Jerry Saltz is a New Yorker’s New Yorker. The Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for New York magazine drinks deli coffee in a giant 7-Eleven Double Gulp cup, doesn’t cook, and hates parties. (“I can also straight-facedly say I have no interest in food or any kind of social life other than a monkish one,” he once wrote.) On any given day, you’ll find him at a gallery show—or several: by his own admission, he attends 25 to 30 a week.
So it comes as little surprise that Marc Jacobs, also a native New Yorker, chose Saltz to spend a quintessential Big Apple day with, as part of his guest editorship of Vogue’s December issue. “I was always intimidated by the art world growing up: I felt I didn’t have enough of an education to look at art,” Jacobs says while sitting in Central Park, as the pair drink bodega coffees. “I didn’t see me ending up on a park bench talking to you.”
But talk they do—about everything and anything. Saltz laments on his chosen profession (“I hate writing: I’d rather do anything in this life than write and yet I can only write”) while also waxing poetic about it: “My job is to notice things and say what I notice,” he adds. Meanwhile, Jacobs reflects on his greatest fear: irrelevance. “What will I be, who will be if nobody cares?” the designer wonders.
Then, the two enter the great Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they wander through the “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350” exhibit. Saltz takes great care to explain to Jacobs—and the viewer—the importance of the Italian town and its artists. “What do you see when you look at that?” Saltz asks Jacob in front of a painting. “A lot more than I did before you explained it to me,” he replies.
Below, watch the wide-ranging conversation between two of New York’s greatest living cultural figures.
Director: Catherine Orchard
Director of Photography: Michael Lopez
Editor: Evan Allan
Senior Producer: Bety Dereje
Producer, On Set: Rahel Gebreyes
Associate Producer: Lea Donenberg
Camera Operator: Andrew Maso
Assistant Camera: Swelee Joseph
Gaffer: Chris Boyle
Audio: Bill Vella
Production Assistant: Quinton Johnson
Groomer: Jennifer Brent
Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Arts & Graphics Lead: Léa Kichler
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Associate Director, Post Production: Nicholas Ascanio
Director, Content Production: Rahel Gebreyes
Senior Director, Video: Romy van den Broeke
Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson
VP, Video Programming: Thespena Guatieri
Special Thanks: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
