Bad at Sports
Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, badatsports.com focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, various other arts professionals through an online audio format.
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 964: Jenal Dolson
08/10/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 964: Jenal Dolson
Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews are joined by painter Jenal Dolson for a conversation recorded live from the Door County Contemporary Art Fair in Wisconsin. Dolson discusses her vividly textured paintings, her installation practice, and the role of touch, memory, and sensory experience in shaping the visual language of her work. The conversation ranges from tactile abstraction and flocked wallpaper to popcorn ceilings, raccoon vision, painting directly onto gallery walls, collaboration, titling artworks, and why artists continue making work in the first place. Links Jenal Dolson Andrew Rafacz Gallery 65GRAND Good Naked Gallery Door County Contemporary Deb Sokolow Trish Tillman Rebecca Morris Chris Cran
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42348565
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 963: Tyson Reeder
08/06/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 963: Tyson Reeder
Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally welcome painter, educator, and perennial instigator Tyson Reeder to Bad at Sports. Recorded during Door County Contemporary Art Fair, the discussion wanders through the history of Milwaukee's DIY art scene, the legendary Dark Fair, artist-run culture, teaching, painting, collaboration, and the productive tension between sincerity and absurdity. Reeder reflects on organizing exhibitions as artistic experiments rather than scholarly declarations, describing curating as "a speculative mindset" where the question is always what if? The conversation also explores painting's unique solitude, collaborative work with his brother Scott Reeder, the role of humor in contemporary art, regional artistic identity, materiality after the pandemic, why artists still need to stand in front of paintings, and how drawing together can become an antidote to digital isolation. Links Tyson Reeder Scott Reeder Canada Gallery Door County Contemporary Art Fair Process Print Shop Swiss Institute White Columns Threewalls Green Gallery Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42282345
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 962: Sophia Chai
08/03/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 962: Sophia Chai
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Sophia Chai at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to discuss photography that insists on becoming something else. Working between painting, sculpture, installation, and large-format analog photography, Chai creates images that challenge our assumptions about perspective, representation, and the mechanics of seeing itself. The conversation moves from camera obscuras and four-by-five view cameras to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, cave painting, Korean language, immigration, and the colonial language embedded within photographic practice. Chai reflects on transforming her graduate studio into a walk-in camera obscura after September 11th, collaborating with architectural space rather than simply depicting it, and asks whether photography might become a practice of witnessing rather than capturing. Name Drops & Links Sophia Chai – Hair + Nails – University of Illinois Chicago School of Art & Art History – Kerry James Marshall – Judith Kirshner – Plato – Camera Obscura – Plato's Allegory of the Cave – Jeff Wall – Barbara Kasten – Johannes Vermeer – Peter Jackson – The Lord of the Rings –
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42281135
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 961: Tanner MacArthur
07/30/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 961: Tanner MacArthur
Tanner MacArthur joins Bad at Sports live from Door County Contemporary for a conversation that begins with secret fry sauce recipes and somehow ends with the shape of Delaware as a sandwich-eating methodology. MacArthur discusses his dual role as both artist and gallerist through his Milwaukee project space, Addendum, founded alongside James Stepanek as an extension of No Instructions Gallery. The conversation moves through contemporary painting, Midwestern DIY culture, artist-run spaces, collecting habits in the Midwest, labor history, and the strange but fertile ground between formal abstraction and dumpster diving. Tanner speaks about his own assemblage-based painting practice, his evolution from hard-edge abstraction into sculptural wall works built from salvaged materials, and his desire to reconnect with painting's possibilities through color, surface, and material experimentation. The discussion also highlights a growing generation of Milwaukee artists creating new spaces and opportunities outside traditional institutions, including apartment galleries, publishing projects, and experimental exhibition venues. Name Drops and Links: Tanner MacArthur – Addendum Gallery – No Instructions Gallery – Martyna Alexander – Meg White (artist) – Tony Conrad – Lawrence University – University of Wisconsin–Madison – University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts – Experimental Sculpture Room (ESR) – Milwaukee Art Museum – Gertrude Abercrombie – Kim Sajet – Door County Contemporary –
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42174105
