists they might not know. I hope that men enjoy it—it’s for them too, completely. And from a position of privilege that anyone stands in, there should always be interest in a different perspective. I don’t only want to learn about people who look like me. I want to learn about all sorts of people.
The press release mentioned that the artists featured are women and non-binary. Could you give an example or two of some of the non-binary artists?
Absolutely. We’ve got people like Gluck [Hannah Gluckstein], who was a fantastic artist working at the start of the 20th Century. They were based in London, where they did portraits of the queer community in the 1920s and 1930s. Virginia Woolf was writing Orlando.
There’s a fantastic artist called Rene Matić, a photographer whose work is at the Hepworth Wakefield. It’s this really beautiful series where they follow their friend Travis Alabanza, who’s a performance artist. There are gorgeous pictures of dressing rooms and quiet moments and the trust that people have to let each other into their very personal lives.
There’s a forthcoming expansion of the guides to Vienna, Austria—do you have other target venues that you can speak about? What is the scope that you have in mind for the guides?
I would love to take it global: the dream would be to work with museums and have translations. I only speak English, sadly, so I’ve done lots of projects and speaking engagements in America. That’s why we started with English-speaking places. There has been interest from other institutions since we launched. But yes, I hope it’s just the beginning of something—we’ll see.
Has there been more interest in contemporary versus historical women artists? Obviously, there’s a smaller pool historically, but have you noticed people gravitating toward anywhere in particular in the timeline of women artists?
I have never noticed that. My pool spans a whole millennium… I think it’s a mix. It’s always exciting talking about someone historic because you can talk about that from a very contemporary point of view. The work has outlived this person maybe for 500 years, but that doesn’t make it any less contemporary than works we’re looking at. And thinking about where the work is in the space, as well, and how it feeds the other works around it and how maybe we can look differently at them… When I was in San Francisco in November, I did the Louise Nevelson tour, and I looked at Robert Motherwell next to her and I saw him in a completely different light because of that.
Lee Krasner, ‘Siren,’ 1966, Oil on canvas, from The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. / Cathy Carver
In terms of the way museums have been pledging to aim for parity—however far away that may be—you used the word “accelerate” relative to the guides changing the pace at which people are focusing on women artists. How much have you seen that acceleration at play? As you’re speaking with curators and directors in institutions, what is your sense of the future?
I think it’s about having certain people who have the power at the moment. They’re conscious of what is in museums and what work needs to be done. I remember speaking with Emily Beeny, a curator at the Legion of Honor, about Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Cupid and Psyche. It’s a really interesting painting of this well-known Greek myth, but Cupid is not even present. Benoist was really telling this work from Psyche’s point of view. I find it fascinating that certain curators, and those who have power in museums, are saying: We need to be collecting this kind of workbecause we need a balanced perspectiveof what history is. Otherwise we’re getting a skewed idea of what happened before us. I wouldn’t say it was by chance that there’s a plethora of female directors, which ties in with the correlation of more representation.
Not to say that the men in charge aren’t conscientious—of course they are. Let’s just say the people who are in charge of a lot of museums are now very conscientious about representation. We can all do things that are in our own remit to help accelerate equality for anything, whether it’s supporting a business or buying a book. My thing is: I can make audio guides and I have a platform to do that, so why not use that in a positive way?
Do you get pushback from people who feel that using a gendered lens to go through a museum is flattening in some way? What is your response to that criticism?
I haven’t personally received any feedback like that. This is totally not prescribing that this has to be the way that people enter museums. I think it’s nice that it’s an option. People are excited about it because perhaps they won’t realize that a work is by a woman. In the Met audio guide, we were in this room in the European galleries—a sea of Courbet nudes! The female nude in her glory. Then there is this huge painting by Rosa Bonheur of the horse fair, and it just towers over every other work. To know that that’s by a woman, in this room, is extraordinary—the lengths she had to go to, to paint that.
Rosa Bonheur, ‘The Horse Fair,’ Painting: oil on canvas, 96 1/4 x 199 1/2 in. (244.5 x 506.7 cm), gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887. Trujillo Juan / Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art,New York
Similarly, in the de Young Museum, there’s a fantastic moment of American realism in the 1930s with these images of farms and quite mundane family dinner settings in a working environment. And in the middle is this amazing sculpture from 2020 by Elizabeth Catlett. It’s the center of all these works that are by men, and the story is very much dominated by the male narrative—but then you have Stepping Out, which puts her in a very important place.
People don’t need to abide by my guides; they’re just to help them through. I often take friends to museums and pick out five to seven works I want to show them. What I do for my friends, I made into a guide.
There was a Rosa Bonheur exhibition in France last year at the Musée d’Orsay, and I was appalled by the text in the museum, which was very elliptical about her queer identity, saying instead that she ‘lived with a friend for a long time.’ The text refused to engage overtly with her queer identity. Some museums remain very conservative.
It’s ridiculous. How we contextualize artists is so important. I was at the National Gallery the other day, and I went to look at works by women artists—and every single gallery label for women artists, all about fifty words, included a male artist’s name. For Artemisia Gentileschi, it said she was the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, who was the contemporary of Caravaggio. Or for Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who—it said in the first line—this work is a response to a Rubens self-portrait. No one is writing of Orazio Gentileschi that Artemisia Gentileschi is his daughter—which is really what they should be saying.
It’s about making sure you contextualize them in a respectful way. Personally, to say someone has a queer identity, it’s just a normal thing, and it’s about normalizing the way that people live. Because there is no shame in that. And I hope I can be respectful to all different people with these guides.
I don’t assume that people know who Artemisia Gentileschi is. It’s not a definitive thing for the artists. It’s a nice resource. I hope it encourages people to take something from it and have their own interpretations. Creating these was even great for me to get to know new work—it led me down rabbit holes for artists I thought I knew so well!
Business Travel News editorial director Elizabeth West and Sonesta International CEO John Murray talk about reported moderated leisure and business travel growth in 2024, but also optimism for a soft landing for the U.S. economy. Murray offers insights into what continues to drive business travel (hint: it’s still led by meetings) as well as rates, and how Sonesta has structured its sales strategy to reach deep into the business travel market. We’ll also talk about Sonesta’s new lifestyle brand The James that is seeing more openings this year as well as its economy-minded brand Sonesta Essentials, which launched a year ago – along with Sonesta’s Worksuite model designed for remote and hybrid work models. Murray offers a unique vantage point in this BTN video interview. ___________________________________________________________________
Mera and Don Rubell at the Washington, D.C., campus of the Rubell Museum. Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Don and Mera Rubell first met in the early 1960s in the library of Brooklyn College. The duo, now aged 83 and 80 respectively, sat at the same table for six months without saying a word to each other. “Then he says, would you marry me?” Mera tells Observer.
When they revisited the library 50 years later, they were astonished to discover that their initial meeting had taken place on the art floor. “We didn’t know at the time, because neither one of us had anything to do with art,” says Mera. She was a psych major at Brooklyn College, while Don was a mathematics graduate from Cornell.
Today, however, art is very much a part of their lives. The Rubells oversee one of the preeminent collections of contemporary art in the U.S., with 7,400 works by more than 1,000 artists, and they have a widely acknowledged and well-earned reputation as spotters of young talent. “We’ve only had one week where we haven’t owed the art world money,” Don tells Observer. What’s less well-known is just how much their relationship is at the heart of their collecting activities. Don and Mera will celebrate 60 years of marriage and 59 years of buying art this year, and they aren’t planning on slowing down anytime soon.
