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Join hosts Anastarcia Palacious and Renaldo Dorsett as they sit down with the people who shape Baha Mar: the chefs, the artists, the visionaries, and the guests to uncover the moments, the culture, and the quiet details that turn a destination into something unforgettable.
Because the real story of Baha Mar isn't in the brochure. It's in the people who live it!
John: What I find unique about the Bahamian art scene is that we’re close. Like, there’s a sense of willingness to be collaborative, to recognize a sense of community, to recognize a sense of lineage.
Anastarcia: Hello and welcome to Beyond the Stay. I’m your host Anastarcia, and of course, we’re telling stories that take you beyond the stay of this amazing resort and let you meet some of the people, the ideas, the experiences that help to shape Beyond the Stay at Baha Mar. Today, I’m really excited for this guest in particular. If you have walked into this hotel, looked at art on a wall, saw art emerging up from the ground, if you’ve had the experience of going into the Current or ECCHO—and if you’ve not, please make time to do so—then you have seen the hand of one of the greatest artists of our times, John Cox. He’s with me here at this podcast studio today, where he also happened to add his flair into this beautiful space, and we’re going to be learning more about his journey and what art means to the Bahama landscape. John Cox, welcome to Beyond the Stay.
John: Thank you so much. You’re very kind.
Anastarcia: They said—oh, oh, also, time out. The hoodie is a part of literally his dope artwork. I think it says ‘dope’ on it.
John: It says, “This is how much I love you”—
Anastarcia: This is how much I love you.
John: —which is dope [laugh].
Anastarcia: Which is dope. Okay. And, “This is how much I love you” is a big deal. I actually got to go and do a screen printing class with you. What is screen printing so people have a context of what we’re talking about?
John: It’s one of the printmaking techniques that’s often used for commercial applications. So, lots of t-shirts and, you know, apparel. It’s something that it’s used for graphics and things being printed on. It’s a piece of industrial silk stretched over a frame that you can apply stencils to in various ways, and you squeegee ink through the stencil onto various surfaces.
Anastarcia: So, I saw a wedding dress—
John: Mmm.
Anastarcia: —that said, “This is how much I love you.”
John: Yes.
Anastarcia: It was all you, your artwork, and somebody wore it for a wedding.
John: Yeah.
Anastarcia: That is so cool.
John: Yeah, I did a collab with [April Burroughs 00:02:21], who’s a very good designer, and she did a wedding dress for a person that we know, a mutual person that we knew. And yeah, it was like a very last minute thing, and it worked out really well. Basically, I just, like, made this giant, “This is so much I love you” painting on fabric, and then she made it into a dress.
Anastarcia: That is so cool.
John: And then the person agreed to wear it for their wedding.
Anastarcia: Yeah.
John: So yeah.
Anastarcia: Pretty awesome. Pretty epic stuff.
John: Yeah.
Anastarcia: Very normal for you, though, very everyday, this—we just do epic, cool things.
John: Yeah, I like that series to feel, like, about being liberated, you know? And I felt like the person who got married in it was kind of the right—had the right attitude around everything. So yeah, it felt on brand.
Anastarcia: It did feel on brand. And guess what? People can actually come here and do printmaking, right? You offer that as a class.
John: That’s one of the classes in the Current.
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: Yes. Yeah. It’s botanical leaf-printing.
Anastarcia: So, we’ve kind of talked about some of the things that John does, but I want to go back a bit, and for you all watching us, engage with us to understand more of who he is as an artist, as a curator, as a cultural leader, and so I guess the first step is what first drew you to the arts, and then how did that journey of discovering, hmm, I’m an artist, lead you to this position of, sort of, curating this Bahama artistic experience that we get to live?
John: Oh, wow. Wow, there’s a lot. There’s a lot because I’ve been, I think, at this thing for a long time, from, kind of, deciding to be an artist and how I would have, kind of, come to that decision, which I don’t think was a very overt decision. It was almost like a process of elimination, you know? I felt like other things in school were not that easy for me, but things that were, like, tactile and building-oriented and visual were more like just felt like they were in my wheelhouse.
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: And then I just was lucky enough that I always had very, very supportive parents that, like, allowed me to kind of explore and discover what I understand—what now I know are, like, what my intelligences were, right? Like you know, there’s you know, there’s this kind of idea that we have—there are a ton of intelligences and most people have certain ones, and I think I didn’t have the mainstream ones. And so, they allowed me to, kind of, discover that, which is in hindsight very, very—
Anastarcia: Pretty cool, for parents.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the environment that I grew up in, like, the physical environment, I was, you know, talking about my dad, who was a civil instructional engineer, but he worked with an architect called Ray Nathaniels, and they made—Ray Nathaniels was, kind of, well known for making these, like, mid-century modern homes. And I never really—I just, kind of, normalized. The house that I was in, I just didn’t think that everyone’s house was just like this, right? Because why wouldn’t they be? Like, I didn’t think that we were special. The longer time goes on, I realize that really, kind of, also informed like how I am and how the decisions I’ve come to make are.
