James Murdoch on His Vision for Art Basel and the Future of Culture

before we get into this week's episode I want to make a plug for Art Market minute this is artnet news's new micro podcast hosted by Margaret carrian who is the sit's news editor Europe it offers a weekly snapshot of essential Art Market news expertly compiled by the artnet pro editorial team now today's age you don't go and say I'm just going to go have a live event and I'm going to go away right the question is how do you build connectivity to those Brands how do you build connectivity within that Community how do you serve that Community [Music] better I'm Tim Schneider and this is the art angle a podcast from artet news where the art World meets the real world bringing one big story Down to Earth every week in the co summer of 2020 the art world was jolted by a very different kind of drama when reports surface that MCH group the Swiss corporation best known as the parent company of Art Basel had entered talks to sell a significant Equity stake to Lupa systems the private investment company founded by none other than James Murdoch for listeners who haven't spent years devouring media sector or political gossip James Murdoch is the fourth of six children of billionaire media Mogul Rupert Murdoch now most infamous for presiding over the hard right coverage beamed out through Fox news in the US and various overseas properties via his News Corp conglomerate the proximity of the Murdoch family to Art bosle initially sent some people in the art world into hysterics one conspiracy theory even held that James was acting as a front for his father who would take control of the planet's best known most prestigious art fair and well it was never quite clear what he would do or why he would care but obviously something Dastardly and irreparable was about to happen and we should all prepare for the worst yet people interested in digging soon found out that James Murdoch is very much his own man with his own resources although he spent decades in the family business including prominent roles in some of its satellite TV and entertainment companies he cut his final ties to the Empire when he resigned from the board of News Corp in July of 2020 he has been a public critic of Donald Trump as far back as 2017 and through quadrivium the foundation James and his wife Katherine started in 2014 he has funneled substantial philanthropic resources Into counteracting Climate Change expanding voting rights and pushing back against online extremism he's also a mogul in his own right when Disney paid a knee buckling 71.3 billion in 2019 to acquire nearly all of the Murdoch's entertainment assets James received a reported $2.2 billion from the deal he launched Lupa systems shortly after with sources claiming at the time that he would invest up to a billion dollars of his wealth through the company by fall of 2020 MCH groups shareholders had approved the deal to make Lupa systems the company's new anchor shareholder with the option to buy up to 49% of its shares but in the time since we've heard relatively little from James moch himself about how MCH group and art bosel fit alongside the other ventures in lupa's portfolio including media properties like the Tribeca Festival advanced technology startups and sustainability projects ahead of the 2023 edition of Art Basel in Basel however I managed to sit down with James at Lupa systems New York offices to hear his thinking firsthand James Murdoch thanks for joining us on the art angle thanks Tim it's nice to be here so we're recording this interview on May 18th of 2023 which is give or take about 20 and a half years I believe since Lupa systems closed on its investment in MCH group over that time period you've taken on a kind of Wizard of Oz status in the art world this kind of all powerful presence behind the curtain that no one has really heard from so I'm just wondering why come out from behind the curtain now if I recall the reveal of the wizard behind the curtain is not kind of a great moment for him um if I'm remembering the story you know I hope it hasn't been that secretive or in any way sort of elusive you know I try to be reasonably quiet and try to get on with the work that's at hand and since we invested in MCH group you know we' been working with the team there with the other investors and trying to get on with that so there's no real magic to any kind of reveal nor is there anything Sinister or secretive going on behind said curtain it's just getting on with the work of what we hope is building a really exciting business yeah and for the record I didn't mean to imply that there was anything Sinister happening there it's just you leave a bunch of journalists alone as you know and don't give them all that much information and they're going to start speculating and just wondering mystery is a powerful thing that's very true that's very true so before we get more into MCH group art basle all those kinds of things I want to take a step back because I think it's important to talk a little bit about why people who know you well well were not nearly as surprised I assume by the idea of Lupa systems investing in MCH group as people in the art world were when the news that you were talking first broke so my understanding is that to do this properly we have to go all the way back to your years as James Murdoch young archaeologist I don't know about that but look I've always been interested in culture and you know been passionate about the cre creative arts and you know as a young person working in kind of at that point archaeological research originally I was planning on majoring in medieval archaeology in school that didn't pan out but I ended up in applied arts and I think I've always been interested in the creative industry as well so going from that to a music business and then working in television and film and digital media for you know a number of decades but always with a real I think my whole life a real Focus us on and a passion for not just culture but also the counterculture and in particular the Leading Edge of that they AV on guard Etc and I think involvement in those parts of the business have always been the most exciting and most interesting for me throughout my career to that point can we talk a little bit about rockus records sure so you were attending Harvard and then I believe you dropped out in your third year after your third year after my third year after your third year and you went to go help form this independent hip-hop label in New York called rockus records in '94 something like that give or take yes walk me through that process I think it was