Wexner Center for the Arts

Tim Fulton 00:11Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, contemporary art and the presentation of it has traditionally been a class-based endeavor. The Wexner Center for the Arts is trying to change that through their programs and the type of work that they present. I spoke with Johanna Burton, the center's executive director, about what the Wexner Center is and how you should view it, how to convince people to expose themselves to the arts, the importance of being a multidisciplinary laboratory, and how they're pivoting in this time. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is sponsored this week by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city's incredible artists, stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events, and an artist directory, visit ColumbusMakesArt.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Johanna Burton, the executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University. Johanna, how are you?

Johanna Burton 01:54I'm great, Tim. How are you? Thank you so much for having me today.

Tim Fulton 01:57No, absolutely. First of all, for those that don't know, who have been sitting under a rock for the past 30 years, give sort of the elevator pitch of what is the Wexner Center for the Arts?

Johanna Burton 02:09Well, everyone should know. But just now, the Wexner Center for the Arts is a multidisciplinary art center. It is a non-collecting institution that's been around for 32 years. We opened our doors in 1989. Something that I often forget to say, but I want to make sure I say here, is that while other institutions, I think, over that time have really become more multidisciplinary, have thought more about the kind of intersection between and even transposition between disciplines, I think ours remains one of the few, at least in America, that still thinks about these disciplines as equal, and also really kind of tries very hard to bring them together in discussions around the disciplines, but also between the disciplines. And we are the only such entity on a university campus, which I find really interesting, because we are a laboratory and follow that mandate.

Tim Fulton 03:09And just to give context for the audience, when you say the multiple disciplines, you are talking about visual art, you're talking about performing arts, you're talking about film and video, you're talking about public programs even.

Johanna Burton 03:22It's great you say that. So I think we've always talked about ourselves as three arms, the ones that are performing arts, exhibitions, and film/video. We have changed, not surprisingly given my background, what had been the education department. It is now Learning and Public Practice, and it is considered a fourth and equal programming arm, for the reasons that you started to slide into. I think education more and more is being understood as not the thing that explains what else is happening in a museum, but as an equal partner in producing ideas and really being able to animate audiences in ways that I think are increasingly important. So yes, now we are four-armed.

Tim Fulton 04:03Excellent. And talk about your background and what brought you to the Wexner.

Johanna Burton 04:06Sure. So I was trained as an art historian and sort of assumed I would teach and write, which I have done, but quickly realized that as much as I enjoyed thinking historically and in the present, I also, more than anything, wanted to work with living artists. Living artists are paving the way always, and following their lead enables you to think about ideas before they even become fully codified, I think, in the culture. So I found my way into some sort of hybrid positions. The last that I was in prior to coming to the Wex was at the New Museum in New York, which is an institution that has a lot of affinities with the Wex. So, similar history. It's a little bit older, but was also really dedicated to living artists, to the social kind of impact made by an artist. And there I was the director of education and public engagement. I both curated and did all the community outreach and public engagement. So I knew from that platform, which I was able to really kind of choreograph in certain ways over the seven years I was there, that I would love to do the same for a larger institution. And so when the job at the Wex came up, I jumped at the chance to come and lead the institution into the next era.

Tim Fulton 05:25Can you talk through sort of what priorities you bring in? Your bio on the website makes it very clear that you're interested in talking about issues of diversity, interested in, I'm gonna go ahead and say, leaning on art in order to facilitate discussions. And you talked about that in terms of what I think of, from my past there, as public programs. Talk about sort of the conversations that you're interested in having and the priorities that you have around that.