Anastarcia: Yeah, and I think it’s so cool to hear that your parents supported you, and then to also know—I’m going to just put a plug in here. Especially if you’re watching from somewhere different in the world and you don’t happen to know who John Cox’s father was, he was the engineer. He’s making it seem like he’s some random civil engineer. He was not. Quick history lesson: when we gained independence in 1973, he was one of our first really local Bahamian civil engineers and was really responsible for mass development across the country, especially here in the capital of New Providence where Baha Mar is located. And so, that’s the context that John is speaking of.
I’ve actually had the privilege of going to your home when I was a couple years younger, and being in the midst of that beauty and just the layout and the architecture and the immersion of fruit trees and native trees into the architecture is really visually stimulating as well. Do you think that’s played into how you’ve, kind of, wanted Bahamians to be seen and felt through the art experience of Bahama? Is that what guests come here and feel as well?
John: Yeah, I think it’s about—for me, it’s about, like, discovering the definition of the thing for the first time, right? It’s like always, like, how can we create a sense of refresh over and over again, right, to just position artwork around the property in a way that sparks curiosity. You know, I used to tell my team in the early days that what we were doing was, kind of like, cultural wayfinding. So, like, you’d, like, put, like, a nugget that would just spark somebody to want to ask a question, and then you would always make sure that the answer to the question was something that was better than the initial instinct to ask it in the first place. You know what I mean?
I just—I’m always thinking that. Like, I don’t think that there’s any reason for me to do anything that is duplicitous or to be like anybody else, and I think that served me well. That’s, kind of, how I got to get the position here in the first place. You know, I used to be the chief curator at the National Art Gallery prior to coming here, and in the earliest phase of Baha Mar, the developer wanted to have art all over the property, but I don’t think that he completely, like, from a logistics perspective, understood how that was going to happen, and I think what his attempt was, which I think I applaud, and I don’t think that I would be here if he hadn’t done that, was he engaged the National Gallery to, kind of, curate the property. So, the whole idea was that we were supposed to have a satellite national art gallery team that was stationed at Baha Mar to manage all the art that was here.
And so, because I was the head curator at the time, there was a lot of consulting and back and forth. And then fast forward through, you know, the board’s trying to agree on details and terms and that kind of stuff, which never really happened, then I just got offered the job to come here. And I took it, you know, with some opinions around why would I do that or whatever, whatever, but it worked out because it felt like the right thing to do and I had a vision that I thought, you know, we could, kind of, realize over the long-term. I’m more of, like, a marathon thinker rather than, like, a sprint thinker. So, yeah. And so, here we are now, still running the marathon [laugh].
Anastarcia: So, I’ve been down at the hotel properties. Many are beautiful, but this is an experience, right? This is a cultural experience. And when you said, you know, you want people to ask a question, and then later on they see the answer and it’s bigger than they imagined, I visually see that as I walk through the property in my mind. And so, art becomes alive. Like, it’s not just on the walls. When you had that marathon vision all those years ago, are you living in it now, or is there more to come?
John: A little bit of both. A little bit of both. I think sometimes when we walk around, we look at the team. You know, I have a team of about 16 people, and I remember the early, early days when there was only three of us, and we were in one gallery, and we, you know, we had a lot of uncertainty in terms of, like, you know, when we were curating the hotel, people could understand, oh, this is what you’re doing, and then they were like, “Well, what are you going to do once it opens? Like, why do you still need to be there once the hotel opens and you put the paintings up? Can’t you just leave?”
And we were like, “Well no, actually because there’s things to program and it’s dynamic, and there’s all these other things that spawn off of, kind of, creative cultural ideas.” And so it’s, kind of, inspiring to live in the spaces that were just ideas, like, a decade ago. Like, nobody would—if we would have said, “Hey, we’re going to do this,” people would have said, “There’s no way that you’re going to be able to do that,” like 10 or 12 years ago, but we somehow did it.
Anastarcia: Yeah.
John: So, I still have that germ of, we’re going to do this that’s going to take 10 or 15 more years to do, but we have the benefit of, like, living in spaces that would have seemed impossible before. So, that feels good for me, but also for the team that I have around me.
Anastarcia: Yeah, from 3 to 16. And a part of that team obviously works at the Current, and the Current was the first art gallery before we had ECCHO.