a exciting opportunity to do something really independently and from scratch I had two very talented Partners who had been musicians and were very keen to start to build a small business focused on exciting new artists and the opportunity to join together to do that to leave school and be you know really from the ground up building something that was focused on artists that were emerging with new kinds of work was something that I didn't think I should pass up and you know having been in school for a few years I didn't go to school right away after high school so I spent some time working more in Academia before I actually went to college so I was ready by then to head into the real world so to speak and make all the mistakes that you know you're expected to make hopefully learn from them but also be from the ground up in a creative business where we were learning everything from scratch so it was a very exciting time I did that for a few years I also just want to thank you personally because some of those rockus records like got me through high school oh that's nice that's nice to hear well and my partners really were very very talented and more in the music side and it's amazing how much still today people sometimes come up and mention that and mention some of those records and how much it meant to them yeah I think that a lot of them have withstood the test of time so that's Bravo it's very gratifying to hear the next kind of pivot in your career it seems was when rockas got acquired by News Corp and you kind of became a part of the family business in in a more direct way to my understanding and what seems like sort of a hard Fork from the outside which was moving into this role where you were put in charge of news corpse Telecom satellite TV Enterprise in Asia and your first big wind my understanding within that sort of millu was that you managed to turn around this satellite TV property called Star TV and you did that by really focusing on India can you talk through kind of that transition from James Murdoch independent music entrepreneur to James Murdoch really kind of getting into the mix of the international media game at a high level after we combined rock as a small independent hip-hop label with some other independent music assets that News Corp owned at time which was the rationale to try to sort of put some of those things together I also got involved this is in the mid to late '90s in sort of at that point the emerging kind of digital business digital industry if you will and simultaneously in Asia we had this business St TV which was really in heavy losses and competitors there were spinning outlandish stories about the digital f future in particular you know number of competitors that seemed to be getting all the attention while the Star TV business was sort of struggling to get to scale and do this stuff so with a colleague who I ended up being a colleague for a long time we were sort of dispatched to Hong Kong to find out what was going on and see if there was a path through and it was at the time a very real possibility that the recommendation would be actually this might not work at all however with the right kind of focus on key regions there with a real focus on India as you mentioned but also Regional investment whether it's greater China with a big focus in Taiwan and sort of a separate very different feeling Southeast Asian business we could really create three businesses that would operate more leanly and be more focused and ultimately be more resonant for audiences in their respective markets it was an adventure it was definitely a shift but I think given familiarity with some of the early digital businesses at the time you know this was the sort of first.com kind of era as well as maybe being Expendable you know going out into the field it was definitely a leap into the unknown but it was one that you know my wife and I we had just been married or we were just getting married we thought it was a really incredible opportunity and I thought it was an incredible opportunity for us and also for in a career to go and do something and really be able to have a reasonably freehand trying to turn something around it became a very substantial business over time star which we're very proud of we an incredible team of people there that really put their back into turning it around at that point and and then building it over the years now that particular pivot in your career and I'm going to have to simplify a lot here because I don't want to go through every line of your very extended very illustrious bi graphy so that we can get into kind of the meat of this discussion but it seems like the Star TV move basically launches you into something close to 20 years where you are in one way or another overseeing these major media Enterprises of one kind or another whether it's satellite TV with B Sky B in the UK or whether it's later on when you running 21st Century Fox Media changed a lot over that time obviously looking back on it now what do you take away from that period in terms of how we got to where we are now like what are the big threads that you would pull out of that experience and say okay when I was here or when I was there these are the things that really ended up mattering maybe we saw it at the time maybe we didn't but now with the benefit of hindsight I can look back and say this is the thing these are the things that matter first of all I would say that I don't think that the media Industries are r large it doesn't necessarily always move in One Direction or rather there are sort of phases of development and Trends or things that you can discern as a trajectory but it may not be a straight line as you go and then there's other ways to think about it in terms of where we kind of are now but over those years a number of things were going on you know in the beginning and I was lucky to be able to work in Asia for example because really a lot of the you know the global media companies were largely either exporters of their made product somewhere or other and then sending it off licensing it to people doing other things Etc and you started to see a different idea of really being a global player with embedded businesses in local places and I think at news corporation at the time and maybe because the company had come from Australia then gone to the UK then gone to America then back into television in the UK for example this was a company that felt very Global already and felt very comfortable going and putting real people and infrastructure and things like that in various markets around the world but I think most importantly what we were doing