How to Run an Institution in an Anti-Institution Era | Better in Person

Anne Pasternak (Brooklyn Museum) and Michael Roth (Wesleyan University) tell Stephen Dubner how they keep the peace in the middle of a culture war. If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, you can watch it on YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

• 0:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and this is a bonus episode called How to Run an Institution in an Anti-Institution Era. It comes from our new TV talk show, Better in Person. The guests are Anne Pasternak, Director of the Brooklyn Museum, and Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University. To watch this episode, or to watch any episode of Better in Person, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel, or search for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. As always, thanks for listening.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I think most people would be surprised to know that I play in a geezer rock band. I just love.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  That is not surprising.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Anne Pasternak and Michael Roth.

• 1:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's it like to run an institution in a time when trust in institutions is at an all-time low? Anne Pasternak and Michael Roth have some thoughts. Anne is Director of the Brooklyn Museum. Before that, she ran Creative Time, a provocative public arts group here in New York City. If you've ever seen the annual Tribute in Light memorial dedicated to the lives lost on September 11th, that was Anne Pasternak's idea. And Michael Roth is the President of Wesleyan University. His geezer rock band, by the way, is called The Smokin' Lilies. He's better known as one of the most outspoken university presidents in the US, eager to talk about the political, financial, and cultural pressures that universities are facing.

• 1:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I thought it might be a good time to get these two together. First of all, thank you for being here. Have you two met before?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  It's the first time.

• 2:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  How was it?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  It was great. It's kind of, I was a little shaky. It's the first time he's gonna touch me.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Well, it was very hard for him because I love-bombed him immediately.

• 2:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  You love-bombed him, how?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I loved him because I follow his very moral voice, you know, in the papers, the opinion pieces he writes for The Times, wherever else. His letters out to the Wesleyan community. I often share it with my leadership team. I've shared his writing with my board.

• 2:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  You read his letters to the Wesleyan community. Are you part of the Wesleyan community yourself?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  No, but these things have a way of getting around.

• 2:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  How would you describe his moral voice?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Very clear, very principled, courageous, humility. There's a lot of humility. But also, he knows who he is. And he's not hiding behind some fashionable way of, you know, being.

• 2:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you feel that's accurate?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Seems too generous to me.

• 3:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  And it's funny, the principle part, because I've adopted an approach for most of my adult life of like, principles are bad, pragmatism is right. And yet, and yet, often people say, you know, you're sticking by your principles. And what I, how I see it is I'm sticking by the things I said I believed in, like you shouldn't discriminate against people, that you should have more diversity, that belonging is a good thing. Like, everybody, any museum director, any university college president would have said that before. And in the last eight months, they seem to have forgotten what they said they believed in, in many cases.

• 3:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me a little bit about what it's like to be running an institution like yours right now.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I think I read in an interview that you said something to the effect of feeling some days like a punching bag. Something like that?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  It's possible.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sometimes it feels that way, but mostly it feels joyous. You know, it feels in a moment of such social upheaval and divisiveness, purposeful to be able to contribute to the public dialogue and to model our beliefs.

• 4:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are people coming to you for? When you think about what the Brooklyn Museum is for in your mind, and how do you provide that?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I think people are looking at the Brooklyn Museum as a place that really models what its values are. So, for example, we talk about inclusion, but we don't just talk about it, we model it. We're not erasing truths, we're confronting uncomfortable truths, but they're also places of joy. So I think people are looking to the Brooklyn Museum maybe as a place of reality.

• 4:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Reality would seem to be the opposite of escape from reality, I guess.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  But, you know, I'll be honest with you, when I'm in an environment like that, I am escaping from reality. I'm not going to deny it, or I'm at least traveling to a different one. I would think a museum serves that purpose too, to some degree, but.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And we can be many things, right? Where those rare places with people of all backgrounds can come together and have an experience that's meaningful to them. If you want to make art, you can make art in the museum. If you want to dance and sing, you can dance and sing in the museum. If you want to have a solitary experience and dive into an artwork on your own and look deeply, you can do that.