John: Yes.
Anastarcia: And that’s a part of, again, when we spoke earlier about the National Art Gallery, the Bahamas. There’s some connection to the National Art Gallery through the Current.
John: Yeah, so the Current is really like the axis of the wheel. So, the Current is the original. A lot of people don’t understand this, but so, the Current is like, kind of, like the revenue-generating part of the department. So, that’s where the gallery is, that’s where the retail is, that’s where the classes are, the experiences that you have. So, those things are guest facing. You know, I can go here, I can buy something, I could go to an art opening, purchase something, I could take a class, I could do something else.
The other aspect of how we work here is referred to as art direction, which is all of the other things that we do: curating hotel rooms, managing things like the Fuze Art Fair, we work through the foundation, we are the culture arm of the Bahama Resort Foundation, which has three pillars: culture, conservation, and community. So, I co-chair the culture part of the foundation. So, the team, very few of us really just, like, live in one aspect of it. So, ECCHO we opened three years ago, and that really was an extension on some level of the Current, but it also created a platform through which the foundation could engage community—
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: —right? So, there is a satellite national art gallery within ECCHO. We also have a partnership with Nassau Music Society, with Hands for Hunger, with sometimes Shakespeare in Paradise does things there. We offer the space to the community as a platform to, kind of, showcase whatever it is they have going on.
So, musicians or you know schools have their annual play there. High schools sometimes have their end-of-year art exhibitions there. So, there’s that level of things that go on. And it just keeps growing and growing. We have a very, very firm relationship with the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas now, so it just keeps—
Anastarcia: Yeah, it’s unlimited possibilities—
John: Yeah, completely.
Anastarcia: —and I know in the past other Bahamian podcasters have actually used the space for podcasting—
John: 1,000%.
Anastarcia: —before we had this very cool podcast studio that he also added his flair to. So, if ever you’re in property, you want to make sure that you stop on in to see the podcast studio, check out the Current, check out ECCHO, all absolutely amazing spaces for you. And the Current, is it called the Current because you wanted that sort of energy associated with that was driving direction, driving culture?
John: Yeah, I could give you like the—
Anastarcia: [laugh].
John: —what answer do you want for that question? It’s a—there is an answer for sure. Yeah, so we named the—we are very lucky. So, the original developer as well as you know the CTF that came on second, you know my boss is Graeme Davis, and he is very, very supportive of my ideas and the things that we, you know, want to develop. And we were one of the few departments that was actually allowed to completely manage our entire identity and brand standards outside of the external agency that pretty much does it for everywhere else, right?
So, everybody knows we have SLS, we have Rosewood, we have Grand Hyatt, and all these other, kind of, external brands that, like, are franchises all over the world. But the Current was an internal thing, and so they trusted us enough to come up with the name, the logo, all of it, everything associated with it. So, the Current initially was referring to the body of water, right, that moves things around. Baha Mar means shallow water.
Anastarcia: Ah, connected.
John: The idea that artwork would be everywhere around the property, and the Current would move water through a space like it was moving art to the space, right? So, that was the original context of the Current. And then we slightly changed it when we changed developers. And they were like, “Well, we like the name Current, but we think maybe we need to do a refresh on things just because it’s a new set of management now.” So, we were like, well, how can we, kind of, remain the same but be different?
And I worked with the original team then, which was only a few of us. It was Natasha Vasquez, Jordana Kelly, who’s now my director, and Sidney Colby, who is an amazing artist and equally amazing graphic designer. We all, kind of, brainstormed. We were like, yeah, we should keep the Current, but we should try and keep it kind of folkloreish, like Bahamian stories, Bahamian kind of ideas, and good fortune and stuff. And so, we had this idea that you know Bahamians refer to electricity as current, like, current’s off, current off, right? The lights are off, the current is off, current on, current off. So, we had this idea that it was like… the power of the resort was the art. And if you see the logo for the Current, it’s actually a moth.
Anastarcia: Okay, it is.
John: So, you know, like, in the out islands in the old days, people refer to that moth as a money bat. Like, it’s like prosperity. Like your grandparents would be like, “Oh, there’s a moth on the thing. That’s good fortune. That means good things are going to happen,” right? So, Sydney came up with this really cool moth concept that the Current itself was this, like, neon light that was literally light, and moths are drawn to the light.
Anastarcia: Yes.
John: So, the moths would always come to where the Current was. So, the idea of art and culture was like good fortune for the resort.
Anastarcia: This is so cool. So, if you’re watching it again, you’re not Bahamian. You want to pick that up. We call electricity here current, and just a perfect story. Loving the concept of the moth. I was just in one of our family islands, and there were moths everywhere, and so this is really cool to see the connection that you all have made.