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 960: Shane Walsh
07/27/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 960: Shane Walsh
This episode on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, organizer, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Shane Walsh at the close of another sunny and slightly delirious weekend in Door County. The conversation ranges from the growth of the Door County Contemporary fair, the peculiar magic of creating a temporary art community in Wisconsin, and the challenge of building an audience for contemporary art outside major metropolitan centers. Along the way, Shane discusses his own abstract painting practice, the virtues of Detroit-style pizza, and why a successful art fair might really just be "arts summer camp." Shane talks about the evolution of Door County Contemporary from its inaugural edition into a larger and more ambitious event, reflecting on how local partnerships, community engagement, and a relaxed atmosphere have helped make the fair feel distinct from the larger art-world circuit. The crew also dives into Shane's own painting practice: lush, unhinged abstractions informed equally by modernist painting histories and the visual language of 1990s punk culture. The result is a conversation about painting, community, and finding ways to make art experiences feel meaningful, generous, and fun. Name Drops and Links: Shane Walsh – Door County Contemporary – Pen Art School of Door County – OS Projects – Willem de Kooning – Helen Frankenthaler – Johnny Carson –
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42173320
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 959: Shane McAdams
07/23/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 959: Shane McAdams
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller head north to the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to sit down with artist, curator, writer, gallerist, and all-around art evangelist Shane McAdams. Broadcasting from a gazebo in Door County, Wisconsin, the conversation ranges from the weather, custard, and pontoon boats to larger questions about why contemporary art struggles to reach broader publics, why the Midwest needs more artist-run infrastructure, and how we might create healthier cultural ecosystems. McAdams makes the case for a bigger, messier, more porous art world—one where commercial galleries, nonprofits, academia, collectors, artists, and curious newcomers all coexist. This is a conversation about building bridges: between Chicago and Minneapolis, between contemporary art and regional audiences, between artists and the merely art-curious. It is also a reminder that art remains one of the few places where genuine meaning-making and community formation can still occur. Name Drops Shane McAdams Door County Contemporary Art Fair Real Tinsel Gallery Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel Peninsula School of Art Claire Ashley David Letterman Marcel Duchamp Robert Ryman James Audubon Mark Glimcher / Pace Gallery Peter Buggenhout University of Chicago University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art Trainspotting Miami Art Week
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42172750
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 958: Rafael Salas
07/09/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 958: Rafael Salas
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artist and educator Rafael Salas for a wide-ranging conversation about rural Wisconsin, magical realism, county fairs, country music, identity, and the contested landscapes of contemporary America. Salas discusses growing up in rural Wisconsin, returning to the Midwest after years in New York, and how his paintings inhabit a space between celebration and unease. The conversation moves from the influence of Wisconsin Death Trip to the political symbolism of county fairs, mixed-race identity, landscape painting traditions, and the challenge of making meaningful contemporary art from outside major art centers. Name Drops and links: Rafael Salas – Door County Contemporary - Ripon College – Museum of Wisconsin Art – Newcity – Michael Lesy (Wisconsin Death Trip) – Wisconsin Death Trip – Charles Van Schaick – Mark Tansey – Grant Wood – Cormac McCarthy – Caspar David Friedrich – Johnny Cash – Dolly Parton – Willie Nelson – Hank Williams – Woody Guthrie – Neil Young – Marquette University – John McCain – Sarah Palin – Barack Obama –
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/42028985
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz
07/02/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz
Recorded live at Door County Contemporary, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally correct a seventeen-year oversight and sit down with Chicago gallerist Andrew Rafacz. From the Bucket Rider days in Pilsen to twenty-five years of building a gallery practice rooted in friendship, advocacy, and weird Midwestern generosity, Rafacz reflects on Chicago's changing art scene, the pressures of art fairs, the realities of representation, and why artists shouldn't mistake social media attention for support. Along the way: the Spray Show, shower beers, Cody Hudson, Pace Gallery's roster cuts, and the strange beauty of making things nobody asked for. Name Drops & Links Andrew Rafacz Gallery — Cody Hudson — Michelle Grabner — Mark Bloch — Shane McAdams — Cindy Sherman — Robert Rauschenberg — Roger Brown — Nancy Spero — Leon Golub — Christina Ramberg — Griffin Goodman — Door County Contemporary — EXPO Chicago — One After 909 Gallery — Foxy Production — The Art Institute of Chicago — Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — Pace Gallery — Gilles Deleuze —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41706185