• 5:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Brooklyn Museum is what's called an encyclopedic museum, is that right? How's that defined, just for kicks?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  You know, none of us are really, truly encyclopedic, but the point is, is that we have collections representing people from all over the world.

• 5:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, all different times as well, yes.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We represent 5,500 years of human creativity.

• 5:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  So is New York City one of the few or only cities with two encyclopedic? Because there is a place called the Metropolitan Museum over there.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  The what?

• 5:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I've not heard of it either, but apparently on the east side of Manhattan. So.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  It's very rare.

• 6:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is very rare, yeah. And what is your relationship with the museum that shall not be named anymore?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  No, I love the Metropolitan Museum. It's one of my happy places. I'm probably there close to three or four times a month.

• 6:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, you're kidding?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 6:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Because I love, I love it. So I have meetings there, I go to see, you know, events and all sorts of things. There are new shows, and I know that collection pretty well.

• 6:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Michael, which museum do you prefer, Brooklyn or the Met?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Brooklyn Museum.

• 6:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm sorry, Anne.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Good job.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it's a reflection of its community. And that means that people find in it all kinds of things, that they go to the public square to find. I mean, it's such an important resource now, because in a time when the government is encroaching on all aspects of our private lives, to have an environment like a museum, which is constructed to keep out certain stimuli and to let in lots of other stimuli, it is, it's, I just, the phrase happy places is so important. And you can go there to have a good cry. And it's, especially when you're from Brooklyn or from New York, it's your, it's your public space.

• 7:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  When I think of Wesleyan, or when one, when one thinks of Wesleyan, what's it for? I mean, I think the purpose and the reality of the modern university is a really interesting question a lot of people are shouting about, with good reason, because it's become really complicated and, I think, exclusive to many, too expensive for many, et cetera. I think a lot of people see it as a resume-building factory now, which is unfortunate.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It is not a resume-building factory, I think, that's for sure. Wesleyan is a place where students can practice freedom while they're creating something new and discovering who they are.

• 8:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And, and that manifests in so many different ways, from someone who discovers they really like physics and computer science, to someone who discovers that they really want to try to be a football player and sing in a musical and do physics. And that Wesleyan.

• 8:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're describing a couple of your most famous alum by chance. Lin-Manuel Miranda was not bad at musicals, and Bill Belichick went to Wesleyan, too.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true. So it's, this is a combination of rigor and freedom.

• 8:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  That is quite astonishing. And, and I always say, it's not for everybody. I mean, if you want to build a resume, go to, go to Williams. But you can cut that out, or not. But, but if you want to experiment.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And with the expectation that the thing you experiment with might produce something really extraordinary.

• 8:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, I'm curious to know how much time each of you spend fundraising. I'm guessing for a university president, it's quite a good bit, yes?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Not enough.

• 9:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not enough. What share of your billable hours are fundraising?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  It's really hard to tell. I'm actually doing this because I hope it'll help me raise money. And I like asking people for money.

• 9:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  You like it?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  I do.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  You do?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I do, because it took a while.

• 9:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think Anne's about to ask you if you will ask on her behalf for the Brooklyn Museum.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I do, because I think we have very generous supporters. And I give them an option so they don't have to use their resources frivolously. They can dedicate them to higher education, which is a great I'm giving them a great opportunity, as we say in fundraising. And I really believe that we would be a better school if we were able to provide more financial aid to more people. We meet full need, but there are people who can't meet their needs, so we can't accept them.

• 9:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  I've read your tuition, your list price is something like seventy six thousand a year. Is that possible?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  It is. It's actually higher than that. It depends what you count, include, if you count room and board. But and about forty some odd percent of people don't pay that. And about half of that, forty percent, pay almost nothing.

• 10:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what's median paid tuition then? Do you have any idea, twenty five, somewhere like that, twenty five thousand?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's forty two percent of our students are on financial aid. And the average grant for those students is over sixty thousand dollars.

• 10:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  So but sixty percent, or almost sixty percent,

• 10:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  pay full fare. And almost all the time, if that happens, I will try to find my way into their living room and ask them, would you give money so someone else can go to Wesleyan?