John: Yeah, I remember people saying, “Oh, that’s the money bat. That’s the money bat.”
Anastarcia: [laugh]. Indeed, indeed.
John: Money [reach 00:15:58].
Anastarcia: Alright, so now we talked about some things they can look out for, like looking out for what we call our money bats, the moth sign at the Current. What are some other ways that guests can engage with art at Baha Mar that they may not even actually realize is art, that they’re like moving through an art space? Are there any of those places?
John: I mean, one of the things we’ve tried to do, going back to the art direction side of what we do, is we curate the entire resort, and we’ve had the good fortune of being able to curate inside hotel rooms, inside a restaurant, inside clubs, right? And so, I’ll use some recent examples. So, two very, kind of, what we feel are successful, proud moments for us are the Jon Batiste’s Jazz Club—
Anastarcia: Oh, my God.
John: And the Horse to Water, kind of, day club news experience that we have, so both of those were really—Horse to Water is the most recent one that we did. And I actually got to name that, right, because I was—I named it after Winston Saunders’ play, You Can Lead a Horse to Water—
Anastarcia: But you can’t make it drink [laugh].
John: Exactly. Right? And so, there was that whole intrigue of that story, which I thought was really compelling. And so, we thought that we could just, kind of, curate that with a lot of works that were not literally, kind of, trying to illustrate that play, but, kind of, from that era. Like it’s like an old, kind of, very rich, kind of, whiskey bar, kind of, vibe in there, and so we have a partnership with Dawn Davies, and so we are always able to borrow works from her. Her works are all over this property.
And so, you ask how guests can engage or how guests can interface with artwork is I mean, Horse the Water probably has, like, 70 works in it in one particular—I mean, like, high-powered Brent Malone, Max Taylor, Amos Ferguson, Kendal Hanna, like, not slouchy work, right? Not that there’s any work that’s slouchy. Just protecting myself. But you know what I’m saying? So, we have this opportunity where people can—how we curate and label things and give, like, background information, you’re able to interface with that.
Also in the Jon Batiste’s Jazz Club, we’re able to, like, procure some really interesting stuff. We have some works from April Bey from her Colonial Swag series that we got through our Tern Gallery as one of our, kind of, local partner galleries that we work with often. We were able to get April Bey in there, who’s, like, an amazing—like, doing very, very well female Bahamian artist that lives in Los Angeles. We also have Anina Major in there. We’re able to, kind of, create these pod moments that were based on old, kind of, music clubs, like, in the ’40s and ’50s that we kind of bring to the knowledge of the—bring into the ethos of the experiences of all these places. And so, we try to do that.
Same thing with Marcus. You know, we curated, we brought, like, four or five Angelika Wallace-Whitfield, KEEYA Poitier, Cydne Coleby, [Cacheon 00:18:46] Knowles, Michael Edwards, Averia Wright. So, like I’m saying, like, these are all people I’m very proud of, that you could look at the work and go, “Oh, it looks nice in here,” but some of the stuff is really compelling, and you’re like, “Who’s Angelika Wallace-Whitfield? Who’s Averia Wright?” Oh, we had this, kind of, metaphor. We used to say, like, we don’t want to be the seasoning on the meat; we want to be the actual meat.
Anastarcia: I love it.
John: You know what I mean?
Anastarcia: I love it.
John: So, I think that’s really where we’re trying to find that balance around the property. So, you know, and that goes on and on. We have Fairwind Exhibition in the Convention Center—
Anastarcia: Which is so phenomenal. Yeah, and—
John: —we have the public areas of Rosewood, which has its own weekly tours.
Anastarcia: So, if you’re looking for art, it’s everywhere. Everywhere you walk, you’re going to see it and feel it, here at Baha Mar. But certainly, you can go and look at very specific installations, very specific things across the property. So, please come and do so. You know, I heard you call Angelika Wallace-Whitfield. She’s one of our younger artists, in a sense, and I fell in love with her from word art she did. “Hope is a weapon”—
John: “Hope is a weapon.”
Anastarcia: Which I thought was so powerful, just the concept.
John: Yeah, very cool.
Anastarcia: When you think about this new generation of artists—because of course you also have a really cool program at the Current where you feature an artist in residence, which I think is just amazing—but what excites you about this new generation of artists? Are they really new? Is there anything really different about the vibe now versus maybe artists we’d have seen, like Amos Ferguson, whose works is in Horse to Water? When you think of this newer collective of artists, what comes to mind for you?
