The Modern Art Notes Podcast: Recent Episodes
Tyler Green
The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a weekly, hour-long interview program featuring artists, historians, authors, curators and conservators. Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee called The MAN Podcast “one of the great archives of the art of our time.” When the US chapter of the International Association of Art Critics gave host Tyler Green one of its inaugural awards for criticism in 2014, it included a special citation for The MAN Podcast.
Episode No. 770 features former museum director, former Association of Art Museum Directors president, and Souls Grown Deep president Maxwell L. Anderson, and Oakland Museum of California director Lori Fogarty.
With the Trump administration and its Congressional allies having threatened, diminished, or attacked national cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, and increasingly the Smithsonian Institution, Anderson discusses whether the sector's response to government hostility has been appropriate. The first, and perhaps only museum to speak out after the most recent Trump administration attacks on Smithsonian museums and the directors was the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. (JANM will be hosting National Museum of American History director Anthea Hartig, the director the administration has most recently attacked, for a live program on August 22.) The Association of Art Museum Directors has not spoken about administration attacks on federal museum institutions since this December 2025 statement. The American Alliance of Museums "condemned" the Trump administrations attacks nearly two weeks after JANM issued its statement.
- Read and/or subscribe to Anderson's Art Scoping Substack.
Museums also do internal work to meet our moment. Fogarty joins the program to discuss how museums and their staffs best work within their community and in ways that advance their communities values, especially in ways that go beyond narrow, essentializing approaches to administration, exhibitions, and more.
- Read Fogarty's recent The Art Newspaper op-ed, "Museums are civic institutions. It's time we acted like it."
Air date: August 6, 2026.
Episode No. 769 features a conversation with Betye Saar recorded in 2016. Saar died on Sunday a few days short of her one hundredth birthday.
Saar, known especially for her use of assemblage and her often pioneering address of complicated and often troubling US, and diasporic African and Caribbean histories, was one of the most influential artists of the last 60 years. Generations of artists, including Saar's artist-daughters Lezley and Alison, have found Saar's work foundational.
Even though Saar was recognized around the world as among the most influential artists of late-twentieth and early twenty-first century United States, remarkably, shamefully, and revealingly, none of Saar's hometown art museums ever launched a retrospective of her work.
Saar was a guest on The Modern Art Notes Podcast in 2016 on the occasion of a survey of her work organized by De Domijnen (which was formerly known as Museum Het Domein) in Sittard, the Netherlands in partnership with Scottsdale (Ariz.) Museum of Contemporary Art. For images of artworks discussed in this conversation, see Episode No. 222.
Air date: July 30, 2026.
Episode No. 768 features artist Derrick Adams.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston is presenting "Derrick Adams: View Master" through September 7. It is the first mid-career survey of Adams' twenty-year career. The exhibition was curated by Dexter Wimberly and Tessa Bachi Haas. An Adams monograph was published by Monacelli in association with Gagosian, an art dealership chain, last year in anticipation of the exhibition.
Adams' work celebrates contemporary Black Life in works that emphasize joy and leisure. Among the institutions presenting solo exhibitions of his work are the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. His work is in collection of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Adams' hometown Baltimore Museum of Art.
Series of Adams' work discussed on the program:
- Floater;
- Figure in the Urban Landscape;
- Profile Pics; and
- Family Portraits.
Instagram: Derrick Adams, Tyler Green.
Air date: July 23, 2026.
Episode No. 767 features artist Young Joon Kwak and curator Laura Igoe.
Kwak is featured in the 2026 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Curated by Drew Sawyer and Marcela Guerrero with assistance from Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez, it's on view through August 23.
Kwak uses sculpture, performance, and collective action to explore bodily transformation, intimacy, and the politics of visibility. Through visually lush, often highly detailed sculptures, Kwak challenges traditional and dominant modes of representation while manifesting ways that trans and queer bodies might be seen. Kwak is the co-founder of Mutant Salon and lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner with Marvin Astorga. They have had solo exhibitions at museums such as the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York; and ARKO Art Center, Seoul. Kwak's work is in the collections of BAMPFA, the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Speed Art Museum, Louisville; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Igoe is the curator of "The Crossing: Picturing the American Revolution" at the Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Penn. The exhibition looks at how artists have represented Continental Army commander-in-chief George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776. Upon reaching the New Jersey side of the river, Washington and his troops would attack carousing Hessian mercenary soldiers fighting for the British, earning a pivotal victory for the Patriots. "The Crossing" is particularly interested in how artists have built on and 'refuted' Emanuel Leutze's famed 1851 Washington Crossing the Delaware, which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition is on view through January 10, 2027.
As discussed on the program:
- Kwak's Glitter Mani Festo.
Igoe was a guest on Episode No. 732, when she discussed her election to the Jenkintown, Penn. school board.
Instagram: Young Joon Kwak, Laura Igoe, Tyler Green.
Air date: July 16, 2026.
Episode No. 766 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Matthew Affron, Michelle Kuo, and Ann Temkin, and artist Nic Nicosia.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York is presenting "Marcel Duchamp" through August 22. The exhibition, the first Duchamp retrospective in the United States since 1973, features over 300 works from across Duchamp's career. The show was curated by Affron, Kuo, and Temkin, with assistance from with Alexandra "Lo" Drexelius, Helena Klevorn, Danielle Cooke, and Julia Vázquez. MoMA has published a catalogue for the show; Amazon offers it for $63.
The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas is showing "Nic Nicosia: Everyday Surreal" through August 16. The exhibition surveys the last 25 years of Nicosia's career (the period since a 1999-2000 mid-career retrospective) a time during which he has particularly focused on sculpture, films, and drawing. The exhibition was curated by Jed Morse. The Nasher has published a valuable catalogue of the exhibition. It is available from the museum.
Air date: July 9, 2026.
Episode No. 765 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Hew Locke.
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is presenting "Hew Locke: Passages," the first US survey of Locke's career, through September 13. Across sculpture, painting, photography and installations, Locke's work considers colonialism, its power, and the ways in which we respond to colonialism and its impacts. Locke, who is Guyanese-British, particularly focuses on British imperialism and how it was constructed, including through monarchy, trade, and (sometimes forced) migration. The show was curated by Martina Droth. The catalogue, which was edited by Droth and Allie Biswas, was published by the YCBA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $60-70. In-gallery materials are available here in both English and Spanish.
Locke's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Tate Britain, London, the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more.
In addition to the images below, here are links to works and exhibitions discussed on the program:
- Hew Locke, Ark, 1994.
- Hew Locke, Menace to Society (series), 1999-2001.
- Hew Locke, The Nameless, 2010.
- "Hew Locke: what have we here" at the British Museum;
- "A Conspiracy of Icons: The Art of Donald Locke," at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and
- "The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain" at the Hayward Gallery, London.
Instagram: Hew Locke, Tyler Green.
Air date: July 2, 2026.
Episode No. 764 features artist Louis Fratino.
The Baltimore Museum of Art is exhibiting "Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again" through September 6. The exhibition shows how Matisse -- specifically Baltimore's great Matisse collection -- has informed Fratino's painting. The exhibition was co-curated by Virginia Anderson and Katy Rothkopf.
Fratino, who earned his undergraduate degree at Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art, often depicts intimate personal spaces and experiences, usually by centering queer life and the male body. His work has been the subject of a solo show at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; he has been included in group exhibitions at museums such as the Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the RISD Museum, Providence; and the Columbus Museum of Art. His work is well-collected by art museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the MCA Chicago, and the MFA Houston.
Air date: June 25, 2026.
Episode No. 763 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Jes Fan.
The Yale University Art Gallery is presenting "Jes Fan: Unbounded" through June 28. The exhibition spotlights how Fan makes sculptures that combine elegant abstract forms with an experimental and innovative approach to materials. Fan's sculptures often explore the porousness of identity, and incorporate living matter, such hormones, and fluids, such as glass. Fan's work has been exhibited in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, the 2022 Venice Biennale, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and more.
As mentioned on the program:
- Stills from Fan's 2023 video Palimpsest.
- Byung-Chul Han's book Saving Beauty.
For more images, see Episode No. 658.
Episode No. 762 features artist John Akomfrah.
The Menil Collection, Houston is showing "John Akomfrah: The Hour of The Dog" through October 11. The work, co-commissioned by the Menil and the Baltimore Museum of Art, explores the history of the US civil rights movement between 1954 and 1963. The presentation was curated by Michelle White and Cecilia Wichmann.
Akomfrah is one of the world's most celebrated film-based artists. His work often investigates memory, colonialism, diaspora, and the intersection of time and aesthetics. He has had solo exhibitions at several Smithsonian museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and at the Tate Britain. He represented the UK in the 2024 Venice Biennale, a year after the UK honored him with a knighthood.
This is Akomfrah's third time on the program. His previous visits were on Episode No. 332 and Episode No. 339.
Air date: June 11, 2026.
Episode No. 761 features artists Denzil Forrester and William Wylie.
Forrester is featured in "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through September 20. The exhibition explores and expands the visual, political, and spiritual histories of dancehall and reggaetón through contemporary art produced in the Caribbean, New York, London, and beyond. It was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Cecilia González Godino, Iris Colburn, Nolan Jimbo, and nibia pastrana santiago. A catalogue will be published by the museum and DelMonico Books in July. It is available from Bookshop and Amazon for $60-65.
The Grenada-born Forrester is best known for paintings that mine London's dub reggae culture and music clubs of the 1980s for subject and verve. The drawings he made in urban dance halls then continue to inform his work. His paintings are full of references to diaspora, the policing of Black people and culture in the UK, and dub reggae music itself. White Columns, New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City have presented solo exhibitions of his work in the US; in the UK, Nottingham Contemporary, the Jackson Foundation Gallery, Cornwall have too. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Tate, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Wylie's new photobook is titled "The Eighty-Eight: Photographs from a Japanese Pilgrimage." It features pictures from Wylie's experience fo the Shikoku Pilgrimage, a trail that vists 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) on the island of Shikoku. The book was published by George F. Thompson Publishing in association with the Center for the Study of Place, and features an essay by Pico Iyer. Amazon offers it for about $42. This is Wylie's seventh book. His pictures are in the collection of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Air date: June 4, 2026.
Episode No. 760 features curators Marko Daniel and Elsa Smithgall, and curator Rachel Vogel.
With Matthew Gale and Dolors Rodríguez Roig, Daniel and Smithgall are the co-curators of "Miró and the United States" at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. The exhibition explores the exchanges between Joan Miró and the mid-twentieth-century US art scene. Not only did Miró have retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1941 and 1959, but he traveled to the US seven times between 1947 and 1968, when he made a point of seeing US art and visiting US artists. The exhibition at the Phillips is on view through July 5. The Phillips and the Fundació Joan Miró have published a catalogue; the Phillips offers it for $65.
As discussed on the program:
- Alexander Calder, Calder's Circus, 1926-31;
- "High Wire: Calder's Circus at 100" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
- Joan Miró's Constellations, 1940-41;
- Joan Miró, Blue Triptych, 1961; and
- "Miró Mural," exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948;
Vogel is the curator of "Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground," a survey of Parasol Press' 1970-2014 output at the Addison Art Gallery, Andover, Mass. Robert Feldman's Parasol Press came to significance by working with minimalist and conceptualist artist such as Dorothea Rockburne, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Sol LeWitt, Chuck Close, and more. The exhibition is on view through July 31.
Instagram: Rachel Vogel, Tyler Green.
Air date: May 28, 2026.
Episode No. 759 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Sarah Humphreville.
With Eric Crosby, Humphreville is the co-curator of "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery." The exhibition surveys Abercrombie's synthesis of surrealism, landscape, portraiture and still-life, and is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date. It is at the Milwaukee Art Museum through July 19. An excellent catalogue was co-published by the Carnegie, Colby, and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
Instagram: Sarah Humphreville, Tyler Green.
Air date: May 21, 2026.
Episode No. 758 features artists Leasho Johnson and Laura Facey.
Both artists are featured in "Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through September 20. The exhibition explores and expands the visual, political, and spiritual histories of dancehall and reggaetón through contemporary art produced in the Caribbean, New York, London, and beyond. It was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Cecilia González Godino, Iris Colburn, Nolan Jimbo, and nibia pastrana santiago. A catalogue will be published by the museum and DelMonico Books in July. It is available from Bookshop and Amazon for $60-65.
Johnson's paintings explore Black queer identity, Caribbean folklore, and post-colonial narratives. His pictures find meaning in the space between figuration and abstraction, and between Jamaican cultural heritage and broader art histories. His exhibition credits include the 2025 Liverpool biennial at the Walker Art Gallery and group shows at the Leslie Lohman Museum, New York, the Portland (Me.) Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Jamaica. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Facey is a Jamaica-based sculptor whose work addresses the land around her and the histories it holds. Her work often seeks what Facey calls "a healthy alchemy" for people and the earth. She has shown at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, the Havana biennial, and at the National Gallery of Jamaica. Her 2003 Redemption Song is sited in Kingston, Jamaica's Emancipation Park. A career-spanning monograph of her work will be published later this year.
Instagram: Leasho Johnson, Laura Facey, Tyler Green.
Air date: May 14, 2026.
Episode No. 757 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features art historian and curator Yve-Alain Bois.