• 10:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Got it. I'm so glad I didn't go to Wesleyan, because you're in my living room now. I'd be stuck. So I love what you both do. I love the university life. I love museums. I love everything they stand for. I love the stuff that's collected there. I love the kind of people who want to work there, who want to teach there, who want to go there. But that's not the way the world necessarily sees either universities or museums right now. They see them as big, arthritic institutions that have had too much say in the way that the culture has been driven. At least that's according to some of the complaints. So I really want to hear what it's been like for you guys to be

• 11:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  under, I don't know if under attack is too strong a phrase, but maybe for universities not. But I want to know where things stand right now. So Anne, you first?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not sure I agree with your characterization, actually. I think the recent surveys tell us that actually people have a great deal of trust and belief that museums are among the most trusted public institutions, actually. So I think we're dealing with a fringe that tends to be inside our community, you know, of artists and critics who have been most critical of our institutions.

• 11:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what are their major critiques?

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of the major critiques are correct, that, you know, we have upheld white supremacy and those narratives for a very long time, that we're not as deeply connected to community as we should be. And when I say we, I mean as a field. And that the pay for museum workers and cultural workers in general has not been great. So it means that you perpetuate a cycle

• 12:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  of only those people who can afford to work in the museum. We've done a tremendous amount of work on wage equity within the institution. But, you know, we've also been dealing with outside forces of inflation of, you know, benefits. Benefits are growing twenty four percent this year alone, right? So

• 12:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you don't have the endowment he has, do you?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  I don't know. How big is your endowment?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Do tell.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  I don't think I should say on the first date.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Everybody has a bigger endowment than us.

• 12:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, right. Yours is, you're like fiftieth in the country for universities, somewhere in there, right?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I believe you if you say that.

• 13:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's one point six billion?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, yes, it's much bigger than ours.

• 13:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  One point six billion?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, and yours is?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Over two hundred million.

• 13:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, okay, so.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So it's one of the smallest endowments of a major museum, if not the smallest in the country.

• 13:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, but.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  And we're also pay what you wish. So more than half of our audiences don't pay anything to come to the museum. I always joke that we have the worst business model and we're proud of it. Because it creates all this diversity within the institution, economic diversity, gender, you know, creed, all of it. And we're really very proud of that.

• 13:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  What about now, if you go back a couple of years after October seven? October seven, the Hamas attacks in Israel were, they turned out to be big, big, big events for both of your institutions. Let's talk about yours first. What was that? Can you just start to tell that story from then?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Well, I knew that this was going to be explosive. As a Jewish woman who's progressive, I've been a target of the boycott divestment sanctions for probably two decades now. And

• 14:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  And is that because you're Jewish? Or because you've done something that put you in a position to be critiqued?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  I've never done anything to put me in a position to be critiqued. I think there's been a lot of assumptions about who I am and what I stand for. And I also think that, you know, I can't prove this, but that because I'm a progressive woman who's Jewish, that if I had signed on to a cultural boycott, it would probably help the movement.

• 14:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  I see.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And I don't believe in cultural boycotts. I believe culture should be a part of the solution. And I think cultural boycotts are antithetical to what I believe in, right? So.

• 14:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's a very logical and rich argument, but it's a tough sell when people are shouting at you.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, everything's a tough sell when people are shouting at you. And so.

• 14:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  So how do you, what do you do when they start shouting? Your home was vandalized, yes? You were, was a banner, I think, hung, white supremacist Zionist?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Oh, God, you have to bring it up. I just always feel like my obituary is going to be that picture. So if I'm lucky enough to get an obituary at some point, but at any rate. Listen, I think that these situations are incredibly difficult. And you have to have a sense of calm and listen and bring your best advisors around you because, you know, you're dealing with a crisis. There's a lot of tension and fear, sometimes fear around that. And so you ask yourself a whole bunch of questions. Questions about how do our audiences feel? And how does participating in one way or another impact our mission or our audiences? There's so much to think about.