John: A couple of things. What I find unique about the Bahamian art scene is that we’re close. Like, there’s a sense of willingness to be collaborative, to recognize a sense of community, to recognize a sense of lineage. And if I think of, like, an artist like Amos Ferguson or like the older masters, right, like Stan Burnside or Jackson Burnside or you know Malone and Eddie Minnis and those guys, you can feel that there’s, like, a knock-on effect of what they’ve done in the contemporary artist’s work, right?
You mentioned Angelica. You know, I feel like there’s connections of her work to other people. Same thing with other people who are her age, approximately, you know, in their mid-30s or something. But the thing that is different is what is radically different from Amos Ferguson at age 30 with Angelika Wallace-Whitfield at age 30 is that the ecosystem is way more developed. Those guys developed their practice with no national gallery, no network of commercial galleries functioning, like, in a real, kind of, like international way, galleries doing art fairs, a significant amount of people being trained at a tertiary level in visual arts in the art industry, people who are trained in art history and so on and so forth, curatorial works, you know, professional practice, art handling, restoration. All of these things really, kind of, demystify this idea that oh, I’m going to be an artist.
You better—you know, don’t die before you’re famous because all artists die, and then you become famous after, like, Vincent Van Gogh, which is a little bit of, like, kind of a cartoon that I think all horrifies most parents when they hear from their kids, “Oh, I want to be an artist, mom.” They’re like, “Nooo, don’t do it.”
Anastarcia: [laugh].
John: I think that what makes it different and what makes their reach more elevated and broad is that they’re working in an ecosystem that is more sophisticated at this moment on a local level. And then also we have to take the good with the bad, with social media. These guys know how to use that tool. They know how to get out there and do what they have to do. I mean, Angelica, as you mentioned, is a wonderful muralist.
I mean, she—I mean, so many people occupy different aspects of what the industry has to offer and we can see it in so many different ways. Like, all of the seats at the table of the contemporary visual arts vocabulary, to me, for the most part, are being occupied by Bahamians in every shape, right? Either if they’re local, if they’re just the guy who wants to be, I’m the life of the party, and we’re doing sip-and-paints and that kind of thing, that’s your world. We also have people who are in art fairs, in Art Basel in Miami Beach or in Hong Kong or whatever, or people who are—Jeffrey Meris, or you know, like I’m saying, there’s so many people doing really, really interesting things. Tavares Strachan, I mean MacArthur Genius Award, I mean that’s high level stuff. Janine Antoni.
And then you have a whole bunch of other people, art teachers doing all this stuff. Carla Campbell is an amazing art teacher that did so much work to, kind of—work with kids who struggled in school, I mean, to help normalize what their experiences are. I mean, I can just go on and on and on, right? But it’s really, really interesting to see. Those are the fundamental differences, I think, between where somebody like an Angelica or a Sydney would be compared to where somebody, let’s say, Brent or Stan Burnside would have been at the same age at this time—at the same age, very different platforms that they’re working from.
Anastarcia: Yeah. And I think I always give Bahama credit for that because I think because this is such a big institution and they’ve invested so heavily in art, it gives people this network, this space that you’re talking about for the platforms to expand and be bigger and to have collaborative work. And one of the things that really excited me was hearing the Bahama was a sponsor at the Venice—I want you to pronounce this word—
John: Biennale.
Anastarcia: Biennale. Because I was going to say something totally different.
John: That’s fair.
Anastarcia: [laugh]. So, the Venice Biennale, tell me about that story. What is the Venice Biennale for those of us that may not know? And then why was it such a big deal for Bahama to take part in that the way that it did to bring the Bahamas to life in that space?
John: So, the Biennale is just an exhibition that happens every two years. They happen all over the world. Museums have, we refer to our national exhibition, you know, with the [NEs 00:24:46], the National Exhibition of the Bahamas. So, it is the most prestigious Biennale globally. I may be wrong, but I think it’s among the oldest ones that have existed. It takes place in the city of Venice, and [unintelligible 00:24:59] structure of it, it’s like a national exhibition with pavilions from all over the world. You have to apply for your proposition to be—
Anastarcia: Featured?
John: Featured. So, you basically have to ask permission to even—
Anastarcia: Show up. Yeah.
John: Even to, even to—you have to ask to be in it. And so, we have done it before with Tavares Strachan 13 years ago, was the first Bahamian to represent. He did a national pavilion. So, when it came up, whenever it came up, probably 18 months ago, when we were like, oh, I think we should consider doing the Biennale, because I chair the National Gallery at the moment, it would work that, like, our Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture then would be the channel through which we would apply to Venice to be accepted.