The Rubells’ humble beginnings
They fell into art collecting while living in Chelsea, where the couple walked around the studio-filled neighborhood in between breaks of studying and began building relationships with the artists working and living there. “At some point, they said, ‘Well why don’t you buy something?’” recalls Mera. But with Don attending medical school and Mera working as a teacher on a $100 weekly salary, they didn’t have an art collector’s budget. So they agreed to begin acquiring works in the $50 to $100 range by putting aside funds for modest payment plans.
After relocating to Miami from New York in the 1990s, the couple now sustain their passion for art through real estate. They run Rubell Hotels, which Mera describes as “a day job to pay for the collecting.” And as for the collecting? Masterpieces by the likes of Kehinde Wiley, Yayoi KusamaDamien Hirst and Takashi Murakami can be seen at their Rubell Museum, a private art institution with locations in Miami and Washington, D.C.
The idea to open their collection to the public came from the Rubells’ son Jason, who alongside his artist sister, Jennifer, got the art bug from his parents. As a young teen, Jason acquired his first piece—a painting by the then-rising star George Condo—with a payment plan funded by a tennis racket-stringing business. He went on to study art history at Duke, where his senior project focused on how private collections become public museums. “That was the seed that got us involved,” says Mera. “He was so seduced by the idea of these private collectors becoming public institutions that he encouraged us to do the same.”
In 1993, they opened what was then known as the Rubell Family Collection in a two-story warehouse formerly used for storage by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami’s Wynwood area. The area’s transformation from a once-underdeveloped neighborhood into a leading arts district is often credited to the Rubells, who also played a role in convincing Art Basel leaders to bring the fair to Miami Beach. To keep up with their growing collection, Don and Mera moved the renamed Rubell Museum to an expanded space in the Allapattah district of Miami—another neighborhood that has seen a proliferation of arts spaces and increasing gentrification in recent years. In 2022, they opened a Washington, D.C., outpost in a former school once attended by Marvin Gaye.
The Rubell collection is built on consensus
The couple were early collectors of artists like Keith Haring. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Despite having been in the art collecting game for more than half a century, the Rubells continue to focus on truly contemporary work. “A lot of collectors fixate on their generation and they stick with that generation,” says Mera. “All of a sudden, 50 years later, you wake up and say, ‘Oh my god, I’m only focused on artists that are dying or dead.’”
They primarily focus on work by young artists and those who haven’t yet received mainstream recognition—the same tactic they applied when becoming early collectors of now-famed artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Cindy Sherman. “The dream and the fantasy is really to find the new Basquiat. And there always is a new Basquiat,” says Mera. The couple pointed to the French-Senegalese Alexandre Diop and Havana-born Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, as well as several young Los Angeles-based artists, as emerging talents to keep an eye on. While the Rubells try not to sell their artwork, they occasionally deaccession pieces to fund the acquisition of new ones.
Don and Mera say they are offered the best works by artists and gallerists who know it will be shared with the public. “They don’t want you to hide it in your basement, they want to show other people,” says Don. The couple is known for their intensive approach to art acquisition, which involves studio visits, in-depth conversations with artists and a rule that Don, Mera and their son Jason must unanimously agree on every purchase. If even one family member vetoes, the acquisition is a no-go. The three bring different strengths to the table, according to Mera, who describes herself as “more impulsive,” while Don focuses on research and Jason brings an art history perspective.
“I would say 50 percent of the time, we agree immediately, and 50 percent of the time, it’s a bloody battle,” says Don. The trio has only broken protocol once, when Don viewed a work he considered “absolutely fantastic” but his wife and son weren’t quite as enthusiastic about. “I bought the work without consulting everybody, and then Mera and Jason made my life so miserable that it was the only time we canceled,” he recalls.
Consensus also shapes how the Rubells operate as a couple. “It’s frightening when someone is out of control passionate about something and has the checkbook to spend it,” says Mera, adding that their process is reflective of how they started their life together. “It could have been his money, my money or our money. And it became our money,” she says. “So if we’re going to collect art, that decision has to be in the ‘we,’ not with an ‘I.’”
Art as a multigenerational affair
The art collectors also seek input from their daughter Jennifer, who chooses not to participate in their collecting activities but still participates in acquisition conversations, and their five grandchildren. “We have the eyes of different generations looking at the work,” says Don. “Ultimately, the history of what this work will be depends on a lot of different eyes, thousands of eyes, looking at a piece of work over time. So this is a very unfair advantage over others.”
Kaari Upson, Rubells, (2014). Courtesy the Rubell Museum
When it comes to the future of the Rubell Museum, both Don and Mera concede that they “won’t live forever.” They’re hopeful that their children and grandchildren will continue as stewards of the collection. Although “we’d be very upset if it became a chore for the next generation, or the generation after that,” adds Don. “They have to have the joy that we have.”
But for now, the Rubells are happy to continue pursuing fresh talent and experimenting with new programs. A recent collaboration with theater company Miami New Drama, for example, saw playwrights stage shows inspired by and performed in front of artwork hanging in the Miami Rubell Museum. One of the dramatic works centered on the 2014 piece Rubells by the late Kaari Upson, who was commissioned to create a portrait of Don and Mera for their 50th anniversary. Instead of photographing the collectors for a traditional painting, she asked for the couple’s shared mattress and cast it in silicone. The Rubells describe the journey their anniversary portrait took from mattress to play as “a way to understand what art does to the brain and imagination.”
It can also be seen as mirroring their own journey in the art world, which has strengthened their marriage instead of strained it. “My story is not about a successful woman with a vision to make something happen,” says Mera. “My story is really about how to make something happen inside of a relationship. And then, by extension, inside of a family.”
Nam June Paik Art Center Director Dr. Namhee Park. Courtesy NJP Art Center
Dr. Namhee Park was recently named the new director of the Nam June Paik Art Center, the Yongin, South Korea institution tasked with protecting the Korean-American artist’s legacy, curating shows highlighting his work in classic and new contexts. Paik seems to be having a moment, with a new documentary and his prominent placement in the Museum of Modern Art’s recent show about video art. But when doesn’t it feel like that? Observer recently caught up with Dr. Park to hear more about the institution’s relationship with the ever-relevant artist.
Why do you think the work of Nam June Paik remains so beloved today?
Nam June Paik was born in the 20th Century, but his spirit was already living in the 21st Century. If his art was avant-garde in the 20th Century, it can be considered contemporary realist art in the 21st Century. Since it is realist art as a ‘total reality’ that hybridizes almost all areas of intuitive but philosophical, sensuous but technical, it can be felt emotionally and methodologically more familiar than in the past, and from a media archaeological perspective, it can be felt as nostalgia. In that sense, his art is an ‘old future’ and is in touch with the art of the contemporary digital media environment.
His art and life attitude of “no boundaries,” “curiosity” and “infinite connection” to all things in the world, including media, information, technology, nature and planets, are still vivid values to his contemporaries. When I took office last year, I proposed ‘hyperconnectivity,’ ‘heritage community’ and ‘polyphony’ as the core values of the Nam June Paik Art Center to evoke and spread this spirit in his art to the contemporary era. This is because his art has already penetrated the current hyper-connected spirit and phenomena.
Nam June Paik with ‘Cyberforum’ (1994). Photo By MICHAEL MACOR/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
How is his legacy perceived in Korea?