Bois is the curator of "Matisse in Vence: The Stations of the Cross," at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibition presents about 80 of the drawings Matisse made for the painted ceramic mural of the Stations of the Cross at the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence. The exhibition reveals how Matisse worked through each of the Stations to arrive at a syncretic, dramatic presentation. Bois was assisted by Alix Agret and Katy Rothkopf. The exhibition, which is on view through June 28, is accompanied by a fascinating, essential catalogue published by Musée Matisse Nice and Bernard Chauveau Publishing. It is available from the BMA for $35.
Instagram: Yve-Alain Bois, Tyler Green.
Air date: May 7, 2026.
Episode No. 756 features author Victoria Johnson and curator Emily A. Beeny.
Johnson is the author of "Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World," the first major biography of the most important and influential painter in the US nineteenth century. The book will be published by Scribner next week. Johnson's book tells the story of Church's life, and especially his travels even as she explains how Church's work engaged with the scientific and political worlds of his time. It is likely to be the authoritative source on Church's life for decades to come. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.
Beeny is the curator of "Manet & Morisot," an exploration of the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, now at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The show particularly focuses on the 15 years between 1868 and 1883, when Manet and Morisot shared perhaps the closest relationship of any two impressionists. It's on view in Cleveland through July 5. A fine catalogue was published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $57-70.
Instagram: Victoria Johnson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 755 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Jess T. Dugan and author D.B. Dowd.
Radius Books is publishing "Jess T. Dugan & Charlotte Cotton: Love Pictures," a collaboration featuring Dugan's photographs and conversations with Cotton and members of Cotton's and Dugan's communities, such as Dawoud Bey, Kate Palmer Albers, and Michelle Millar Fisher. Radius, Amazon, and Bookshop offer the two-volume publication for about $75.
Dugan is a St. Louis-based artist whose work explores subjects such as personhood, relationship, desire, and love. Their work is in the collection of over 70 museums. The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the University of New Mexico Art Museum are among the institutions that have presented solo exhibitions of Dugan's work. This is Dugan's sixth book.
Dowd is the author of "Reading Pictures: A History of Illustration," which was just published by Princeton University Press. "Reading Pictures" details how, for many centuries, illustration has often worked between written, published text and art history to advance ideas and ideologies. Princeton, Amazon, and Bookshop offer it for $52-60.
Instagram: Jess T. Dugan, D.B. Dowd, Tyler Green.
Air date: April 23, 2026.
Episode No. 754 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features author Andrew Graham-Dixon and artist Rachel Burgess.
Graham-Dixon is the author of "Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found," which was just published by WW Norton. The book, a biography-ish of one of the most famous and elusive artists of the Dutch seventeenth century, offers exciting new ideas about Vermeer's life and presents new arguments about why and for whom Vermeer made most of his paintings. Amazon and Bookshop offer "Vermeer" for $35-42.
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University is showing "Rachel Burgess: Particles and Waves" through June 6. The exhibition presents Burgess' recent large-scale works on paper, typically monotypes, that depict landscapes and domestic scenes. Burgess has been included in group shows at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and more.
Instagram: Andrew Graham-Dixon, Rachel Burgess, Tyler Green.
Air date: April 16, 2026.
Episode No. 753 features artist Delilah Montoya and author Mario T. García.
Montoya's work is featured in three major exhibitions around the US this season. The Albuquerque Museum is featuring "Delilah Montoya: Activating Chicana Resistance," the first retrospective of Montoya's forty-year career. The exhibition, which was curated by Josie Lopez, is on view through May 3. A valuable catalogue was published by University of New Mexico Press and the Albuquerque Museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $32.
Two significant historical group shows also foreground Montoya's work. At the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Montoya is featured in "Hyphen American: Intersections of Identity." The exhibition, which pointedly rejects increasing right-wing claims that the US is, or should be an ethnostate, presents the many ways identity is presented and interrogated in our art. The excellent exhibition catalogue, which was published in the four languages most commonly spoken in Lincoln (English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Arabic), was published by the museum. "Hyphen American" was curated by Christian Wurst and is on view through July 5.
Artists in the exhibition who have been guests on The Modern Art Notes Podcast include Radcliffe Bailey, Binh Danh, Catherine Opie, Alec Soth, and Renée Stout.
The Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture are showing Montoya in "Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026." The exhibition shows how 45 artists have used their camera as a tool of representation, empowerment, and change over the past 60 years. It is the first major survey of Chicano/a/x lens-based image making. "Chicano Camera Culture" was curated by Elizabeth Ferrer. It's on view at the Riverside Art Museum through July 5, and at The Cheech through September 6. The excellent catalogue was published by The Cheech and is distributed by University of Washington Press. It is available from Amazon for $44.
Artists in the exhibition who have been guests on The Modern Art Notes Podcast include Christina Fernandez and Ken Gonzales-Day.
Montoya is one of the major figures in the development of Chicana art in the United States. Her community-oriented work addresses colonialism, identity, land, feminine power, and justice. It is held by museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the New Mexico Museum of Art.
García is the author of "Rupert García: The Making of an American Artist, a Testimonio," which was just published by Rutgers University Press. It is the first biography of the Chicano artist Rupert García. The book, which is informed by 50 hours of interviews conducted over 30 years, is illustrated by 80 artworks. It is immediately the major volume on García's career. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $31-33.
Instagram: Delilah Montoya, Tyler Green.
Air date: April 9, 2026.
Episode No. 752 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Melvin Edwards.
Edwards, one of the most important and influential sculptors of his generation, the rare artist whose work simultaneously addressed the past, the present, and the future, died on March 30. He was 88.
This program was taped in 2015 when the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas opened the major retrospective "Melvin Edwards: Five Decades." It was the first Edwards museum retrospective in 20 years, and the most thorough. "Five Decades" was organized by Catherine Craft. It included a re-creation of Edwards' important 1970 installation of barbed-wire sculptures at the Whitney Museum of American Art, dozens of Edwards' best-known works, his 'lynch fragments' series, and more.
The show traveled to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers and to the Columbus Museum of Art. The show's excellent catalogue was published by the Nasher and appears to have sold out. Amazon offers it used for about $100.
The Nasher's website features a Q&A between Craft and Edwards that host Tyler Green mentions on the program. For images, see Episode No. 170.
Episode No. 751 features artist Kahlil Robert Irving and curator Rebecca Head Trautmann.
Irving is included in "Monuments," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition juxtaposes decommissioned Lost Cause monuments with artworks that address the histories the Lost Cause aimed to whitewash. "Monuments" features two Irvings: New Nation (States) Battle of Manassas - 2014, 2024-25; and Viewfinder, 2024 which address the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri and its aftermath. The exhibition, which is on view through May 3, was curated by Hamza Walker, Kara Walker, and Bennett Simpson with Hannah Burstein and Paula Kroll. The museum says that a catalogue is forthcoming.
Irving has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis; he's been featured in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and more. He was also a guest on Episode No. 591 in 2023.
Trautmann is the curator of "Water's Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe" at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. "Water's Edge" is the first career-length survey of Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) artist. It is on view through January 1, 2027. Smithsonian Books published a catalogue of the exhibition; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $33-37.
Instagram: Kahlil Robert Irving, Tyler Green.
Air date: March 26, 2026.
Episode No. 750 (!!!) is a clips episode featuring artist Jo Ann Callis.
Starting in the early 1970s, Callis has constructed both black-and-white and color photographs that consider, sex, sexuality, pleasure and more pleasure. This program was taped in 2014 when Aperture published "Other Rooms," a book of Callis' investigations of the nude body and sexuality, mostly from the mid-1970s. Last year Luhz Press published "Jo Ann Callis - Dish Trick," featuring Callis pictures that explores the emotions latent in the objects of the home. Luhz lists it at $45; Amazon offers it for $80.
Callis is a leading feminist artist and one of the most important photographers of her generation. In 2009 the J. Paul Getty Museum presented a retrospective of her work titled "Woman Twirling." Callises are in the permanent collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Air date: March 19, 2026.
Episode No. 749 features curator Mari Carmen Ramírez and Isabelle Frances McGuire.
Ramírez is the curator of "Frida: The Making of an Icon" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition reveals how Frida Kahlo went from virtually unknown to mainstream audiences at the time of her death in 1954 to becoming famed as both an artist and as a kind of celebrity icon. Among the factors it identifies are North American geopolitics, the role of culture in the promotion of nationhood, tourism, and international trade, and more. "Frida" features more than 30 works by Kahlo and 120 more by five generations of artists she inspired. It is on view at the MFAH through May 17. A fascinating catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60.
McGuire is included in the 2026 biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The show was curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez. It's on view through August 23. This segment was taped when McGuire was included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's "Descending the Staircase" exhibition in 2024. McGuire is a Chicago-based artist whose work considers the body and how our understanding of it can be filtered by video games, film, animatronics, and other technologies. The 2024 MCA Chicago exhibition marked her first inclusion in a museum exhibition; since then McGuire has shown at Artist's Space, New York, and at the Renaissance Society, Chicago. For images see Episode No. 648.
Instagram: Isabelle Frances McGuire, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 748 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Shawnya L. Harris and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll.
Harris and Richmond-Moll are the curators of "Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The exhibition presents the life and work of nineteenth-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis in the context of her contemporaries and artists she may have influenced. The exhibition is on view through June 7. A valuable catalogue was published by the Peabody Essex Museum and Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
Episode No. 748 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Shawnya L. Harris and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll.
Harris and Richmond-Moll are the curators of "Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The exhibition presents the life and work of nineteenth-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis in the context of her contemporaries and artists she may have influenced. The exhibition is on view through June 7. A valuable catalogue was published by the Peabody Essex Museum and Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
As discussed on the program:
- Gisela Torres, Reverie and Slumber, 2020.
Instagram: Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Tyler Green.
Air date: March 5, 2026.
Episode No. 747 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Bethany Collins and curator Edouard Kopp.
Collins is included in "Monuments," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition juxtaposes decommissioned Lost Cause monuments with commissioned artworks that address the histories the Lost Cause aimed to whitewash. Collins' contribution to the project is Love is dangerous (2024-25), a sculptural installation that remakes the base of the Stonewall Jackson monument that was installed in Charlottesville, Virginia. The exhibition, which is on view through May 3, was curated by Hamza Walker, Kara Walker, and Bennett Simpson with Hannah Burstein and Paula Kroll. The museum says that a catalogue is forthcoming.
On March 5 the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver opens "Bethany Collins: The Deluge," a presentation of Collins works that each address -- and navigate -- an existential storm. Across several media, Collins addresses major literary works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Sophocles' Antigone -- and the US songbook too. The exhibition was curated by Leilani Lynch and is on view through July 5.
Among the many museums presenting solo exhibitions of Collins' work are the Seattle Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Van Every and Smith Galleries at Davidson College, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University.
Edouard Kopp is the curator of "Wall Drawing Series: Gladys Nilsson" at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The site-specific exhibition features an enormous Nilsson drawing that features fantastical, hybrid beings surrounding one monumental figure engaged in the act of drawing. It's on view through August 9. Nilsson's work has been the subject of dozens of exhibitions, including a 1973 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Instagram: Bethany Collins, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 746 features artist Brian Rochefort and curator Catherine Craft.
Rochefort is among the artists included in "Made in L.A. 2025," the biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. The exhibition was curated by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow and is on view through March 1.
Rochefort's ceramic sculptures are informed by abstract painting, the earth's geology, and more. Over the last decade he has shown at commercial galleries in the US, Greece, Italy, Belgium, France, and more. His work is in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.
Craft is the curator of "Rauschenberg Sculpture" at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The exhibition presents highlights from Rauschenberg's three-dimensional practice and is on view through April 26.
Instagram: Brian Rochefort, Catherine Craft, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 745 is a holiday weekend clips show featuring artist Christina Fernandez.
Fernandez is included in "Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966-2026" at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum. The exhibition explores the evolution of Chicana/o/x lens-based practices through over 150 pictures made across six decades. The exhibition is on view at both RAM locations, and will remain at The Cheech through September 6, and at RAM's Julia Morgan-designed building through July 5. through It was curated by Elizabeth Ferrer.
Concurrently, Fernandez's 2002 Lavanderia #2 is on view in the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection galleries. The NGA holds at least six pictures from the series.
This episode was taped in 2023 on the occasion of the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles' post-renovation-and-expansion debut exhibition "Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer's Contemporary Collection," and as the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth was showing "Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures," a survey of Fernandez's career.
For images, see Episode No. 602.
Air date: February 12, 2026.
Episode No. 744 features artist Blas Isasi and curators Larissa Grollemond and Elizabeth Morrison, and artist Harmonia Rosales.
Tomorrow, February 6, the Saint Louis Art Museum opens "Currents 125: Blas Isasi." The exhibition presents sculptures informed by ancient Andean cosmology and the Peruvian desert landscape, as well as the violent collision between Indigenous Andeans and colonizing Europeans. The exhibition was curated by Simon Kelly, and is on view through August 9. SLAM's exhibition brochure is available here.
Isasi is a Peruvian sculptor who lives in the United States. He has previously shown in Prospect 6 in New Orleans (parts of that exhibition traveled to the MCA Denver), at SHED Projects, Cleveland, and at The Front, New Orleans.