So, we got accepted, and then we, kind of, put our heads to the ground and we said, “Hey, I think we want to ask Dr. Krista Thompson,” who is a Bahamian art historian, very, very well respected in this whole idea of, like, creating context of what the tropics and what the Caribbean creative experiences are and around our, kind of, connections to our African roots and slavery and everything. She’s a very, very smart and very, very well respected person. So, we said she would curate it. She kind of came up with this idea.
We lost, very sadly, John Beadle two years ago, who was considered one of the master artists amongst a younger generation than, like, Max Taylor and Stan Burnside. He would have been only 61, I think, now if he was alive. So, he passed away, and Lavar Munroe, who is a younger person, probably in his mid-40s, would respond to John Beatles’ work. And there’s something about that’s very, kind of, I think fits into the Bahamian experience. Like we’re very, like, emotive people, you know?
We, like, come together around ritual, right? You know, like, it’s almost like a morbid thing. People like—Bahamian’s say, like, they love to go to funerals and that kind of thing. But there’s something about, like, [Junkanoo 00:27:03], like, what we understand Junkanoo to be, how Lavar’s experience with Junkanoo and John’s experience with Junkanoo allowed them to connect with audiences in a way that a lot of other artists don’t, but in a very unusual way. Like, not like, “Oh, we’re going to go to Junkanoo on Boxing Day and watch the parade.” It’s more like, “This is what Junkanoo means to the neighborhood that I came from. This is what Junkanoo taught me about sharing ideas and collaborating with people and working with people and working through things without ego for a common goal.”
Like, and to have Lavar send John off in that way at the Venice Biennale was nuts, right? And so, all of us who were a part of it was a very, very special moment. And before we knew it was going to be that special, before we—when we just had it written down on paper, I went to Graeme and I was like, “I think this is a very important thing, and I think that we could be useful here. And this is not anything that’s going to rebound off the wall, like, hitting a tennis ball off a hard wall, it’s going to come right back to us with a bunch of money,” I said, “But I think that how important this is way more important than how much money that you can make on this, so we should step up.” And he was like, “Let’s do it.”
Anastarcia: Wow.
John: But he stepped up. It caused other people to step up. Amanda Coulson is the producer of the exhibition, so she’s brilliant. This is where she steps into her—puts on her superhero outfit and is like, “This is what I do, [admin 00:28:31].” Right?
And so, I was on the team. It was me, her, Krista, and Lavar, and then we had a whole bunch of other people from the community, Antonius, and all these other people sharing. But that’s super important, and Baha Mar got behind that. Baha Mar was like, it was like a part of the ethos. And you know, Royann—who we know: Royann Dean—we have a partnership with her through her talks called, “Inspired by the Current,” and so her most recent talk was talking about art as a diplomatic soft power, effectively meaning that when you do something at the level of the Venice Biennale and you do it really well, it causes the world to look at your country in a different, like, through the lens of art. Like, you have people that can do art this well? I mean, we were getting these accolades from all of these journals and, you know, academies or whatever top ten national pavilion to go. There’s a hundred pavilions.
Anastarcia: Wow, that is a big deal.
John: A hundred countries in this thing. Plus the Giardini and Arsenale are where the there’s a hundred artists exhibition curated across—they’re called, “In Minor Keys” this year—about, like, things don’t have to be grandiose and overt and ostentatious, like playing the piano, playing the minor keys, the black keys.
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: So, there was all of that. We received countless—like I’m not exaggerating—I’m talking about countless top ten.
Anastarcia: Wow.
John: Unbelievable.
Anastarcia: Wow.
John: So, the fact that we can rewind the tape and say that Baha Mar was a part of that—and it’s interesting too—I’m talking a lot. I’m sorry.
Anastarcia: No, this is so cool to me.
John: No, no, no. But like, what’s important is that hospitality is really, kind of like, a double-edged sword in the region. Like, it can really, like, water down your identity. It really, really can. And that was one of the criticisms that I had when I first came from the NAGB, from the National Gallery here, to be, like, nobody cares. It’s a hotel. Like, this is not serious.
Anastarcia: It’s not though.
John: It’s not rigorous. There are no academics. There’s no PhDs there. You need to stay in the white cube, curate at the high level. Like, nobody is going to—this is not a serious space.
And that’s a hard thing to hear because it’s not—if you have a certain posture, that’s not necessarily untrue, but I think it just, kind of, went back to me again. Like I was like—you know, like, I think I was probably had the little germ. I was like, you know, like, my father didn’t think things like that. He was thinking about what was possible, not like what people who are lazy think. I’m thinking about what people who are not lazy think, and how can we balance the scales here?
