Embracing AI Without Losing the Muse

The arts have always been subject to fear. Fear is not cowardice here; it’s sensitivity. When a new tool arrives, oil paint in tubes, the camera, offset printing, digital layout, artists and their institutions feel the vibration first. AI brings a different pitch. It is not just a new brush; it’s a swarm of invisible hands, answering questions we never asked, finishing sentences we never began and distorting authenticity if we are not careful. The unease is quite warranted.

Yet the most serious mistake the art world could make is to confuse discomfort with opinion. AI is not a value system; it is an accelerant. What it speeds up depends on what we put into it, our discipline or our shortcuts, our curiosity or our cynicism. The dilemma, then, is not whether to embrace AI, but how to keep our bearings while we do and not allow ourselves to be lazy.


The real fear beneath the headlines
The loudest anxieties about AI are the easiest to rebut. “It will erase the human hand.” “Everything will look the same.” “Clients will want perfection.” Beneath those worries sits a quieter one: will the audience still care if the mystery is gone? We sell more than objects and exhibitions; we steward meaning. The market may flutter over surface features, but audiences, in the end, remain faithful to intentionality, the chain of decisions that begins with a live question, ends with a work that holds, and a voice that is only yours and yours alone.

AI complicates that chain because it appears to shorten it. If anyone can conjure a thousand images in minutes, where is the value of the hard-won? The answer is: right where it has always been, in the choices a creative makes and stands behind. Authorship is not a performance of difficulty; it is a record of responsibility.


Georgia would have hated AI. Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, 2025. Ivan Barnett image.


Let the tool take its proper place
The temptation is to banish AI from the studio and the back office of the gallery. That would be a category error. We’ve always used tools to remove friction from the parts of the job that do not deserve our spirit. Nobody misses hand-setting type for wall labels; nobody romanticizes the bookkeeping error that costs an exhibition its break-even. We love the hand because of what it expresses, not because it does the filing.

The wise path is not abstinence, but placement. Keep AI backstage where it expands attention rather than replaces it; let it quicken the studies, clarify the press notes, steady the pricing, personalize the follow-up. Then return to the front of house, the studio table or easel, the white wall, the conversation with a collector, with the extra oxygen you’ve banked. The slow work remains slow. AI can be your assistant; it must never be your muse. Finally, like all tools, AI must be respected and fostered with your own voice.


Against the sheen
If AI feels alien in the gallery, it’s partly because so much of its output lacks personal intention. The uncanny gloss of a blemish-free image reads as a lie to the eye that has studied brushwork, grain, a pot’s shoulder where the slip ran, the faint tool mark that becomes a signature. The human gaze anchors itself in resistance: the moment where effort meets material and something unexpected and glorious happens.

Nothing requires us to adopt a machine’s taste. When the tool proposes something nonconflicting, we can decline. The presence of AI does not obligate us to a new aesthetic regime. In fact, its very “perfection” can renew our appetite for natural patina, if we are careful for asymmetry, for the wabi-sabi proof that time was here. If the future is glossy, curators and artists may have the delicious job of re-teaching the public how to see and feel the mark of the hand.


Santa Fe in the home of Meow Wolf, the rest is history, 2025. Image Ivan Barnett.


The gallery’s task: strengthen the quiet
Galleries do more than sell; they set the conditions for what viewers notice. In unsettled times, that condition should be braver, not safer. Pair the unexpected; give audiences the pleasure of intelligent risk.  And commission and encourage work that stretches an artist’s reach.

Courage without intention is performance. AI can strengthen the quiet structures that protect bravery: clear pipelines from inquiry to close, labels and checklists produced by data instead of fatigue, a record of which wall hooked the eye and which did not. These are not “growth hacks.” They are conditions for more important art to meet its audience without tripping on logistics. When the unglamorous parts run cleanly, the curatorial imagination has room to breathe. Just imagine our world without the “wheel.”


Provenance of choices
If there is one gift AI can offer the arts that we should accept is the discipline of documenting decisions. An artist keeps a simple account, e.g. what sparked the series, where a form turned, when they stopped, Certificates of Authenticity, and catalogues. A gallery notes why a certain pairing stayed on the wall, another pairing remained on the wall, and another pairing dropped builds organizational memory instead of repeating hunches.