in Asia at the time I think was really recognizing that the sort of global Brands the global sort of exporting business with these Brands was not something that automatically was obviously going to resonate with local communities so you had to really think about the community that you were in think about the customers that you were trying to reach think about where there were many of them what kind of business you could make but most importantly what are the cultural touch points in a business of Storytelling and a business of ideas which we were obviously in what are the cultural touch points that you can try to understand or have people that can understand those things and then build a business can be kind of an expression of those things a creative industry is a you know there's a lot of instrumentation and there's a lot of data and there's a lot of things that you have to do to get better at it but at the first instance it's about trying to understand your audience trying to understand the culture trying to understand how you create a place where creative people can come and do incredible work and create that environment for them to take those creative risks and that was I think something that as a key point in the development whether that was at Star in India with our launch into Hindi entertainment which happened around that time and then later on into various Regional languages with the Acquisitions of businesses mostly in south or in Taiwan where we had a really thriving entertainment business that was locally produced programming and all of that stuff or later on to Sky Italia which was you know with TG vti quatro the the only real Independent News Channel there but also real investments in original programming and really beautiful filmic programming for the first time going on television at skaya from Romano crial to Gamora which later traveled around the world those were things that were big risks at the time that it came from a real dedication to your audience not in a slavish way but actually in a wanting to create things that were fun and surprising and powerful and then having storytellers come and work with you that knew that you were going to be able to empower them to be able to tell the stories they wanted to tell and at Sky for example both in the UK and Italy and in Germany we were really starting from scratch with original production we were a sort of Licensing business we had our Sports business there very strongly But ultimately you had to build something new to become a real quality entertainment and storytelling business that took many years to become the scale of original programming investor that you know it later became so I think there was a long Journey towards understanding that going very deep into these markets creatively was important for the brands for the business for your customer for your community Etc but also through this time there's been this and this was particularly in my time at Sky I think there was this real drive towards vertical integration we knew that customers didn't really care about the business rules around how we license and window movies for example you know a customer doesn't doesn't really care if you say well you can have it now in the theater then you can have it on cable TV and then you can have it somewhere else or vice versa all of those rules had been built up by physics right because you used to have three broadcast networks in America so you'd put it in the theater and then you'd wait a long time and it could be movie of a week or something on Sunday then you had cable TV so that window came later and then you had other things but it wasn't a notion for a long time that you should be able to have everything everywhere whenever you want as we do today however at Sky we really believed early on that sort of broadcasting across multiple platforms wasn't some fantasy in the future it was actually happening now we never thought of ourselves as just a satellite television provider so we invested heavily in buying programming to be able to be consumed whether it was on a gaming device or downloadable to be able to take with you and this was a journey that we really started to understand would take both an investment in programming but also that vertical integration would give you the flexibility to really provide something for your customers that was incredibly useful the best expression of that that we understand today is if you look at a whether it's a Netflix or a Hulu or something like that you know you have the programming you have it where you want it you have it today you have it in a month so on and so forth but also what that did in the industry was to really turning an industry that was really about in many ways partnership with creators and artists around all of the sort of fruits of their authorship whether it was when the show finally goes into syndication you know they get the writer producer all the people who have points in it make a lot of money it was sort of becoming something much more like a Cost Plus production business and that pendulum is kind of swung all the way but I think those two things around the technology changing so that the way you bought and made programming had to change and the way you partnered with artists potentially and also not globalization in terms of flattening but actually a notion that if you were going to be successful on a global basis or anywhere you had to be of that market and of that community and investing in creators there in a real way those are the two things for me I think that were most from a thematic point of view in the industry but also the way you run these businesses the way that digital Innovation Works in Legacy businesses all of those things were challenges and learnings and muscles ultimately that you could build to make these companies go faster this seems like a nice segue into the eventual investment into MCH group before we do that just for the sake of our listeners we'll set this up by saying that the big inflection point or one of the big inflection points anyway in your career and what you've been doing lately is the sale of most of Fox's entertainment assets to Disney for the Tidy sum of $ 71.3 billion of which I believe you personally ended up with a payout of about $2.2 billion and after that launched Lop of systems which is your private investment vehicle now MCH group was not your first acquisition we may go back to that but it does seem to be an important one based on what I've gathered from talking to you in preparation for this interview I'm just wondering first off why MCH group Lupa systems I'm sure could get in the