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 956: Phoenix Brown
06/29/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 956: Phoenix Brown
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Milwaukee-based artist, curator, musician, and all-around multi-hyphenate Phoenix Brown. The conversation begins with Phoenix's drawings in the Portrait Society exhibition and quickly expands into vulnerability, symbolism, self-healing, lizards from Italy, Midwestern art communities, music, curatorial practice, and the challenges of balancing multiple creative lives. Phoenix discusses how personal experiences become encoded into a visual language of recurring symbols—flowers, fire, rivers, and tailless lizards—while reflecting on trust, disclosure, and the ways artists reveal themselves through their work without always saying everything outright. Phoenix also shares details about their work as curator at the Bronzeville Center for the Arts, efforts to build Milwaukee's first museum dedicated to artists of the African diaspora, and their band Home Going. Links Phoenix Brown: Bronzeville Center for the Arts: Portrait Society Gallery: Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD): Milwaukee Art Museum: Cincinnati Art Museum: Sculpture Milwaukee: Martine Syms: CK Ledesma:
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41703925
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz
06/25/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Duncan MacKenzie sit down with Chicago artist Mindy Rose Schwartz to discuss Countersealed, her recent exhibition at M. LeBlanc Gallery. The conversation explores a deeply immersive exhibition built around ceramic scorpions emerging from cracks in the gallery floor, glowing bronze aliens, reconstructed fur animals, monumental incense sculptures, woven memorial forms, and a contemporary incantation bowl based on ancient Mesopotamian protective magic. Schwartz discusses material experimentation, memory, ecology, astrology, political anxiety, and the possibility of making art that is simultaneously playful, hopeful, sentimental, and critical. Name drops and links: Mindy Rose Schwartz – M. Leblanc Gallery - https://mleblancchicago.com/ Louise Bourgeois – Helen Mirra – https://hmirra.net/ Luba Krejci – https://browngrotta.com/artists/luba-krejci Dr. Justin Sledge – https://www.esoterica.tv King’s Leap Gallery – https://www.kingsleapfinearts.com/
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41628345
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson
06/22/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago artist Heather Mekkelson to discuss her recent paired exhibitions, Bass Note at 65GRAND and Snare at Boundary. Across two installations separated by nearly sixteen miles of Chicago, Mekkelson transforms obsolete communication technologies into sprawling sculptural environments wrapped in jute. The conversation explores technological obsolescence, archaeology, sound, labor, environmental extraction, analog nostalgia, artistic trust, and the strange afterlives of the materials we leave behind. From bog-preserved artifacts and ancient spears to dead HDMI cables and power distribution boxes, Mekkelson traces the resonances between human invention and human consequence. Name Drops and links Heather Mekkelson — https://www.heathermekkelson.com/ 65GRAND — Boundary — https://www.boundarychicago.space/ Clacton Spear — Ancient Danish Corded Skirt (Egtved Girl context) —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41627330
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer
06/18/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer
Executive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, former co-founder of Elsewhere Museum, printmaking evangelist, institutional theorist, and recovering residency founder George Scheer joins Duncan and Ryan for a sprawling conversation about artist-centered institutions, the legacy of Robert Blackburn, socially engaged practice, the economics of DIY arts infrastructures, and what happens when artists try to build sustainable worlds inside systems that rarely reward care work. The conversation moves from the legendary Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop to the anarchic magic of Elsewhere’s living archive, through New Orleans arts policy, cross-sector cultural work, printmaking discourse, academia, administration, and the impossible balancing act between artists, institutions, donors, and communities. George discusses the evolution of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts from grantmaking organization to one of the most significant artist studio and printmaking ecosystems in the country, including the continuation of Blackburn’s radical community printshop model and the preservation of a major archive featuring artists like Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden. Name Drops & Links Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts — Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop — Elsewhere Museum — NADA New York — Library of Congress — Mellon Foundation — Faith Ringgold — Elizabeth Catlett — Romare Bearden — Jasper Johns — Robert Rauschenberg Foundation — Common Field — Creative Time — Walker Art Center — Central Saint Martins — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — Duke University —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41399635
