This audio is generated by AI, so pronunciation and expressions may not be fully accurate. The narration is only in English.
When Naomi Beckwith stepped onto the stage at Keio University's Mita Campus during Art Week Tokyo 2025 (AWT), she began with a question borrowed from Marvin Gaye: "What's going on?" Invoking the spirit of Gaye's 1971 album, she invited the audience to consider how art helps us navigate a world where we often lack shared language, shared concerns, or shared solutions.
Beckwith—Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Artistic Director of the upcoming documenta 16—is known for placing representation, equity, and community at the center of major institutions. Her visit to Tokyo for Art Week Tokyo, an annual showcase of the creativity and diversity of contemporary art in Tokyo, offered a chance to reflect on what contemporary art asks of us today—and what makes Tokyo such a vital place to ask those questions.
For Beckwith, art and everyday life are inseparable. "Art is not separate from the real world—just a very special place within it," she says. It is a space where people can try out new ways of seeing and feeling. "Art can educate, build community, and help you engage with your inner thoughts. When your mind is expanding through art, you can change the world."
Her keynote for AWT Talks Symposium used What's Going On as both soundtrack and methodology. The album famously opens not with music but with overlapping voices, an improvised call-and-response. "Community-making, for Gaye's album, is the beginning of music; the sonic resonance of people coming together is the beginning of art," she explained.
This belief runs through her curatorial work. She is drawn to moments when artists respond to political pressure not simply by changing what they depict, but by reinventing the forms of art itself—rewriting figuration, performance, or sound to imagine new forms of liberation. "I often think artists are today's prophets," she said. "Societies can fear technology, strangers, history, authority—yet artists broach all these phobias head-on."
At a time of information saturation, Beckwith argues that art offers something increasingly rare: sustained attention. "Art allows us to slow down and maintain prolonged attention when so many things now are so rapid," she notes.
For viewers intimidated by abstraction, she suggests beginning with careful looking:"What colors do you see? What shapes? Does the work feel slowly made or hastily made? Can you imagine the artist making it?" From there, she encourages people to identify personal associations. "The answers to art are inside each person, not outside them."
Art Week Tokyo gave Beckwith a close-up view of how these ideas take shape locally. "Current exhibitions show how important Japan has been for artists and architects worldwide," she says, noting a "timely and keen interest in post-war Japanese women artists across multiple institutions." Her visit, which was supported by the National Center for Art Research in collaboration with Art Week Tokyo, also took her to both the Aichi and Setouchi Triennale, where she found deeply moving works rooted in regional histories.
Back in Tokyo, she observed a city where local and international voices meet on equal footing. This exchange, she says, is often facilitated by museums, galleries, and triennials that naturally draw diverse communities into dialogue. Historically, Japanese artists have positioned themselves in relation to Euro-American narratives of modernism—sometimes aligning with them, sometimes poking at them. Today, she sees artists "exploring history through lesser-known stories and seeking to preserve them in an increasingly globalized, multipolar world."
What struck her most was Tokyo's connectedness. "Tokyo's art scene—commercial and non-profit—is wide and varied, but everyone is aware of the programming around the city and the work of their colleagues," she says. "It's an art scene built on connection, rather than competition, and that makes everyone a strong ambassador for the wealth of contemporary culture in Japan."
Platforms such as the AWT Bus and the experimental AWT Bar also stood out as important tools for visibility and exchange. She described the bar as "absolutely necessary; it is where networks are formed and ideas exchanged."
As someone deeply engaged with representation, Beckwith sees substantial potential for Tokyo to strengthen its position as an inclusive hub—especially for artists from Black and other marginalized communities. She points to longstanding ties between Black artists and Japan, citing figures such as Kerry James Marshall and David Hammons, and notes that spaces like Space Un continue to deepen those connections.
"Non-Anglo and non-European cultures broaden understandings of what art can be," she says. A shared commitment to questioning inherited narratives, she suggests, provides fertile ground for collaboration. "Japan is a culture that is kind to its guests, and I believe a commitment to hosting is the first step to inclusivity."
In a world increasingly divided over basic facts, Beckwith suggests that art may offer a simple place to begin again: coming together, paying attention, and asking one another what is happening right now. As she reminded her audience at Keio University, the question "What's going on?" is not only a greeting—it is an invitation to stay in the conversation.
