Even over a Zoom call, our interview with Hamilton Set Designer and Immersive Van Gogh New York Creative Director David Korins oozed with the energy and tempo of NYC. Joining us from the back seat of an Uber, David spoke with passion and panache about the New York art scene, working with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the secret subconscious powers of design, and his city’s notorious beef with LA. Serendipitously, his shameless praise of making art for the common denominator was even punctuated by an errant car horn.

Nonetheless, David’s razor-sharp wit and astounding breadth of insight are more than matched by the inspiring generosity behind his work as an artist and designer. On the one hand, his approach is steeped in humility toward the work of his collaborators—including Immersive Van Gogh Creator Massimiliano Siccardi and, in a sense, Van Gogh himself—along with a profound desire to carry that work to its greatest heights of innovation and exposure. On the other, he is also keenly attentive to the hopes and fears of New Yorkers as they pursue a slow exit from the devastation of COVID-19. Taken together, David’s words offer a simultaneously practical and idealistic approach to defining post-pandemic artistic experience—an offering all the more valuable in that it comes from a global epicentre of both the tragedies of this past year and the profound creativity through which we will survive it.