Grollemond and Morrison are the curators of "Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through April 19, looks at how creation stories have been advanced in manuscript painting. The exhibition also includes works by Harmonia Rosales, whose work often engages Christian creation stories, how they were presented in the middle ages, and how they might be offered today.
Rosales, whose work centers Black women in reconsiderations of Western art, has been included in group shows at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Instagram: Blas Isasi, Larissa Grollemond, Harmonia Rosales, Tyler Green.
Air date: February 5, 2026.
Episode No. 743 features author and art historian William E. Wallace.
Wallace is the author of Michelangelo & Titian, which will be published by Princeton University Press on February 3. The book examines what Michelangelo and Titian saw in each other's work, how they spoke to each other in paintings and sculptures, and details their two meetings. Wallace's narrative animates the many relationships with church officials, collectors, and intellectuals that the two men had in common, providing insight into their world and the many ways in which the two artists may have addressed each other in their art. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $19-33.
Wallace was previously on Episode No. 439 to discuss Michelangelo, God's Architect.
Air date: January 29, 2026.
Episode No. 742 features artist Woody De Othello, and artists Jason Garcia, Michael Namingha, and curator Bess Murphy.
The Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting "Woody De Othello: coming forth by day," a presentation of new ceramic and wood sculptures, tiled wall works, and a large-scale bronze, all of which explore the primordial relationship between body, earth, and spirit. The exhibition was organized by Jennifer Inacio with the support of Fabiana A. Sotillo. It is on view in Miami through June 28 after which it will travel to the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis.
Othello's sculpture, painting, and drawing often investigate the still life genre. His previous institutional solo exhibition was at The Bowes Museum in the UK. Museums that have featured his work in group shows include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Seattle Art Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Whitney Museum of American Art included him in its 2022 biennial. Later this year, his work will be featured in a Public Art Fund solo presentation in Brooklyn's Brooklyn Bridge Park. He is an artist trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Garcia and Murphy are the co-curators of "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country" at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Namingha is among the 13 artists in the exhibition, 12 of whom are from the six Tewa Pueblos of northern New Mexico (Nambé, Ohkay Owingeh, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and Tesuque). "Tewa Nangeh" presents the work of Tewa artists while highlighting O'Keeffe's erasure of Tewa people. It is on view through September 7.
Garcia's work is in the collection of museums such as the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
Namingha's work is also on view through April 5 at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe in "Essential Elements: Art, Environment, and Indigenous Futures." The El Paso Museum of Art and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe have featured solo exhibitions of his work; he's been in group shows at museums such as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Instagram: Woody De Othello, Jason Garcia, Michael Namingha, Tyler Green.
Air date: January 22, 2026.
Episode No. 741 features curator Ed Schad and critic Gabriella Nugent.
Schad is the curator of "Robert Therrien: This is a Story" at The Broad in Los Angeles. The retrospective presents Therrien's meditations on scale and material, while revealing Therrien's repeatedly mined vocabulary of forms and symbols. The exhibition is on view through April 5. The Broad published a fine catalogue to accompany the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
Nugent is a London-based art historian and curator who routinely publishes essays in Burlington Contemporary and Art Monthly. She particularly discusses her recent essay "On the problem of artists' biographies in exhibitions," which was published in Burlington Contemporary in December 2025.
Instagram: Ed Schad, Gabriella Nugent, Tyler Green.
Air date: January 15, 2026.
Episode No. 740 features artist Firelei Báez and curators Charlene Foggie-Barnett and Dan Leers.
The MCA Chicago is presenting "Firelei Báez," the first North American mid-career survey of the artist's paintings and installations. Báez's work often explores the legacies of colonialism across the American and the African diaspora, in the Caribbean, and beyond. Her works are often explosively colorful and use complex and layered materials, including archival material and paint, to unsettle fixed categories and historical events. The exhibition was curated by Eva Respini with Tessa Bachi Haas; the MCA Chicago presentation was organized by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Cecelia González Godino and Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 31. A catalogue was published by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in association with DelMonico Books. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $36-56.
Institutions that have previously presented major Báez exhibitions include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, The Momentary in Bentonville, Ark., the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Foggie-Barnett and Leers are the co-curators of "Black Photojournalism" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The exhibition presents work by nearly 60 photographers chronicling historic events and daily life in the United States between 1945 and 1984. The exhibition was designed by David Hartt. It is on view through January 19, before traveling to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60.
In addition to the video below, the CMOA has produced an outstanding podcast series to accompany the show.
Instagram: Firelei Báez, Charlene Foggie-Barnett, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 739 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Dara Birnbaum.
Birnbaum, a pioneering titan of video art, passed away this year at 78. "Her work is now displayed in museum collections around the world as the example of feminist video art," wrote curator and critic Karen Archey in an Artforum obituary.
Birnbaum's work often included pointedly feminist critiques of mass media, including of entertainment and journalism. Retrospectives of her work include "The Dark Matter of Media Light" at SMAK, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, and "Dara Birnbaum Retrospective exhibition" at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria and at the Norrtalje Konsthall in Sweden.
Several of the Birnbaums discussed on this program are available online, including:
- Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79);
- Kiss The Girls: Make Them Cry (1979) (clip);
- Canon: Taking to the Street (1990) (clip); and
- Walkthrough of Psalm 29(30) (2016) at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris.
This program was recorded in 2017 when Dara Birnbaum's Local TV News Analysis (1980), which Birnbaum made with Dan Graham, was included in "Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition examined how artists have used newspapers, magazines and televised news programs to consider media, news and the messages included therein. The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs.
Air date: January 1, 2026.
Episode No. 738 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Wafaa Bilal.
Earlier this year the MCA Chicago presented "Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me," the first major survey of Bilal's work. Across his genres-busting career, the Iraqi-American Bilal has made performances, sculptures and related digital presentations that have interrogated the United States' relationship with and conduct within Iraq, the Middle East, and broader geopolitics. Bilal's work also investigates the notion of cultural cannibalism, the ways in which the culture of one people may be used, disassembled, and consumed by another. "Indulge Me" was curated by Bana Kattan. An invaluable catalogue was published by the MCA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $20-32.
Bilal's work is in the collections of museums as unalike as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE; the Art Gallery at NYU Abu Dhabi; and the 2015 Venice Biennale.
For images, please see Episode No. 704.
Instagram: Wafaa Bilal, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 737 features curators Beverly Adams and Jamillah James.
With Christophe Cherix, Adams is the co-curator of "Wifredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition includes more than 130 works made between the 1920s and 1970s, making it the most extensive Lam retrospective presented in the United States. "When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" argues that Lam, a Cuban-born artist who spent much of his life in Spain, France, and Italy, was a prototypical transnational artist. It is on view in New York through April 11, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-70.
Jamillah James has organized the presentation of "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition is one of the most comprehensive presentations to date of the pioneering Fluxus artist, musician, and world peace activist. "Music of the Mind" includes over 200 works across a vast array of media, including performance footage, music and sound recording, film, photography, installation, and more. It is on view at the MCA through February 22, 2026. An exhibition catalogue was published in North America by Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $38-47.
Air date: December 18, 2025.
Episode No. 736 features artist Dyani White Hawk.
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is presenting "Dyani White Hawk: Love Language," a 15-year survey of White Hawk's career. The exhibition spotlights how White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) has foregrounded Lakota forms and motifs to challenge prevailing histories and practices around abstract art. The exhibition was curated by Siri Engberg and Tarah Hogue with Brandon Eng. The Walker has published an excellent catalogue; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $50. After closing at the Walker on February 15, "Love Language" will travel to the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
White Hawk's work is in the collection of institutions such as the Walker, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
White Hawk was previously a guest on Episode No. 610 of The MAN Podcast.
Instagram: Dyani White Hawk, Tyler Green.
Air date: December 11, 2025.
Episode No. 735 features curators Dan Nadel and Laura Phipps, and curator Alexander J. Noelle.
With Elizabeth Sussman and Scott Rothkopf, Nadel and Phipps are the co-curators of "Sixties Surreal" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition works to complicate the march of -isms which, outside the academy and too few art museums, has too often ossified into the the era's US art history. "Sixties Surreal" offers some of the ways in which artists working around the US (and not only in New York or for its market) mined surrealist thought and theory to help them reckon with the era's sociopolitical extremes. The exhibition is on view through January 19, 2026. The thought-provoking exhibition catalogue was published by the Whitney. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40-45. Also, Nadel and Phipps have made a 113-song Spotify playlist to accompany the show.
The Cleveland Museum of Art's remarkable autumn of major Italian Renaissance presentations continues with Noelle's "Filippino Lippi and Rome," a look at the Florentine's painter's work in and informed by travel to Rome. The impetus for the exhibition was Cleveland's own tondo The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret (ca. 1488-93), a masterpiece and the only known independent work that Filippino produced in Rome. Filippino is the son of the famed Fra Filippo Lippi, and apprenticed and collaborated with Sandro Botticelli before working on his own. "Lippi and Rome" is on view through February 22, 2026. A superb catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40. Several months ago the Cleveland Museum of Art debuted Giambologna's Fata Morgana, a high-profile acquisition of a rare Giambologna marble sculpture.
Instagram: Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Alexander J. Noelle, and Tyler Green.
Episode No. 734 is a Thanksgiving weekend clips program featuring artist Aliza Nisenbaum.
The Des Moines Art Center is presenting "Aliza Nisenbaum: Día de los Muertos" through January 11, 2026. For the latest iteration of DMAC's annual Día de los Muertos celebration, and as the museum's Toni and Tim Urban International Artist-in-Residence, Nisenbaum created five paintings. The presentation was curated by Beth Gollnick.
Earlier this fall, the Obama Presidential Center announced that it had commissioned a mural from Nisenbaum. Titled Reading Circles/ Weaving Dreams/ Seeding Futures, the mural will depict moments of civic life within a public library, offering a living portrait of community in action.
This episode was taped in 2021. For images, please see Episode No. 522.
Instagram: Aliza Nisenbaum, Tyler Green.
Air date: November 26/27, 2025.
Episode No. 733 features curators Diana Seave Greenwald and Megan Fontanella.
With Christina Michelon, Greenwald is the co-curator of "Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Boston Athenaeum. Both presentations are on view through January 19, 2026. (Theodore Landsmark co-curated the ISGM presentation.) The exhibition surveys the career of Boston-based Crite, whose work spotlighted Boston neighborhoods such as Lower Roxbury and the South End, the challenges they faced from gentrification and so-called urban renewal, and Christianity. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the two institutions. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42.
Fontanella is the curator of "Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Across more than 50 paintings and almost 20 photographs, the exhibition survey's Münter's work and finds that it was involved in avant-garde presentations of landscape, still life, and portraiture. Fontanella curated the photography section of the exhibition with Victoria Horrocks. "Contours of a World" is on view through April 26, 2026. A catalogue was published by the Guggenheim. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55.
Instagram: Diana Seave Greenwald, Megan Fontanella, Tyler Green.
Air date: November 20, 2025.
Episode No. 732 features artist Igshaan Adams and curator and Jenkintown, Penn. school board-electee Laura Igoe.
The Hill Art Foundation, New York is presenting "Igshaan Adams: I've been here all along, I've been waiting" through December 20, 2025. The exhibition features work from the last 15 years of Adams' practice, and emphasizes how his work engages and serves his community. Adams tapestries and sculptures build from weaving traditions to make the routine, even mundane the subject of rich, detailed artworks. On the occasion of the exhibition, the Hill Art Foundation has published this essay by Siddhartha Mitter.
Adams grew up in a Muslim-Christian household in the segregated suburb of Bonteheuwel in apartheid-era South Africa, and employs Bonteheuwel residents and family members in his studio. His work has been the subject of solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Art Institute of Chicago; Kunsthalle Zurich, the Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark; and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work is in the permanent collection of museums such as the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Tate Modern, London, and Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil.
Discussed on the program:
- Adams' 2016 exhibition "Oorskot" at Blank Projects, Cape Town; and
- Adams' 2022 exhibition "Desire Lines" at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Igoe, the chief curator of the Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Penn. was just elected to the Jenkintown, Penn. school board.
Instagram: Igshaan Adams, Laura Igoe, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 731 features artist Hew Locke.
The Yale Center for British Art is presenting "Hew Locke: Passages," the first US survey of Locke's career. Across sculpture, painting, photography and installations, Locke's work considers colonialism, its power, and the ways in which we respond to colonialism and its impacts. Locke, who is Guyanese-British, particularly focuses on British imperialism and how it was constructed, including through monarchy, trade, and (sometimes forced) migration. The exhibition, which is on view through January 11, 2026, was curated by Martina Droth. The catalogue, which was edited by Droth and Allie Biswas, was published by the YCBA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $60-70. In-gallery materials are available here in both English and Spanish.
Locke's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Tate Britain, London, the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more.
In addition to the images below, here are links to works and exhibitions discussed on the program:
- Hew Locke, Ark, 1994.
- Hew Locke, Menace to Society (series), 1999-2001.
- Hew Locke, The Nameless, 2010.
- "Hew Locke: what have we here" at the British Museum;
- "A Conspiracy of Icons: The Art of Donald Locke," at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and
- "The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain" at the Hayward Gallery, London.
Instagram: Hew Locke, Tyler Green.
Air date: November 6, 2025.
Episode No. 730 features author Amy Newman.