room with practically anybody in the art world that they wanted to did you always just kind of know that this was the particular property that you were interested in or was there sort of a larger scope that you went through to decide that actually this is where we want to focus well to be honest I had been focused or at least trying to learn about MCH group for some years before and the reason is largely around some of the things that we were doing in our Sports business and it struck me that a lot of the most exciting Sports businesses whether that's Formula 1 or the IPL Cricket or what have you they have in some ways the the character of a traveling circus Formula 1 is probably the best example right where it kind of sits down in a city there's a huge circus that goes on there's lots of different events that happen there's a race there's culture people come from all over and then they pick up and they go to the next town or city or whatever it is much like a traveling circus would was always the way I thought about it and that ability to convene a broader Community it's not just you know the super fans the T for Ferrari coming and doing this it's actually more about this sort of broader moment in a city where something happens with some center of gravity in it could be really great and fun for that City could be really lucrative for the city and for the owners of the rights Etc and it struck me that there are very very few kind of real convening centers of gravity in the culture space that are of the sort of scale and brand and immediate sort of understanding of a brand for example like art bosle so actually you know I've been wondering about MCH group and the art basle business in the context of these kinds of convening kind of opportunities I think in increasingly also in a as more and more of our lives are kind of synthetic or digital the value of those convening that ability to create that center of gravity I think goes up because I think it probably become scarcer so I had been looking at the business for a while and obviously learned that the business was majority owned by you know a group of cantons and so on and so forth so kind of figured it would be pretty hard to get involved and events then sort of intervened I started to build a relationship with some of the key stakeholders the openness around potentially having new investors in that business was something that emerged over time you spent the time talking to them and spent the time building some trust Etc and then obviously Co happened so it became a real opportunity to not just be able to really help the business but also to become a real partner in the business going forward but I don't think it could have happened if it hadn't been that kind of longer period of time of trying to get to know it and trying to get to know some of the key stakeholders and try to get everybody to understand that you know the commitment to the business from a new investor was going to be really important and a commitment to really growing it and really growing it not just in the broader MCH group but actually for art bosil for example in basil committed to the fairs that we have and committed to Growing those and growing the role hopefully that the business can play in that Community to really support all the constituent elements but it had come from before this sort of interest in it so for me it actually felt like you say a pretty natural place to go when I set up our holding company here we always wanted to have one or two kind of real focuses right things that were more substantial Holdings with more involvement and support and MCH and art bowo really seemed like a real logical place to start to develop that part of the business I want to key in for a second on the distinction that you and I are both drawing between MCH group in art bosel because it struck me in doing research for this interview that in the general press this investment is almost never referred to as an investment in MCH group it is almost uniformly described as an investment in art bosle that's natural because it's the most prominent brand in the group in the international press I think in Switzerland they talk about MCH group and they talk about some of the other assets there Etc but it's the most recognizable brand it's the easiest one to understand so it's natural that that's the way people think about it should we read into that that you don't necessarily think about art bosle as being kind of the one gem in this larger portfolio that you're really looking at everything that MCH group has done and can do in a cohesive way well I think it's clear that art bazle is the most prominent brand and the most prominent business in there MCH has a broader portfolio of both live marketing event businesses Etc that are Global in various other areas and some in a more sort of classic traditional Messa business I think Art Basel is clearly though for me anyway it's both a model but also an opportunity to think about you know a brand that is created within the group that is very very focused on its cultural and artistic community that is taking that brand and making it a global brand be it art bosle Miami Beach or in Hong Kong or now with par PLO these are things that I think are really exciting attributes of that business and I also think one that has attributes that will be added to over time in terms of capabilities so I think it's clearly the most prominent business within that group but there's other things to be done you're essentially talking about a sort of dual understanding or interpretation of what MCH group can be because on the one side we're talking about it as being enticing because it is a Live Events business in an increasingly digital world but at the same time you're also talking about it as the potential for a global brand that can do all these other things I think besides just Live Events is that fair I wouldn't worry too much about what's it where MCH is and the things that might happen there versus artbasel and how it goes I think the osle piece of it is right now obviously a core Focus because it's the biggest brand globally in the group there are other businesses there so I don't want to S change things but I think art basle is just an incredible example of how powerful culture can be and convening and how powerful if I think about the impact of bringing a major Fair like our baso to Miami or something like that that it has on the broader Community right and I don't just just in the city but also the cultural life of the city the other events and other things that come out that can kind of be chaotic and rockus and all of those