• 15:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you begin to doubt yourself?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  I think if you're a healthy person, yes.

• 15:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you have to have some humility. You have to listen to the multitudes of viewpoints. And when October seventh happened, didn't take, you know, a genius to realize that Israel would retaliate and that this would not be good for Jews around the world.

• 16:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. So when you were saying that you admire Michael's spine and courage for what he's been writing, a lot of it has been around these issues. Can you just walk me through that? You've been visible and vocal on this kind of thing for a long time, yeah?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  So on October seventh, I was actually just doing some work in my study on campus. And the newsflash came, you know, through on my computer. And I thought, should I actually be saying something about this? Because I have been keeping a blog fairly regularly since two thousand and seven. And it was cool in two thousand and seven. And not so much anymore. But the, and I look back and I had said, written a little bit about different terrorist attacks over the years. And so I decided to write something quickly. I think I called it Sickening Violence

• 17:05Speaker 01

  and posted it with, you know, that afternoon, I guess, on October seventh. And that is how I do things.

• 17:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  You don't run it by your board?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I do not. I do not. I had the great, good fortune of having a board chair early in my tenure, Joshua Boger, who was the founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. And like the founders of companies, I'm told more generally, they don't like to be, have a lot of oversight. And Joshua said to me, my job is to support you or fire you. And not.

• 17:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  How do you know when you've crossed from one boundary to the next, though?

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Y'all know.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so my protocol with him, and I've been very fortunate. I've had great board chairs ever since. I let them know that there will be something in the press, let's say, but I don't tell them what it is. I had something in the L.A. Times. And I let the board chair know that there'll be something in the L.A. Times in a couple of days. And

• 18:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  That piece was about essentially the rise of authoritarianism, yes? Yeah. You like to stick your neck out?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Not, I don't think, maybe, I guess I like.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I don't, no, but I don't think either of us are sticking our neck out. We're just engaging in the conversation. And isn't that what we're supposed to do as cultural and educational institutions?

• 18:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yes, I would say, comma, but I see many, many, many, many people not.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  And that's why I, part of the reason I do it so often is to try to encourage other people.

• 18:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it working?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  No, not, not yet.

• 18:43Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 19:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  and adapt those assets for different markets, carrying context through every step. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

• 19:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Michael Roth isn't even scared of the free speech debate. He wrote a book called Safe Enough Spaces, and in 2012, Wesleyan hosted the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have an annual talk that's endowed in honor of free speech. And there's a faculty group that makes a recommendation to the president, and this group recommended I invite Justice Scalia. And I thought they were kind of pulling my leg to see if I would, because they're to the left of me, and I was not, I thought they wouldn't really do this. I thought, well, he's not going to come, so I'll just invite him, no big deal. And so we invite him, and immediately I get a letter back, accepting the invitation. And then he wrote a handwritten note on it saying that his former law clerk, Larry Lessig, had given this talk to me last year, and he knew he had a great experience.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Larry is quite far to the left, and so here's Scalia's coming. Now, my own view is that Scalia had, Justice Scalia, had done more harm to the interpretation of the American Constitution than anyone since the 19th century. And some faculty announced that they would be demonstrating, and students would demonstrate.

• 20:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  And I knew that if I had not been the president, and having had the task of introducing him at the lecture, I would have been demonstrating against him speaking at Wesleyan.

• 21:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why? Why demonstrating against him speaking? Isn't that the whole idea of the speech model?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Well, to demonstrate against the views that he would be discussing.

• 21:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, but isn't what we've been talking about here the whole idea that you want to hear?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Of course. No, but, and I wouldn't say that he shouldn't be allowed to speak, but if you're going to invite people, you might invite someone who hasn't done as much harm to the republic.

• 21:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  And honor him in this way. That would have been my view had I not had the task of introducing him and celebrating him. He spent the whole day on campus with students, much to his credit. We had dinner together with a group of, even at Wesleyan, I have conservative donors, and it was remarkably interesting in many ways. He was as hidebound and sexist as his critics would have thought, and he was charming and interesting and very smart.