And so, when you do that, and you’re like, wow, like, what if we’re slowly changing the perception of how people see the Bahamas through art and culture, using hospitality as the thing to spin it, to spin the definition itself?
Anastarcia: That’s pretty cool though.
John: So, that might seem like crazy talks—
Anastarcia: That’s not cr—I mean, it might be though.
John: [crosstalk 00:31:30].
Anastarcia: But you know what Steve Jobs said about crazy people?
John: Who?
Anastarcia: Steve Jobs.
John: Yeah.
Anastarcia: “Crazy people change the world.” Right?
John: Yeah.
Anastarcia: And so, the idea that you’re changing how people see us and wanting people to come here—I think it was Jackson Burnside who said many years ago—
John: 2020.
Anastarcia: You know, that people by 2020 would be coming here not just for our sun, sand, and sea, but for the culture and for Bahama to be supporting, taking this to the world, getting those top ten score is a big deal. How do you think that’s going to impact Fuze? So Fuze, of course, is a part of our Bahamas Culinary and Arts Festival. Fuze is the exhibition highlighting the arts, and it is so cool. If you’ve not been, you have to come. It’s always in October. Please check it out. It is just—it’s amazing. I’m watching it grow every year. This is going to be year five. What are your hopes and dreams for Fuze and just for the future of art at Baha Mar, Period?
John: I mean, Fuze is—like you said, for us, the Culinary and Arts Festival is in year five. We’re four. It’s the platform that I think significantly helps turn the ship in the harbor because what it does is it becomes the attraction for people to come to the Bahamas at large. For me, yes, Baha Mar, yes, we underwrite it. It’s about as much as it’s about the Bahamas, it’s about the region.
It’s about us, kind of, taking, I won’t say control, but affording the responsibility that we have and the opportunities that we have to take responsibility and say, “Hey, this is what we can do for us, and this is what we can do for the region,” to reshape how people see who we are and create an art fair which takes from the best parts of all the global art fairs, but makes something that feels relevant to our ecosystem. And that’s super important for us. Like every year, we’ve grown year-over-year. This year we’re not getting physically bigger, but we are getting tighter. We have a tight, tight group of artists coming through.
The programming is going to be amazing. We have artists from the diaspora who are, like, Caribbean people who are all over the world, working, excited to be here, and we’re thinking long-term. I talked about marathon thinking. Like, you know, we’re thinking of ’26, ’27, ’28, ’29. I can count occasionally.
Anastarcia: [laugh].
John: But yeah, I mean, there’s, like, all of this, like, long-term thinking to get artists to be a part of this thing, and that’s really how you see how Venice is. If you see how Venice, the city of Venice is set up for the Biennale—
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: That is hospitality.
Anastarcia: Okay.
John: Right? We, through art and culture, that’s what that is. I see Fuze becoming that for Baha Mar, for the Bahamas.
Anastarcia: I love it.
John: Yeah, so that’s our goal.
Anastarcia: And it’s so cool. Like, last year, I walked through and somebody was doing tattoos, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is so cool,” because it just honors all the forms of art. One of my favorite designers, April Burroughs—we talked about her and the gown she did for you—she was there, and you saw, like, fabrics as art, and it’s just so—it’s so much bigger than just gallery pieces. It is like an art fusion. I just love the name. Very cool.
John: And that’s why we want to keep pushing it, right? We want to keep pushing the expectations of what it means for our guests to come here, to say, like, “Oh wow, like, we should go to Baha Mar in October because that’s when Fuze is.” You know what I mean? And that’s when the Culinary and Arts Festival is, right? So, those are the things that we really want to, like, help move the needle, and then ultimately, that’s how we can really begin to measure the true return of these things.
People talk about orange economy; that’s a term that gets thrown around all the time. What are the ripples created by that pebble dropping? You know what I mean? Like that’s really how you measure it? It’s not like oh, how many paintings did you sell?
Yes, it’s very important for us to sell artwork at Fuze, but really, what it is, it’s more about the connection. You know, it’s more about the collaborations that come from it, it’s more about the future opportunities that come out of what happens during that time frame, that when people come and go, “Oh, I saw these hundred artists at Fuze. I really want to come back later in the year because I know that this person is going to be doing this thing here. Oh, I didn’t realize that this person was living in Baltimore, and they’re going to have a show in Chicago, and I live in Chicago.”
Anastarcia: Yeah.
John: You know what I mean? Like—
Anastarcia: Yeah.
John: —that they realize that we’re not this, like, insular idea. You know?
Anastarcia: Yeah, I love that. Okay, thinking about the future, what are you most excited about in terms of art and culture for Bahama?