Newman is the author of Barnett Newman: Here a biography out this week from Princeton University Press. The book presents Newman as devoted to art but initially unsure of what a Newman would be, as a dedicated, almost blindered New Yorker, and as an artist intensely interested in what US art had to contribute to the US national and global project. Amazon and Bookshop offer Newman for around $40. (It will be available in the UK in January 2026. Amy Newman and Barnett Newman are not related.)
Newman is the author of the author of Challenging Art: "Artforum" 1962–1974 and the editor, with Irving Sandler, of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
Works discussed on the program include:
- Black With Yellow (Euclidian Abyss), 1946-47;
- Onement I, 1948;
- Two Edges, 1948;
- Onement VI, 1953;
- Here I, 1950; and
- Broken Obelisk, 1963-69.
Instagram: Amy Newman, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 729 features artists Justin Favela and David-Jeremiah.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery is presenting a commission from Favela titled Capilla de Maíz (Maize Chapel) through a not-yet determined date. The Favela makes the Renwick's grand salon gallery a fantastical space, complete with shimmering gold-fringed walls and piñata corncobs that highlight the role of maize in North American visual culture. It accompanies "State Fairs: Growing American Craft," an exhibition that details artists' contribution to the US tradition of state fairs that is on view at the Renwick through September 7, 2026. (The Renwick is temporarily closed because Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill have shut down the federal government.)
Favela's work typically investigates Mexican or Latin American craft practices, especially cartoneria (more commonly known as piñata making). His work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, the Des Moines Art Center, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and more.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "David-Jeremiah: The Fire this Time" through November 2. The exhibition presents a group of vertical assemblages of black and other polychromatic paintings on shaped wood that form an installation. The twenty-eight works stand over ten feet tall. The primary configuration surrounds viewers completely before giving way to a final suite of paintings featuring abstract assemblages that include references to fire. The exhibition was curated by Christopher Blay. A catalogue is available from MAMFW.
David-Jeremiah's work reflects the artist's experience of Black masculinity in America. Previous David-Jeremiah solo exhibitions have been at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., and the Houston Museum of African American Culture; he has participated in group shows at institutions such as Project Row Houses, Houston. In 2020, David-Jeremiah received a Nasher Sculpture Center Artist Grant Award.
Instagram: Justin Favela, David-Jeremiah, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 728 features curators Anna Lovatt and Kelly Montana, and artist/curator Pablo Helguera.
Lovatt and Montana are the curators of "Lines of Resolution: Drawing at the Advent of Television and Video" at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The exhibition examines the intersection of drawing, television, and video from the late 1950s into the 1980s. "Lines of Resolution" features the work of 25 artists, including Nam June Paik, Howardena Pindell, Sigmar Polke, and Joan Jonas. It is on view through February 8, 2026. A fascinating catalogue was published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35-40.
In addition to the works shown below, works discussed on the program include:
- Ulrike Rosenbach, Bonnet Drawing, 1972.
- Catherine Elwes, Two Drawings on Glass, 1978.
Along with representatives from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's curatorial and learning teams, Helguera is the co-curator of "Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera," which is at the MCA through July 5, 2026. The exhibition is the product of questions that Helguera, a New York-based artist and educator, posed to a group of 20 Chicago artists, writers, activists, and educators in the fall of 2024. It's on view through July 5, 2026.
In addition to the works shown below, works discussed on the program include:
- Susan Philipsz, We Shall Be All, 2011.
- Public Collectors, QUARANZINE: A printed space for work produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020.
Instagram: Pablo Helguera, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 727 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Andrea Carlson.
The Denver Art Museum just opened "Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky," a mid-career survey. The exhibition spotlights how Carlson, who is Ojibwe and of European settler descent, creates works that challenge the colonial narratives presented by modern artists, museum collections, and cannibal genre horror films, all in ways that challenge and depart from the US landscape tradition. The exhibition was curated by Dakota Hoska, and will remain on view through February 16, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by Scala, Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $30-35.
Museums that have featured solo exhibitions of Carlson's work include the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Denver Art Museum. She is also the co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.
This program was taped on the occasion of Carlson's 2024 solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago. For images, please see Episode No. 677.
Instagram: Andrea Carlson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 726 features artist Danielle Joy Mckinney.
The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is presenting "Danille Mckinney: Tell Me More" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition, Mckinney's first solo presentation in a US museum, spotlights Mckinney's introspective explorations of Black womanhood. It was curated by Gannit Ankori. Concurrently, Galerie Max Hetzler is presenting Mckinney's work in "Second Wind" in London through November 1.
Mckinney has been featured in exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and many more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
Instagram: Danielle Joy Mckinney, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 725 features curators Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis (and a cameo, of sorts, from artist Anthony Barboza).
Brookman and Willis are the co-curators of "Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-85" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition considers photography's engagement with the post-war cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty, and which often influenced the broader civil rights movement of which it was a part. The exhibition features 150 works from photographers and other artists who used photography in their work, such as in collage or assemblage. It is on view through January 11, 2026. An excellent catalogue was published by the NGA In association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60.
Instagram: Philip Brookman, Anthony Barboza, Deborah Willis, Tyler Green.
Air date: September 25, 2025.
Episode No. 724 features artist Antony Gormley. It was taped before a live audience at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
The Nasher is showing "SURVEY: Antony Gormley" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition is the first major museum survey of Gormley's work in the United States. Across sculptures, models, and notebooks, "SURVEY" spans Gormley's career from the 1980s to today. The exhibition extends beyond the Nasher's galleries to include sculptures installed on the rooftops of both the Nasher and skyscrapers in and around downtown Dallas. It was curated by Jed Morse.
Gormley is the UK's most honored living sculptor. His works often use the body to address fundamental questions of where humans stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Major exhibitions of his work have been held at museums and in biennials all over the world.
Air date: September 18, 2025.
Episode No. 723 features curator Michelle White and artist Nanette Carter.
White is the curator of "Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s" at The Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition considers Rauschenberg's conceptual, expressive use of fabric as a medium through a focus on three groups of works from the 1970s: Venetians (1972-73), Jammers (1975-76), and Hoarfrosts (1974-76). It is on view through March 1, 2026. "Fabric" is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-65.
The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is presenting "Nanette Carter: Afro Sentinels" through January 11, 2026. The exhibition features works Carter has made over the last decade, including work from her Cantilevered, Destabilizing, and Shifting Perspectives series, plus new sculptural works commissioned by the Wexner. It was curated by Rebecca Lowery. Carter's abstract collages, produced in Mylar, often engage with contemporary social issues. The Montclair Art Museum presented a retrospective of Carter's career last year.
As discussed on the program:
- Carter's 2021 oral history for the Archives of American Art.
Instagram: Michelle White, Nanette Carter, Tyler Green.
Air date: September 11, 2025.
Episode No. 722 features museum director and human rights activist Ann Burroughs, and curator Cory Korkow.
Burroughs is the director of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, which has led the museum sector in resisting Trumpism and the rise of fascism in the United States. Even as many US institutions capitulated when the Trump administration demanded a return to racist and white supremacist policies and practices, JANM stood by its diversity and equity foci and programs. Over the summer, armed and often masked Border Patrol agents conducted what appeared to be an operation aimed at intimidating speakers at a program at the museum's Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, including at a press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The museum aggressively resisted the federal show of force, drawing lines between illegal federal actions in 1942 and the present.
JANM's mission is "to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience." Its collections and programs feature art and art's history. The museum holds work by and the archives of artists such as Hisako Hibi, George Hoshida, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugimoto, Chikashi Tanaka, Kango Takamura, and Jack Iwata.
In addition to leading JANM, Burroughs is the two-time former chairperson of the board of Amnesty International USA, the chair of the Amnesty International Global Assembly, and presently sits on the board of Amnesty International.
As mentioned on the program:
- Burroughs' op-ed for the American Alliance of Museums; and
- JANM's "History Unpacked" program.
Korkow helped lead the Cleveland Museum of Art's acquisition and initial installation of Giambologna's Fata Morgana (ca. 1572), which had been the last of the roughly dozen marble sculptures made by the artist remaining in private hands. Giambologna made the sculpture for installation in a fountain at Bernardo Vecchietti's Villa il Reposo in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy.
Instagram: Cory Korkow, Tyler Green.
Air date: September 4, 2025.
Episode No. 721 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Saif Azzuz.
The Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, is presenting "Saif Azzuz: Keet Hegehlpa' (the water is rising)," which interrogates the privatization of land, water, and natural resources within settler-colonial systems. Across the exhibition, Azzuz and family members Lulu Thrower, Elizabeth Azzuz, Viola Azzuz, Moya Azzuz, and Colleen Colegrove reference the myths, origin stories, and fabricated tales animating the land now known as Houston. The artists in the exhibition draw upon ecological knowledge to visualize histories of land stewardship and rematriation practices that gesture to Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor’s notion of survivance, the fusion of resistance and survival. The exhibition was curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum and will be on view through December 20.
Azzuz is a Libyan-Yurok artist based in suburban San Francisco. His work, which often addresses nature, land, and California Native American cultural practices, is in the collections of museums such as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
This episode was taped on the occasion of ICA San Francisco's presentation of Azzuz' work in 2024. For images, see Episode No. 638.
Instagram: Saif Azzuz, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 720 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tidawhitney Lek.
Lek is among the 30+ artists featured in "Spirit House" at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. The exhibition considers how 33 contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art, including how the spiritual relates to diaspora, connections to ancestral homelands, and the experience of feeling present within multiple cultures and multiple geographies. The show’s curatorial framework was inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter for the supernatural. "Spirit House" originated at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, and was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua. It is on view in Seattle through January 11, 2026. An excellent exhibition catalogue, titled “Spirit House: Hauntings in Contemporary Art of the Asian Diaspora,” was published by the Cantor and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.
Lek is a southern California-based, Cambodian-American artist whose work examines narratives surrounding and the daily experiences of a first-generation American born to immigrant parents. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and she's been featured in the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Her first museum solo show was at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 2023.
Discussed on the program:
- Martha Rosler’s “House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home” series may be viewed on the website of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- The work of Amir Fallah and Annie Lapin.
- Lek’s website.
Instagram: Tidawhitney Lek, Tyler Green.
Air date: August 21, 2025.
Episode No. 719 features curator Laura Katzman.
Katzman is the curator of "Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity" at the Jewish Museum, New York. Shahn's first US retrospective in nearly 50 years. The exhibition examines Shahn's progressive commitment to the major issues between the Great Depression and the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. The exhibition features 175 paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs and more, spotlighting Shahn's skill and vision across media. The exhibition debuted at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and was adapted by the Jewish Museum. It's on view through October 26. A catalogue was published by Princeton University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $32-42.
Episode No. 718 features artist Masako Miki and artist/curator Katherine Simóne Reynolds.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting "Midnight March," a far-ranging presentation of Miki's two-dimensional and three-dimensional practice.
The Japanese-born Miki's paintings, sculptures, and installations live between the sacred and the secular. Her often exuberant sculptures are rooted in the blending of Japanese and US cultures. Her previous solo shows have been at museums such as the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, and the ICA San José. Her work is in the permanent collections of BAMPFA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and more.
Reynolds is the curator of "Held Impermanence (Artists Select: Katherine Simóne Reynolds)" at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. The exhibition uses the museum's art collection and archive to consider multiple competing desires, including Still's and the desires of art institutions, such as the unknown future museum to which he directed his art and archive be entrusted. Reynolds is an artist and curator who investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies of Blackness. Her previous exhibitions have been at venues such as SculptureCenter, New York, Counterpublic 2023, St. Louis, and the Stanley Museum of Art, University of Iowa.
As mentioned on the program:
- The CSM's gallery booklet.
Instagram: Masako Miki, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 717 features artist Erin Shirreff, curator Davide Gasparotto, and conservator Ulrich Birkmaier.
The Milwaukee Art Museum is presenting "Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts" through September 1. Across 40 recent collages, photographs, sculptures, and videos, the exhibition reveals Shirreff's interest in the space between images and the objects they picture. The exhibition was curated by Kristen Gaylord. Among the museums that have presented solo exhibitions of Shirreff's work are SITE Santa Fe, the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., SFMOMA, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
"Artemisia's Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece" is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles through September 14. The exhibition reveals conservation work done on Gentileschi's ~1635-37 Hercules and Omphale, a significant painting damaged in a massive explosion in Beirut in 2020. Birkmaier led the conservation of the work, which Gasparotto joined to four other Gentileschis in this exhibition, which particularly highlights Gentileschi's focus on strong women from the classical and Biblical traditions.
Instagram: Davide Gasparotto, Tyler Green.
Air date: July 31, 2025.
Episode No. 716 features curator Eleanor Nairne and artist Francesca Fuchs.
With Wells Fray-Smith, Nairne is the co-curator of "Noah Davis," an eponymous retrospective at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Davis, who passed away from a rare cancer in 2015 at age 32, was a painter whose work addressed current affairs, every day life, family histories, and architecture. Davis often addressed the subjects that interested him by fusing his interest in art history to his interest in vernacular sources, such as flea market photographs or personal archives. The exhibition is on view through August 31. A catalogue is available from Prestel. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-46.