things but are also part and parcel of that sort of traveling circus notion now today's age you don't go and say I'm just going to go have a live event and I'm going to go away right the question is how do you build connectivity to those Brands how do you build connectivity within that Community how do you serve that Community better you might have a center of gravity in a live event not everyone can go to the live event or people want to have connectivity across the calendar one of the reasons why Paris was so interesting was it really plugged sort of an Autumn hole for us so now we have a major event in each of the seasons if you will and different parts of the world and I think that just helps build more connective tissue within that community and around the art bosel brand which we want to enhance further that really seems to be a defining characteristic of Art bosle historically in my mind I interviewed Mark Spiegler former Global director of art BOS on this podcast a few months ago and we had a long conversation about how one of the things that really struck him about art bosel Miami Beach when he was still covering it as a journalist was this idea of he didn't really understand like a lot of other people just how much else there was from a cultural perspective that was happening in Miami it took this kind of signal of event to start to pull together all of these different threads and it sounds to me like you're talking about something that is essentially that same Dynamic playing out on a larger scale now in these different markets over time I hope so um and I think encouraging that is important I mean the Miami example is an interesting one I think you put it very well a signal event that then you realize what else is going on but it also can be a catalyst for a lot of those things going on it's not just about the fair itself although that's obviously our Focus to make it as excellent and as great and as good a service for the community as we can but it also becomes a catalyst for a broader engagement with the community from a creative perspective and that's something I think where because of the authenticity of the brand and because people understand to some extent what they're going to get and each fair and each location obviously has a very different flavor which is good and you want that I think it's something that hopefully gives the business sort of the permission to to start to grow the way it thinks about engagement with the city and with the community and in general and that's something that we think can grow and I think there's other cultural events that aren't art fairs that the Basel brand and the Art Basel brand can also be thinking about over time and it's early days we've been invested for as you said before some two and a half years a lot of that was just coming out of this covid period kind of rebuilding that supporting the team trying to move through this so the next phase of it I think is going to be one more characterized by development and Innovation as with a foundational support for our kind of core art business that is necessary to be able to go and do other things so I'm very excited about it and I think these are events that as I said before there are things that are very rare at this sort of level of quality and with this sort of level of authenticity that the folks who run Bas and the folks who run MC they really understand how precious that is and how rare that is and you know keeping that focus on quality I think is [Music] fundamental late in 2021 art basle began providing let's call it industry expertise and promotional support in collaboration with regional art events in the Asia Pacific namely artweek Tokyo in November of 2021 and Singapore's sea Focus fair in January of 2022 also in January 2022 MCH group acquired a 15% stake in the parent company of the Arts G fair in Singapore which debuted this year after a long gestation period now these are very different projects from one another and they're also very different from MCH group or art bosle EXP in again in Asia by launching another new wholly owned art fair of their own in a new city how do these kinds of alternative more nuanced engagements with new markets fit into MCH groups future I don't want to get too much into the sort of Weeds on how you know the company's thinking about those things but those are Partnerships that are all valuable and important to the group and in some way is understanding those local markets and understanding each piece of it and having local Partners there as you start to think through what the future is I think is important so it's worthwhile having these things at of different levels but I also think there are ways for in the future to think about the art basle brand not just about the signal events the big fairs I'm not sure how many big fairs the market sustains Paris we thought was just an incredible opportunity to be able to do this particularly ahead of going back into the grand P next year after its renovation but I think there's an appetite for culture and for particularly the kind of really exciting you know new and challenging storytelling whether it's fine art or film or what have you I think there's a real appetite for that everywhere so the combination of the curatorial Excellence the brand the commercial nouse Etc that can all be developed and much of it is there can I think lead to other types of experiences that will emerge in different places as we move forward if I look at something like I shouldn't say mundane because it's interesting if you look at the growth in the immersive kind of environment today right where you have people touring shows around the world selling tickets from the V go immersive business to you know the Museum of ice cream or whatever it is I think there's a real appetite and a demand for things that are different and new and you want to be in the business of working with creators that are developing new ideas for these communities as you go along and it's the same reason why we partnered with and invested in the Tribeca Festival which is an audience Festival really focused on Independent storytellers but across film television multimedia technology immersive games that is a platform for creators I think to really showcase work that may not be available to people otherwise I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to talk about tribeca's relationship to MCH group in terms of how you're thinking about these cultural properties and how this concept of Storytelling plays out in each of them you just mentioned how diverse the programming in the Tribeca Festival is and people listening to this