The 8-bridges Podcast: Recent Episodes
8-bridges
The 8-bridges Podcast features cultural visionaries and leaders across the Bay Area. The inaugural series includes conversations with art advisor Mary Zlot, curator Ali Gass, collector Pamela Hornik, and artist Woody de Othello. 8-bridges is a gallery platform that brings the Bay Area art world together. Our mission is to maintain a vibrant gallery scene, despite restrictions on travel, celebrations, and other larger gatherings. We want to support our artists by informing and entertaining curators, collectors, and critics with potent online exhibitions of their work. Visit us at 8-bridges.com.
In this episode of The 8-bridges Podcast, Adam Green and Jacob Pritzker are in conversation with Micki Meng.
With over a decade of experience in the art industry, Adam Green founded Adam Green Art Advisory in 2016. Adam Green Art Advisory provides bespoke services to new and experienced collectors including advising clients on acquisitions of investment quality contemporary art as well as locating and brokering important contemporary artworks. Additionally, Adam serves as the podcast host of the ArtTactic Podcast, the first and leading podcast covering the art market. Prior to establishing Adam Green Art Advisory, Adam spent nearly a decade working at Christie's, the leading auction house for the art market.
Jacob Pritzker works with and advocates for artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, where dedicated art space is a dwindling commodity. He launched the Space Programartist residency in 2019, which strives to provide local and visiting artists with the space, time and materials needed to expand and elevate their practice. He is deeply committed to sustaining bay area culture.
Micki Meng is a dealer, curator and artist advocate working on the West Coast in a global context for over fifteen years. She has held gallery positions at Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Altman Siegel, San Francisco; and curatorial roles with LA>
Kelly Huang is the founder of KCH Advisory, dedicated to building meaningful collections aligned with individual and family goals, personal interests, and passions. Kelly amassed an extensive background in the arts before founding her own firm, starting as a Curatorial Assistant at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Advisor at Zlot Buell and most recently co-director of Gagosian San Francisco. In addition to running her own advisory, Kelly is a founding member of 8-Bridges and has just curated May’s presentation, “Do We Dream Under The Same Sky?” a curated selection of artists from the Asian diaspora in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, curated by Aleesa Alexander from the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Carla Emil is an arts philanthropist, collector, and founder of C Project, a non-profit whose mission is to commission leading contemporary artists to create original, site specific performance based art experiences in San Francisco that are free and open to the public. A Chicago native, Carla has been a supporter of the Bay Area arts with her husband Rich Silverstein for over 30 years. Carla worked as an advertising executive before shifting more permanently to focus on her philanthropic work. Carla has served on the boards of SFMOMA, Dia, Second Stage Theater in New York, SFFILM, and CCA, where she is an emeritus trustee. She currently serves on the Hammer Museum Board of Advisors in Los Angeles and the US Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch.
Kathan Brown and Valerie Wade are Founding Director and Director, respectively, of Crown Point Press. Founded in 1962 by Kathan Brown, Crown Point Press opened as a print workshop where artists could pay an affordable fee to use the facilities and seek tactical advice. By 1965, Crown Point had published etching portfolios by Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud, and would later go on to work with leading figures of the Minimal Art movement, including Sol LeWitt and Brice Marden. Today, Crown Point continues to invite contemporary artists to work in its studio, including Tomma Abts and Jacqueline Humphries, in addition to hosting summer workshops that engage the local community. Archives of the works of Crown Point Press are held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Mari Robles is the Executive Director of the Headlands Center of the Arts in the Bay Area, an institution globally recognized as one of the top artist residency programs. Mari has an extensive background in museum education and engagement, with experience at established institutions across the US. Mari started her career as a Program Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, then became Deputy Director of Education and Public Programs at the Perez Museum of Art in Miami. Mari went on to work as Director of the DreamYard Art Center in New York, before working in Senior Managing roles in programming and engagement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mari assumed the role of Executive Director at Headlands in fall of 2020.
Founder of the eponymous Anthony Meier Fine Arts Gallery located in the Pacific Heights of San Francisco, Anthony Meier started collecting art in the early 80s as a student at Harvard, and quickly became one of the most important dealers in the art world, known for his exceptional eye and helped champion careers for artists like Gerhard Richter, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, and countless others.
Together, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt run the renowned Fraenkel Gallery. Founded in 1979, Fraenkel Gallery is synonymous with world-class photography and known for 19th century and 20th century masters such as Carleton Watkins, Anna Atkins, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand, among many others. Fraenkel Gallery is responsible for creating some of the world’s most important photography collections and building a world-class art gallery second to none. Their taste, connoisseurship, and the artists they work with are known around the world.
Andy and Deborah Rappaport are 21st century philanthropists. Andy was a partner at August Capital and together, he and Deborah have amassed a highly personal and deeply meaningful collection of contemporary art. Arguably their most significant contribution to-date has been Minnesota Street Project, which they founded in 2015 to provide the Bay Area with economically sustainable spaces for art galleries, artists, and related nonprofits.
Carlie Wilmans and her family have long been champions of the arts in San Francisco. In 2003, she started her current role as director of the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and in 2008, purchased 500 Capp Street from David Ireland, establishing the Foundation in 2009. Carlie has served as a trustee of the California College of the Arts and SFMOMA since 2006.
Pamela Hornik is a passionate art enthusiast and seasoned collector based in San Francisco. Pamela and her husband, David, have been collecting art for decades. Pamela volunteered at the Cantor Arts Center every Friday, and over time, has amassed one of the most important contemporary collections — with early works by Jordan Casteel and others. In this episode of The 8-bridges Podcast, she explains why she has collected more art than ever before during the pandemic.
Ali Gass is a leader in the curatorial and museum community. Ali is Executive Director and Chief Curator at the San José Institute of Contemporary Art. Ali began her curatorial career at the Jewish Museum in NYC, then became an assistant curator at SFMOMA. She went on to serve as a member of the leadership team that opened the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. In 2014, Ali was hired as the Chief Curator and Associate Director for Exhibitions and Collections at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and most recently served as Director of University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art.
Woody de Othello is a renowned artist based in the Bay Area, working and living in Oakland. Born in 1991 in Miami, Woody completed his MFA at CCA in 2017, which has a long lineage of ceramics — a medium Woody explores in depth. Woody has exhibited widely in group exhibitions, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial (2018), the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial in Slovenia (2019), San Jose Museum of Art (2019), and “Sleight of Hand” at the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC (2020), and will exhibit at the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia this April. At 29 years old, Woody has achieved incredible success as an artist — but as he will describe, he is just beginning to scratch the surface.
Mary Zlot is the founder of Zlot Buell, a world-renowned art advisory firm and leading visionary in the global art world based in San Francisco. Mary has curated modern and contemporary art collections for many prominent corporations and private collectors in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world.