S5:E12 Spectacle and placemaking of art… Charlotte Burns, Founder, Studio Burns
Guest
Charlotte Burns
In conversation with
Adrian Ellis
Adrian Ellis speaks with Charlotte Burns, Founder of Studio Burns, about how the art world constructs its stories – and what happens when data complicates them. From representation and market dynamics to institutional culture, they explore how research can surface patterns that would otherwise remain invisible and help inform future practice.
Date of Recording
9 October 2025
Date of Publication
20 November 2025
[00:00:00]
Charlotte Burns: Everything that we've witnessed over the past couple of decades is sort of spectacle and placemaking of art that's really been tied up with that neoliberal sense that you could sort of sell democracy and its ideas. You could sell art, you could export it, and it would be in itself an extension of a value system.
[00:00:20]
THEME MUSIC
[00:00:26]
Adrian Ellis: Hello, and welcome to The Three Bells. This podcast is part of the fifth season produced by AEA for the Global Cultural Districts Network. The focus is, as always, the relationship between cultural and urban life, and the ways in which cultural life contributes to urban vitality and vice versa. The series and supporting materials can be found at www.thethreebells.net. And if you like our content, please subscribe and give us a positive review on your favourite podcast listening platform.
I'm Adrian Ellis, the chair of GCDN and the director of AEA Consulting. Our guest this week is Charlotte Burns. Charlotte's a journalist, editor, cultural researcher, and she's probably best known for her work on equity and power in the art world.
She founded Studio Burns in 2020. It's a media platform focusing on investigative reporting, data-driven research – and I emphasise the data-driven, and editorial analysis of museums, markets, and institutional systems. She's the co-creator of The Burns Halperin Report, which is a longitudinal study of museum acquisitions, exhibitions, and the art market primarily from the perspective of equity.
Before establishing Studio Burns, she was the US news and market editor at The Art Newspaper and was the editor and host of a weekly podcast. In other words, she's written for The Guardian, Cultured, Monocle, as well as The Art Newspaper. And I first met her probably 15 years ago and have witnessed her editorial skills and diplomacy closeup on a couple of occasions.
If you've read Charlotte's work or listened to her interviews, you know she has a gift for gently pulling the conversation out of the realm of good intentions and into the realm of evidence-based reality. Charlotte, welcome.
[00:02:07]
Charlotte Burns: Thank you so much for having me.
…
External Links
Studio Burns – Independent editorial and research studio founded by Charlotte Burns, producing investigative journalism, data-driven projects, and podcasts about the art world.
The Burns Halperin Report – a longitudinal data study on representation in US museums and the international art market, co-created by Charlotte Burns and Julia Halperin.
Artists Speak: The Anonymous Was A Woman Artist Survey – written by Charlotte Burns, Julia Halperin, and SMU DataArts, synthesising responses from over 1,200 women artists on careers, finances, family, and identity.
Museums Moving Forward – study on workplace equity and organisational culture in US art museums, offering longitudinal data on pay, promotions, discrimination, and job satisfaction.
About our Guest
Charlotte Burns, is a journalist, researcher and founder of Studio Burns and the co-founder of The Burns Halperin Report, the largest data study of its kind tracking representation in museums and the market. She is also the host and producer of the podcasts The Art World: What If…?!, and Hope & Dread and In Other Words with Schwartzman& in New York. +