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern
06/15/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern
Bad at Sports Episode 951 has Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller still in Miami for a conversation with Chicago artist Tali Halpern at NADA, representing 1210 Gallery. The conversation spans weaving, sobriety, punk music, queer identity, labor, spectacle, and the ecstatic possibilities of fiber art. Halpern discusses their transition from painting and addiction into weaving, their work with digital looms at Loom Room, and the way embellishment, rhinestones, embroidery, and collage become acts of healing and reconstruction. The episode touches on Chicago’s art community, punk aesthetics, club culture, spiritual labor, and the tension between craft traditions and contemporary experimentation. Name Drops & Links Tali Halpern — Twelve Ten Gallery — NADA Miami — School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) — Loom Room Chicago — Hope Lange — Gregg Araki — Nowhere — Mike Kelley — Paul McCarthy — Tracey Emin — Sylvia Plath — Elliott Smith — Ken Burns — Nirvana — The B-52's — Guns N' Roses — Howardena Pindell — Melissa Cody — Cranbrook Academy of Art — Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art — The Weaving Mill — Mikey Mosher — Cindy Sherman — Noelia Towers — The Killers —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41398210
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida
06/11/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida
At NADA Miami, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sandford and returning guest William Powhida dig into the art world’s annual power rituals, the shifting geography of cultural influence, Gulf-state biennials, wealth concentration, and the contradictions of contemporary art’s relationship to capitalism. Starting from Powhida’s commissioned work for the annual ArtReview Power 100 issue, the conversation encompasses discussions of oligarchy, philanthropy, redistribution, art fairs, nationalism, soft power, artist-run infrastructure, and Powhida’s ambitious experimental project, the Zero Art Fair. William Powhida — NADA Miami — ArtReview Power 100 — Ben Davis — t Nicole Eisenman — 52 Walker — Zero Art Fair — Flag Art Foundation —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41353930
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long
06/08/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Justin H. Long Live from the fair circuit heat (not Miami… but spiritually always Miami), Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford catch up with artist Justin H. Long, self-described “original Florida man,” to talk boats, comedy, identity, and the strange poetics of nautical culture. Long’s sculptural practice moves between deadpan humor and conceptual rigor: a capsized Laser sailboat turned vertical monument, a palm tree replacing its mast, and a title—S.O.S.—that refuses to resolve cleanly into sentiment. From Morse code to yacht club politics, from Spanglish boat names to disaster-relief coolers, Long builds a practice that blends maritime history, Miami mythologies, and a punk-inflected irreverence toward art’s seriousness. Also featured in this episode – a CalArts performance art involving chocolate milk vomit, signal flags translating hip-hop lyrics, and why humor still makes the art world uncomfortable. Justin H. Long — Duncan MacKenzie — Ryan Peter Miller — Tom Sanford — Lumpen Radio — Florida International University — CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) — Baker Hall Gallery — Spring/Break Art Show — Design Miami — Key Biscayne Yacht Club — Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans — Damien Hirst — Nicole Eisenman — The Simpsons — Kids in the Hall —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41311870
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein
06/08/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein
I don't quite know how to start this. It feels important to repost this interview because of Hilde. Hilde Lynn Helpenstein was a kickass human. "Jerry Gogosian" was a lance aimed directly at our pretensions and self-importance. Through Jerry, Hilde developed an incisive understanding of how the art world works. She created a space where many of us felt seen, derided, embarrassed, challenged, or simply able to laugh at our own reflection. She used Jerry to investigate us, for better and worse. In doing so, she exposed the paradoxes, half-truths, and hypocrisies embedded in what we do and how we choose to spend our lives. I think we should have listened more carefully when she tried to take what she had learned and suggest other ways forward. Hilde fucking loved art. More than almost anything. I know that feeling. She knew something wasn't working and she was trying to understand it, diagnose it, and imagine alternatives. What changed for me in this interview was realizing that we were on the same trip. My friend Chris Johanson used to say, "Trip on it, don't fry on it." It's hard not to fry on the thing you love most, especially when you feel responsible for all of it. Hilde was generous and generative. Sadly, the art world can't love you back. It's a little like summer camp: a temporary bubble of perfection that can be difficult to bring back into everyday life. What Hilde wanted, I think, was for us to find a way to reconnect art to the world outside that bubble, and maybe get over ourselves in the process. I, and all of us at Bad at Sports, will miss our fellow traveler. d.