Johanna Burton 05:54Absolutely. So my priorities are, as somebody who again comes at artistic practice and artists as spaces for conversation, to really think about the Wex, maybe less as a—I mean, it is a presenting institution, right? You come and you see a film, you come and you see a performance, you come to exhibitions. But what's special about a place like the Wex, which is a non-collecting institution, the resources are really much more, I think, for me at least, kind of interestingly put toward the artist in real time. So what does it mean to commission somebody to make something without knowing exactly what it is before you commit to saying it's gonna go on your walls? So I'm thinking, you know, we've used the word laboratory for many years to describe the Wex. And how do you take that to its full conclusion and think about it through a kind of lens of ethics and equity and transparency, and really think about the museum as a place that changes its audience and is changed by its audience? So in the next few years, I think what we're aiming for is to really honor this idea of both education—we're on a college campus—but also laboratory, in the sense that we're inviting artists in at various stages in their career to do things that maybe they wouldn't have the agency to do elsewhere. And it's not so much about giving them license to fail, but more license to not have to know exactly what something will look like. So the aim, I think, and one of the reasons that I loved the Wex when I first heard about it, is to go back to a model where you invite an artist and you commit to each other for six months, or nine months, or two years, or whatever it takes. And you invite the audience into that space. A lot of people find contemporary art to be really kind of challenging, and in many cases, I think, feel that it's not for them, when in fact I think contemporary art is the most poised of any sort of era to be in discussion with everybody. I mean, it really is about reflecting on what's happening in the world. But to make that really clear, I think you have to pull the veils off and really ask people to join in. So my priorities have a lot to do with really thinking about contemporary art as a space that is generative and generous and welcoming, at the same time as difficult. I'm not saying that you can't find yourself in a situation where you're uncomfortable. I think a lot of times people will be, but that there's a space for that, and that it is really about learning and growing in a kind of joined and communal space.

Tim Fulton 08:37Yeah, I think a little bit here about times that I've interviewed artists from the Wexner Center specifically. I'm thinking about Bebe Miller. Yeah. And the conversation for me, with no dance background other than having written press releases about it, trying to have a conversation about how should somebody who has not viewed contemporary dance before view it. And I'll link the conversation in the show notes. It's a wonderful conversation. The other thing I think about is sort of coming down off the pedestal a little bit. While the art world can be viewed from the outside as, like, that's not for me, because I am just a person functioning within my life. And if you come down and sort of offer up, this is how to take this in, or this is what it's related to, or this is what it's speaking to, you can grow those audiences.

Johanna Burton 09:33Right. No, Bebe is a great example. And I watched some of your discussion with her, and I had lunch with her not long ago, with Ann Hamilton, on a similar podcast that we've been doing. And I think what you're pointing to is really important, which is there are very specific technical ways that one can look at, say, dance, and that is an audience that I think we also want. You know, it's not like everybody should have the same skill set or vocabulary or language. But somebody like Bebe—what's so amazing about her, and she's a great person to point to—is she can speak that language of having gone through training. She's very well steeped in the kind of language and history of modernist and postmodernist dance, at the same time that she's talking about embodiment and feeling and relationality. And sometimes, actually, what's so wonderful is maybe that's where you enter, and you think, oh my God, this is the thing I've been waiting for. And then you go further, and you can access these other layers. So it's something that I'm always really hoping is clear when I'm talking about accessibility: that doesn't mean everyone has the same experience. It means that you can meet multiple experiences through practices that understand the world through a kind of multifocal lens. And I think that's where the multidisciplinarity is interesting. We shouldn't have four separate audiences. We can have audiences who maybe are really devoted to film/video. But what if they then walk through the gallery while they're waiting for the film to start? And that's, I think, a really extraordinary and interesting way that we can become more accessible. But again, I think we have work to do to convince people that we want them to come through our doors, and we want them to have a moment of unknowing, that we can meet them there.

Tim Fulton 11:27And this is the point in the episode where I say, full disclosure, I used to work at the Wexner Center, because I think I'm obligated to do that. Talk about, how do you foster that, right, as the director? How do you foster these, frankly, silos? From a curatorial standpoint, how do you foster that interdisciplinary work between those mediums?

Johanna Burton 11:55It's interesting. So, we're starting to—I don't have an answer, and we're working. I think what's interesting is, I think it's more of a structural approach than anything that has to do with the content. So, for instance—this will seem like I'm not answering your question, but I am—when I began, the institution, like many, had, and still has, a hierarchy. But I changed that from being a director and deputy director to more of a C-suite model, where there's a cabinet of both the top administrators and the department heads from each programmatic area. And the hope, right, is that we're all in these rooms talking about the institution as a whole. And then that also becomes a way of working across departments. So, interestingly, again, what we now call LPP, which was education, now Learning and Public Practice, headed by Dionne Custer Edwards, was naturally a kind of program that did move between the other programs, which is why, ironically, it's often sidelined and not thought about as its own program: it's an intentional interweaver. Well, we're trying to have more and more of those spaces where people are talking about their ideas and matrices arise. It's really challenging because people have been trained—and I don't mean at the Wex, I just mean in culture and in the world—to be really proprietary, to want to author things, to protect their resources. So siloing happens, where even in an institution that's as porous and flexible as the Wex, people worry, I think, more about what they're going to lose than what they gain. And I think we're shifting some of that through things like the change in how the leadership, the C-suite, works, but also things like—we were talking about this before the episode—we're now doing trainings for all staff on how a budget is made, how philanthropy works, what an endowment is, how we pick our—how budgets are built. And we had to start doing that out of necessity when we had major budget cuts over the last year, as many museums have. So while there was bad news, there was also an understanding across the center. And I think that translates, or I hope it translates, to things like programming also, when we're thinking about how to work maybe in different ways. And of course, capitalism has figured this out. You just read about the way Zappos works, right? Everybody cross-trains, and everybody, you know, you can change. By the way, I say that somewhat ironically, but I also think it's interesting that we are the spaces of creativity, we're supposed to be the spaces that model this behavior. And I think we're very behind infrastructurally.