may not realize that what they probably know still as the Tribeca Film Festival no longer actually has film in the name it's just the Tribeca festival and that seems to be a very deliberate move on the part of the company under Loop of systems management influence however you want to put it to Signal this is about something bigger than it used to be something broader something more expansive and maybe there are more possibilities here to get interested and to connect with an audience well first of all I mean they're separate businesses and trica Enterprises the company you know the founder Jane rosenal runs the business she's our partner she and Bob founded it some 20 odd years ago after 911 obviously the story is reasonably well known but it was really her vision to expand that and she started particularly with the immersive work and the other things there because I think and I agree with it she found that the canvas if you will is so Broad in terms of what storytellers are doing doing and really interesting storytellers whether it's in video games or more traditional filmic storytelling was something that really could be conceived of as one again kind of cultural platform where those creators feel like they can highlight their work and they can do that and then we can bring an audience a large audience to that experience the film is obviously still a big central part of it but it's something that we take a kind of broader view of what that creative landscape looks like and hopefully that leads to different kinds of collaborations between artists in the future it leads to different ways to be able to connect those artists with the community at large connect other brands to that Community as well and the way I look at it and again you know Tribeca we acquired right that was actually right before our investment in it right before Co then we had a couple of years of doing outdoor we did drive-in theaters the first year to try to get people to have something that was fun and good out there that was hard and then we went back to a live event most of it was outdoor in the beginning now it's getting back into using theaters more and other things as we did last year for me anyway it comes from the same place which is these convening opportunities for people who are really passionate about the creative arts and whatever medium are if not unique rare and developing them over time and thinking about what the other possibil are whether that's in New Markets whether that's in growing the kind of services or other things that you can provide to that Community is the opportunity for growth most of the events businesses they have kind of some tickets they have some sponsorship they do things like that they pay some rent at our baso we pay rent and we charge rent provide other services to mount the thing Etc help connect people I think there's a lot more you can do to provide that what I said before this connective tissue in these communities and when we look at the customer you know if I look at the customer of a sort of cultural business like this the customer sort of the community at large right we have to support the galleries that we work with we have to support the artists we have to support collectors and collecting institutions and we have to be a key component or a key part of the community that it takes place in more broadly the city the people the local government Etc that you have to sort of work with so I I think the customer is sort of complex in that way and that also creates opportunities I think to create new sort of businesses as you go along Tribeca starts in a few weeks and it's a really exciting program unfortunately it overlaps right with Art Basel and a bunch of things Etc so I don't get to I don't get to go and enjoy these things like directly as much as you'd like it's mostly a lot of meetings and things but these are I think as Brands as well I'm really excited about the Tribeca brand as I am about the basman I think they're brands that are in a weird way bigger than the businesses and that's a real opportunity for growth part of this Community Focus and the presence in the the cultural sector in particular is this idea of how the creators how the artists are being supported you mentioned that all the way going back into the kind of media days within News Corp back in the early 2000s Lupa system's first acquisition to my knowledge was a company called artists writers and Artisans which had a real focus on bringing the creators of comic book properties essentially into the business side in a kind of Novel way can you talk about that a little bit I'm just curious because within the art World there is I think more and more focus on how artists have traditionally maybe not been given or not been able to access all that they deserve for the work that they put in and it seems like we're at an inflection point where people are asking those types of questions about a lot of different cultural Industries I'm just curious how you think through that aspect of things it's a good question and you're absolutely right to kind of draw that thread through these things I think what I was mentioning earlier about this longer term Trend as the media industry and let's say let's call immed the creative industry kind of RIT large sort of moved in the mass Market towards more vertical integration and therefore Distributors owning more rights at its heart right so they had more flexibility in terms of how they could sell things how they could package things how they could do it they didn't always have to pay this person or that person if they just bought the thing out right they could do what they want with it put it on your phone put it on your TV put it on a year later and so on and so forth and I observed that and in some ways was part of that trend for a number of years and I really always wanted to take the Approach at 21st Century Fox and before that at Sky actually trying to think through okay how do you partner with your creators more meaningfully how do you make sure that we continue to create the economics that existed for artists let's take television for example or film that existed when they were participants in the sort of full life cycle of the work as it grew in value their value and so on and so forth I think the pendulum swinging all the way to the sort of Cost Plus I'll just buy everything and it'll look like a big headline number but as it grows in value if it grows in value you may or may not participate in that I think the pendulum is swung all the way and I really sensed that the pendulum was going to swing back and I think it is starting to do that you