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41573275
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 948: Esther Park
06/04/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 948: Esther Park
In this episode of Bad at Sports, recorded at the tail end of a sun-soaked, sweat-drenched, and somehow still magical Miami Art Week, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with curator and cultural programmer Esther Park—the force behind this year’s public programming at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Park traces her origin story from working the front desk at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami to throwing illegal block parties in Wynwood, to shaping NADA’s ambitious “Ecologies” program. The conversation spirals (as it should) into art world mythologies, Miami as mirage, the collapse and reinvention of criticism, and why the real work happens far below the visible surface. This is a conversation about infrastructure, community, exhaustion, joy, and why—despite everything—the ecosystem still matters. Esther Park — cultural programmer and curator (NADA Public Programming) Duncan MacKenzie — Ryan Peter Miller — New Art Dealers Alliance — Art Basel — Sam Keller — Knight Foundation — Pérez Art Museum Miami — Heather Hubbs — Mel Chin — Jerry Saltz — Roberta Smith — Peter Schjeldahl — Christopher Knight — Hyperallergic — Ben Davis — Artnet — Brad Troemel — Jerry Gogosian — Lori Waxman — KAWS — Alec Monopoly — Beeple —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41311640
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Heather Hubbs
06/01/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Heather Hubbs
Recorded live in the blazing Miami heat (seriously, surface-of-the-sun conditions), Duncan, Ryan, and crew sit down with Heather Hubbs, Executive Director of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), for a conversation about art fairs, artist ecosystems, and what it actually means to build a sustainable contemporary art community. From CBD waters and early-morning whiskey to global art economies and the future of ceramics, this episode captures Bad at Sports at its most “tailgate meets art world summit.” Heather walks us through NADA’s evolution from a member-driven trade association into a flexible, responsive platform that supports galleries, artists, and experimental projects across Miami, New York, and beyond. The conversation digs into post-pandemic market shifts, the logic behind fair restructuring (goodbye Sunday drag), and how Warsaw is unexpectedly a site of mass public hunger for art. Along the way: project spaces as incubators, ceramics as a rising force, and the enduring legacy of Chicago art world figures who shaped how fairs operate today. Also: inflatable dancing airmen. Chickens. Buttholes. You know, professionalism. New Art Dealers Alliance — White Columns — Matthew Higgs — 47 Canal — Bureau — Green Gallery — Good Weather — Blade Study — Rhona Hoffman — Art Chicago — SOFA Chicago — John Riepenhoff — Celebrity Book Club —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41311600
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 946: Chris Succo
05/28/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 946: Chris Succo
Chris Succo joins Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford in Miami for a conversation that slides easily from pronunciation jokes into a deep dive on abstraction, immediacy, and the quiet, often unspoken labor of sustaining an art practice. Succo unpacks a studio logic built on contradiction: paintings that feel fast but are deeply considered, surfaces that appear minimal but hold layers of decision-making, and a practice that balances commercial necessity with experimental risk. The conversation ranges across Succo’s “white paintings,” photographic references, sculptural work in foundries, and the strange economics of being a working painter. Along the way, the crew hits Miami art fair nostalgia, Miley Cyrus backed by The Flaming Lips, and the enduring romance of making something that might never sell. This one is about intuition, material intelligence, and what it actually means to keep going in the studio. Chris Succo - Mark LeBlanc — Richard Prince — Paul McCarthy — Willem de Kooning — Bushwick Bill — Miley Cyrus — The Flaming Lips — MC Serch — Fugazi — Michael Harding Paint — Gamblin —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41221330
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 945: Dreamsong Gallery
05/25/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 945: Dreamsong Gallery
Recorded in the sunburnt delirium of Miami, Duncan and crew stumble out of the Midwest and into the heat of the fairs, only to find a familiar sensibility in an unexpected place: Dreamsong. Rebecca Heidenberg joins the conversation to talk about building a gallery ecosystem in Minneapolis that resists isolation and instead fosters dialogue between regional artists and those working in larger art centers like New York and Los Angeles. From this conversation we get a portrait of a space that operates as both a commercial gallery and something closer to a cultural commons, anchored by programming, residency initiatives, and a commitment to community. From the founding logic of Dreamsong to the evolution of the Cloud House residency program, Rebecca outlines a model that prioritizes relationships over market pressure. The conversation moves fluidly between Minneapolis