Tim Fulton 14:32Yeah, well, and I think about, you know, we are recording this virtually, primarily because of the time that we're living in. And I think about how important it is to empower your people with information. Right? Like you said, there's bad news, but here's why. It feels like folks who are in higher-up positions want to guard information rather than democratize it and let people know, here's why the decisions that have been made have been made. And I just want to give you a little bit of kudos for doing that.

Johanna Burton 15:15I think what it is, is it's about asking for—and again, I think this is what's so interesting about this moment—we have to build a different kind of institution. I mean, if you look around the nation right now, museums are not faring well. And I mean that both in terms of, they're shutting; people are very quickly realizing that the structures of funding are really precarious. But also, staffs and institutional, you know, the kind of paradigms of how they're run are being questioned in really profound ways. And part of the reason that we started to roll out this model of engaging staff was because there was bad news, but also because there was good news, which is that cultural spaces can shift and transfigure and transform. And it's not just through the programming, it's through the way that you structure a staff and make sure that people feel like they are part of a mission and part of an institutional mandate. Another part of that that's very big, and we are hardly alone, is we're really hoping to think through DEI—diversity, equity, inclusion—all of the questions of accessibility around not only who comes to your museum and who you serve, but what is the cultural space that you create in order to make that possible. And so I've been working very closely across staff, but really with, again, I'll name Dionne Custer Edwards, who has been doing a lot of this work for the 15 years that she's been at the Wex, in a different position. And we're starting to assemble—we have begun to assemble—a small working group at the Wex of staff, a community thought-partner group, and then we're working with both sort of local and international partners who do this work, because it feels like everything's an equity question, down to how you interview people, to, of course, pay and the kind of work that's done. So I think there will be growing pains. I mean, I feel that myself. I've been dedicated to this work for my entire life, but I still feel like I'm daily reminded of my blind spots. But we've decided that this will be an institutional mandate, and that hopefully, again, as we're moving forward, that will enable a platform that feels like it's a good place to work from, and also for artists maybe to work with even more support.

Tim Fulton 17:53And so being welcoming not just to—I hate this term—non-traditional audiences, but being also open to non-traditional artists. Let's stop saying non-traditional. Let's say a more diverse audience, a more diverse group of artists, and a more diverse staff, in order to bring in that, frankly, diversity of ideas.

Johanna Burton 18:17Right. And it's hard work. Because I think, especially with a place like the Wex, I want to give credit where credit is due to the years that preceded me. The programming has actually been exemplary, and really kind of showing and centering voices from many different, you know, globally, in terms of gender, in terms of race, in terms of sexuality, and these issues that are really pressing ones coming forward through the voices of artists. But it also means that a lot of the kind of pressure and the labor is placed on those artists instead of the institution and the work. I think we're seeing this more and more with the debates that are going on right now. It's like, well, if you just point to the artists that you've asked, or that you've allowed, or that you've brought in to do the work, you may not be doing the work yourself. And so I think that's come up. And I'm not saying that there's been a terrible history of this at the Wex. But I think that all museums are realizing, it's a very class-based profession that we're in, and we have to be thinking about what that means. I am not from a wealthy background. I come from a very, very—I emphasize this, very—modest background in rural Nevada. And yet I wanted to be part of the arts. And what I realized as I began to make that journey was there was a skill set, and then there was also a lot about navigating class. And I think that that is something that we continue—and it's not just class, of course; it's intersectional. It's class, it's race, it's gender, it's age, it's sexuality. It's all the things. And so, to your question about whether the doors are open, and to whom, I think that's part of what we have to think about all the time.

