Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

Dialogues is pleased to present an episode podcast from our colleagues at The New York Review.

Private Life is hosted by Jarrett Earnest and this episode features an interview with writer Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison, criticism, and narrative empathy. 

Namwali Serpell is a professor of English at Harvard University. In addition to On Morrison, she is the author of the novels The Old Drift (2019) and The Furrows (2022) and the essay collection Stranger Faces (2020). 

Private Life is a podcast from The New York Review, hosted by contributor Jarrett Earnest. Each episode offers intimate, in-depth conversations with distinguished voices from across the literary landscape—about their lives, their work, and the ideas that shape both. Along the way, they revisit pieces from the Review’s robust sixty-year archive (some episodes of the podcast will feature newly recorded readings of these classic essays) to situate arguments within contemporary culture. The show also includes discussions of titles from our book publishing arm, New York Review Books.

In this bonus live episode, Lucas Zwirner returns to the mic for an interview with Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, to celebrate Weber’s new biography, titled Anni Albers: A Life. Over the course of the exchange, Weber opens up about the writing process behind this major new biography and shares some rare anecdotes from a lifetime spent working closely with the Alberses.

Anni Albers: A Life is out now from Yale University Press. Learn more about the book: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300269376/anni-albers/

This special episode with Helen Molesworth and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh was taped in front of a live audience at David Zwirner New York for a 2023 exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s final paintings.

A new exhibition of Richter’s celebrated photorealist landscape paintings from the 1960s to the 2000s, Gerhard Richter: Landschaften, is now on view at our 20th Street gallery in New York.

The illuminating conversation draws on Buchloh’s decades of scholarly work on Richter, including a discussion of the art historian’s landmark 2022 study Gerhard Richter: Painting after the Subject of History. 

Learn more about the exhibition Landschaften: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2026/gerhard-richter-landschaftenLearn more about Gerhard Richter: Painting after the Subject of History: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543538/gerhard-richter/

An interview with Michael Armitage about his unique use of material and color, and his singular approach to narrative on the occasion of his major retrospective at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Titled The Promise of Change, the show is presented concurrently with the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and on view through January 10, 2027.

Armitage is also the founder of the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, a non-profit visual art space dedicated to the growth and preservation of contemporary art in East Africa and a participant in In Minor Keys at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, on view through November 22, 2026.

Learn more at the Palazzo Grassi website: https://www.pinaultcollection.com/palazzograssi/en/michael-armitage-promise-change

Image: Michael Armitage, Don’t Worry There Will Be More, 2024 (detail)

© Michael Armitage

A conversation with artist Rachel Harrison and art historian Alex Kitnick on the occasion of a once-in-a-generation retrospective of Marcel Duchamp at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Alex Kitnick teaches art history at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. 

Rachel Harrison is a Brooklyn-based artist.

Learn more about the exhibition at MoMA.org.