03.06.18
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

S4E3: Arthur Cohen


Arthur Cohen is CEO and co-founder of LaPlaca Cohen, a strategy, design, and marketing firm for the cultural world. After business school, he took a job in brand management, but left to work in the nonprofit cultural world. He talked about his first day as marketing director at the Institute of Contemporary Art, which had just opened a Robert Mapplethorpe show.
So, first phone call was from the major, the number one arts reporter at the New York Times who wanted an interview. Wow. Hang up. Phone rings again. And it is a bomb threat. Someone wanted to blow up our place because they thought that this Mapplethorpe show was so objectionable. And in that moment, I realized, wow, I'm in for quite a ride. But also, it reinforced the notion that culture is always a reflection of the world around you.

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Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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