Tim Fulton 20:07Can you—you had talked about funding just a little bit, and I don't want to belabor the point, but I think it's important to note that while the Wexner Center is funded partially by the Ohio State University—well, first of all, the university is under financial strain. But also, when you guys can't let people in the doors and can't charge tickets and can't hold a formal gala or anniversary celebration, whatever it's being called now, that hurts the bottom line as well, right? And so tough decisions need to be made. And you're not the city park. It's, you know, it's not by default just paid for. While I truly do believe it is a public good, it is not funded that way.

Johanna Burton 20:55Right. Well, and I think, you know, it's interesting. We could talk a lot about this—wanting this space, which is on a campus and part of an institution of higher education, wanting it to actually feel like public space, while to your point, there are these barriers. I don't think the biggest barriers are cost, although frankly those are the ones I'd love to erase first. And we've been talking about what it would—there's no—I'm certainly not making promises here about trying to be less cost-prohibitive. In an ideal world, everything would be free. And there are places for which this actually is a good business proposition. I've been looking at museums who have gone free, and their membership numbers go up, because people are committed; they don't feel like this is a transactional space. But that's just one access point. It is true, I think there are presumptions about our funding, which are—again, we are part of OSU, which is, I think, a really wonderful thing, and I'm excited; it's one of the reasons I wanted to come. But not all of our costs are covered, I can say that for sure. And, you know, I learned this in a funny way. I worked for a director at another museum, and we were talking about fundraising when I was early on in the game. And she said, you know, museums are businesses. And it made me really upset. I'm like, no, they're not, they're not businesses, they're for the public good, they're public spaces, they're about public discourse. And they are those things, but at the end of the day, you actually do have to have the money to run them and to pay your people and to get the work done. And so it's an interesting proposition to both be a kind of public space and an entity that has to run on this other model. I talk a lot about how I wish that museums could make the pivot that libraries have made, in terms of being these functional spaces that, I think at one time, people questioned the longevity of. Libraries—like, you know, we aren't going to need books, and people go there. And it's all about this sort of higher idea of knowledge. They're fully public spaces, people use them for everything. They have generated, I think, across the entire country—they're not all the same, but they operate to welcome people in, and people may never read a book but go there every day. So I think that there's work to be done on that front.

Tim Fulton 23:27I want to pivot just a little bit into what's currently happening at the Wex. I want to talk about the collaboration you guys are doing with WOSU, specifically, and about the current exhibition, that's a Climate Changing show. So I'll make that your choice for which path to go down first.

Johanna Burton 23:47I'd be happy to speak about either. So when I came to Columbus, I had, of course, always known about Ann Hamilton. She was an artist who I admired and who I feel great affinity with; we've become good friends. And we started having conversations, really sort of as the pandemic dawned and hit, and then as all of the episodes of racially oppressive violence, we were hitting into that and also making really clear that history. We decided we just wanted to start talking about how art could still be being made right now, and how, for some, it's very difficult; for some, it provided a different kind of context and a different kind of urgency. And that, in a way, the argument is just that art is more essential than ever, even if, in a sense, it's more imperiled, at least in terms of financial stability. And so we started inviting people that had various kind of ways in which they're linked to the Wex, but some relationship to the Wexner and to this place, to Columbus. And so we have talked with Bebe Miller, who is this brilliant choreographer who of course has an international reputation but chooses to live and work and teach here, and she did. And Anne Bogart, who did an amazing project here, who Ann is good friends with, and actually Ann invited Debra Winger, who she's worked with, to do it, which is really terrific. We spoke with Dana Bojić—Dena—who runs a very important foundation that funds artists directly. We are speaking this week with Sharon Udoh, who is a total Columbus—we've spoken with—

Tim Fulton 25:43And Sharon, by the way, for our audience, is Counterfeit Madison.