Although he spent more time in Japan, Germany and the United States than in Korea, the affection and pride for Nam June Paik and his art is very significant in Korea. We Koreans are very grateful to Nam June Paik, not only for his status as an internationally renowned artist and his outlook for future society but also for his contribution to driving Korea toward internationalization. In particular, since the NJP Art Center opened in 2008, it has been working hard to preserve Paik’s legacy by collaborating with many artists at home and abroad. The roles of former directors Youngchul Lee, Manu Park, Jin-seok Seo and Kim Seong Eun were crucial; they were at the forefront of promoting Nam June Paik’s legacy more widely through exhibitions and research. However, the awareness and promotion methods of its importance do not lead to active or full support.
His legacy, which includes his role in the art world and his global perspective and desire for world peace, still requires much time to receive more empathy, broader awareness, and practices. As the fifth director of the NJP Art Center, I presented the new vision to create a ‘shared museum connected through art and technology’, which aims to hyperlink Nam June Paik’s legacy with contemporary times. The NJP Art Center, named “the house where Nam June Paik lives for a long time” by Paik himself, serves as a platform for the post-Nam June Paik through his legacy. Continuing research related to Paik every year through the academic journal NJP Reader is also a process of practically understanding his legacy and putting it into practice.
Of course, besides our museum, more and more people, individually or collectively, recognize and study Paik’s legacy as very important. The NJP Art Center is working to preserve his legacy by collaborating with major Korean institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea and the Leeum Museum of Art.
I understand that some of his video work is very hard to maintain these days, given that much of the technology it used is no longer manufactured. What is your ethos towards conservation?
Not only Nam June Paik’s art, but also media-based works in which electronic devices play an essential role in the realization of art from the late 20th Century to the present are being reviewed from various angles, as the object of exhibition, collection and research, regarding their operation, sustainability and preservation. In particular, many are interested in Paik’s works using television monitors because they are the most original examples of this media art. The fact that CRT monitors are no longer manufactured due to the technological development of television may cause concern that problems with the operation or preservation of his work may arise. I thought that by constantly asking, ‘How did Paik deal with this problem?’ we should not forget his openness, flexibility and quickness while looking at the various situations, testimonies and records in which he worked.
His work, which pioneered video art by placing television at the center of his art, was a combination of the developer’s attitude and artistic experimentation from the beginning. Paik was always open to many situations and had the agility to apply various elements, even when confronting variables or unexpected situations. For example, Zen for TV (1963), too, was created by chance in such circumstances. Considering the attitude of Paik and the next steps after the monitor production is discontinued, we keep the following two things in mind: The first is the opinions of the assistants and technicians who worked with Paik, and the second is the remediated perspective of media in the context of technological evolutionism.
For example, Jung Sung Lee, who worked as a technician for many works of Paik, presents a clear opinion on the monitor issue in The More, the Better (1988), owned by The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA Korea), which is persuasive: “Recently, MMCA Korea announced that as a final restoration method, they would apply the latest technology only in part of the monitor while maintaining the form of the existing cathode-ray tube monitor. However, since the essence of a media artwork is the content of the media inside the monitor, I believe the restoration should be done by replacing it with a new LCD monitor, in line with technological development. Suppose the restoration continues to maintain the original cathode-ray tube. In that case, breakdowns will increase, and the subsequent restoration will become more difficult, ultimately increasing the possibility of raising public skepticism about the work.”
Lee’s comment suggests that replacing it with new media is possible, considering the technicians’ opinions and the essential content of the media that I mentioned earlier. To summarize, my opinion so far is that, just as Nam June Paik’s creative journey was, media such as television are open to the possibility of replacement due to the evolution of technology, which, I believe, will more firmly defend Paik’s legacy.
Nam June Paik Art Center. Courtesy NJP Art Center
What are some of the key challenges facing your institution and how do you plan to tackle them?
The NJP Art Center opened in October 2008 and is now in its seventeenth year. We have worked hard to integrate Nam June Paik’s art into the museum system that collects, exhibits, researches and educates, and now we have reached the point of taking another leap forward. Above all, it is a time when institutional and content conditions must be improved to rebuild as a contemporary media art platform where Nam June Paik and post-Nam June Paik come together. As is the case with many art museums in the era of local autonomy, as time goes by, physical spaces such as exhibition halls and storage facilities initially set up need to be reorganized. In addition, realistic development plans are continuously being considered, such as securing budgets for continuous program development, improving old facilities and public recognition and increasing accessibility.
Many issues are directly related to budget, and various strategies are needed to solve them. We are currently seeking support and cooperation from companies from which we can secure financial resources. Meanwhile, regarding content, the NJP Art Center has reached a point where it is necessary to expand the public forum further so that many researchers can participate. We have been sharing our research through the symposium ‘Gift of Nam June Paik’ and NJP Reader, but we are working on creating ways to share the perspectives and opinions of more researchers.
Part of your mission is to “discover the future Nam June Paik” through your art prize. What are the qualities of that future Nam June Paik?
Nam June Paik was an avant-garde artist full of humor and diligently explored new things. The Paik of the future will artistically embody thoughts that can have as fresh a shock as Paik’s impact on humanity. In other words, the ability to drive the positive function of art artistically and technically is required, under Paik’s spirit, such as child-like curiosity, scientist-like inquisitiveness, avant-gardeness of overthrowing fixed ideas and forms, union/fusion rather than separation/division, and the desire for peace rather than war.
Paik’s work was heavily influenced by the then-new concept of mass media. What do you think he’d make of this era where mass media seems to be dying?
Nam June Paik’s art started with the most popular medium, television, but utilized various technologies and media, including robots, satellites, and lasers. As for mass media, Paik paid attention to it as a system to share information with many people with the advantages of serving as a field to connect and share people and thoughts and also recognized the disadvantages of its one-way communication. When he attempted ‘satellite project’ such as Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), he maximized and demonstrated the advantage that it was possible to have a meeting without the immediacy of information and physical communication through live broadcasting by trying to communicate two-way rather than one-way between cities with a broadcasting system.
Now, this is being done not only by mass media such as television but also by social media connected through the Internet. Paik would have been very interested in this situation for its freedom from the monopoly or fixity of the media and its autonomous activity of new media. He might even be happy to think we are getting closer to spirituality, which he said was the most crucial medium after the laser. He may have been pleased to see that mass media is transitioning to its new role rather than dying and that we are moving toward a world where the openness and diversity of media have expanded. In that sense, he is truly in the time of our old future.
What is your favorite work by Paik in the museum’s collection?
Among Nam June Paik’s many works, my favorite is Moon is the Oldest TV (1965). The work reveals his original understanding of the medium and intuitively reflects the Eastern and Western understandings of time. In this work, created in 1965, the moon’s shape appears different depending on the time of day. The lunar cycle from the new moon to the full moon is divided into twelve television monitors. By inserting a magnet into a cathode-ray tube to interfere with the electromagnetic signals of the internal circuit, Paik made various moon-like shapes appear on the television screen using only those signals. Viewers have an opportunity to think about the length and depth of time, the moment and eternity.
The moon, the oldest light of humanity and the only satellite of the earth, was the object of projection of countless imaginations and aspirations even before scientific exploration. At the NJP Art Center, after the video E-MOON (1999) was added to the original twelve monitors, this work consists of thirteen monitors. The moon, which shows time by recombining it spatially, is formatively meditative and overflows with poetic imagination.
Patreon CEO Jack Conte in Austin, Texas for SXSW 2024. Hutton Supancic for SXSW
As social media platforms grow into profit machines, many of them have stopped building up their content creators, according to Jack Conte, the co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a creator-focused subscription and membership platform that seeks to change that.
