In Memory of Agnes Gund

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: All Of It
Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Episode: In Memory of Agnes Gund
Date: September 22, 2025

This episode is a tribute to Agnes Gund, the renowned philanthropist, art collector, and former president of MoMA, who passed away at 87. The conversation is a replay of a 2020 interview with Agnes Gund and her daughter, filmmaker Catherine Gund, about the documentary “Aggie.” The discussion delves into Agnes’s passion for art, her lifelong commitment to social equity—including pioneering arts education and justice reform—and the personal values that shaped her public work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of Filming Agnes Gund

• Catherine describes the peculiar challenge of documenting her mother’s life:
  • “It was the sort of central challenge in making this film was trying to focus a spotlight on someone who can't stand having the spotlight focused on them.” (01:27, Katherine Gund)
• Catherine explains her reluctance to pursue the film until Agnes’s extraordinary decision to sell a prized Lichtenstein painting for social good motivated her.

2. Turning Art Into Justice

• The catalyst for the film and much of the conversation was Agnes’s decision to sell a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $165 million to start the Art for Justice Fund, combating mass incarceration.
  • “She sold it to turn art into justice, into ending mass incarceration. And I thought that was an unbelievable model… I want other people to… feel their agency. And I feel like that's what she's a model of for me.” (01:52, Katherine Gund)
• Agnes’s philosophy reflects her drive to make art a force for social change:
  • “I thought what Ava’s [DuVernay, ‘13th’] point was was that there were so many black and brown people that were put in jail as compared to white people, and this just didn't seem right.” (13:24, Agnes Gund)

3. Early Love for Art and Museums

• Agnes reminisces about formative experiences at the Cleveland Museum of Art:
  • “I loved going around. I loved seeing very many of the things. Some of them are still up that I looked at… But the Cleveland has always been dear to my heart, and especially this museum.” (03:20, Agnes Gund)
• Family tradition played a role; multiple siblings attended art classes.

4. The Pull of New York City

• On moving to NYC and finding belonging, Agnes expresses the city’s emotional energy:
  • “It's because of, I guess, the emotion of the place you feel. One feels very much that there's a speed that everything's going at... but there are places that you can go where you can relax and be by yourself.” (06:02, Agnes Gund)
• New York emerges as a symbol of opportunity, diversity, and connection.

5. Studio in a School and Supporting the Excluded

• Catherine draws a direct line from Agnes’s founding of Studio in a School to later activism:
  • “It's about giving voice to people… elementary school, public school students or women artists or incarcerated people, all kinds of people whose voice wasn't welcome to shine, whose voice wasn't amplified… this belief that everybody mattered…” (07:38, Katherine Gund)
• Agnes’s hands-on engagement with art programs in prisons demonstrates her belief in the transformative power of creative expression.

6. Art Philosophy: Accessibility over Investment

• Agnes opposes treating art as mere capital and underscores broad access:
  • “I've found that… people don't get enough chance to see art… I think that those are what, what attracts people and allows them the breadth that they need to have to go into museums for museums.” (10:16, Agnes Gund)
• Catherine remarks:
  • “She doesn't treat art like money… she gives it as gifts to the museums and the universities, and she's given… over 900 pieces to the Museum of Modern Art...” (11:23, Katherine Gund)
• The Lichtenstein sale was different because it redirected wealth for social justice, not personal gain.

7. Personal Dimensions: Family and Learning Across Difference

• The conversation touches on Agnes’s experience as a white grandmother to Black grandchildren:
  • “Most people that are white don't live with… people that are black… It's all positive. They're all very wonderful kids… There's a lot to say about their role in this world and what they want to do.” (15:50, Agnes Gund)
• Catherine adds a generational perspective:
  • “There is this way that she's open to learning, but we wouldn't be who we were if it weren't for how she functions in the world… as the country is becoming more multiracial…people will know.” (16:53, Katherine Gund)
• The family’s lived diversity shapes and deepens Agnes’s public commitments.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “She sold it to turn art into justice, into ending mass incarceration.”
  — Katherine Gund (01:52)

• “I loved going around the Cleveland Museum... But the Cleveland has always been dear to my heart, and especially this museum.”
  — Agnes Gund (03:20)

• “It's about giving voice to people… this belief that everybody mattered and that the students would bring more of themselves to our society, if they were allowed to develop their critical thinking capacities...”
  — Katherine Gund (07:38)

