Live from Guggenheim New York: Sarah Sze, Julie Mehretu and Yana Peel

CHANEL Connects

In this special episode of Chanel Connects, Yana Peel hosts artists Sarah Sze and Julie Mehretuna at the Guggenheim New York. The conversati

Key takeaways

Sarah Sze reflects on the 1990s NYC art scene as a 'cornucopia' of free cultural access that shaped her early career.
Julie Mehretu discusses her philanthropic contribution to the Whitney Museum to ensure free admission for artists aged 26 and under.

Main topics

New York City art history
Museum accessibility and philanthropy

Notable quotes

If you go into the arts, fundamentally, art saved your life somehow.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an inspiring meditation on how artists maintain

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:05) Welcome to Chanel Connects. I'm Yana Peele, President of Arts, Culture, and Heritage. In Season 5, we invited artists and innovators to La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel's home on the French Riviera, to explore ideas of home, generosity, and the freedom of creation. In this special bonus episode, I had the pleasure of hosting a conversation with artists Julie Morettu and Sarah Zee, live at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Speaker 1 (0:42) Julie, Sarah, thank you so much for being here with us today. This is our fifth season of Chanel Connects, and we've been thinking about the home. So we thought we'd start here in New York City, a place that you have chosen to make yours from very early on. Can you talk to us as young artists how the city shaped your experience as artists and which institutions in New York were central to your lives? Sarah, do you want to give it a start? Sure. Speaker 3 (1:09) You know, when I moved here in the 90s, It was just incredible. I mean, it was a cornucopia of music, dance, culture, talks. I remember my young artist friends, we would find out, like, which museum was open for free, and we'd go to every free night. You know, with the gallery spaces, it was amazing that you could just walk into any gallery space for free. You know, I had been working for five years in a full-time job when I came, and so for me, I went to graduate school here. It was such a gift, and it was something I hadn't. thought I could do, because as an undergrad, I remember going to... This was in New Haven. Yes. I went to the room, I went into career services, and it's like a library, and I pulled out like the card catalogs. It was like medicine, being a lawyer, you know, law school, business. And then I pulled out like the art one, and it was like, hello, hello, Speaker 1 (1:58) nothing. There were no cards in it. Speaker 2 (2:01) So Speaker 3 (2:02) I was like, okay, I don't know how I'm going to do that. So I just decided after my full-time job, I... I say this to my students that I think that if you go into the arts, fundamentally, art saved your life somehow. And when I was doing other work that was really important, I was painting every night and I was just yearning for it. Speaker 1 (2:21) I'll turn to your institutional influences in a moment because I know there was a show very early on for you at a New York museum. Julie, maybe you could tell us when you came to the city and how that shaped your times. Speaker 2 (2:31) I also came in the early 90s and coming to New York was transformative. my understanding of contemporary art. Basically, I realized really quickly how little I knew and how, I mean, when I first moved to New York, I didn't even know you could go to galleries for free. Like, I didn't even know that that ecosystem existed in that way. The Whitney was a really important museum when I was young. Outside of, like, the modern or the Met, the Whitney offered this very, it was a very different energy happening there. In 93, it was a year after I came, we had the 93 biennial, and you had the black male show that was, that Thelma curated that was at the Whitney. Thelma Speaker 3 (3:09) Golden. Speaker 2 (3:09) Thelma Golden at the studio, yeah, director of the studio museum, her first major kind of show at the Whitney. So this was a really kind of incredible time, and I remember those markers, and I remember being like, I need to get my ass back in school quick, because I knew nothing, really, when it came down to it. I learned a lot about the world, but where I went to school, I went to a small liberal arts school in Michigan. But we didn't have the MCA in Chicago at that time. There was no MOCAD in Detroit. There wasn't a contemporary art institution in Grand Rapids. And there definitely wasn't a Broad Museum by Zaha Hadid in Michigan State, which there is now. So like, it is such a different world. And I think in the early 90s, you had to come to a city like New York or in Los Angeles, I think in a very different way. But even here, it was like there wasn't a professional kind of ecosystem or way to get involved in that that we knew of. You were either like, and I realized quickly being here, you were born into that. You like grew up with families that introduced you to this space or you came into that in the cities that you were from. And somehow from elsewhere, you could tap into that in terms of publications and stuff. But you didn't have the kind of interconnectivity you have now. So it's such a different environment. And it's where I realized, you know, right away I was waiting tables at this place called Coffee Shop on Union Square. And it was there that I started. I see some nods Speaker 1 (4:27) of Speaker 2 (4:27) recognition. Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:28) Yeah. Yeah. Shout out. And then Speaker 2 (4:33) and then from that. waiting tables and painting and working hard and just being so inspired by everything that I would see. Even to this moment, like, you know, there's a million things happening in the city tonight, especially with the UN. You have this, you have MoMA, you have all these different events. That's what the city, you feel it every day and the kind of drive people come to the city with. There's this contagion in that energy Speaker 1 (4:55) and I became addicted to it right away. I love Full Circle because in 97, when you came for your MFA, you said you didn't even know that free museums existed. And then more recently, as a board member of the Whitney, Scott Rothkopf yesterday told me that you did something very generous to make sure that the next generation could enjoy free art. Do you want to tell the audience a little bit about that moment? Yeah, Speaker 2 (5:14) so actually when I moved here, you could go to the Met for free. You did Speaker 1 (5:17) not have to pay what you, I Speaker 2 (5:19) guess there was the pay what you will thing maybe, I don't really remember, but none of us paid to ever go to the Met. Like it wasn't something. You just could go, anyone could go to the Met. And then it was like, oh, you could make a donation. It was more that kind of a structure. It's now become a different where you can request to go in if you're a New Yorker for free, but you go through, you have to go through something. And the Whitney had something like that. Coming from a family that, you know, both of my parents were teachers. My father was a professor at Michigan State. My mother was a high school teacher. I mean, sorry, toddler teacher. Very different now. But Montessorian. My point is that they didn't have the kind of resources that could afford to take us to a museum on the weekend for $125 or whatever it is. They're $30 ahead, $25 ahead. So it's only very particular people, you know, college students and those who get that culture a little bit. And so fundamentally, I think it's somewhat of a classist structure. And if you're really trying to open up institutions, when I was growing up, you'd go to the DIA for free. You could go. You could go to the Art Institute. Go, like I said, to the Met.