• 22:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  And did he change your mind on anything?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  What he, I guess what he changed my mind is how productive it could be to have someone who I thought was wrong, have to listen to him speak. And that he was gracious and thoughtful, and we had people stand up in the chapel where we had the talk, in orange jumpsuits to protest the Guantanamo. And we had folks go around, say, you have to sit down or leave, and they sat down and they left. He gave his talk. There were some questions about Bush versus Gore, and he was, you know, just get over it, he said, I remember he said. And then it was one of my students who yelled out, why don't you call on a woman? Because he had only called on the men who raised their hands. And he said, oh, okay, I'll call on a woman, you know.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  But it was a great event.

• 22:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean--

• 22:52Speaker 01

  What changed my mind was that it was a great event, because he got to make his arguments, people got to push back and ask questions, he had heard all these things before, he was ready with replies, and I think everybody learned that you could have a really good discussion with someone who you deeply disagree with.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  And that's our job.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's our job.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  That is a big part of our job.

• 23:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean this in the nicest possible way. I would not want to do either of your jobs for one day.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  I mean, my job is fantastic. I mean, it is--

• 23:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  I've heard you say that, but when I hear the details--

• 23:28Speaker 01

  No, no--

• 23:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think it takes a special kind of person to process that into fantastic, and I'm glad you're that person.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Well, it's just that you get to spend time with a lot of really interesting people. And if you can deal with the projections onto you and their own mischigas and what they, their relation to authority, and you think, I just find that interesting. I don't actually, I had a great mentor at the Getty named Deborah Marrow, who ran the Getty Foundation for a long time, is an art historian. And she said to me, Michael, the first rule of administration is don't take anything personally. And she said, because people are going to give you credit for things you have nothing, like the football team won the championship, I get credit. You know, Glenn Ligan gave us some artwork, I get credit. You know, and at the same time, I also get blamed for things that I really have no role in.

• 24:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  And are you, are you able to, you're able to perform that? You're able to not get too caught up in--

• 24:23Speaker 01

  I try. I try.

• 24:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  What would you say is the biggest misperception about your job when people hear that you run a museum? What do they think you do, and how vast is that?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know, actually. You know, when I first came to the museum, people would say things like, oh, do you get paid for that? Barely, yes. I mean, I hope so.

• 24:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you take home work that you love? Can you just take something off the--

• 24:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  That would be, for me, then, the biggest misperception, because that's what I imagine you're doing, that you show up every day with a big bag.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Well, some museums, their directors have housing that the museum owns.

• 25:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  And it's furnished with good art.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yes. That's not the case that I have, but--

• 25:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Didn't the Museum of Modern Art, once upon a time, have a lending library essentially?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Brooklyn did too, actually.

• 25:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that right? No longer?

• 25:17Speaker 02

  No, and a lot of people think it's a great idea, and that we're going to make a lot of money on lending our collection out to people. In fact, I think Brooklyn Public Library just did something like that, but you really cannot do that with valuable work. One, you know, our job is to make sure it lasts in perpetuity, and you can't control if the, you know, dog is peeing on something, or the kids are throwing a Nerf ball at something. So that's not great. Also, the insurance, the amount of registrars, I mean, it's really a kind of misunderstanding of how we care for art in this day and age.

• 25:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  I can see that, but I still like the idea that you could walk into MoMA and say, I kind of like that Gorki, can I have him for a couple of weeks?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  You know, the answer is still no, Steve.

• 26:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, fair enough, I tried. Art does sometimes travel well. I'd asked Michael and Anne to bring some show and tell to this conversation, and they both brought art. To be clear, Anne's art did not come off the museum walls, and Michael's decision to bring art probably has something to do with the fact that he used to be president of the California College of the Arts. I asked Anne to go first. She brought a small painting of a boxer lying flat on the canvas.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  So, this is a little painting that my husband gave me for Christmas last year by an artist named George Wilner. But you've never heard of George Wilner? I never heard of George Wilner.

• 26:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Living, dead?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Dead. He died. I learned that he was born around 1908 and died around 1970.