as a site of artistic possibility, the economics of running a gallery outside New York, and the strange spectacle of Miami’s art fair ecosystem, including dystopian crypto exhibitions and phantom Lamborghini launches. Along the way: documentary filmmaking in Cuba, the legacy of an art-dealing mother, the emotional labor embedded in artistic practice, and the ongoing tension between “pretty” art and meaningful engagement in a complicated political moment. It’s Midwest pragmatism meets art world absurdity. And somehow, it works. Rebecca Heidenberg — Dreamsong — Cloud House — Gregory Smith — Edgar Arceneaux — Walker Art Center — Minneapolis College of Art and Design — Rachel Collier — Hair + Nails — All My Relations Arts — Minneapolis Institute of Art — Henry Moore — Douglas Kearney — Art Basel Miami Beach — Frieze Los Angeles — Jean-Michel Basquiat —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41221185
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 944: Amy Kligman
05/21/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 944: Amy Kligman
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, this episode finds the crew in full fair-mode: cramped booths, warm beverages, and the particular energy of artists, curators, and dealers trying to make something real happen in public. Joining the conversation is Amy Kligman, founder of Special Effects Gallery, a Kansas City–based gallery barely out of the gate and already showing at fairs. Alongside Tom Sanford, the conversation moves quickly from logistics and booth banter into something deeper: how artists carry histories, how objects hold people, and how a gallery can function less like a marketplace and more like a host. Kligman’s project is both scrappy and intentional. Special Effects Gallery is rooted in Kansas City but outward-facing, acting as a connector, a translation device, and maybe even a love letter to regional practice that deserves a broader stage. The name itself comes from her parents’ rural Indiana video store, a place that served as a portal to elsewhere - Special Effects Gallery carries that lineage and seeks out a similar ethos. Amy Kligman — Tom Sanford — Kevin Demery — Rashawn Griffin — Charlotte Street Foundation — Plug Projects — Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) — Dana Schutz — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Schutz
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41220980
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 943: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubko
05/18/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 943: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubko
From the humid chaos of Miami Art Week, Bad at Sports drops into the garden at NADA for a conversation with two artists from Western Exhibitions: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubkov. A loose, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful discussion about painting that isn’t painting, sculpture that remembers your body, and bathrooms as sites of intimacy, memory, and quiet surveillance. Nanako walks through her hyper-flat, acrylic-based “paintings” that live somewhere between screen, object, and comic logic. Olivia counters with slip-cast porcelain sculptures drawn from domestic life. Towels, tiles, soap dishes, and mirrors become witnesses to the private rituals of living. The conversation drifts between material process, Chicago’s influence, comic culture, color as personality, and the strange emotional charge of everyday objects. Along the way, there are riffs on boob lights, mold-making ethics, and whether your bathroom fixtures are silently judging you. Ryan Peter Miller — Duncan MacKenzie — Western Exhibitions — Nanako Kono — Olivia Zubkov — Scott Speh — NADA Art Fair — Lumpen Radio — School of the Art Institute of Chicago — University of Nevada, Las Vegas — Richard Rezac — Julia Fish —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41220570
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 942: Embajada Gallery
05/14/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 942: Embajada Gallery
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, Episode 942 features a deeply generous conversation with gallerist and artist Christopher Rivera—founder of Embajada (“Embassy”) Gallery in Puerto Rico. Joined by hosts Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sanford, and William “Bill” Pereda, Rivera discusses artist-led infrastructures, building a gallery as a political and conceptual project, and the evolving ecosystem of Puerto Rican contemporary art. At the center of the conversation is Rivera’s presentation of artist Taina Cruz whose hybrid practice—spanning painting, robotics, and installation—anchors the booth. The discussion moves fluidly between artistic identity, diaspora, conceptual vs. formal practices, and the strange alchemy of building a gallery that resists becoming purely commercial. This is also a conversation about organic growth: careers, relationships, and opportunities that emerge through trust, community, and sustained engagement rather than strategy alone. NADA Art Fair — Taina Cruz Art Basel Miami Beach — Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) — Yale University — Hunter College — Marlborough Gallery — Rachel Uffner Gallery — Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling — Artforum — Bad Bunny — Joshua Nazario Lugo — Jan Anthony Olivares — Carla Acevedo-Yates — William Wegman — Claude Monet — Camille Pissarro — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41220055