hear people talking about it I talked to people in the TV and movie business about it there is a real growing sense that the Creator should really have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their authorship over time now clearly in the art business the approach to that question is very fragmented some gallerists have one approach there's other places where there's a consortion they say well we're going to do it this way and that way there's a lot of different ways to sort of think about it I think what's really exciting today when I look at what's possible as well is and even though it's not very fashionable to talk about you know web 3 anymore but I actually think the opportunity to have Smart contracts to have things on a distributed Ledger Providence other things Etc and there's various companies working on it one of which is arall which is a venture that Art Basel launched with the Luma Foundation I think is a really really exciting opportunity there to provide services that are foundationally in support of the artists and their gallery who make the creative investment and often times the investment to launch the artist and do all of those sorts of things and actually really streamline a lot of that what now is a very fragmented kind of process around there and I think overall the whole Community will Embrace this over time but it takes a long time to change the way things are done but I sense that that's really happening and I think if it can happen in the world of you know Contemporary Art it can happen in film fil again it can happen in television it's already starting to so I think that pendulum is swinging back in some ways creators need to sort of take that little bit of extra risk you know to own more of their work to hold things back a little bit and so on and so forth but I think this is a trend that is a new an opposite piece of momentum that is very real but it is going to take time so on AWA it wasn't an acquisition we were one of the sort of founding investors if you will like with the founders there that got it going it's a ilar idea I mean look you know comic book writers often times you know get a page rate and then the thing gets turned into a billion dollar superhero movie and they get like a couple of tickets to the premere and they're like high-fiving that's the traditional way to think about it and we looked at it and this is with partners and others Etc we talked about it said this is a really interesting place where new ideas and new stories are not being told enough right there's a lot of comic book businesses the same characters over and over many times sort of reinvented but hugely culturally relevant over time if you get it right and we really wanted to think about you know how could you create something where you know the sort of Commerce of the thing was handled in an efficient way by a company but that the ownership in the copyright and the ownership in the growth of value in those products it was really shared with the authors so we set it up to really allow authors first and foremost to tell stories that they weren't weren't able to tell otherwise and then to share in the success of those stories as they go from comic to other kinds of graphic fiction to digital exploitation to film or television or things like that because these ideas and these stories are the kernels of what actually can become quite widespread and resonant stories so we were super excited to be able to be part of that business we still are a big part of that business and it's developing incredibly well but it's not just about saying hey this is the way you a portion everything it's actually most importantly to say to creators you come to a place like this and you can tell the stories that you need to tell and you can create the art that is going to be the best work of your life and in so doing you're going to do better doing it that way than doing it the other way that's the approach I felt this way in my past life as well if you can create a place where people know they can come and do the best work of their lives the place is going to succeed and they're going to succeed and then more people come to want to do that and better people want to come to want to do that and that's really the journey that I always feel like a business should be on can I just ask you how your own as much as I hate to use this phrase because gets used a lot your journey as an art collector has played into that because we don't really know and by we I mean we in the General Public public there's not really a lot of information out there about what you collect necessarily we know that you're I hope there's none there may not be any more after this interview depending on how you answer this question so but um one of the only things that we really know about in this particular dimension of things is that you're on the board of the dart Foundation which is a very particular organization within the art world has very particular Mission it's not what the average Museum does let's just say that's the whole point exactly so can you just kind of you don't of course have to reveal anything about which types of artists you've been gravitating towards or how you see art necessarily or all those kinds of things but just at least through the prism of your involvement with Dia can you just talk a little bit about maybe how that helps Define the way that you look at contemporary art in particular I guess I would go back to something I said earlier know I've always been interested in I know the counterculture things that are maybe a little weird things that are maybe a little on the front edge and to be honest with you in the television and movie business the things that I enjoyed the most being involved with were the things that were maybe that little bit quirkier riskier more avanguard because it's really exciting to be able to do those things or something that might be very mission driven like the National Geographic business there and turning that into something that was making different kinds of programming so things that are just a little off the beaten path relative to what a like a big commercial Mass Market popular content company kind of does so to speak in art what I love about and what sort of attracted me to place like Dia for example is really the opportunity for an institution or the reality of an institution that supports artists in making things that they otherwise couldn't make so it's not about just you know Gathering things up that anybody could gather up and putting them in a box but actually about really supporting artists to do things that and encouraging them to