Conte closed out this week’s SXSW conference with a keynote presentation today (Mar. 15) about how social media companies are working against creators in favor of profitability. Conte spoke about how major platforms like Facebook began ranking posts based on user engagement, which eventually changed the nature of these sites from a place to discover creators to a recommendation machine that only promotes content that the ranking algorithm thinks users should see. As a result, creators now have a harder time gaining a following and building a dedicated fanbase.
“We only saw it in retrospect, but now I think of the 2010s as the decade of ranking, the decade when the original promise of the creator-led community, the true follow, was broken for the first time,” Conte said during his keynote today.
Patreon provides a platform for creators to sell subscriptions to audio and video content. Conte, a musician in two bands named Scary Pockets and Pomplamoose, co-founded the platform in 2013 with developer Sam Yam as a way to monetize his own videos.
Earlier this week (March 12), Observer spoke with Conte about his thoughts on the problematic trends in the creator economy and how his company is working to build a better future for content creators. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Observer: The title of your keynote is “Death of the Follower and the Future of Creativity. What do you mean by the “Death of the Follower?”
Jack Conte: TikTok was one of the first platforms that came around and basically said, “We’re not even going to worry about follows and subscriptions aren’t a thing we care about or work on. And that’s why I think you see creators on TikTok getting millions of views with one video and then a thousand views the next video. And you sort of bounce up and down like that because you don’t really have a direct relationship with your fans on that platform.
Your distribution is up to the whims of the platform and the distribution algorithms that govern it. So the shift that happened was toward that style of content feed. Specifically, YouTube followed with Shorts, and Instagram followed with Reels. But it wasn’t just short-form vertical video, it was an emphasis on recommendations and algorithmic curation because that drove really strong engagement on the platforms.
If you look at the way the internet is organized, it’s shifted from a follower-based, creator-led community based organization to curation and recommendations and personalization that I think is really bad for creative people. It’s harder to build a business, it’s harder to energize your fan base, it’s harder to have a community, it’s hard to manage your community. It’s hard to tell your community new things that’s happening in your life.
It doesn’t have to be like that. The shift to curation and personalization is not the way it must go down. There needs to be a way to reach those people and build an energized community as opposed to just having communities die off as the shift to personalization precipitates across the web.
Have you talked to creators lately? What kinds of things have they expressed that they need from these platforms?
I can’t think of a creator that I know through Patreon or just in my personal life who hasn’t felt this shift over the last four years. It started even before that with post ranking. Ranking algorithms were focused on engagement and ad revenue, which was great for their business and the right decision. But what it meant for creators was our posts are getting pushed all the way down to the bottom of the feed and we’re not able to talk to our fans anymore.
There was a group of creators whom I met with once a week for 12 weeks as part of a creator club that I did where we just talked about what’s working and what’s not. One of those creators emailed me a year later and was like, “I’m hanging up my hat. Overnight changes to the way Facebook distributes content, reduced traffic to my pages by 80 percent, and I have to sell my house.” I wish that was an exception to the rule, but that’s actually what’s happening now.
What is the argument for these companies as to why they should care how well creators do on their platforms as long as people are still visiting their sites and they’re getting ad dollars?
I don’t think they do, and I don’t think they have a business reason to, and that bothers me as a creator. Their customer is the advertiser, so why should they prioritize creative people and their work? Well, because it’s the right freaking thing to do. But is that their job as corporations? Clearly it isn’t.
I think they are making the right business decisions for their revenue models. The vast majority of their revenue, 90 plus percent of it, is coming from advertisers, and they have to maximize engagement on their platforms to sell ads. It just so happens that that’s not the best thing for creators. I think the argument is that there ought to be a better way for creators to build communities and fandoms.
Do you see a parallel to creators in the media landscape, like Big Media or corporate media?
Yes, the parallel between creators and media companies is real. Actually creators and media companies want similar things, which is to provide utility to the audience they’re serving. Big Media feels kind of thrashed around by social media platforms over the last four years. That’s how creators feel, too: it’s hard to reach people.
What is Patreon doing to solve this problem?
Patreon is a media community and business platform for fandoms and creators as opposed to just a membership platform. Not all creators want to do memberships, and not all fans want to pay for memberships. So we started to expand outside of membership into more holistic media and community and business tools for creators.
A lot of fans aren’t yet ready to pay, but they consider themselves true fans of the creator. They want to see what the creator has to say and they want to have a tight-knit relationship with the creator in that community. And so we’ve found a way to do that. We call it free membership: It’s kind of like a follow, but it’s gated behind an email. What that does is it puts the control in the creator’s hands and they can build a community of free members that they have a direct line of communication to.
We also built a community product called Chats, which allows creators to set up a community where fans can talk with each other and with the creator, in an effort to help creators build what we call energized fandoms. I think the problem with the way it exists on other platforms is the fandom doesn’t get energy as the fandom gets older. The fandom is sort of zapped of its energy as it progresses through time, because those fans aren’t seeing the work of the creator. Those posts aren’t rising to the top and they’re not getting a chance to hang out with other fans and build their enthusiasm.
Do you think that we are past the days of online public forums, especially now as individual or group creators can kind of create these spaces for themselves?
I don’t know if those days are over, but it’s certainly changed and it certainly feels like we’re starting to break apart into smaller, more manageable, in my opinion, more healthful groups of people. I don’t think the big open spaces will go away. Those maximum broadcast channels will continue to be there, but I think people will likely want to spend more time with smaller groups of people that they have deeper connections with.
Why do you believe smaller groups are more “healthful?” Can you expand on that a bit?
I think having a smaller group of people that we have really intimate deep relationships with is a much more pleasant experience as a human being. You can be more vulnerable, you can share more, you can be more of yourself without feeling worried that people are judging. You can find it’s easier to find belonging instead of constantly being subjected to people whose values you don’t share, yelling at you while you’re wrong. You’re among a group of like-minded people, which is how our brains are designed. So, something about all that feels a bit more healthy to me rather than just kind of being in the big mosh pit.
With all the changes and disruptions going on in the social media business, what do you think the future holds for creators?
I actually think the future is very, very bright for creative people. If you look at over the last two decades of the internet, where we came from and where we are now, 11 years ago, there was no paying creators. There was no way to make money, no tipping, no subscriptions. Now, all of that stuff is like table stakes in the industry. If you’re a platform, there’s a cultural expectation that creators deserve to be paid for their work. But then there still needs to be the actual community building and business building that happens.
I think we’re moving into a world where there will literally be hundreds of millions of people as full-time professional creators building communities and businesses. And that’s the world I want to live in.
BMA curator Kevin Tervala. Maximilian Franz / Courtesy the BMA
A few months ago the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) named Kevin Tervala as the institution’s new Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, a role he previously filled on an interim basis for almost a year. Before this posting, Tervala served as head of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands department since 2017, and he brings to the table plenty of ideas about how to program such material for a city as diverse as Baltimore. Observer recently caught up with Tervala to hear about his new role and his thoughts about the art world at large.
You’ve been at the BMA since 2015. What’s unique about it as an institution? What does it do better than others?
In 2018, the BMA went through a strategic planning process that resulted in a radical revision of our mission and vision statement, one that commits us to “embodying a commitment to artistic excellence and social equity in every decision from art presentation, interpretation and collecting, to the composition of our Board of Trustees, staff and volunteers.” This commitment is deeply felt at all levels of the BMA, and since 2018, we have moved rapidly to transform our organization from top to bottom. This has only been possible because of the incredible people who have committed themselves to this institution, from the staff and Board to the artists and Baltimoreans who put their trust in us.