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 941: Myra Greene
05/11/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 941: Myra Greene
Recorded live in Atlanta at the Art Papers Symposium at Ponce City Market, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, educator, and department chair Myra Greene for a conversation on materiality, identity, and the long arc from photography to textiles to weaving. The conversation centers on practice as evolution, about what happens when an artist refuses to stay in one lane, and about how material decisions carry conceptual weight. Greene reflects on her move from Columbia College Chicago to Spelman College, where she helped build a program grounded in storytelling, experimentation, and liberal arts integration. From ambrotypes to fabric dye to loom-based weaving, Greene’s work consistently circles a central question: how can identity exist without the body? Name Drops & Links Myra Greene — https://www.myragreene.com/ Duncan MacKenzie — Brian Andrews — Spelman College — Columbia College Chicago — Jeanne Gang — Mary Schmidt Campbell — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Schmidt_Campbell LaTanya Richardson Jackson — Samuel L. Jackson — Candida Alvarez — Patron Gallery — The Weaving Mill — Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild — https://chgweavers.org/ Ansel Adams —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41219620
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 940: Emily Llamazales
04/29/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 940: Emily Llamazales
Recorded live during the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Emily Llamazales to talk speculative biology, adaptive futures, and sculptural ecosystems that feel equal parts laboratory experiment and sci-fi relic. Emily’s work merges biochemistry, ecology, and material experimentation into immersive sculptural forms that hover between organism and artifact. From translucent photo-printed fabrics to ceramic “creatures” built from invasive species logic, her practice imagines a world where mutation is survival and adaptation is aesthetic strategy. The conversation ranges from collaborative exhibition-making and studio ecology to invasive snails, granite outcrops, and the porous boundary between science fiction and real science. Along the way: holography, grant writing, fungi, and the possibility that the future might already be quietly evolving around us. Name Drops (with links) Emily Llamazales - Duncan MacKenzie — Brian Andrews — Jacob O’Kelly — (curator, Swan Coach House Gallery, Atlanta) Ben Steele — Aaron Putt — Burnaway — Art Papers — Clio Art Fair / Clio (Savannah project space) — Arts Capital Atlanta — Arabia Mountain — Ichetucknee Springs — Suwannee River — Apple Snail (invasive species) — h Dyssodia / “diamorpha” plants (granite outcrop flora) — Scavengers Reign (TV series) — Futurama — Adrian Tchaikovsky —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/41063180
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 939: Sarah Higgins
04/19/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 939: Sarah Higgins
Art Papers, Fire Ecology, and Ending Well This week on Bad at Sports, we sit down in Atlanta with Sarah Higgins, Executive and Artistic Director of Art Papers, during the Art Papers symposium. What unfolds is a candid, generous, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about what it means to end something well. As Art Papers approaches its final chapter after nearly 50 years, Higgins lays out a model for institutional closure that resists panic, rejects compromise, and instead asks: what if ending is a form of contribution? From the “fire ecology” framework to radical transparency about budgets, labor, and sustainability, this conversation moves from grief to strategy to something like collective possibility. Along the way: the death of art criticism models, nonprofit fatigue, Chicago parallels, and why maybe nobody is coming to save us. Names Dropped (Bad at Sports style) Sarah Higgins — Art Papers — Brian Andrews — Duncan MacKenzie — Art Papers Symposium — New Art Examiner — Dan Talley — Laura Lieberman — Real Art Ways — Critical Minded — Ponce City Market — Jamestown — National Endowment for the Arts — Mary Louise Schumacher — Lucy – Scarlett Johansson – Morgan Freeman –
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/40812505
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 938: Tori Tinsley
04/15/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 938: Tori Tinsley
Recorded live at the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, this episode features a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation with Tori Tinsley. Joined by Brian Andrews and Duncan MacKenzie, Tinsley reflects on caregiving, grief, motherhood, and the evolution of her “hug” figures across painting, sculpture, and animation. Her practice emerges from lived experience, particularly her mother’s diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia, and expands into a broader inquiry into emotional labor, embodiment, and the absurdity of contemporary life. Humor, instability, and tenderness coexist in work that resists resolution while remaining deeply accessible. Name Drop List (with links) Tori Tinsley — Brian Andrews — Duncan MacKenzie — Art Papers — School of the Art Institute of Chicago — Georgia State University (GSU) — William Kentridge — Brené Brown —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/40812390