• “I've found that… people don't get enough chance to see art and to… appreciate it. And I mean older art too.”
  — Agnes Gund (10:16)

• “She doesn't treat art like money… she's always, since the beginning… wanted it to go to the people.”
  — Katherine Gund (11:23)

• “What set it off was seeing Ava DuVernay’s film… there were so many black and brown people that were put in jail as compared to white people, and this just didn't seem right.”
  — Agnes Gund (13:24)

• “Most people that are white don't live with… people that are black… It's all positive. They're all very wonderful kids.”
  — Agnes Gund (15:50)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:27] – Katherine on filming Agnes; spotlight challenge
• [01:52] – Art for Justice Fund origins and intent
• [03:20] – Agnes’s childhood and early museum experiences
• [06:02] – Why Agnes felt she belonged in New York City
• [07:38] – Studio in a School and the link to social justice
• [10:16] – Agnes’s belief in broad access to art
• [11:23] – On giving art, not treating it as an investment
• [13:24] – The Lichtenstein sale and criminal justice motivations
• [15:50] – Agnes on being a white grandmother to Black grandchildren
• [16:53] – Catherine on family, learning, and societal change

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Summary

This intimate conversation celebrates Agnes Gund’s vision of art as a vehicle for social change. With poignant reflections from her daughter Catherine, we learn how Agnes’s personal values—equity, inclusion, and access—drove her public work. From founding arts education initiatives to pioneering philanthropy in criminal justice reform, Agnes Gund’s legacy is honored as one of generosity, moral courage, and unwavering belief in art as a public good. The episode offers a rare, personal lens on how a singular New Yorker harnessed creativity for enduring societal impact.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. Last week, philanthropist, art collector, and former MoMA President Agnes Gunn died at the age of 87 at her home in Manhattan. You may remember in 2017, Gunn sold a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $165 million to launch the Art for Justice Fund to combat mass incarceration, which she described as unjust and unfair. The fund provided grants for criminal justice reform through 2023. It was not the first time she had used her considerable fortune to promote social equity. In 1977, she founded Studio in a school. In the face of educational budget cuts, its funds brought artists into schools to teach art. Her daughter Catherine made a documentary about her mother and her approach to art and social justice. The film is called Aggie. Catherine and Aggie both joined us on all of it during the pandemic by phone to speak to us about it. And we wanted to play it today to honor her. I started by asking Katherine what the challenges of filming her mother were.

[Katherine Gund]

It was the sort of central challenge in making this film was trying to focus a spotlight on someone who can't stand having the spotlight focused on them.

[Interviewer]

Well, there's, you know, there's no shortage of articles about Aggie Gund, about your mom. So what part of this story, this woman's story, Aggie Gund's story, not your mom's story, did you want to come forward that you wanted to put front and center?

[Katherine Gund]

Yeah. I've been a filmmaker for decades, and it never occurred to me to make a movie about my own mother. That was really probably the last thing I was ever going to do. Not to jinx it, but that's how I felt. And then she did what you just made reference to, which is she sold this painting with the intention of creating criminal justice reform. She sold it to turn art into justice, into ending mass incarceration. And I thought that was an unbelievable model and frankly, not that big a stretch. Like, I couldn't actually believe other people hadn't done it before and that it was so rare and unique. And I want other people to look at what they can do and bring that forward and to really take part in our. In our society and our families and our communities, to feel their agency. And I feel like that's what she's a model of for me.

[Interviewer]

And I felt like as I watched the film, as I got to know you, Aggie, through the film, I. I started to understand why you would do that and how you would naturally come to that moment of selling that painting, which you Loved quite a bit. But I want to go all the way back to when you first started loving art, and you say it's in part to classes you took at the Cleveland Museum of Art. One of your high school teachers got you really involved. What do you remember about when you first got drawn into the world of art? What happened that made you realize this is something that I love and that I'm going to pursue?

[Agnes Gund]

Well, I just. I love going around the Cleveland Museum. It's still a great museum. It's run by Bill Griswold, who was formerly at the. Well, he was in many different places, but he came together with me at the Morgan, and then he was also at the Milwaukee Art Museum and at the Getty.

[Katherine Gund]

You took classes at the Cleveland Museum.