What are some of your favorite shows that you’ve worked on in your tenure there?
That’s a tough one! I have had the privilege of curating eight exhibitions in my time at the BMA, ranging from small, one-gallery presentations to sprawling, multi-gallery projects. Of these, two stand out as my favorites: “Kuba: Fabric of an Empire” (August 19, 2018 – February 24, 2019) and “A Perfect Power: Motherhood and African Art” (April 5, 2020 – March 7, 2021). In “Kuba,” the BMA examined the relationship between the political history of central Africa’s Kuba Kingdom and the designs embroidered into the textiles created for and worn by the kingdom’s elite. This was an enormously fun project to research—one that involved carbon dating a cache of textiles to create a 250-year timeline of Kuba two-dimensional design—and the results helped us understand the important role of fashion when it comes to the exercise of power.
In “A Perfect Power”—an exhibition that examined the role of maternal iconography in historic central African states and societies—I curated the show alongside a truly brilliant cast of scholars and students, including Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí, a professor of Sociology, Africana, and Women’s Studies at Stony Brook University; Jennifer Kingsley, Director of the Museums & Society Program at Johns Hopkins University (JHU); and Michael Harper, Hae In Kim, Maria Kyriakakos, Clara Leverenz and Andrea White, undergraduate students in a Spring 2019 Curatorial Practicum that I taught with Jennifer Kingsley at JHU. This collaborative curatorial process was so enormously important in making the exhibition the success that it was, and it also made it a ton of fun.
How do you program for both the people of Baltimore and the broader art world?
This is a great question and one that speaks very directly to everything that we are about at the BMA. Our director, Asma Naeem, has made it her mission to interweave global and local histories, and we are shaping our exhibition program and our curatorial strategy for collection galleries to bring these narratives to the fore. And it is quite an easy task. Baltimore is and always has been a global city. So, if you are focusing on Baltimore-based artists and Baltimore-based narratives, you are naturally going to be focusing on histories of interaction and exchange. Our upcoming retrospective on the legendary Baltimore artist Joyce J. Scott—”Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams” (March 24 through July 14, 2024)—makes this clear. Joyce has lived in Baltimore for most of her life but has traveled the world to learn and make with other artists. Her artworks and her artistic practice are deeply grounded in this city, but they are also related to the artistry and the history of our world.
You have a PhD in African Studies from Harvard. What drew you into the field?
I fell in love with African art during my freshman year of college. At the time, my undergraduate alma mater—the University of Maryland—required all its students to take a history or theory of the arts class as part of its general education program, and I signed up for an Introduction to African Art course to fulfill that requirement. At the time, I had no idea what art history as a discipline was and had never taken a college-level humanities class. I had, in short, no idea what I was getting into, and I fell absolutely in love with what I was seeing. Part of this is because African art history is filled with a dazzling array of visually arresting works that delight the eye and challenge the mind, and part of this is because art allowed me to transcend myself and my personal experiences.
Art by people of color seems to be more popular than ever with collectors and curators. How has that affected the field?
While I would agree that the “art market”—that amorphous entity centered in global financial capitals—has finally recognized that people from across the world have been creating gorgeous and thought-provoking artworks for millennia, I think it is also important to recognize that the perceived novelty of this emphasis is something of a localized phenomenon. Collectors, curators, scholars and artists throughout the Global South have been collecting, curating and thinking about artworks created by artists of color for centuries. And there are plenty of scholars and curators in the Global North that have also made it their life’s work to champion artists of color and the works they produce. The “art market” is simply catching up. And it is high time they do so. We need more exhibitions and scholarship focused on historic and contemporary artists of color. We need more collectors to support artists and galleries that focus on these works.
Your museum recently acquired its first piece of performance art. What does this tell us about the future of your acquisitions strategy?
We could not be prouder to be the institutional steward of Jefferson Pinder’s phenomenal performance piece Ben-Hur. And though this is our first acquisition of a performance, it will certainly not be the last. Indeed, we are committed to caring for all forms of artistic expression and are continuously revising not only the collecting roadmaps that guide our acquisitions strategy but also the internal policies and procedures that guide the way we collect, research, exhibit and care for artworks. Take “Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800,” for instance. This exhibition—which was on view at the BMA between October 1, 2023 and January 7, 2024 and opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario on March 27, 2024—uncovered and valorized women artists who worked in artistic mediums that have historically been ignored by mainstream art historians and art museums. By putting artistic mediums like lace and paper quilling on the same level as painting and sculpture, our brilliant curatorial team showcased the extraordinary diversity of artistic creativity in early modern Europe.
Similarly, much of my research revolves around artworks made by nomadic artists, and what I have found is that the normative artistic mediums of many nomadic artists are quite different from the normative artistic mediums of many sedentary artists. There is, as I am fond of saying, a little bit of art in everything, and at the BMA, we want to make sure we are showcasing and uplifting the sparkling diversity of our shared creative spirit.
What would you say you’ve learned in your nine years at this institution?
I think an easier question to answer might be what haven’t I learned? I feel incredibly privileged to have spent the last nine years working alongside the most intelligent, passionate, hardworking and innovative group of colleagues (both in and out of the museum). Through them, my approach to pretty much everything has been radically transformed. And I think that is the biggest lesson I have learned at the BMA. Our work is always better when we engage—openly and deeply—with one another.
As extended-stay competition heats up, an established player stays cool.
Business Travel News editorial director Elizabeth West hosts Extended
Stay America chief commercial officer Kelly Poling to talk about
business travel trajectory in 2024, the recent decline in extended-stay
occupancy, new competition from major hotel brands, product
diversification at ESA, and whether the company will move to
attribute-based selling. Poling offers her vantage point in this BTN video interview. ___________________________________________________________________
If you can’t wait for Oscar Sunday, you can relive the best moments from Oscars past right now with the new Unlocked TV Channel, “Oscars On The Red Carpet Encore.”
The On The Red Carpet team dug deep into the vaults to uncover the most magical moments and must-see interviews from our red carpet coverage over the years with Hollywood’s biggest stars like Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy, Brad Pitt and many more.
Among the highlights, you’ll see some of today’s biggest stars enjoying their first Oscars experience like Jennifer Lawrence in 2011 who was shocked when On The Red Carpet’s George Pennacchio told her she was the second youngest actress ever nominated for “best actress” for her performance in “Winter’s Bone.”
“Really?” she exclaimed. “For real! Oh my God. I didn’t know that!”
In 2010, Robert Downey Jr, who’s nominated this year for “Oppenheimer” told us big events like the Oscars don’t faze him.
“I really like to be confident when others are nervous and neurotic when everyone else is absolutely calm,” he said.
The past Oscar shows also feature all the glamourous red carpet fashion including the always fashionable Carey Mulligan, a nominee this year for “Maestro” who told George Pennacchio at the 2020 Oscars she doesn’t advise people to copy her signature short hairstyle.
“Oh don’t get the Carey Mulligan haircut,” she said. “I’m trying to grow it out but I keep having to do it for things like this.”
In addition to all the celebrity interviews and red carpet fashion fun before the Oscars over the years, the On The Red Carpet Encore channel also features an inside look at the VIP after parties the stars attend following the Oscars ceremony each year.
You can watch Oscars Red Carpet Encore free with no sign-in needed. Find it exclusively at ABC.com and the ABC app!
Sergio Mercado may draw inspiration from the sleek, contemporary style of California, but his timeless and luxurious designs have become an iconic part of the New York City area, whether that be a classic townhouse or a plush restaurant.