do things that you know would otherwise seem not doable and whether that's new contemporary commissions that Dia is doing or the Legacy work over the last you know almost 50 years now of Dia that's maintained and servest and you know from like the lightning field to the Spiral Jetty to what have you so I think for me it was really and those things are the exciting things are the things that are made uniquely possible by an institution and that is something that I think Dia does uniquely well so without getting into our own collector I'm not a big art collector but I love being able to experience work that in the case of some of those works you know sort of unmediated and a little nutty and weird and I think that's sort of the sort of stuff that takes you out of your comfort zone and you know creates a resonance with the viewer that is incredibly special you can do that on a small scale you can do it on a large scale it doesn't all have to be giant cities in the desert but it's more about a a way of approaching I think the viewer that is to me there's a unique feel to it in terms of your personal interests and the interests of loop of systems one other major theme has been sustainability and green technology and things like that there's a lot of talk now in the art World about how we need to place a higher priority on sustainability and I'm just wondering given your perspective on this for a long time how that aspect of things may or may not be filtering into your discussions about what art bosel and the MCH group should stand for or how they can contribute to changing the art World in one way or another so first of all yes I've always been a real advocate of businesses trying to operate their business but also have an impact within the broader supply chain or other things Etc that can be more energy efficient you know more sustainable so to speak and also there's a lot of other factors in terms of how a business can at Sky we used to say you know see the bigger picture around it and then also how we should believe in better that we should be continuously improving our customers should believe in better we should be optimists about being able to create a world that is better you will see I think more activity on this from the company and particularly in the art World Etc I think that you know we are very focused on it not just in terms of our own sort of footprint and sustainability and we have reporting requirements around that Etc and you know constant effort to do that but also to your question I think think about the broader Community the first thing to do is to be able to measure everything I don't necessarily think it's measured as well as it could be there's a lot of different moving Parts in it but I think measuring things and then managing them as you go along and what's possible and what isn't I don't think it's necessarily right to say because people traveling to an event whether it's a sports event or an art fair or something it's inherently bad the because they flew in Planes to get there or something like that I think there's a reality of the world that we live in with Aviation and other things Etc that is going to take time to move forward but then again the automotive sector right now is moving incredibly fast with respect to the transition to sustainable energy and that's led by the EV companies in China obviously Tesla but also all the other Automotive companies now investing heavily in this so I think there's an urgency around it but I also think we have to take a real stock of where are the pockets that are particularly kind of wasteful and what can you do to manage those down and I think you'll see more activity on this from the company I know it's a real focus of the management team and they're very passionate about it we've talked a lot about storytelling and it's importance across all these different cultural sectors I'm just wondering pick any medium that you want what was the last great story you heard I'm not going to pick the last one there are a lot of great stories try to be sensitive to them but I tell one story and this is more relevant maybe to your audience but one thing that I thought was so powerful over the last a few years and then the way the story for me unfolded even though I kind of knew the story was really powerful was I thought that the story of one of the great creative risks taken by an individual in a career of all time to me is Philip gustin's you know shift back to figuration and then I was fascinated the way that and there was an exhibition here that Haworth put on which assembled pretty much that first exhibition again I don't know if you saw it but the way that actually recreating the actual collection of works and we know the story and how people reacted to it and we know The Bravery from a creative perspective that it takes to go and do something like that to actually see the thing unfold in real time again for those of us that weren't alive or were very young when it was first exhibited was something that was so incredibly powerful for me and also I think really resonated in terms of again like this real fork in the road creatively that also pushed into the unknown the true avangard right because everybody just hated it and um for me the great stories teach you lessons as well and about risk and about creativity and about confidence and all of those things so seeing an exhibition tell a story like that again was something that I didn't think I'd be lucky enough to see that that to me is pretty cool it occurs to me that when we first started hearing news about the idea that James Murdoch and Lupa systems were circling art bosel in the MCH group there was this speculation that you were just some proxy bitter for your father and this was going to be hell on Earth for culture and now 2 and a half years later actually probably even a little longer we've gotten you in a room talking about how important Philip Gustin was to your life and your perspective on things and it's just such a sort of dramatic shift I think and I hope in terms of how the art world thinks about you and what you're doing and what you want to do at Art bosle so it's just sort of all a beautiful ending thanks thanks so much for joining us you've been so generous with your time we really appreciate it hey Tim thank you so much it's really nice to talk that's it for this week's episode of the art angle if you liked what you heard you can subscribe rate and review us on Apple podcasts Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts the art angle is produced by Sonia manaly Caroline Goldstein and me thanks for listening and see you next week