Johanna Burton 25:48Yes. And what's come of those discussions, in a way, has been—it maybe was a little greedy of us; we just wanted to sit and talk with people for whom there was a kind of shared desire to think about art in the midst of what's happening, and not instead of what's happening, but as it's happening. And so these discussions were co-produced with WOSU, who's one of my favorite OSU neighbors, and they're going to be even closer to us. And the hopes there are that we'll end up doing more of those collaborations with them. But they're just an amazing team. And I think we're just wrapping up that season. And that may be the only one that we do, but it's been great. And then I'm very excited about Climate Changing. It's a show that just opened at the Wex a few weeks ago, by Lucy Zimmerman, who is an associate curator at the Wex. The title of the show is Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment. And you can imagine how many different titles were thrown around. But what Lucy really wanted to be thinking about—and this was well before any of the events of the last year—was a kind of new modality of institutional critique that artists are really engaged in, where they're taking cues from artists like Chris Burden, who—you see, that facade of the Wex has been anointed with a piece that he first did at the Wex 30 years ago; it was part of one of the first shows. Chris Burden has passed away and is the only artist in the show who isn't working today. But taking up some of those questions that had percolated in the '60s, '70s, and beyond, about really taking institutions to task, but then thinking even more deeply about the kind of empathic and emotional and embodied parts of those questions. And also, I think, making a call for a kind of collective future-making. And what's different about this generation of artists is that I think they're calling for and even demanding something else, rather than maybe just taking apart and dismantling. I love institutional critique, for the record. It's a sweet spot, markedly. But I think that there is something really exhilarating about what these artists are doing. They're looking at ableism, they're thinking about race and gender, and these intertwined in really interesting ways. And they're insisting on—really thinking about, again, placemaking within the museum as a way to consider the larger world. And so it's very inspirational, I think, in many ways. And there's a kind of poetics to a lot of what happens. So if you come to the Wex, it's a group show with about 20 artists, three of whom are collectives. And again, it ranges from artists who are thinking about how you actually enter the building—if you need a wheelchair, what does it mean to actually come in and intersect with the architecture in a way that calls attention to both how it holds up and also how it holds our bodies. And I think what's also spectacular about it is it's very beautiful, and you can spend a lot of hours in it, but it asks hard, interesting questions. And, speaking of accessibility, we are really thrilled that HP has partnered with us, so we have free Sundays now. So you can come for free to the Wex every Sunday now, which is the beginning of what I hope will be a bigger step in that direction.

Tim Fulton 29:43Absolutely. Can you talk about—I would be remiss if I didn't bring up sort of what it was like to make the decision to reopen, and also what a patron experiences in the light of COVID-19 there?

Johanna Burton 30:00Yeah. So it's a great question, because you have to weigh, right, how essential is it to actually have your doors open, and with safety. And we've been lucky, again, to work with staff who came together around a reopening task force—they became a reopening/closing task force, because we've had to do it a few different times. And we're under the umbrella of OSU, but we've also been allowed to think about ourselves as partially public. You know, we're public-facing as well as serving students. And so we reopened—when we first closed, we were closed for quite a long time, then we reopened briefly so that our fall shows, which were specifically addressing the election—it was a suite of those, that people had to see them as the run-up to the election happened. And then we re-closed when the numbers went higher. When this show—it's interesting, it's less even the decision to reopen; it was, were we going to install a big show that we could maybe never open the doors for. We all made a decision. Lucy's show had been pushed off, actually, for nearly a year, because—it was first meant to open, and to be clear, this show that is currently open was meant to be in 2019—

Tim Fulton 31:16Or 2020, give or take.

Johanna Burton 31:18And so, you know, there came a moment where we pushed it off and thought, now's the time where we have to decide whether we install this show. And Lucy had worked with many of these artists; almost half of them had new commissions, and the other work was still very specific to the show. And we felt it was worth actually seeing that through. And we started having discussions about, well, if we can't open the doors, we can do virtual walkthroughs, we can figure out ways to engage the work. And the good news was, we have a very, very good safety protocol within the building for our staff. That said, it wasn't without anxiety. I think, clearly there are, again—to talk about equity—you've got some folks who don't have to go in to do anything at all when an exhibition is being installed, myself included. And then you've got folks on the prep team who needed to be there. So there were real discussions about comfort, and about how to have small pods working, how the front desk, our amazing visitor experience team, would feel safest. And we managed to get it done. So when you go there now, there's a lot of PPE. Nobody's gonna ask you to go beyond the kind of Plexi screen that is between you and the person who's giving tickets. And even—we have a virtual reality headset that you have to wear for one of our pieces, and we've got a guard who's got this tremendous amount of Purell and wipes, so that after every time somebody uses the virtual reality headset, it gets cleaned. So people have been extraordinarily grateful to be able to come into the space, and actually be with each other and be with art. That said, we haven't slowed down at all on the other programming areas. So though it's a shame not to be able to go to a film together, or to go to a performance together, attend an education workshop together, we have probably been programming as much, if not more, than before. And the numbers, interestingly, are really good. And also, if there's a silver lining, we're actually seeing people from all over the world watching our—we had Ohio Shorts, which you'll remember is normally, you know, we have a full house, it's 300 people in the theater. But the numbers of people who watched during the time that it was actually online were tremendous. It was thousands of people from virtually every state in the United States, and globally as well. So there have been some really kind of silver linings of virtual as well. And we're learning from that, so that when we come back, we can maybe utilize that tool moving forward, because nothing's gonna be the same. We're not going back to normal.