The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House" through November 2. The exhibition starts, as it were, in 1970, when John de Menil wrote to German classical archeologist Dr. Werner Fuchs (1927–2016) seeking to identify the subject of a Roman male torso in his collection. Forty-nine years later, Francesca Fuchs’s discovery of the black-and-white photographs John de Menil sent to her father that depict the marble torso led Fuchs to find the original letter in the museum archives. "The Space Between" presents Fuchs's response to the unanswered letter and familial collection through Fuchs' own paintings, selections from the Menil's collection and archives, and more. The exhibition was curated by Paul R. Davis.
- As mentioned on the program:
- See Francesca Fuchs' letter to John de Menil (also below); and
- Fuchs' 2013 exhibition at Texas Gallery.
Instagram: Francesca Fuchs, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 715 features artist Kandis Williams.
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis is presenting "Kandis Williams: A Surface," the first survey of Williams' career. The exhibition spotlights how Williams has used collage as a tool of Black feminist resistance, to dismantle entrenched histories and power structures, and to rebuild dominant narratives. The exhibition, which was curated by Taylor Jasper with Laurel Rand-Lewis, is on view through August 24. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Walker. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $45.
Williams is also included in "Performance on Paper" at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. It features prints and drawings created at the intersection of music and dance by about twenty artists active from the 1960s to the present. It was curated by Naoko Takahatake with Jennie Waldow, and is on view through August 10.
Williams' previous museum solo exhibition was at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University. They have been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in the Hammer Museum's Made in LA biennial.
Instagram: Kandis Williams, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 714 features curator and art historian Jonathan D. Katz and curators Allison Kemmerer and Gordon Wilkins.
With Johnny Willis, Katz is the co-curator of "The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939" at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. The exhibition details the emergence of a significant change in how societies around the world regarded homosexuality in the wake of the coining of the term 'homosexual' in 1869, and the ways in which images have represented a range of identities ever since. It is on view through July 26. The fascinating exhibition catalogue was published by Monacelli. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75.
Kemmerer and Wilkins are the curators of "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass. The exhibition surveys a 75-year career during which Leaf explored the human experience in works that are layered, whimsical, playful, and sometimes dark. It is on view through July 31. The Addison, the Grey Art Museum, New York University, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College co-published the exhibition catalogue with Rizzoli. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $42-60.
Episode No. 713 is a Fourth of July weekend clips episode featuring artist Carmen Winant.
This episode was taped in 2023 on the occasion of the Minneapolis Institute of Art's presentation of Winant’s “The last safe abortion” through December 31. It features Winant’s assemblages of historical photographs gathered from across the Midwest that detail the work of providing health care to women. That work includes answering phones, presenting training sessions, scheduling appointments, and more. “The last safe abortion” was curated by Casey Riley.
Winant’s work typically explores representations of women through strategies such as collage and installation. Her exhibition credits include the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sculpture Center, Queens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and many venues in Europe.
For images, see Episode No. 621.
Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 712 features artist Julian Hoeber and curator María Elena Ortiz.
Hoeber is included in "Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The exhibition offers a new selection of works from the Nasher collection that offers conversations between works from the past and present.
Hoeber's practice centers perception and searches for ways to exceed and reconcile limits set by binary ideas such as interior and exterior, or psychic and somatic. Paradoxically, he often uses binary systems, such as stereoscopic vision, in his work. His exhibition credits include Desert X 2019, a Hammer Projects show in 2010, and gallery shows in San Francisco, New York, Milan, Los Angeles, London, and more. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.
Ortiz is the curator of "Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. "Feeling Color" pairs the work of two Guyanese artists and considers their roles in the history of late-twentieth-century abstract painting. "Feeling Color" is on view through July 27.
Instagram: Julian Hoeber, María Elena Ortiz, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 711 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Patrick Martinez.
Martinez is among the artists showing in the Boston Public Art Triennial, which was developed by Pedro Alonzo, Tess Lukey, and a(n unspecified) curatorial advisory group. Martinez's 2025 Cost of Living may be seen at Boston's Downtown Crossing.
Martinez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work investigates socio-economic position, immigration, police violence, and civic and cultural loss. He’s had solo shows at museums and kunsthalles such as the ICA San Francisco, the Tucson (Ariz.) Museum of Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Vincent Price Art Museums. He’s been in recent group shows at the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum, The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and El Museo del Barrio, New York. Martinez also operates Mixed Media Editions.
This program was taped in 2024 on the occasion of “Patrick Martinez: Histories” at the Dallas Contemporary. For images, see Episode No. 649.
Instagram: Patrick Martinez, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 710 features curator Timothy Anglin Burgard and artist Tony Lewis.
Burgard is the curator of "Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art" at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The exhibition details how Thiebaud drew ideas from and reimagined European and US artworks both old and new. It is on view through August 17. A superb catalogue was published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in association with University of California Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $54-60.
Lewis is featured in "What drawing can be: four responses" at the Menil Collection's Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The exhibition, which also offers work by Jillian Conrad, Teresita Fernández, and Constantin Luser, presents ways in which the four artists stretch the boundaries of drawing and offer new ideas of what it can be. It's on view through August 10. The gallery guide is available here.
Lewis’ work examines the relationship between semiotics and language as a means to confront subjects such as race, power, communication, and labor. His solo exhibition credits include the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Instagram: Tony Lewis, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 709 features author Adrienne L. Childs and curator Iris Moon.
Childs is the author of "Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts." The book, which was published by Yale University Press, examines the role decorative arts played in the representation of Black people within European visual and material culture. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $44-78.
From the show:
- The exhibition guide to the 2022-23 Henry Moore Institute exhibition "Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture," which Childs co-curated.
Moon is the curator of "Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition is a feminist construction of the story of European porcelain. Chinese porcelain arrived in early modern Europe and led to the emergence of chinoiserie, a decorative style that foregrounded European fantasies about the East and the exotic, as well as about women, sexuality, and race. It is on view through August 17. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.
Instagram: Adrienne Childs, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 708 features artist Paul Pfeiffer.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is showing the retrospective "Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom." For over 25 years, Pfeiffer has investigated spectacle and mass culture, especially sport, and has found within it the power to create and extend political narratives. Included within the exhibition is only the second US presentation of Pfeiffer's landmark 2007 The Saints, an immersive sound and video installation that considers the 1966 men's World Cup final between England and West Germany that is one of the most significant works of the 21st century.
"Pfeiffer" was curated by Clara Kim and Paula Kroll. The MCA presentation, which is on view through August 31, was organized by Bana Kattan with Iris Colburn. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and MACK. Amazon offers it for $65.
Instagram: Paul Pfeiffer, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 707 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Lorna Simpson.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is presenting "Lorna Simpson: Source Notes," a survey that focuses on paintings that Simpson has made over the last decade. Across more than 30 works, "Simpson" spotlights the artist's explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. The exhibition, which is on view through November 2, was curated by Lauren Rosati in "close collaboration with the artist." The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40-45.
This conversation was taped in 2017 on the occasion of “FOCUS: Lorna Simpson," at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition featured new work that juxtaposes beauty and promise with disaster and upheaval, often in the context of the representation of black women in Ebony magazine from the 1950s to the 1970s. It was curated by Alison Hearst.
Instagram: Lorna Simpson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 706 features curators Leslie King-Hammond and Edward Saywell, and curator Jared Ledesma.
Along with Patrick Murphy and Jennifer Farrell, Hammond and Saywell are the co-curators of "Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition surveys Wilson's 60-year career, spotlighting the ways in which Wilson addressed anti-Black violence, the civil rights movement, labor, family life, and more. "Wilson" is on view in Boston through June 22 before traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in the fall. The richly illustrated exhibition catalogue was published by the MFA. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for about $50.
Ledesma is the curator of "Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention" at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. The exhibition is a focused examination of how Hartigan's relationships with New York poets, including Barbara Guest, James Merrill, and Frank O'Hara, influenced her paintings and works on paper. It is on view through August 10, 2025 before traveling to the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art and the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. An excellent catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $35.
Instagram: Jared Ledesma, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 705 features curators Dalila Scruggs and Catherine Morris, and artist Beatriz Cortez.
With Mary Lee Corlett, Scruggs and Morris are the co-curators of "Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition surveys Catlett's career across over 150 sculptures, prints, paintings, and drawings. The exhibition is on view through July 6. An exceptional exhibition catalogue, titled Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies was published by the The University of Chicago Press, the NGA and the Brooklyn Museum, which originated the exhibition. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $56-60.
Catlett was a feminist, activist, and radical who helped join the Black Left in the US to influences from the Mexican Revolution. Her work continued the practice of earlier US artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Carleton Watkins by using cultural production to advance ideas and ideologies.
Cortez is featured in "Seeds: Containers of a World to Come" at the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. The exhibition features work by ten artists whose research-driven practices are informed by inquiry into plant-human-land relations. "Seeds" was curated by Meredith Malone and Svea Braeunert, and remains on view through July 28. The exhibition brochure is available here. "Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos" is at the Americas Society, New York through May 17. The show considers the idea of ancient objects traveling across space and time.
Cortez's work explores simultaneity, life in different temporalities, and imaginaries of the future. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY,; the Williams College Museum of Art; Clockshop, Los Angeles; and more.
Instagram: Catherine Janet Morris, Beatriz Cortez, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 704 features artist Wafaa Bilal.
The MCA Chicago is presenting "Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me," the first major survey of Bilal's work. Across his genres-busting career, the Iraqi-American Bilal has made performances, sculptures and related digital presentations that have interrogated the United States' relationship with and conduct within Iraq, the Middle East, and broader geopolitics. Bilal's work also investigates the notion of cultural cannibalism, the ways in which the culture of one people may be used, disassembled, and consumed by another. "Indulge Me" was curated by Bana Kattan, and is on view in Chicago through October 19. An invaluable catalogue was published by the MCA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $20-32.
Bilal's work is in the collections of museums as unalike as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE; the Art Gallery at NYU Abu Dhabi; and the 32015 Venice Biennale.
Instagram: Wafaa Bilal, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 703 features artist Dakota Mace and curator Claire Howard.
SITE Santa Fe is showing "Dakota Mace: DAHODIYINII—SACRED PLACES," an investigation of an atrocity during which the United States expelled the Diné people from Dinétah, their ancestral homeland, and forced them to march as many as 400 miles to the Bosque Redondo in central-eastern New Mexico, where they were forced to remain in a concentration camp from 1864-68. The exhibition is organized into themes such as memory, land, and the stars; with each section of the show considering Diné cosmology. The exhibition, which is on view through May 19, was curated by Brandee Caoba.
Mace is also featured in "Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time" at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. The exhibition examines how Native artists have explored memory and time, including how the past is continually remembered and reimagined. It was curated by Sháńdíín Brown and will remain on view through August 31, 2025. "Smoke in Our Hair" features previous MAN Podcast guests such as Saif Azzuz, Teresa Baker, and Andrea Carlson.
Series of Mace's work discussed on the program and presented in full on her website include:
- Dahodiyinii;
- Distorted Landscapes;
- Łichíí (Red) Series; and
- Akágí (Skin).
Host Tyler Green mentions two books on the program:
- Hardship, Greed, and Sorrow: An Officer's Photo Album of 1866 New Mexico Territory, by Daniel Kosharek and Deborah Romanek, with a forward by Jennifer Nez Dennetdale;
- Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, by Keith Basso.
Howard is the curator of one section of "In Creative Harmony: Three Artistic Partnerships" an exhibition that considers artistic discourse, at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Howard's section considers the relationship between Arshile Gorky and Isamu Noguchi. Other sections present dialogue between Nora Naranjo Morse and her daughter Eliza Naranjo Morse and José Guadalupe Posada and Artemio Rodríguez. It's on view through July 20.
Instagram: Dakota Mace, Claire Howard, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 702 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles is presenting "María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold" through May 4. It is the first multimedia survey of Campos-Pons’ work in 17 years. The exhibition spotlights Campos-Pons’ photography, installation, and performance-based practices, which typically address global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration — and how their impacts continue into the present. It was curated by Carmen Hermo and Mazie Harris with Jenée-Daria Strand. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-42.
This program was taped on the occasion of the exhibition's presentation at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2024. For images, please see Episode No. 656.
Episode No. 701 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Scott Allan, and curators Will Hansen and River Ian Kerstetter.
With Gloria Groom and Paul Perrin, Allan is the co-curator of "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through May 25, looks at how Caillebotte's interest in male subjects significantly distinguishes him from his impressionist colleagues. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Getty. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50-58.
Hansen and Kerstetter are the curators of "Native Pop!" at the Newberry Library, Chicago. "Native Pop" examines how Indigenous people, and art by and of them, are central to the story of our popular culture. The exhibition is on view through July 19.
Instagram: Scott Allan, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 700 (!) features artist Tarrah Krajnak and curator Jennifer Raab.
Krajnak is featured in two exhibitions on opposite sides of the United States. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Krajnak is featured in "Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography" through July 13. The exhibition was curated by Shana Lopes, Erin O’Toole, and Delphine Sims, with Sally Katz and Alex Landry. At the International Center of Photography, New York, Kraynak's work is included in "To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography." Organized by Sara Ickow, Keisha Scarville, and Elisabeth Sherman, the exhibition presents the ways in which seven photographers are reimagining what an archive can be, or might look like.
A third US exhibition of Krajnak's work opens April 16 at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. It will be curated by Georgia Erger.