• 26:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Where'd your husband find it?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  He found it through an online antique store in Portland, Oregon, or someplace like that.

• 26:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Your husband's an artist, we should say?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  He's an artist.

• 26:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  A very well-regarded artist?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yes, he is. Mike Stern. And so I looked this up, because I wanted to learn more about the artist. He was involved with the American Artists Congress in the 1930s.

• 27:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's that?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Well, it was a congress at a time period of depression and growing authoritarianism around the world and fascism that really asserted the right to free speech, artists' rights, and the group of artists, people like Stuart Davis, really felt that it was important for artists' work to be political and to engage in public dialogue. But I asked my husband, why did you give me a painting of a boxer who's been knocked out? And he said, because I see you as a fighter, and you always get back up.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  You still have your gloves on.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, and I thought it was hilarious when I got it. I loved it instantly, because that's how I felt last year. I felt flattened out. So I felt really seen by him in that moment. Yeah.

• 27:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is a, that is a very, very lovely gift.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you feel you've gotten up off the canvas then, this year?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 28:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, and how'd you do that?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  You know, you surround yourself by people who are really supportive, your staff, your friends, your family, your trustees, and, you know, they say, we believe in you, and we think you can do it, and you have to do it. You have no choice but to do it. People's livelihoods depend on it.

• 28:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, now it is Michael's turn. He brought a pair of photographs. The first shows a young couple in a sort of embrace, leaning up against a dirty wall. The photo is called Dave and Cookie, Jonesen.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  So this is a photograph by Jim Goldberg. Jim is from New Haven originally, but he's been in Northern California for many decades. He's retired now from CCA, where I got to know him when I was president of the art school. And this is from a book called Raised by Wolves, which is a story of kids living on the streets in San Francisco. And Jim and his more senior colleague, Larry Sultan, were conceptual photographers, book photographers. Larry and Mike Mandell did a book of found photographs in the late 60s, I guess, early 70s, that became an important work in the history of photography. And then he did a book from which this is taken called Pictures from Home.

• 29:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  This photograph is called Mom in Green Nightgown. In fact, everything in the photo is green, the walls, the shag rug, even the vibe is green. That's Larry's mom, then?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  That's Larry's mom. And there's a picture, so in our living room, we have these two, side by side with a large, kind of more museum-quality photograph of his dad with the golf club. And Larry, like Jim, put photographs, and then would text next to them, and his father would say, why do you make us look so lonely? We actually have a great life here, and it's so wonderful.

• 29:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  How would he answer that? Because I, I know these, I know that book.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  And it's true, it's like, and then I remember reading about it later, where the parents were saying, like, we actually have a very nice, normal life where we interact, but yeah, there's this feeling of sort of that suburban desolation sadness. So why did he do that?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Because that's how it felt to him.

• 30:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's how it felt to him?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  That's how it felt to him. And, you know, he's the artist, they just get to be the parents.

• 30:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  I love being explained anything personally, but looking at art, I think, is something that intimidates a lot of people. Is there anything you could teach me slash us in the moment? Or maybe, or maybe this is something that someone who's coming to the Brooklyn Museum that you would want them to know?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  The first thing I would want people to know is there is not a right way to read an artwork and that one of the great joys is just doing what we're doing, which is looking and sharing what we see with one another. I have been in this field for a very long time. And every time I speak with somebody, they see something I never noticed before. Right? So there's always an opportunity to really look deeply, to talk with one another. We realize we all see things differently. I think that's an important human lesson. And then if people want to go a little deeper, they can take a look at how the artist made something or when they made it. What was the social or historic context in which they made it? What did the artist have to say about it?

• 31:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's fun to look at art together in person. But what happens when the art is no longer made by a human? What if it's made by an AI?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I, I don't know if anybody wants to look at art created by AI. But I think that AI can greatly improve the viewer experience. You can look at an artwork and you can ask AI just about any question. How was it made? When was it made? Tell me about the biography of the artist. Does that church still exist?