Tim Fulton 34:17Right. This is the new normal.

Johanna Burton 34:19This is the new normal.

Tim Fulton 34:21My follow-up to that, and I think you answered it, was, you know, when you get to that new normal—let's call it the fall—do you think you'll still be engaging and investing, frankly, in virtual programming?

Johanna Burton 34:35Yes. The answer's yes. I actually think, as amazing as our sort of buckets are, with film/video and performing arts and exhibitions and Learning and Public Practice, something that the Wex hasn't really addressed is technology, and I think that's something that is on the horizon for us. It may not be its own bucket, but it certainly needs to be a tool, and that tool is one employed by artists, employed by audiences, in a way that this has jump-started the conversation in a particular way. So yeah, and I'm actually very excited, because I think technology is something that the Wex could address very well. So ironically, one of our first steps in really kind of leaning into technology for the next year—the Wex has been so focused on the future that it hasn't really actually addressed its own past. And so we are, again ironically, as we aim for the future, going to hire an archivist. We're in the middle of this now, so that we can build a digital archive that actually tells the story of the center, and really gives a history for all of this work. So technology and the past coming together in a really interesting way, I think.

Tim Fulton 35:46That's fantastic. I am personally very excited about that. The things that sort of step out to me during this conversation—I think it's almost a little dangerous to use this word when you think about an institution, but there is an intersectionality there, right? It has multiple characteristics that have to be taken as a whole in order to understand it. And I also think about the duality between being a public space and being a private institution, and an institution that's connected to a land-grant university. Is there anything else that you would want the audience to know sort of about viewing the Wexner Center holistically?

Johanna Burton 36:32Yeah, I mean, it's actually, I think, a challenge that we're trying to figure out right now, which is, we do so many things that I think sometimes people aren't sure exactly what we are. And so I think that articulation of the Wex as a space that—maybe we're not defined by these buckets, but we do them very, very well—is important. Again, institutions, I think, globally caught up with the Wex at a certain point and started talking about multidisciplinarity in a way that makes us seem maybe less unique than we are. So I think, in terms of telling our story, it really is about utilizing this space. I'm going to start using the word transdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary, because I think artists themselves are less beholden or interested in holding those buckets apart, when we use those tools to tell stories about the world and about ourselves. And I do again think that what's on the horizon is figuring out how that process piece of what we do really is unique. And it really invites people in and allows it to be a discursive, generative social space, unlike many others. And again, I think, telling the story moving forward, we have maybe not been as invested in talking about our place on campus, as a space of learning. And I actually really think that that's something that differentiates us, and I want to continue to talk about. So I'm not sure if that answers your question.

Tim Fulton 38:03Absolutely, it does. I just want to wrap up by asking, now that you're a Columbus resident now, what do you think?

Johanna Burton 38:13I love it. I'm really happy here. As you know, I spent my entire professional life in New York City. But I came from a place that's very different from Columbus, but I think has an affinity, and there's a kind of fierce loyalty to the city that I find really interesting, and a kind of civic engagement around, at least, the arts that I have found really moving. You know, often I think that kind of pride has to do with—I don't know—it's a big enough city to have kind of texture, but it's also small enough to have real community. I'm from Reno, which is the biggest little city in the world, and sometimes I think there's something similar about it. I've also felt really fortunate to meet just incredible people in a short time who want me and the Wex to succeed. And that has felt very humbling, but also like I landed in the right place. And then, ironically, we found a house that chose us. So when we moved here, I'm a real nester, and I said, where are the modernist houses? And we ended up living in this iconic roundhouse in Rush Creek, where—I don't know if you folks know Rush Creek, but it is a very unusual—it's one of the only existing Usonian architecture communities in the United States, built by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright. And so we ended up in this crazy house that I feel really lucky to wake up in every day. That's round.

Tim Fulton 39:49Fantastic. Johanna, thank you so much for your time today.

Johanna Burton 39:52Thank you, Tim. I really enjoyed it. I hope we'll chat again one of these days.

Tim Fulton 40:08Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite contemporary artists. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.