The point is not to entomb mystery, but to respect it. An honest record of choices is how we justify price, defend curatorial judgment, and honor the makers who entrusted us with their work. Provenance, in the AI era, extends beyond ownership; it includes how we arrived here.


Phone home, ET. Santa Fe 2024. Image Ivan Barnett.


The economy of attention, not allegiance
We can also be frank about what AI is doing to attention. It scatters it. That is a reality, not a moral failure. The way to meet it is with sureness and clarity. Artists who offer coherent bodies of work that let a viewer deepen what they are seeing, will be rewarded. Galleries that design a first sightline that matters, and a second that rewards the linger, will convert curiosity to commitment. None of this is new; the stakes are simply higher. The audience is still human, still open, still hungry for a surprise that feels earned.


An ethics that looks like respect
The ethics of AI in the arts is not a riddle to be solved in one clause or one code. It is the daily practice of respect for the living artists whose labor should not be scraped without consent; for the historical record that deserves better than a prediction; and for the viewer who wants true transparency to trust. We can begin by being clear about what we used and why, by avoiding shortcuts, and by refusing to let expedience become a rule of thumb. Your AI assistant can even act as a collaborator of sorts.


You’ve got mail. AI will never replace a handwritten note. Canyon Road, Santa Fe, 2025.  Image Ivan Barnett.


What audiences will remember
When the history of this moment is written, it will not be a story about prompts. It will be a story about who stayed an authentic course. The artists who will matter are the ones who used the new tools to free time for the slow decisions, the stopping, the risking, the leap in form that could have failed but didn’t. The galleries that will matter are the ones that protected human courage with seasoned structure, that improved their discipline so they could afford to be surprised. “If time is money, so is AI.” Who doesn’t want to have a helper to do things that allow you to be in your studio more?


Serious Play’s wager
At Serious Play, we are not enamored of machines or technology; we are respectful of work. Our wager is simple: if we move the chores where they belong, into the background, we can return the foreground to more productive making, staging, seeing, and playing. AI is one of the ways we tidy the back room. It is that two-wheeled dolly that just saved your back and a half day of lifting.

For those in the arts who feel freaked out, you are not wrong to feel it. But fear is a poor curator. Keep your hand. Keep your standards. Let the tools, any tools, earn their keep by creating room for the things only you can do.

The dilemma is real; the path is clear. Embrace AI as infrastructure and support. Guard the meaning like a hawk. And give your audience what they came for: they came for the “you” that is indeed yours and only yours.



Serious Play’s purpose is to mentor artists and art organizations to tell more of their untold stories.

© Ivan Barnett 2025, All rights reserved.

 

About the author

Ivan Barnett
As co-founder and creative director of Patina Gallery, Ivan played a pivotal role in elevating artists’ careers and shaping the gallery’s international reputation. His expertise in gallery management, marketing, and exhibition planning allows him to support creatives in crafting sustainable careers. Through one-on-one coaching and curatorial support, he encourages artists to refine their narratives, embrace risk, and find deeper creative meaning.
Raised in a family of artists, Ivan was influenced by his father, Isa Barnett, a celebrated painter. After studying at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he pursued a career in painting, metalwork, sculpture, and mixed media. In 2023, he launched Serious Play, integrating mentorship with innovative business strategies to help artists refine their messaging and expand their careers.
Unlike most consultancies, Ivan’s empathetic and intuitive approach fosters creative dot connecting, collaboration and profound storytelling, proving that art is not just something we create—it’s something we are. Learning the art of playing seriously can transform and propel our lives toward new heights.

Serious Play, based in Santa Fe, NM, is a creative consultancy founded by Ivan Barnett, an artist, curator, and mentor with over five decades of experience in the art world. Ivan helps artists, galleries, and arts organizations navigate the complexities of creative careers by blending artistic exploration with strategic business acumen.
Serious Play’s purpose is to mentor artists and art organizations to tell more of their untold stories.

creativemornings.com/individuals/ivanbarnett
seriousplaysf@gmail.com