Krajnak works between photography, performance, and poetry. Krajnak, who was born in Peru to an Indigenous mother and who was raised by a transracial US family, often interrogates photography standards and finds that they have limited women, and furthered the violent loss of Native land, lives, and rights. She has won most major photography prizes; her work is in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
Raab is the author of "Relics of War: The History of a Photograph" from Princeton University Press. It examines a photograph made by Clara Barton and published by Matthew Brady that features relics from the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. "Relics of War" traces how the photograph was a central part of Barton's work of addressing mass death and related grief. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42-59.
Instagram: Tarrah Krajnak, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 699 features two conversations with artist Jack Whitten.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York is presenting "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the third major US survey of Whitten's work since 2014. (Previous exhibitions include a paintings retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2014-15, and a sculpture retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017-18.) "The Messenger," which is on view through August 2, was curated by Michelle Kuo with assistance from Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge. Next month MoMA will publish a catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75.
This episode features Whitten's two visits to The MAN Podcast. The first was recorded in 2013 on the occasion of "Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73" at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum. The second was recorded before a live audience at the opening of "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting" at MCASD in 2014. For images, please see Episode No. 98 and Episode No. 151.
Episode No. 698 features artist Alex Da Corte and curator Mark Castro.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "Alex Da Corte: The Whale," a survey of Da Corte's relationship with painting. Featuring more than 40 works, the exhibition examines Da Corte's interest in consumerism, persona, sex, invisible labor, taste, power, and desire. Curated by Alison Hearst, "Da Corte" will be on view through Sept. 7. A catalogue from MAMFW and DelMonico Books is forthcoming. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
Da Corte's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MOCA Toronto, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, MASS MoCA, North Adams, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Castro is the curator of "Oaxaca Central: Contemporary Mexican Printmaking" at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va. Across 100 works, the exhibition surveys recent printmaking practice in Oaxaca, home to a vibrant, activist printmaking community. Artists in the exhibition include Ricardo Pinto, Mercedes López, Dr. Lakra, Colectivo Subterráneos, and Emi Winter. "Oaxaca Central is on view through May 11.
Episode No. 697 features curator Sarah Humphreville and author Marisa Anne Bass.
With Eric Crosby, Humphreville is the co-curator of "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery." The exhibition survey's Abercrombie's synthesis of surrealism, landscape, portraiture and still-life, and is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date. It is at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh through June 1 before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.
Bass is the author of The Monument's End: Public Art and the Modern Republic, which was recently released by Princeton University Press. The book finds the origin of many of today's questions around monuments and memory within the early modern Netherlands. Among the artists Bass discusses are Rembrandt, Dirck van Delen, Hendrick de Keyser, Spencer Finch, Thomas Hirschhorn, and more. Bass is a professor at Yale University. Her previous books include Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt and Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity. Amazon and Bookshop offer "The Monument's End" for $20-42.
Instagram: Sarah Humphreville, Marisa Bass, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 696 features curators Natalie Dupêcher and Leigh Arnold.
Dupêcher is the curator of "Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight" at the Menil Collection, Houston. "Taking Flight" offers work from three of Overstreet's abstract painting series: Flight Pattern (early 1970s), and related bodies of work from the 1960s and 1990s. While recent exhibitions such as "Now Dig This!" (Hammer Museum, 2011) and "Soul of a Nation" (Tate Modern, 2017) have included Overstreets, this is the first solo museum exhibition of his work in 30 years. The Menil's exhbition guide is available here. An exhibition catalogue will be available in the late spring. "Taking Flight" is on view through July 13.
Arnold is the curator of "Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. Across two floors, the exhibition reveals Yang's critique of the modernist project and its tendency toward singular Western domination. It is on view through April 27.
Works discussed on the program include:
- Yang's Spring Sailors – Six Synecologies Aloft (2024) at 2024's Lahore Biennial.
Instagram: Natalie Dupêcher, Leigh Arnold, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 695 features artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and curator Ken Myers.
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless," an examination of the complications of colonial histories from an Indigenous perspective. "Speechless" particularly focuses on how narratives, myths, and histories are constructed through the concept of the cargo cult, which developed as a result of Western military campaigns that delivered supplies to foreign lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. These cults formed around the provisions that were delivered by the imperial forces (such as radios), the very groups that were colonizing Indigenous lands. The exhibition was curated by Apsara DiQuinzio and remains on view through July 6.
Concurrently, Luger's work may be seen in the 16th Sharjah Biennial, "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" at the Moody Center, Rice University, and in "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always" at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University.
Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. His work, across a wide range of media, extends cultural awareness and enables action. His work has been presented in solo or two-person shows by the Public Art Fund, New York; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., and more.
Works discussed on the program include:
- A single-channel version of Luger's Future Ancestral Technologies: New Myth, 2021;
- Luger's extended Mirror Shield project; and
- Luger's Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta installation series, which celebrates the Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI), 2021-.
Myers is the curator of "Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery" at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "Painted with Silk" looks at how US schoolgirl embroideries made from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries helped build and extend ideas around nation, gender, class, and religion. It also includes contemporary embroideries by Elaine Reichek that repurpose the form of earlier embroideries and investigate their constructions of gender, class, and race. The exhibition is on view through June 15.
Instagram: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 694 features artists Tacita Dean and Ilana Harris-Babou.
The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "Tacita Dean: Blind Folly," the first major museum survey of Dean's work in the United States. The exhibition examines a range of Dean's production, with a special emphasis on her drawing practice. "Blind Folly" includes new works informed by Dean's time in Houston, including her residency at (and in!) the Menil's Cy Twombly Gallery. It is on view through April 19.
The Menil, MACK, and Dean have produced several books related to the Menil exhibition:
- Why Cy, an artist's book of images Dean produced during her residency in the Twombly Gallery. Within it is a small booklet of notes and drawings that Dean conceived during the same residency.
- Tacita Dean: Blind Folly, a book by exhibition curator Michelle White that addresses Dean's practice and oeuvre in a strikingly legible, almost narrative way.
Why Cy is available from Amazon for about $95; White's Blind Folly is available from Amazon for about $28 - or just $10 on Kindle.
Dean is one of Britain's most celebrated artists. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums such as the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. In 2011 Dean's work FILM was shown in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
Harris-Babou's 2018 Reparation Hardware is included within "Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica" at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which was curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, survey's Pan-Africanism's cultural manifestations across 350 objects made over the last 100 or so years. It is on view through March 30.
Reparation Hardware, which was made for DIS.ART, is streamed below.
Harris-Babou has been included in group shows at the Wellcome Collection, London, Apex Art, New York, and at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. Her work is in the collections of museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Episode No. 693 is a Presidents' Day weekend clips episode featuring artist John Edmonds.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York recently announced the acquisition of Edmonds’s complete 2018 Untitled (Hood) series. The work was included in last year's Guggenheim exhibition "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility."
Edmonds discussed his Untitled (Hood) series in detail when he came onto the program in 2020 on the occasion of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Among the institutions that have collected Edmonds' work are the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and SFMOMA.
For images, see Episode No. 446.
Instagram: John Edmonds, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 692 features curators Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, and Danielle Canter.
Hokanson and Seidenstein are the co-curators of "Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature," which opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend and is on view through May 11. It is the first retrospective of the German Romantic artist's work in the United States. Friedrich was a leader in German Romanticism, which offered new understandings of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Last year was the 250th anniversary of Friedrich's birth. The Met has published an excellent catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.
Canter is the curator of "A Brush with Nature: Romantic Landscape Drawings," which opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum on Feb. 18. The exhibition features dozens of drawings in which artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Théodore Géricault, and Friedrich respond to the natural world around them. "A Brush with Nature" will be on view through May 25.
Instagram: Alison Hokanson, Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 691 features artists Kota Ezawa and Amy Pleasant.
The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture is presenting "Kota Ezawa: Here and There - Now and Then," an investigation into the creation of memory in the Bay Area and nationally, through March 9. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, features Ezawa and Julian Brave NoiseCat's Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), and Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021), and Ursonate (2022), which were among 11 Ezawas recently acquired by SFMOMA. "Ezawa" was curated by Frank Smigiel. Fort Mason will publish a catalogue on the closing weekend. SFMOMA is showing Ezawa's National Anthem (2018) in "Count Me In" through April 27.
Ezawa's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at many museums, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. His work is in the collection most major US art museums, and in museums in seven other countries.
Pleasant is included in "Synchronicities: Intersecting Figuration with Abstraction" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha. The exhibition examines some of the ways in which nine artists have recently navigated the space between abstraction and figuration. "Synchronicities" was curated by Rachel Adams, and is on view through May 4.
Pleasant's work is also on view at The Carnegie, Covington, KY in "Southern Democratic" through February 15, and in "Vivid: A Fresh Take" at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN through June 1.
Pleasant has been included in exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and more.
Instagram: Amy Pleasant, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 690 features curators Vivien Greene and Michael Hartman.
With Tracey Bashkoff, Greene is the co-curator of "Harmony & Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition surveys a transnational art movement that joined abstraction to dance, music, and poetry and that engaged with ideas of simultaneity across kaleidoscopic pictures and sculpture. Among the artists included in "Harmony & Dissonance" are Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. The exhibition is on view through March 9. The Guggenheim published an excellent catalogue for the exhibition. It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for about $60.
Hartman is the curator of "Beyond the Bouquet: Arranging Flowers in American Art" at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The exhibition looks at how North American artists have made use of floral beauty.
Instagram: Michael Hartman, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 689 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist B. Ingrid Olson.
Olson's work is included in "Descending the Staircase" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition considers novel artistic approaches to representing the human body. The exhibition is curated by Jadine Collingwood, Associate Curator, and Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator and is on view through July 6.
This episode was recorded in 2022 on the occasion of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University's presentation of two concurrent B. Ingrid Olson exhibitions, “History Mother,” and “Little Sister.” Each exhibition was on a separate floor of CCVA’s building. Olson’s exhibitions feature site-specific presentations that engage with doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, the interplay between photography and sculpture, and between the body and the built environment. The exhibitions were curated by Dan Byers.
The week this show originally aired, the Secession in Vienna had just closed an exhibition of Olson’s work titled “Elastic X.” In addition, Olson’s work has previously been featured in solo presentations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.
For images please see Episode No. 566.
Instagram: B. Ingrid Olson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 688 features artist Sayre Gomez and curator Anna Katz.
Gomez is included in two of the season's major contemporary group shows: "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2000," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Gomez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work uses hyperrealism to address current events and representation and visuality in US society.
Katz is the curator of "Ordinary People," which is at MOCA through May 4. The exhibition's fine catalogue was published by the museum and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $65.
"The Living End" was curated by Jamillah James, who discussed her exhibition on Episode No. 683. It is on view through March 16. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20.
Instagram: Sayre Gomez, Anna Katz, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 687 features artist Laurie Simmons.
Simmons is included in "Diaries of Home" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features works by women and nonbinary photographers who explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home. The exhibition, which is on view through February 2, is co-curated by Andrea Karnes and Clare Milliken.
This conversation was taped in 2018, on the occasion of "Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera," a retrospective of Simmons' work (also at MAMFW).
For images, see Episode No. 362.
Episode No. 686 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold.
An untitled 1966 Plimack Mangold painting is on view in the current permanent collection installation at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The NGA has one of the finest institutional collections of Plimack Mangold's work: eight paintings and at least a dozen works on paper.
New York's Craig Starr Gallery is showing "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975-84" through January 25, 2025.
Plimack Mangold's paintings, seemingly rooted in realism but often undermining it, play with perspective, flatness, engage the centuries-long tradition of painters making paintings about painting. In 1994 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo organized a retrospective of her paintings; two years earlier the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized a works on paper survey.
For images, see 2018's Episode No. 349.
Episode No. 685 features artist Vincent Valdez and curators Theresa Harlan and Drew Johnson.
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is presenting "Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..." the first major survey of Valdez's career. The exhibition, which features Valdez's work across media, reveals Valdez's construction of US national memory. It was co-curated by Patricia Restrepo and Denise Markonish. It's on view at CAMH through March 23, 2025, when it will travel to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue is forthcoming.
Also, Valdez is included in "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition surveys post-war photorealism up to the present. It was curated by Anna Katz with Paula Kroll and is on view through May 4, 2025. MOCA and DelMonico Books published an excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $65.
Harlan and Johnson are the curators of "Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar's Photographs of Native California" at the Oakland Museum of California. It's on view through June 22, 2025. The exhibition surveys Aguilar's presentation of Native life and land, mostly between 1982 and 2018. The exhibition is OMCA's first presentation of Aguilar's work after the Aguilar's family gift of his archive to the museum in 2022. The show does not have a catalogue, but many of the works in the show are featured within Harlan's 2015 Aguilar monograph for Heyday Books, "She Sang Me a Good Luck Song."
Episode No. 684 features curators Akili Tommasino and Mark Mitchell.
Tommasino is the curator of "Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-now" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition examines how Black artists and other cultural figures have engaged with ancient Egypt from the American centennial, through the Harlem Renaissance, to the present. "Flight into Egypt" is on view through February 17, 2025. The fascinating catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.
Artists in the exhibition who are previous MAN Podcast guests include:
- Lauren Halsey;
- Julie Mehretu: Episode No. 82, No. 255; No. 417;
- Robert Pruitt;
- Betye Saar;
- Lorna Simpson; and
- Fred Wilson.