Mercado started his interior design journey in San Francisco, where he developed a signature style that became highly sought after in residential, hospitality and commercial spaces. He spent years building up brands like BAMO, Inc. and Clodagh Design, helping them see through his unique modern lens.
For the past nine years, Mercado has devoted his efforts to building Sergio Mercado Design Studio, where he focuses on the personal aesthetics of each individual client, while still infusing his own artful style and passion.
Observer recently had a chance to speak with Sergio Mercado and learn more about how his studio remains a standout in the interior design world.
A space in Water Mill, NY designed by Mercado. Joshua McHugh
Observer: What inspired you to become an interior designer?
Sergio Mercado: I feel as though I’ve always had the inclination towards design. As a child, I was constantly rearranging the furniture in my parents’ home. My father built me a clubhouse, which I was quick to furnish, and my parents also let me design my bedroom when I was 16.
What are you known for?
Creating spaces that are sleek and rich in design and texture, while also feeling calm and serene.
How has your design ethos changed since you first started out?
My design ethos has definitely evolved. Throughout each design process, I’m always considering whether the core of what we are designing is life-enriching. A home can be both beautiful and easy to maintain and live within.
How do you help clients move past their comfort zone?
By presenting a concept passionately. If you share how passionate you feel about a concept with your client, they will sense those feelings and will want to see that vision conceptualized.
Where do you recommend saving vs. splurging on interior decor? What investments in decor have the most significant return on investment?
This is a hard question to answer, because I feel that well-designed and limited-edition furnishings are a good investment. As an example, a piece by Finn Juhl, Wendell Castle or Sergio Rodrigues will not only have an impact in a room, but will also retain its value. There is always going to be a market for this type of furniture.
What are your favorite brands to work with?Are there any design rules you live by?
Too many brands to name them all, but top of our list would be Avenue Road for furnishings, The Future Perfect for lighting, Rosemary Hallgarten for rugs and textiles and Salvatori and Boffi for plumbing fixtures and bathroom vanities. They produce pieces that are well-made and designed. I don’t think there should be rules on design.
How do you help your clients avoid decision fatigue, and keep the process fun instead of overwhelming?
We try to avoid revisiting design decisions. Our best ideas are generated in the beginning of the design process. If we explore other concepts, we find that nine times out of 10, we revert back to our original ideas. We’ve found the surefire way to avoid this is by presenting our clients with multiple concepts from the onset.
Is there any item or type of decor that you find clients need the most help selecting? Or come to you with buyer’s remorse after trying to find that piece themselves?
The decor that most clients have difficulty in selecting are sofas and dining chairs. Scale in seating can be tricky. We always insist on clients sitting in sofas, club chairs and dining chairs [to test them out].
A townhouse designed by Mercado. Joshua McHugh
Do you find yourself doing a lot of gut renovation work?
Most of our work consists of gut renovation projects.
Do you educate your clients to invest in certain pieces?
When we present limited edition furnishings, we will provide context by presenting our clients with the designers’ bio. It is also helpful when furniture designers exhibit at furniture fairs, such as Salon of Art & Design or Design Miami. Our clients love attending furniture fairs.
Have you worked with clients on second and third projects over the years? Do you find your client going outside of their comfort zone more after you have worked on the initial project with them?
We have a couple of clients who we’ve worked with on multiple homes. And yes, after having experience working together on an initial project, a level of trust and comfort is achieved. Shared visions and concepts are much easier to discuss and implement.
Travel and expense software provider Emburse recently announced a new CEO: Marne Martin, a newcomer to the travel and expense industry but a veteran in technology and software, having spent more than 25 years in the industry including a stint as CEO of field management software provider ServicePower.
Speaking to BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker just about a week into her new role, Martin said there’s an opportunity for Emburse to fill a “gap” leading to what will be the future of expense management, as she sees some of the company’s largest competitors as either slow to innovate or bogged down by other internal issues. “We hear a lot from our customers and our prospects, but I still feel like there are many influences and needs that aren’t being articulated yet, so I want to get in front of that and build Emburse as a company that’s not only listening in this space but advocating and driving what people need in this space,” Martin said.
In terms of building customers, those opportunities will include going after not only the customer base of market leader Concur—who Martin called “the Goliath that has gotten stuck”—but also “a huge market that’s never been on Concur and maybe has never been on any best-of-breed solution,” she said.
An edited transcript of the rest of BTN’s interview with Martin follows.
BTN: What drew you to accept the CEO role at Emburse?
Marne Martin: For me, I look at categories of software that I have personal experience with but I’m also passionate about. I’ve used Concur and Expensify, and I’ve traveled a lot. I definitely relate to that. But I’m also looking at sectors that aren’t going away. Even if you apply more AI, there still are going to be expenses to manage and oversee. People will still be traveling. I try to pick categories of software that are super durable to the customer need. Then, I try to pick companies that are already proven that they are good companies and have good products and people, but it’s the next level of growth and next scale or inflection point that they’re ready for.
I was really fortunate with the trust that [Emburse owner K1 Investment Management] and the board and [former Emburse CEO Eric Friedrichsen], transitioning to me. Emburse is really at an inflection point. Of all the various companies I looked at in different categories, it’s an area of software I not only know something about, but it’s also at an inflection point that is interesting. The marketplace is both ripe for disruption with competing solutions, plus there’s a lot of [total addressable market] or greenfield to go after.
There are not many female CEOs who have been CEO more than once. A lot of the private equity sponsors have started looking for more female operating partners, so I do admire K1. Now, both of their largest companies will be run by female CEOs, so that personally makes me happy, but this is a category that is very interesting for a lot of different private equities. It’s K1 that put their money in the space in building a platform for growth.
Martin: People will pay for that. It will be interesting over time what we focus on with our product roadmaps, how we maybe charge for the software and how you think about it might evolve, but it will never change that you need to have a link into expenses, and that will be a critical part for compliance and accounting but also a tool for growth. No business can grow their business if they have uncontrolled and unmanaged expenses. What we do is super important at the heart of how they run their businesses. The easier we can make it for them to not only stay within budget but think about being a driver of their profitable growth and how well we can help them do what they need to do and help their CFOs, that’s a big responsibly and opportunity for Emburse.
No business can grow their business if they have uncontrolled and unmanaged expenses. What we do is super important at the heart of how they run their businesses.”
BTN: Emburse has reported fairly rapid revenue growth over the past few years. What’s your strategy to sustain that?
Martin: Eric and the team have done a great job. So many software companies don’t even get to the size of Emburse. They’ve already done something that hard and unusual. They’ve created a software unicorn.
One of the experiences I’ve had throughout my career is how you get things to grow faster organically, and that’s something I’ve done over and over. To simplify it, I think about what’s already working, but how do we just do more of it? If we have a good value prop that we’re executing on, how do we keep driving pipeline? There are some things at Emburse we can do even better.
We have taken a surprising number of Concur customers to Emburse for the size of Emburse, but there are a gazillion Concur customers we’ve never even talked to. We’re going to continue scaling what the company does well, and some other areas where I think we can have greater confidence, success and execution; we’ll push on that. I have a lot of experience. I didn’t come from Concur as an example, but the number of multinational and enterprises I’ve worked with in the past are mostly on Concur, so even though I might not have sold them the Concur replacement, I’ve been working with them and know them, and that’s where we’ll continue building. We have a lot of references already. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. People don’t even know we’re in 120 countries with our software.
