Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

Helen speaks to Rachel Hunter Himes, author of the essay “Black Block” in Triple Canopy, about the long history of black artists underserved by white critics, museums’ moral and political responsibility to the public, and more.

Rachel Hunter Himes is an art writer, museum educator, and PhD candidate at Columbia University.

Read “Black Block” here: https://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/black-block?ui.header=true

Award-winning filmaker Todd Haynes and his longtime collaborator, film producer Christine Vachon, discuss their thirty-year creative partnership, from the emergence of the new queer cinema to the culture wars of the nineties. 

In 1987, Haynes directed the short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. His first feature film, Poison, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. After Safe, which featured Julianne Moore in a breakthrough role, he conjured David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine, then paid homage to German director Douglas Sirk in Far from Heaven. Haynes had six actors play Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. He directed the TV miniseries Mildred Pierce, then returned to feature films with Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, and the documentary The Velvet Underground, followed by the feature film May December. 

Christine Vachon is an Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award winner who co-founded the powerhouse Killer Films with partner Pamela Koffler in 1995. Over three decades, the company has produced more than one hundred films, including some of the most celebrated and important American independent features. Recent releases include Todd Haynes’s May December (Netflix), starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and Celine Song’s Past Lives (A24), which marks her first Oscar nomination in the Best Picture category.

We revisit a conversation from the first season of Dialogues with critically acclaimed painter Rose Wylie, OBE RA, and actor Russell Tovey.

Rose Wylie is the subject of a major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view from February 28–April 19, 2026.Wylie, an admirer of cinema, and Tovey, a fan and collector of Wylie’s work, en

Acclaimed artist Amy Sillman and curator Donna De Salvo join Helen Molesworth for a deep dive into how an art exhibition comes to life.

Amy Sillman is widely recognized as one of the most significant painters of her generation. Amy Sillman: Oh, Clock!, the artist’s first major institutional solo exhibition in Europe, was presented at Kunstmuseum Bern in 2024, before traveling to Ludwig Forum Aachen the following year. Amy Sillman: Alternate Side (Permutations #1–32) is currently on view at Dia Bridgehampton through June 2026.

Donna De Salvo is a senior adjunct curator at Dia Art Foundation and previously served as the chief curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Recent projects include Steve McQueen at Dia Chelsea and Dia Beacon, featuring the immersive installation Bass (2024), co-commissioned with the Laurenz Foundation, Basel; Roni Horn at Dia Beacon; Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience, Gagosian, Paris; and the forthcoming This Land: Considering the American Landscape, cocurated with Seph Rodney for The Church, Sag Harbor.

Emmy Award–winning filmmaker and producer Matt Wolf joins Helen Molesworth to discuss his latest documentary series, Pee-wee as Himself, a revelatory documentary about the late Paul Reubens.  

The HBO original two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself is available to stream now on HBO Max.