Mitchell curated "The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876-1917," which is at the Yale University Art Gallery through January 5, 2025. The exhibition looks at how two generations of post-Civil War artists adopted the human figure as their focus (partly in response to the mass death of the Civil War era). "The Dance of Life" particularly focuses on studies related to artistic commissions for major US public sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, Washington, and the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. YUAG published a valuable catalogue It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for $50-60.
Instagram: Akili Tommasino, Tyler Green.
Air date: December 12, 2024.
Episode No. 683 features artist Tala Madani and curator Jamillah James.
James is the curator of "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Madani is among the 60-plus artists included in the exhibition. "The Living End" surveys the arc of painting over the last half-century with a particular focus on artists who have redefined painting by using new technologies, imaging techniques, and their own bodies. The exhibition will be on view through March 16, 2025. Jack Schneider assisted James with the show. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20.
The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington is presenting "Tala Madani: Be flat," a solo exhibition featuring recent and newly commissioned work that explores the influence of symbols, language, and mark-making on power dynamics and individual agency. It was curated by Shamim M. Momin and is on view through August 17, 2025.
Madani makes paintings and painting-informed animations that consider gender, political authority, and representation. Her work typically includes bald, middle-aged men in bizarre, often hilarious circumstances. She has had solo shows at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Secession, Vienna; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
Episode No. 682 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Leslie Martinez.
Martinez is included within "Shifting Landscapes," which is at the the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York until January 2026. The exhibition considers how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists as they address the world around them (which is to say US artists are addressing land and landscape as they have since the days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Cole.) The show was curated by Jennie Goldstein, Marcela Guerrero, and Roxanne Smith, with Angelica Arbelaez.
Seven previous MAN Podcast guests are in the exhibition, including Robert Adams (Episode No. 41, 227, 555), Teresita Fernández, LaToya Ruby Frazier, An-My Lê, Patrick Martinez, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Alison Saar.
Martinez was previously featured in solo shows at MoMA PS1 in Queens, and the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston. Their work is in the collection of museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
For images, see Episode No. 635.
Instagram: Leslie Martinez, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 681 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Tidawhitney Lek.
Lek is featured in "Spirit House" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. The exhibition considers how 33 contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art, including how the spiritual relates to diaspora, connections to ancestral homelands, and the experience of feeling present within multiple cultures and multiple geographies. The show's curatorial framework was inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter for the supernatural. The exhibition was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua. It is on view through January 26, 2025. An excellent exhibition catalogue, titled "Spirit House: Hauntings in Contemporary Art of the Asian Diaspora," was published by the Cantor and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.
Discussed on the program:
- Martha Rosler's "House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home" series may be viewed on the website of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- The work of Amir Fallah and Annie Lapin.
- Lek's website.
Lek is a southern California-based, Cambodian-American artist whose work examines narratives surrounding and the daily experiences of a first-generation American born to immigrant parents. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami. Her first museum solo show was at the Long Beach Museum of Art last year.
Instagram: Tidawhitney Lek, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 680 features artist Ronny Quevedo and curator Jillian Kruse.
The Menil Drawing Institute is presenting "Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo" through August 2025. The work on view, titled C A R A A C A R A, is a site-specific drawing that explores the relationship between origin, transfer, and translation. Each of the drawing's three panels reveals a different step in Quevedo's process. The presentation was curated by Kelly Montana.
Quevedo has had a solo show at the Queens Museum, New York. He's been included in group shows at the Buffalo AKG Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and more.
Kruse is the curator of "Imagination in the Age of Reason" at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition examines how Enlightenment artists presented fantasy and folly in works on paper during an era obsessed with truth and knowledge. It is on view through March 2, 2025.
Instagram: Ronny Quevedo, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 679 features artist Hugh Hayden.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is presenting "Hugh Hayden: Homecoming," an exhibition of new works informed by Hayden's upbringing in Dallas. The show includes sculptures that explore themes such as nostalgia, childhood, education, and religion. The exhibition was curated by Leigh Arnold and will be on view through January 5, 2025.
The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is presenting "Hugh Hayden: Home Work," a survey of the last decade of Hayden's work. The show includes a site-responsive installation conceived for the Rose. "Home Work" was curated by Gannit Ankori and Sarah Montross, and will be on view through June 1, 2025.
Among the museums that have presented solo shows of Hayden's work are the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass.; the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and White Columns, New York. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Instagram: Hugh Hayden, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 678 features curator Stephan Wolohojian.
Along with Laura Llewellyn, Caroline Campbell and Joanna Cannon, Wolohojian is the curator of "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition examines the role of Sienese artists such as Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini in the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and before the onset of the plague in around 1350. While Florence is typically considered the most important city of the Italian Renaissance, "Siena" argues for a broadening of our understanding of the dawn of a new era. "Siena" is on view through January 26, 2025. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the National Gallery, London. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.
Some of the works referenced on the program are most easily seen via websites that aggregate multiple paintings into single pages, including:
- Ambrogia Lorenzetti, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, 1838-39, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
- Duccio, Maestà, 1311, Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena.
- Ugolino di Nerio, Santa Croce altarpiece, 1325-28.
Episode No. 677 features artist Andrea Carlson.
As mentioned at the beginning of this week's program:
Help Asheville and my friends and neighbors across the southern Appalachians! These are all local organizations helping people in western North Carolina:
- Southern Smoke Foundation;
- Asheville Food & Beverage United (also here); and
- Beloved Asheville.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is presenting "Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons," the latest exhibition in its "Chicago Works" series. Across painting, video, sculpture, and two billboards (along Interstate 94 between Illinois and Wisconsin), "Shimmer on Horizons" presents Carlson's investigation of how landscapes are constructed both politically and culturally. The exhibition was curated by Iris Colburn and is on view through February 2, 2025.
Carlson's work may also be seen in "Andrea Carlson: Future Cache" at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which features a 40-foot-tall memorial wall that towers over visitors, commemorating the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who were violently burned from their land in Northern Michigan on October 15, 1900. Curated by Jennifer Friess, the presentation is on view through June 2025.
Carlson is also included within "Scientia Sexualis" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through March 2, 2025. The exhibition, realized as part of the Getty's "PST ART: Art & Science Collide" program, centers research-driven interventions into raced and gendered assumptions that structure scientific disciplines governing our sense of the sexual body. It was curated by Jennifer Doyle and Jeanne Vaccaro.
Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent) typically addresses land and its history by foregrounding decolonization narratives. Museums that have featured solo exhibitions of her work include the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Denver Art Museum. She is also the co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.
Chicagoans: on Saturday Carlson and poet Heid E. Erdrich will be in conversation at the MCA at 2:30 pm. A program at the Center for Native Futures precedes the event.
Instagram: Andrea Carlson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 676 features curator Jay A. Clarke.
With Jill Lloyd, Clarke is the co-curator of "Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me," which is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through January 12, 2025. The career-surveying exhibition features Modersohn-Becker's proto-expressionist works that address subjects and themes such as childhood, the bodily experience of motherhood, pregnancy, and old age. "Modersohn-Becker" also features many of the artist's self-portraits, including the first nude self-portraits known to have been made by a woman. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Prestel Verlag. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-47.
Episode No. 675 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Ken Gonzales-Day.
The Yale Center for British Art is presenting "Ken Gonzales-Day: Composition in Black and Brown" a two-part public art project informed by Gonzales-Day's investigation of YCBA's collections. Both works, a billboard along Interstate 95 in West Haven, Conn., and a site-specific vinyl work on the museum, feature Gonzales-Day's interrogations of historical constructions of race and the limits of representation. The billboard is on view into October 2024; the work at YCBA is on view until December 2024.
Gonzales-Day’s work considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems, such as photographs of lynchings and museum displays. His book “Lynching in the West: 1850-1935” expanded our understanding of racialized violence in the United States through the discovery of photographs of lynchings of Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and African-Americans in California. His work has been the subject of solo or two-person exhibitions at museums such as the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
This episode was taped in 2021 on the occasion of Gonzales-Day's inclusion in at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. For images, see Episode No. 498.
Episode No. 674 features curators Kristen Collins and Nancy K. Turner, and curator Thea Liberty Nichols.
Collins and Turner are the curators of "Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. "Lumen" explores how scientific understandings of light shaped the visual culture of the Middle Ages. It includes over 100 works, including celestial globes, golden altars, and illuminated manuscripts from the Christian and Islamic worlds. It's on view through December 8, 2024. "Lumen" is part of PST ART : Art & Science Collide, a regional cultural celebration taking place across over 70 Southland exhibition and performance spaces. It is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Getty. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-70.
With Mark Pascale, Thea Liberty Nichols is the co-curator of "Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective," which opens at the Hammer Museum on October 12 and which runs through January 5, 2025. Ramberg was a painter who developed an intense visual vocabulary derived from often fetishized objects such as corsets, hands, high-heeled shoes and hair, building from them into arresting compositions. Late in her life -- Ramberg died in 1995 at the age of 49 -- she also made an extraordinary series of quilts. The exhibition was a significant critical hit at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on view over the summer. The wonderful catalogue was published by the Art Institute of Chicago, which originated the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 673 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Matthew Brandt.
Brandt is included in "Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition shows how 45 photo-based artists from around the world have examined the Anthropocene. "Second Nature" was curated by Jessica May and Marshall N. Price and is on view through January 5, 2025. An excellent catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $49-60.
Brandt's works often join physical elements from the subjects he photographs to investigations of the land and our impacts on it. He's received solo shows at museums such as the Newark Museum, and he's been included in major group shows at museums such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and more. His work is in nearly all major institutional US photography collections.
Brandt's website includes extensive galleries of the series of work discussed on the program, including:
- Lakes and Reservoirs;
- Carbon;
- Trees (including George Bush Park 1, 2009-11);
- Taste Tests (featuring Yosemite);
- Eagles;
- Woodblocks;
- Waterfalls; and
- 1864.
Instagram: Matthew Brandt, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 672 features curators Kimberly A. Jones and Mary Morton; and curators Sant Khalsa and Juniper Harrower.
Along with Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins, Jones and Morton are the curators of "1874: The Impressionist Moment" at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition examines the condition of Parisian art in 1874, both official standards exhibited at and effectively promoted via the official salon, and the renegade works exhibited at the first impressionist exhibition. Included are impressionist stalwarts such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, and also salon lions such as William Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme. The smart, delightful catalogue was published by the Musee d'Orsay and the NGA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $46-60. "1874" is on view through January 19, 2025.
Khalsa and Harrower are the curators of "Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees" at the Lancaster (Calif.) Museum of Art and History. Part of this year's sprawling Getty PST ART initiative, it's on view through December 29. "Desert Forest" examines how artists from Carleton Watkins to Cara Romero to Nancy Baker Cahill have presented Joshua trees and the fragile Mojave Desert ecosystem in their work. A fine catalogue was published by Inlandia Institute. It's available from MOAH.
Instagram: Mary Morton, Kimberly Jones, Sant Khalsa, Juniper Harrower, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 671 features curator, professor, and former museum director Dean Sobel, and artist Jackie Winsor.
Winsor, a leading Canadian-American post-minimalist and feminist sculptor, died last week at 82. She was the first female sculptor to receive a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1979), which holds five of her works in its collection. The most recent institutional survey of Winsor's work was at MAMCO Geneva in 2022.
This week's program opens with Sobel, who organized the 1991 Winsor retrospective at the Milwaukee Art Museum. (The show traveled to the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Calif., the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Akron Art Museum in Ohio. Sobel was later the director of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and is a professor at the University of Denver.
Next will be host Tyler Green's 2014 conversation with Winsor, apparently the next-to-last interview for which she sat. (See her 2019 program with MoMA curator Christophe Cherix.) The program was recorded on the occasion of "Jackie Winsor: With and Within" at The Aldrich, Ridgefield, Conn. For images, see Episode No. 154.
Episode No. 670 features artist Arlene Shechet.
Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY is showing "Arlene Shechet: Girl Group" through November 10. The exhibition joins Shechet's recent work exhibited in a typical gallery setting to six new monumental sculptures Shechet created for installation at Storm King. The exhibition was co-curated by Nora Lawrence and Eric Booker, with Adela Goldsmith.
On September 27 and 28, a group of six women will gather to dance at dusk in the midst of Shechet's outdoor sculptures. The performances are choreographed by Annie-B Parson in collaboration with the dancers: Cecily Campbell, Elizabeth DeMent, Natalie Green, Kashia Kancey, Brooke Ashley Rucker, and Jin Ju Song-Begin. Costumes for the performances were designed by Shechet. Tickets are available through Storm King's events page.
Shechet's work is also on view at many art museums around the United States, including at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass., in "Disrupt the View: Arlene Shechet at the Harvard Art Museums," and more.
Shechet is one of the nation's greatest living sculptors. Among the institutions that have presented solo exhibitions of her work are The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; The Frick Collection, New York; and the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha. In 2015 the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston presented a mid-career survey. (On the occasion of that exhibition, Shechet was a guest on Episode No. 194 of The MAN Podcast.)
Instagram: Arlene Shechet, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 669 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tammy Nguyen.