[Agnes Gund]

And I took classes. Yeah, that was. We all took classes, the four oldest ones of us, but Graham and I were the ones that really took them very seriously. I loved going around. I loved seeing very many of the things. Some of them are still up that I looked at. Then this one assemblage of, or it's a sculpture of cranes with snakes at the bottom of it. It's in wood, which is amazing because it's over 200 years, 2,000 years old. So it's a wonderful object. But the Cleveland has always been dear to my heart, and especially this museum. It's in a region that has a lot of other things to it that there's a science museum and there are parks and a flower museum and every kind of thing that's there. So it's in a place called University Circle.

[Interviewer]

Oh, it's a great museum.

[Agnes Gund]

Yeah, it is.

[Katherine Gund]

I love the images in the film. You see these old images of how they used to hang the art there, and they just put all the art on one wall. So they put sort of all the portraits together from floor to ceiling. It's really astonishing to see now and then, you know, compared to today, where we'll have, you know, one painting on an enormous wall that just sort of holds its own in the center of a big wall. It's. It's fascinating to see how they used to share the artwork.

[Interviewer]

Now, Aggie, you clearly have a love of Cleveland and your hometown, but we learned. You say this amazing thing in the film, you know, you've decided to move on from your marriage, and you say, I needed to be where I belonged, and that was New York. New York was where you needed to be. What was it that made you feel like you belonged to New York City and you belonged in New York City.

[Agnes Gund]

Well, it's because of, I guess, the emotion of the place you feel. One feels very much that there's a speed that everything's going at, or there's a there, but there are places that you can go where you can relax and be by yourself.

[Katherine Gund]

We.

[Agnes Gund]

I just had one of the people that came from Juilliard, who was a former dancer, Damian Wetzel. And he was just out in the country and near us. So he came over and he, you know, you just get that transferred. Some of various people, everybody that you could ever want to know comes to New York and is in New York with a special thing that they care about. And you don't find that at any other place. I mean, as much as you find.

[Katherine Gund]

It in New York.

[Agnes Gund]

I loved.

[Interviewer]

Katherine. There's a real sense about your mom in this film. I feel funny talking about her while she's on the phone, but that's your mom, like, not settling for the life and the parameters that culture and the time set for a young woman. Was there something that your mom did prior to coming to New York or when she got to New York that you thought at the end of this film, like, oh, that is on brand for my mom?

[Katherine Gund]

Well, actually, it's interesting because the two things she's most well known for, other than being a collector, is the starting the Art for Justice Fund and starting a studio in a school program, which is the artist teachers who teach art classes in the elementary and middle schools and high schools, the public schools in New York City. And it's been for over 40 years. And she did these two kind of incredible organizations or efforts, enterprises, and sometimes people don't see the comparison. So it's interesting you actually asked because she started student school right before she moved to New York City. And for me, I think there's a straight line from student school to Art for Justice because it's about giving voice to people. And your question about belonging is so important because I think she sees people who are left out, who are not included, who are not asked what they think, like elementary school, public school students or women artists or incarcerated people, all kinds of people whose voice wasn't welcome to shine, whose voice wasn't amplified, whose leadership wasn't recognized. And so to me, it's, you know, as soon as I started making the film, I thought it was going to really only focus really on Art for Justice. And then the student school effort just seemed so clear and sort of clairvoyant almost. You know, this belief that everybody mattered and that the students would bring more of themselves to our society, if they were allowed to develop their critical thinking capacities, if they were allowed to try problem solving and fail and see beauty and be abstract and you know, all these different ways that they approach the artwork in that program. And when Aggie. I've been in the prisons with Aggie, when she goes in the prisons, she sees artists. At San Quentin, there's actually an art studio and when we were there together, they have a lot of programs at that prison, a radio and a university education program and other things. And we went started in the art studio and I thought we were never going to go anywhere else because she was going around and talking to the artists about their work and why they were doing it and what they were doing and what they felt they were saying and what they were offering. She always looks at artists as, as offering us gifts and vision. They're very future looking imagination.

[Interviewer]

So, Aggie, we get a sense in this film of your actual love of art and your appreciation of artists that you don't believe it should be stored away or purchased solely as an investment. How did you come to that belief?

[Agnes Gund]

Well, I've been associated with a lot of museums, both big and small, and I've found that many of the. That people don't get enough chance to see art and to. To appreciate it. And I mean older art too. I think just the other day somebody brought up Rembrandt, who is obviously very well known, and it was wonderful when kids can learn about older people to people that aren't contemporary people, but also see something where the paint is still not dry and so they can see something that has just come out of the studio as well as an earlier thing. And I think that those are what, what attracts people and allows them the breadth that they need to have to go into museums for museums.

