We Took a Francis Bacon Painting to the Pub in a Prison Van

Jago Cooper on living art, the Easter Island myth, and why things are better storytellers than people.

What if artworks aren't objects but living entities? Jago Cooper, Executive Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, made headlines when he became the first museum director in the world to change his institution's governance structure so that every artwork is treated as a living being, and every staff member's job is to give those entities their best lives. Yes, including taking a Francis Bacon painting to the pub.

In this episode, Jago sits down with James Kirkham to explain why museums have got it wrong for centuries, how a childhood digging up artefacts in Gloucestershire shapes his radical approach today, and what happened when he dismantled one of history's most enduring environmental collapse myths: the story of Easter Island.

This is a conversation about what happens when you stop seeing art as property and start seeing it as a relationship. One you can trust with your deepest secrets.