I also try to find businesses that I can bring a more evangelist or brand advocacy to. That’s why I always care about joining companies I can be authentically passionate about, so we can really start positioning ourselves not only as the size of company that we are but as the size of company that we will be. That growth and that mojo is what encouraged SAP to buy Concur in the first place. I think they’ve been distracted by other things, and the people who built that mojo at Concur have moved on. There’s a huge opportunity for Emburse to go on its own journey. We’re well-positioned to do that, and a lot of that will come through organic growth execution, the maturation of sales and marketing.
BTN: You have a long history in software outside of the travel and expense sphere. Are there skills or strategies from those other areas that will be valuable in this industry?
Martin: For sure. Chrome River, for example, has quite a sophisticated workflow engine. I think it’s as good as what Concur has, maybe better, but at least comparable. I have a lot of experience in other sectors taking rules-based or workflow-based software and starting to layer in AI and machine learning. I’ve been talking to our team about that. Even how you think about facial recognition software or fraud detection software, how you detect anomalies and trends, how you build out AI and machine learning related to anomaly detections, recommendation and learning, it’s pretty much the same regardless of the software category, because it relates to the data and knowledge around that. How you apply it is what needs to be tailored to the use cases that apply to that category of software, and then how you’re able to monetize it.
Whether you are looking at infrastructure fault data or asset anomaly data or looking at it for consumer behavior or for expense management, you need to figure out what drives the most business value and improvement from what you already have—like a sophisticated workflow—then thinking about it. AI, to be commercialized, has to be better than a team of data scientists. To be valuable, it has to be better than people. In this day and age, it’s hard to get enough people to solve many of these problems, which is why we use AI and machine learning, and it’s enabled by the cloud and the huge compute powers. ChatGPT is super fun to play with and interact with, but I was laughing that probably the most commercial benefit from ChatGPT or anything like this in the near term is that the cloud hosting bills tripled, because AI consumes so much more of the cloud. As software vendors, we need to put AI to work in ways that will be valuable and customers will pay for it, but the cloud companies and also the people doing the AI chips and semiconductors, they’re the leading indicators of benefiting from these. We need to understand what our customers and prospects really want.
BTN: What goals have you set as CEO?
Martin: Some of them are financial goals. Other goals are win goals, brand recognition goals, operational efficiency goals and really thinking how do we build a great company. Emburse is already a great company at its stage. How do we build a great company that’s a $500 million company or even bigger? There are different things when you think about scaling and efficiency then you might think about when you’re focusing on acquiring 13 smaller best-of-breed entities.
Taking the company on this journey also will involve talent. Similar to how companies choose different CEOs for different chapters, there will be different people within the organization at all levels that are better suited to different chapters. Some, of course, will always be valuable, because they understand the space and what we do from a core perspective. Some of the people needs and people processes will evolve as we’re positioning ourselves to the next stage of growth. I really am blessed to come into such a good company that has the domain expertise that’s critical: good products, good people and really excellent customers.
AI, to be commercialized, has to be better than a team of data scientists. … It’s hard to get enough people to solve many of these problems, which is why we use AI and machine learning, and it’s enabled by the cloud and the huge compute powers.”
BTN: Emburse has been pretty busy on the acquisition front in recent years. Are you planning more?
Martin:TripBam and Roadmap are great acquisitions, and their customer lists are phenomenal. We are going to see how we can cross-fertilize those customers—expense management more to travel, travel more to expense management—to really think about share of wallet across all the businesses that have needs for that. K1 has done a really good job buying up in the U.S. market. There might be some additional travel acquisitions we could make. There are some smaller expense management and other types of companies outside of the U.S. it might be interesting to look at. I always analyze: Can we get those customers and go into that market organically if we are better at organic sales, or do we still need to buy them? When I look at buying them, I really look at are we getting something that’s unique or different, or is it more like consolidation play?
We are reviewing our M&A now. K1 is very well funded. We have to find the right acquisitions that really drive value to us, an accretive acquisition, or something that is interesting. We’re thinking software first, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t also thinking about credit card partnerships, financial services and fintech. I’ve built those out as complementary to the software, and in certain cases they can drive greater retention figures and revenue. I do firmly believe that to have a durable software business you have to be growing and developing great software, even if you add other things into what the software does.
BTN: What sort of connections are you looking to make with Emburse customers?
Martin: As the company grows, there will come a time when I won’t connect with all the customer or prospects, but that’s something I’m passionate about. I sent out personal emails to our larger customers today. We’ll be doing some events and customer advisory boards. I’m very eager, whether it’s a LinkedIn or email, to get to know them. When you come in, no matter how good a company is, there will be users that are like, “XYZ didn’t work”. Some of the feedback might not be all an A-plus, but that’s also how I learn what thy need and how we need to improve. My formal title is CEO, but I should be called the chief problem solver. That’s my internal title.
It’s always a pleasure when we get a chance to talk to the creators behind the games, and we’ve gotten another great opportunity today. Sawaki Takeyasu of Crim, Inc has worked on many legendary games like Okami and Devil May Cry, but as a director he is best known for El Shaddai, a striking, mysterious action game that first released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2011. The game will be making its way to the Nintendo Switch in the West in April, and we decided to throw a few questions Takeyasu-san’s way about the game, its origins, and its surprising emergence as a cult classic over time. Let’s get to the interview!
TouchArcade (TA): Thanks for your time today, Mr. Takeyasu. Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself? And what are your favorite pizza toppings?
Sawaki Takeyasu (ST): Hello, my name is Sawaki Takeyasu. I previously worked on Devil May Cry, Steel Battalion, and Okami at Capcom Co., then became a freelancer and worked on many videogames in many different roles. Now I am the representative of Crim, Inc and am working on El Shaddai‘s Switch port and our incoming title, Starnaut.
As for my favorite pizza toppings, that would be prosciutto and blue cheese, and also ketchup.
TA: Although it has been a while since El Shaddai first released, can you let us know about how the game was conceived?
ST: It all started from me meeting VJ Chadha, who was the CEO of Ignition Entertainment in the UK (which also does not exist anymore), for the first time. On his birthday, he asked me to do the contract for El Shaddai.
TA: You had considerable experience as a character designer going back many years before, but El Shaddai was (I believe) your first time directing a game. What was it like moving into such a role?
ST: All I was doing up until that point was getting ordered to work for somebody. Thus when I took a position where I could decide everything, I felt happy and confused simultaneously. Of course I was glad that I could decide whatever I liked, however there were so many things where I thought my decision was not really required. Such things reminds me of the pain of being a director back then. Also, I found collecting people in one place and working together was so difficult that it led to my current fundamental stance which is to make decisions as soon as possible and take responsibility for them.
TA: Although the game had fairly good reviews, El Shaddai seemed to sell a bit lower than expected back in 2011. How did it feel to see the cult following for the game grow so much over time?
ST: The biggest issue was that the expectations were too high due to the visual impact, and the studio’s closure at that time meant that the ending was not concluded well. However, above all I think the attempts we made in every aspect were just too ahead of the time. Having originally been at the studio that developed Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Okami, I often think maybe we were looking too far into the future.
TA: I have to ask: how do you feel about the popular El Shaddai memes that popped up over the years? (“Daijoubu da, mondai nai“)
ST: I’m glad to hear that, as that phrase was originally created with the intention of becoming an internet meme. I completed it in just two hours while on a bullet train during a business trip. It’s an honor that it’s still recognized to this day. “Don’t worry, there’s no problem; I trust you to use it in the best way possible.”
TA: What is your personal favorite aspect of El Shaddai?
ST: My favorite scene is from the beginning, depicting a 365-year journey. I created it to mirror my own life, and I still feel that way about it. It’s a metaphor suggesting that life is like a fleeting glimpse of images, long when you’re living it but short when it comes to an end.