• 31:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're highlighting one of my major grapes about most museums.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, when I see a piece, I mean, that's just the nature of me, I guess, is I want context. I want to know where and when and who the artist was, but I also want to know what was going on there. And I want to know what the symbols mean. I want to know all that stuff. So yes, when can I start getting that at your museum?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  I actually think in the near future.

• 32:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  I don't know, like two years.

• 32:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  We might start to see less and less museum labels because there'll be more interfaces for the public to directly get the information that they want. So I, I think that we're going to see an enhanced, more satisfying museum experience or gallery experience, tourist experience.

• 32:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, if you take it to an extreme, one might say, oh, maybe I don't need to go to the museum anymore if I can have.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 32:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because why? What is it about going that will retain its hold?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  First of all, I think people want to see the object in real life. Right? Just think about all the tourists who go and they have to all have the same picture taken, you know, in the same location in Dumbo, the Brooklyn Bridge.

• 32:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do they take? What's the piece or three that they take a picture of at your museum?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Uh, I think probably our great Bierstadt painting, Mount Rosalie, the dinner party by Judy Chicago, the Brooklyn Bridge by Georgia O'Keeffe. There are a number of works, but I think at, at the end of the day, people really want to commune with art. And I think the other thing is they really appreciate having a public space to gather and to learn.

• 33:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  And I don't think that's going away. I'm not, I'm not cynical about that at all.

• 33:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Michael, what about you? AI, Wesleyan education generally?

• 33:31Speaker 01

  I mean, there are things that are to me disturbing. As an old guy, I like giving people assignments that they go home and they work on it, they revise it, they do it again. And in my classes fall, I gave them in-class exams instead.

• 33:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  To prevent?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Prevent cheating. And, but at the same time, I gave an optional writing assignment every week for extra credit, ungraded, but with comments from me for those people who want that kind of exchange. And I also require them to use an AI chatbot that we made for the class, where they would talk about the material in the class with what I call the aggressive therapist AI. The, it's a course on, this course on virtue and vice. And you would say, well, for my week of practicing temperance, I am going to cut down on my smoking. And the AI would say, why do you think you smoke? Well, I really like the taste. Really? You don't think it has something to do with your, you know, being nervous about? And then you answer, you try to deflect the question and the AI pushes you back. So they have to do that for 10 minutes.

• 34:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can I say, I like that assignment. That's good, good assignment.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  But we also, I also added an hour of class time where with no technology, you get in the room with 10 people who all had separate conversations. And then you talk about what you learned in those conversations. And my, the TAs who run those tell me that the, that the conversations are really much more animated because everybody's primed. So I think there are ways of combining AI as a complement to education and to get rid of the things that we really shouldn't be doing in expensive colleges, universities, which are telling people things they could get online or in a textbook.

• 35:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  So if that were to really happen fully, whether it's university, high school, grade school, what should be happening more in those classrooms now that you're no longer having to spend so much time transferring knowledge?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Learning by doing.

• 35:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  You, you get, you take on projects with your classmates and your teacher. And every project can be different because you're, you're feeling differently that day. The team is different, the group you're working is different.

• 35:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  That sounds like a very different version of college.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  In some respects, I think people go to museums to be in the presence of artwork, to go to sports events, to be in the presence with other people of someone working at the, or playing at the highest level. And in education, you should be in there to be in the presence of people who are learning together and.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  People want a social experience. We're more and more isolated and yet we're human beings and we're social animals and we want to be together.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I remember being in a Mark Rothko exhibition in Washington years ago. And I was with like maybe two or three people in the whole museum. And this woman kept going in front of the paintings and she would go, oh my God. And she started to weep and she, and so the guards came over. And I said, you know, to me, it was like, was so much a more interesting experience because we were having this experience of looking at the paintings together.

• 36:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks for checking out this audio episode of our new TV talk show, Better in Person. If you'd like to see the conversation and the paintings, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel or look for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. Our email is [email protected]. We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Do you know I love hiring Wesleyan students?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that sounds very good.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I do because you train them to be independent thinkers.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  That can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true too. Maybe I should rethink that.

• 37:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better in Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.