John: Well, Fuze, obviously. The future of that, seeing that grow and become more integrated throughout the year, not only in October. We have this new thing called the Recenter. It’s a studio that we are creating in the context of what we’re going to be calling Baha Mar Farms, which is out on Gladstone Road, which is, like, another compound, like, a mile-and-a-half away from the property. But the Recenter is a massive studio that we’re developing around sustainable creative practice.
So, it’s about recycled materials or what we refer to as free stock. Because one could imagine the amount of—I hesitate to use the term waste, but I’m just going to say waste because I don’t have a better term—well, free stock is our new waste term—the amount of free stock that comes from a place like this, the amount of glass bottles there are, the amount of plastic bottles, the amount of cardboard, the amount of linens, the amount of uniforms, the amount of old material from construction sites. I mean, this place is constantly something’s going on here all of the time. The plants, everything. And so, when you think about using that at the center of your creative practice—which is what a lot of artists do anyway—
It’s ironic because we talk about cardboard, right? Cardboard being so central to Junkanoo and different things like that. The amount of cardboard that Baha Mar receives through procurement, there’s people’s jobs that work here, all they do is, like, fold down cardboard boxes and, like, strap them together, and we can fill 40-foot containers with cardboard boxes, like, multiples in weeks. We could just fill them up and we send them back to different places where they can be used. We’re thinking about, like, what kind of center can we create that allows creatives, not just fine artists, but designers, to use this material in a utilitarian kind of way, in a creative space, in a whatever. I mean, you know what was interesting at the Venice Biennale? All of the plinths and all of the false walls at the Venice Biennale were cardboard.
Anastarcia: Wow.
John: Like I mean, such an ironic moment to be able to do that. So, that’s something new for us. Lots of things we have going on through the foundation, we have this real partnership with the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, which we hope to develop even further with more curatorial practice. And then, of course, there’s the ’28 Venice Biennale.
Anastarcia: Okay, so you’re looking at ’28.
John: One thousand.
Anastarcia: Okay. Okay, okay. Very exciting stuff happening in the future, John. This has been just an epic interview for me. I am not an artist, but I admire great art, and I think anybody that comes to Bahama and has the experience—and I want to challenge you if you’re watching this, you’re going to come and visit us soon, or you’re here now and you’re seeing this, to ask yourself why do you feel so good?
And yes, it’s the sun, and yes, it’s the beautiful water, but if you walk into a restaurant, you go into the jazz bar, there’s going to be an energy that you feel, and if you take a moment and try to understand why, it’s going to be the artwork around you. I absolutely believe that that’s what causes that energy. It’s what you’ve created in the space. So, now we’re going to do something really quick. I call it a quick fireside chat, but there’s no fire here. It’s just the sun, so it’s just a quick chat.
John: Okay.
Anastarcia: I’ve got to fire something at you, and you have to respond first thing that comes to mind. Got it? Okay. One Bahamian artist everyone should know.
John: Kendra Frorup.
Anastarcia: Okay. I love Kendra. Did you see her New York Fashion Week show with her sister? [singing Ohh.
John: She’s amazing. She’s everything.
Anastarcia: All right, one piece of art or artistic space at Baha Mar that every guest should experience?
John: I’m going to say the inside of Horse to Water.
Anastarcia: Inside of Horse to Water. Okay. And then what does beyond the stay mean to you?
John: The curiosity to want to know more about what the art brought to your experience when you were here.
Anastarcia: I love that. John, this has been really great. Thank you for your time.
John: Thank you.
Anastarcia: Thank you for your hoodie, man. Very cool.
John: [unintelligible 00:40:03].
Anastarcia: Hey, can people buy those in the Current?
John: Um… not yet.
Anastarcia: [laugh].
John: We’ll talk to you—we’ll talk more about that.
Anastarcia: Okay, yeah. Let’s make that—
John: At Fuze, I think we’re going to do some things to Fuze and then slowly trickle them out to the masses.
Anastarcia: Ok. Alright. I’m doing it for you. I’m doing it for you, the viewer. I’m getting a collection established, so whenever you’re here at Bahama again, you get to say—
John: We’ll do drops, you know? Like, here and there. And people will be—
Anastarcia: Yeah, boom. Like, every now and then.
John: Camping. That’s the idea.
Anastarcia: Yeah, yeah, that’s like—okay. I love it. We got a vision going. Thank you so much for being with us here on Beyond the Stay. It has been my absolute pleasure to bring to you—the—John Cox. The reason—one of the reasons—that you feel so inspired whenever you come to Baha Mar. Please go ahead and check out Horse to Water, as well as the many installations around the property. And we will see you next time. I’m Anastarcia. Until next time, bye.