TA: Have you had any challenges in bringing the game to the Switch?
ST: It was all difficult, and I gave up many times. The Switch version took about four years from conception. Ultimately, it was completed thanks to meeting Mr. Hayashibara, the main programmer, and his development of the Aquareed Engine. I think those four years were meant for me to meet him. Meeting him made me realize once again that life shines through the accumulation of such miracles.
TA:El Shaddai received a follow-up in the form of The Lost Child in 2017. Have you considered creating another game in the series, or is that your final word on this world?
ST: Actually, the game I’m currently developing, Starnaut, is also connected in some ways in terms of its setting. I’m not making the specific link public yet, but I hope to reveal it, perhaps when the time comes for a collaboration with El Shaddai.
TA: What is the most interesting point of modern gaming to you? Are you happy with the current state of the medium and how it has evolved?
ST: The evolution of indie games has been dramatic, akin to the shift from television to YouTube, marking a change of an era. I am also currently making an indie game. The environment where one can focus solely on creating a game is so thrilling, it’s almost shivering. I believe Unreal Engine 5 has changed the era.
TA: Do you have any message you would like to give our readers? You can say anything you want here!
ST: There is a game called Starnaut that will be released on Steam on February 14th. Please play this game while waiting for the release of El Shaddai. It’s a low-budget game made by three people, but it’s a thrilling roguelike action game themed around massive destruction. After playing it, please play El Shaddai in April. I promise that all the revenue from these sales will be invested into our next game.
And that’s that! We’d like to once again thank Takeyasu-san for his time, and Derek at Hound PR for facilitating this interview. Starnaut will be available on Steam on February 14th, and El Shaddai will arrive on Switch in April. Thanks for reading!
TOUS les JOURS’s raspberry cake. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
If you live in New York or Los Angeles and love to grab a coffee and snack on the go, you are probably no stranger to TOUS les JOURS, the café-style bakery known for its wide selection of freshly baked pastries, delicate cakes and beautiful fruit tarts. TOUS les JOURS (and its equally French-sounding rival, Paris Baguette) is actually from South Korea. The bakery café chain pioneers a unique concept known as French-Asian pastry and is enjoying a growing presence in the U.S.
French-Asian pastry is a distinct genre confined neither to France nor to Asia; it’s also more than “just a fusion of flavors,” said Tony Hunsoo Ahn, the CEO of TOUS les JOURS’s international business. The store sells classic French bakery items, traditional Korean-style pastries and everything in between. “Our menu features unique flavors and just the right amount of sweetness, which sets us apart in the American market,” Ahn told Observer.
Founded in Korea in 1997, TOUS les JOURS opened its first U.S. store in 2004 (Paris Baguette arrived a year later). Today, it operates more than 100 stores across the U.S. Encouraged by consistent profitability and a growing demand in recent years, the company has an ambitious goal to grow that number ten-fold by 2030. In September 2023, TOUS les JOURS announced plans to build its first U.S. production facility in Gainesville, Georgia to support that vision. The company also recently opened its first store in Canada, further expanding its reach in North America.
In December 2023, Observer interviewed Ahn about the TOUS les JOURS’s long journey of bringing Korea’s café culture to the U.S. and how it has moulded and reshaped America’s taste in coffee and pastry.
The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Observer: I have visited Korea a few times as a tourist. I got the impression that coffee and pastry have a special place in the Korean lifestyle in comparison with other Asian cultures. Where do you think it came from?
Tony Hunsoo Ahn: Korea is probably one of the quickest markets to keep up with the latest trends in the world. As Korea experienced economic growth at an exponential speed over the past few decades, its food and beverage scene quickly adapted to Western culture.
As a result of economic growth, more jobs have become available, therefore increasing the size of the population commuting for work. Coffee and pastries have become a staple in modern Korean culture because of their simplicity and functionality. For many, it has become a daily routine to take their favorite cup of joe, likely an Americano, from their nearby café on their way to work or during lunch breaks. Visiting a bakery or café has become an essential part of a typical Korean person’s daily life, regardless of age or gender.
The interior of a TOUS les JOURS shop in Dublin, Calif. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
What makes a bakery or a café great in Korea?
It’s the experience—bakeries and cafés have a huge presence in Korea, and there’s still room for growth. Most stores are well decorated to create an inviting vibe and have plenty of seating, making them suitable for social gatherings or work meetings.
How did TOUS les JOURS get its name?
“Tous les jours” means “every day” in French. With our unique French-Asian menu and mission to provide freshly breads made with quality ingredients every day, we couldn’t have thought of a better fitting name.
How would you define French-Asian bakery? How is it different from, say, traditional French bakery?
French-Asian bakery is a unique concept where a wide variety of menu items are presented with authentic ethnic flavors, such as red bean and kimchi, in a cafeteria-style store. We offer an array of both French pastries and Asian-style cakes rather than just a fusion of flavors. You will find traditional Korean-flavored products, such as a red bean donut, as well as traditional Western bakery items with nontraditional flavors, such as croissants filled with strawberries and cream.
The cafeteria-style layout, where each customer grabs a tong and tray to pick out their own items, is something you will definitely find in a French-Asian bakery. This has helped us create a product-centric environment, which emphasizes our menu variety. This design also enhances the in-store experience for customers since it provides the customers control to choose their own products without waiting to be served at the counter.
The facade of a TOUS les JOURS shop in Dublin, Calif. Gado via Getty Images
Korean pastry in general strikes me as distinct in both flavor and aesthetics. What sets you apart from competitors in a Western market like the U.S.?
One thing that distinguishes us from competitors is our emphasis on providing a wide variety of menu items all day and for every occasion. You can find breakfast pastry, birthday cakes and good coffee all in one place.
Our menu features unique flavors and just the right amount of sweetness, which sets us apart in the American market. Many customers have said the authenticity of flavors is our key strength. We have seen that classic items with our signature flavors, such as milk cream and matcha, perform exceptionally well. One of our top-selling products is Cloud Cream Cake, which incorporates a sweet vanilla sponge with milk-based cream and fresh berries.
Who are the customers of TOUS les JOURS in the U.S.? Are they primarily Asian or other ethnic groups as well?
In the first few years of our operation in the U.S., our strategy was to steadily expand our presence across areas where consumers had prior experience with the brand. For instance, Koreatown Los Angeles. However, we quickly learned that there was a demand for Korean-inspired bakery goods outside of these markets, too. So we opened our first Manhattan location in 2012. That was an area outside of our comfort zone, and it’s been a continuous growth to where we are today. Currently, non-Asian customers make up more than half of our customer base.
As far as age groups go, our target and actual customer pool has been those in their late 20’s to 40’s who enjoy premium products and value quality. Interestingly enough, we’ve seen more Gen Z customers frequenting our stores in recent years.
TOUS les JOURS has been doing business in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. Has your brand proposition and customer base changed over time? How has inflation in the past 18 months affected your business and strategies, if at all?
With high inflation, a main shift we’ve seen in consumer behavior is seeking quality over quantity, especially among the younger generation.
While consumers are willing to spend a bit more for premium options, the overall value must make sense in order for business to survive. Especially in the current state of economy, there has been a huge shift in value where what seemed to be pricey in the past has become the norm. This shift is an advantage for TLJ, actually, because in the past a lot of consumers tended to classify us as a premium brand compared to their local bakery options, and now we appear more accessible, and we are consistently seeing an increase in the number of average tickets.
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