[Katherine Gund]

I mean, one time Aggie told me that she collects contemporary art because she wants to know the artist. But it was just recently in talking about the film, around the release of the film, that I realized how much she loves the objects of the earlier art that she's referring to now that she does love those as objects in the way that the contemporary art still holds so much life and indetermination and potential. And so she would never settle on, I don't feel on these current pieces the object quality, the material quality of them in quite the same way she does the others. But she also made it clear, and this was part of why I thought the Art for Justice sale was so radical, is that she doesn't treat art like Money. She doesn't buy it and store it and wait for its value to go up and then resell it for a profit. She's always, since the beginning, she explains in the movie, when she felt so guilty about having the money to even buy and live with this quality of artwork that she wanted it to go to the people. She wanted people to be able to access it. And so she gives it as gifts to the museums and the universities, and she's given, you know, over 900 pieces to the Museum of Modern Art, for example. And in that way, it's not that money, then, is that there's. There's no money in that because it's a gift. It's not cashed in. And so what was very different with the Lichtenstein was that she was saying the intention behind the sale could be different. She didn't cash it in to get the money for something to use for some luxury or on herself. She was selling it to create resources to end mass incarceration. So that was different.

[Interviewer]

So let's talk about that big gift. Aggie, when you sold this painting masterpiece, everybody knows it if you see it, to start the Art for Justice Fund. What was the tipping point, Aggie, that made you do this? That made you think, I'm going to sell this painting that I love, and I'm going to figure out how to make a change in this really stubborn and difficult issue of mass incarceration?

[Agnes Gund]

Well, I do think it's a difficult issue, and it still is, even though we've made some headway with our donations, as well as many other people who have joined into this and have been involved with this for years. But the thing that set it off was seeing Ava DuVernay's film and the 13th. And she's made a lot of good films, but this one, I really didn't want to see it. I was out to dinner with some people, and they. They suggested this, and I thought, oh, it's not for me. It has violence in it, and I don't think I can manage that. But I already read the new Jim Crow, which was very influential on me. And I thought that what Ava's point was was that there were so many black and brown people that were put in jail as compared to white people, and this just didn't seem right. And the reasons they were there were because they couldn't pay bail, they couldn't get out in a time limit that was reasonable. And it just seemed that there was so much injustice in this, you know, this incarceration that I felt it was something that really did need more centered money.

[Katherine Gund]

The.

[Agnes Gund]

The people that have helped me have been the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker and Helen Wang among them. So I've had loads of help besides Katherine and Sonia and myself who do lead this fund.

[Interviewer]

You know, Aggie, in the film, we get to meet a lot of your family, and you're the grandmother to someone who looks like me. You have black grandchildren. And what is something as the grandmother of who has black grandchildren that you know, that someone in your position might not necessarily understand or know?

[Agnes Gund]

Well, I think there, most people that are white don't live with. Although that's changing too, as everything is, don't live with people that are black. I think they. They're just. It's all positive. They're all very wonderful kids. And it's because their mothers are good mothers that they are wonderful. There's a lot to say about their role in this world and what they want to do. They feel that they're just as special as other children.

[Katherine Gund]

And.

[Agnes Gund]

And that's important to give them. Both mothers have given them their, you know, their own appreciation of their lives and their selves in it. So that's very important to me.

[Katherine Gund]

It was fascinating to me once, Alison, when one of my children was with me and we were talking with somebody who was saying that me coming out as queer at a young age and having the politics I have and then her having black grandchildren has influenced her. And those things are certainly true and there's really a back and forth. But as one of my children turned to me and he said, do people realize that she made us, you know, that there is this way that she's open to learning, but we wouldn't be who we were if it weren't for how she functions in the world and how open she is to learning and growing and changing as a person. And I think that is the difference that when you say other white people like her may not know that they could learn, they would learn. And, you know, as the country is becoming more multiracial and becoming more people of color, becoming the majority, you know, that's really going to change because I think people will know. You know, it happened with gay marriage and people were like, oh, but my co worker, my aunt, you know, And I think what Aggie's talking about is when she started out in her answer, she said most white people don't live with black people. And that is the problem. That's what Bryan Stevenson talked about. It's not just segregation. It's actually an unwillingness to be proximate and to learn from being around and loving and working with and living with people who are different than me.

[Alison Stewart]

That was my conversation with Katherine and Agnes Gund from 2020. They were on the show to talk about their documentary Aggie. Agnes Gunn died last week at the age of 87.

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