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 937: Nato Thompson
04/13/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 937: Nato Thompson
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Abigail Satinsky sit down with Nato Thompson for a conversation that spans collapsing institutions, alternative economies, and what it actually means to sustain a life in art. Recorded in the context of an art fair ecosystem that increasingly blurs community, commerce, and survival, Thompson reflects on his path from Creative Time to Philadelphia Contemporary (RIP unrealized museum), and into his current multi-pronged practice: consulting, artist support, and the evolving Alternative Art School. What starts as a casual catch-up quickly becomes something sharper: a diagnosis of failing art school models, a critique of nonprofit dependency, and a proposal for artist-centered infrastructures that actually function. Along the way: dark matter artists, subscription economies, global classrooms, refrigerator exhibitions, and the radical idea that maybe art isn’t a career ladder at all. Names Dropped (with links) Nato Thompson — Duncan MacKenzie — Brian Andrews — Abigail Satinsky — Creative Time — Philadelphia Contemporary — Alternative Art School — e-flux — Anton Vidokle — Powerhouse Arts — Raqs Media Collective — Tania Bruguera — Guadalupe Maravilla — Jeremy Deller — Lexa Walsh — Times Square Arts —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/40812365
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks
04/08/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks
Locks’ exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration. The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space functioning like improvisational jazz and the other like a stripped-down, urgent punk track. Locks pushes back on easy analogies, but embraces the underlying idea: that both bodies of work are driven by different modes of attention and response. A major thread is process. Locks describes an almost anti-archival system of working, where stacks of Xeroxes, prints, and sampled sounds are mentally cataloged rather than digitally organized. This produces a practice grounded in rediscovery and accident, closer to crate-digging than database searching. Equally central is pedagogy. His decade-plus engagement with incarcerated students becomes a generative force, not a side project. The “homework” he assigns becomes his own studio method, expanding into the work shown here and into related musical output like List of Demands. Throughout, Locks positions his work within a lineage that moves fluidly between comic books, punk ephemera, Black radical print culture, and contemporary art. The result is a practice that refuses clean categorization, operating instead as an ongoing negotiation between sound, image, politics, and community. Names Dropped Duncan MacKenzie — Ryan (Peter Miller) — Damon Locks — Goldfinch Gallery — Lumpen Radio — Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project — Stateville Correctional Center — Artists / Art References Charles White — Raymond Pettibon — Emory Douglas — Kerry James Marshall — Music / Punk References Bad Brains — Minor Threat — Government Issue — The Clash — Siouxsie and the Banshees — The Damned — Big Black — Naked Raygun — Black Flag — Comics / Illustration Influences John Byrne — Neal Adams — George Pérez — Marshall Rogers —
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/40775855
info_outline
Bad at Sports Episode 935: Chicago Critics Roundtable
04/06/2026
Bad at Sports Episode 935: Chicago Critics Roundtable
Guests: Annette LePique, Curtis Anthony Bozif, Pia Singh, Gareth Kaye Recorded with the support of Columbia College Chicago - Colum.edu What happens when you gather a room full of critics in a moment when criticism itself feels both endangered and newly alive? In this long-awaited return to the Chicago Critics Roundtable, Duncan sits down with a new multi-hyphenate crew of writers, curators, artists, and exhibition-makers to unpack the shifting role of criticism in a fractured “art ecology.” What emerges is a conversation about care, attention, subjectivity, labor, and the strange intimacy of thinking deeply about someone else’s work. From the death of legacy media to the rise of Substack, from writing as love to writing as agitation, this episode positions criticism as a lived, embodied, and often obsessive practice. Criticism is relational, literary, emotional, and deeply entangled with the conditions of making and showing art in Chicago today, and certainly never “neutral”. Name Drop List (with links) Duncan MacKenzie—Brian Andrews—Annette LePique—https://sixtyinchesfromcenter.org/byline/annette-lepique/ Curtis Anthony Bozif—https://www.curtisanthonybozif.com/ Pia Singh—https://curatorsintl.org/collaborators/22319-pia-singh Gareth Kaye—https://chicagospleen.substack.com/ Derrick Guthrie—https://derrickguthrie.com/ Lane Relyea—https://www.artic.edu/authors/71/lane-relyea James Elkins— Michelle Grabner— Lori Waxman—https://www.60inchcenter.org/lori-waxman Charles Baudelaire— Dave Hickey—https://www.artforum.com/contributors/dave-hickey Werner Herzog—https://www.bfi.org.uk/filmography/werner-herzog Timothy Morton—https://www.timothymorton.net/ Rachel Carson—Peter Schjeldahl—
/episode/index/show/badatsports/id/40748450