This late summer and fall Nguyen will be featured in two institutional exhibitions, one a solo show and the other a group show. On October 4, the Sarasota (Fla.) Art Museum will present "Tammy Nguyen: Timaeus and the Nations." The show was curated by Rangsook Yoon. On September 4 the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University will present "Spirit House." It's an examination of how contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art. It was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua.
Nguyen was a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship, and has exhibited at museums such as MoMA PS1, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and the Dallas Museum of Art. This program was taped in 2023 on the occasion of her first museum solo exhibition, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She is also the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press, an artists’ book publisher.
For images, see Episode No. 625B.
Episode No. 668 is a summer clips episode featuring historian and author David Bindman.
Bindman’s most recent book is ‘Race Is Everything’: Art and Human Difference. It examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century racializing science (sometimes referred to as pseudoscience) and how European art both influenced it, and was itself influenced by it. The book pays special attention to the racialization of people of African and Jewish descent. It considers the skull as a racializing marker, Darwin and Darwinism, the construction of the Mediterranean ‘race,’ Anglo-Saxonism, the racializing debate over Egyptians, and plenty more. ‘Race is Everything’ was published by Reaktion Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $30-37.
Episode No. 667 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Melissa Cody.
MoMA PS1 is presenting "Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies," through September 9. The exhibition features over 30 weavings and a new work. It was curated by Isabella Rjeille and Ruba Katrib.
Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver, creates tapestries from traditional techniques that engage both ancestral and contemporary ideas and forms. Her work is partly informed by the Germantown style, developed in the nineteenth century by weavers who used industrially dyed yarns produced in Germantown, Pennsylvania and shipped west to be used by Diné weavers. Cody’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, SITE Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and more.
This program was taped on the occasion of Cody's inclusion in the 2023 Hammer Museum "Made in LA" biennial. For images, see Episode No. 623.
Instagram: Melissa Cody, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 666 features author and art historian Michael Lobel.
Lobel is the author of "Van Gogh and the End of Nature," which was just published by Yale University Press. The book interrogates Van Gogh's presentation of nature, and finds that Van Gogh was looking more intently at industry, pollution, and environmental degradation than is typically recognized. Bookshop and Amazon offer the book for about $42.
Lobel is a professor of art history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His previous books include Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art (Yale University Press, 2002), James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics and History in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2009) and John Sloan: Drawing on Illustration (Yale University Press, 2014).
Instagram: Michael Lobel, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 665 features curator Cathleen Chaffee and critic Elisabeth Kirsch.
Chaffee is the curator of "Marisol: A Retrospective," which is at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) through January 6, 2025. The exhibition presents work Marisol, sometimes remembered as 'the forgotten star of pop art,' made between the 1950s and the early 2000s. It builds on an extraordinary collection of works that Marisol left to the Buffalo AKG Museum upon her death. The museum and DelMonico Books have published a superb catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-70. Chaffee curated the exhibition with the assistance of Julia Vázquez.
Kirsch is the author of "Handmade Papers, 1980-2005," an essay in the catalogue for "Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence," a retrospective now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The catalogue was edited, and the exhibition curated, by Erin Dziedzic. At the MCA, where "Jaramillo" is on view through January 5, 2025, its presentation was organized by René Morales and Iris Colburn. The exhibition's middle gallery presents an extensive mini-survey of Jaramillo's paper-constructed works. Amazon and Bookshop offer the catalogue for about $50.
Instagram: Cathleen Chaffee, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 664 features curator Sarah Kelly Oehler and artist Rebecca Manson.
With Annelise K. Madsen, Oehler is the co-curator of "Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks." The exhibition spotlights O'Keeffe's paintings of New York City, surrounding them with pictures she made of Lake George and the Southwest. It's at the Art Institute of Chicago through September 22, when it will travel to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The exhibition catalogue was published by the AIC. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-46.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is showing "Rebecca Manson: Barbecue," an immersive installation made from ceramic. Manson's work has been shown in group shows at institutions such as Ballroom Marfa in Texas, and the Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, and at Tribeca Park in New York. "Manson" was curated by Clare Milliken and will be on view through August 25.
Instagram: Sarah Kelly Oehler, Rebecca Manson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 663 features artist Jeremy Frey and curator Sarah Humphreville.
The Portland Museum of Art is presenting "Jeremy Frey: Woven," a twenty-year survey of Frey's basketry and printmaking. The exhibition features more than fifty baskets made from natural materials such as black ash and sweetgrass, as well as prints and video. The exhibition is in Maine through September 15, when it will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was curated by Ramey Mize and Jaime DeSimone. The excellent catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa in association with the PMA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $35-46.
In 2011, Frey became the first basket-maker to win Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market, in 2011, a feat he repeated in 2014. His work has been included in exhibitions at institutions such as The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass.
Frey, a seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket-maker, makes his baskets from ash trees, which are threatened by an invasive species called the emerald ash borer. The exhibition also presents this threat to Wabanaki cultural traditions and northeastern forests.
Humphreville is the curator of "Eastman Johnson and Maine," at the Colby Museum of Art at Colby College. The show celebrates the bicentennial of Johnson's birth with a presentation of works Johnson made in Maine, his home state. It is accompanied by a gallery of works made by Johnson's peers. "Johnson and Maine" is on view through December 8.
Instagram: Jeremy Frey, Sarah Humphreville, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 662 features artists Sarah Sze and Zoë Charlton.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Sarah Sze," a presentation of new works that explore how memory marks time and space, and how art negotiates image and object. The ex\xhibition is on view through August 18.
Sze represented the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Other -ennials at which her work has been featured include the Whitney (2000), Carnegie (1999), Berlin (1998), Guangzhou (2015), Liverpool (2008), and Lyon (2009). She has made public artworks for sites such as LaGuardia Airport in New York, and Storm King Art Center.
Charlton is included in "A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration" at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition presents impressions of the Great Migration as considered by a dozen contemporary artists. The exhibition, which was co-curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown, was organized for Berkeley by Anthony Graham with Matthew Villar Miranda. It's on view through September 22.
Charlton's work often addresses culturally loaded landscapes and histories. It has been included in exhibitions at museums such as the Studio Museum in Harlem and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark. Her work is in the collection of museums such as The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Instagram: Zoe Charlton, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 661 is a holiday clips episode featuring curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner.
Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner was the co-curator of “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle.” The exhibition, which debuted at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts in 2020, presented Lawrence’s 1954-56 “Struggle: From the History of the American People.” The series presents a revisionist and pictorial history of the first five decades of the US republic, or what Lawrence called “the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy.” The exhibition marked the first time in more than 60 years that the paintings had been together. The excellent catalogue was published by University of Washington Press. Amazon offers it for $45.
For images, see Episode No. 435.
Episode No. 660 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday clips program with artist Kiyan Williams.
Williams' work is on view in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York through August 11. On July 6, Art Omi in Ghent, NY will present "Kiyan Williams: Vertigo." It features large-scale works including Vertigo and 2022's Ruins of Empire, a reimagining of Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom, which was installed atop the US Capitol dome in 1863. Ruins of Empire debuted at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York as part of the Public Art Fund's "Black Atlantic" exhibition.
The Whitney exhibition was curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes; the Art Omi show was curated by by Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, with Guy Weltchek.
This program was recorded on the occasion of the aforementioned Public Art Fund exhibition and the Hammer Museum's 2022 presentation of “Hammer Projects: Kiyan Williams”, the artist’s first solo museum show.
Instagram: Kiyan Williams, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 659 features artists Barbara Bosworth and the Haas Brothers.
Two art museums are showing exhibitions of Bosworth's work: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is presenting "Barbara Bosworth: The Meadow" through December 1. The show features photographs of a meadow in Carlisle, Massachusetts and near the Concord River that Bosworth made over 15 years, pictures that investigate time, human presence, and nature. The exhibition was curated by Karen Haas. In 2015 Radius Books published a book of Bosworth's "The Meadow" pictures accompanied by texts by poet Margot Anne Kelley.
"Barbara Bosworth: Sun Light Moon Shadow" is at the Cleveland Museum of Art through June 30. The exhibition offers Bosworth's photographs of light, including eclipses, sunrises, and sunsets, many of which were made near Bosworth's childhood home in eastern Ohio. It was curated by Barbara Tannenbaum.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Haas Brothers: Moonlight" through August 25. The exhibition, which highlights the fusion of art, design, and technology in the brothers' practice, shows work made by twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas both inside and outside the museum. The Haas Brothers have previously had solo exhibitions at the Katonah (NY) Museum of Art, the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Ga., and at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Fla.
Instagram: Barbara Bosworth, Barbara Bosworth (weather), Haas Brothers, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 658 features artists Jes Fan and Emilio Rojas.
Fan's work is included in two ongoing -ennials: the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York through August 11; and Greater Toronto Art 2024 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto through July 28. The Whitney exhibition was curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes; GTA 2024 was organized by Ebony L. Haynes, Toleen Touq, and Kate Wong.
Fan's sculptures consider the constructs of race and gender and their relationship to the intersection of biology and identity. As part of his explorations, Fan often incorporates living matter, such hormones, and fluids, such as glass, into his work. Fan's work has been exhibited at the 2022 Venice Biennale, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and more.
As mentioned on the program:
- Stills from Fan's 2023 video Palimpsest.
- Byung-Chul Han's book Saving Beauty.
Rojas is included in "Descending the Staircase" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, presented across two floors of the MCA, presents ways in which artist have represented the human body. Curated by Jadine Collingwood and Jack Schneider, it is on view through August 25.
Rojas works across disciplines to investigate and reveal sites of knowledge that are rich with historical narrative. His work often specifically addresses colonial histories, and the relationships between those histories and the present. Rojas' work has been exhibited at museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, and he has participated in festivals and biennials in the US, Europe, and in Asia.
As mentioned on the program:
- Rojas' GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM (Santa Maria);
- The Columbian half dollar coined for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Instagram: Jes Fan, Emilio Rojas, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 657 features curator Natalie Dupêcher.
Dupêcher is the curator of "Janet Sobel: All-Over" at The Menil Collection, Houston. Across 30 paintings and drawings, the exhibition explores Sobel's short, meteoric, hugely influential career as one of the first New York artists associated with abstract expressionism as it began to coalesce in the early 1940s. Among other works, the Menil exhibition brings together six of Sobel's famed "all-over" paintings for the first time in 60 years.
Sobel was an emigrant from Ukraine who began to make art around 1940. She used non-traditional supports such as glass and cardboard, and unusual paints, including oil and enamel borrowed from her family's costume jewelery-making business. Contemporary critics credited her with developing the action-driven, dripping technique that would become core to the legends created around other, male artists. The exhibition is on view through August 11.
This episode was taped before a live audience at the Menil.
Episode No. 656 features artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons and curator Lauren Applebaum.
"María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold", now at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, is the first multimedia survey of Campos-Pons' work in 17 years. The exhibition spotlights Campos-Pons' photography, installation, and performance-based practices, which typically address global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration -- how their impacts continue into the present. The exhibition is on view at Duke through June 9. It was curated by Carmen earmo Hermo and Mazie Harris with Jenée-Daria Strand. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-42.
On the program host Tyler Green mentions this excellent website published by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. on the occasion of its 2016 Campos-Pons exhibition.
With Daniel Ackermann, Lea Lane, and Jenny Garwood, Applebaum is a co-curator of "Layered Legacies: Quilts from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem" at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. The exhibition includes more than 30 quilts and related objects from the MESDA collection (as well as some from private collections) and presents new, revised investigations into their making. It is on view through July 21. NCMA published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition; it is only available at the museum.
Episode No. 655 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Teresita Fernández.
Fernández is included in "Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-today" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. It is the first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora, foregrounding forms that reveal new modes of thinking about identity and place. Over 20 artists are featured in this exhibition, many of whom live in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean heritage. "Forecast Form originated at the MCA Chicago. It was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, with Iris Colburn, Isabel Casso and Nolan Jimbo.
This segment with Fernández was recorded in 2014 when Fernández created a major new series of installations for MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. Titled “As Above So Below.” That show included three large-scale installations that are informed by Fernández’s interest in landscape, art about landscape, and our perception of landscape, including Black Sun, Sfumato (Epic) and Lunar (Theatre).
In 2005 Fernández received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MOCA North Miami, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Artpace, the ICA Philadelphia, Castello di Rivoli outside Turin, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and more.
Episode No. 654 features curator Karen Hellman and artist Myra Greene.
With Carolyn Peter, Hellman is the curator of "Nineteenth-Century Photography Now" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition examines how many of the conventions and processes established in photography's early years remain of interest to artists working today. Historical artists within the exhibition include Anna Atkins, Gustave Le Gray, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, and Carleton Watkins. The exhibition is on view through July 7. Claire L’Heureux and Antares Wells assisted the co-curators.
Greene is among the 21 contemporary artists on view. Her work uses photography and textiles to explore representations of the body and race. Core to her practice is an understanding that color is materially and culturally dependent on context, and historically has been. She has had solo exhibitions at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Atlanta, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, and has been included in group exhibitions at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and more.
Ten artists in the exhibition previously have been guests on The Modern Art Notes Podcast:
- Andrea Chung;
- Liz Deschenes;
- Ken Gonzales-Day;
- An-My Lê;
- Lisa Oppenheim;
- Wendy Red Star;
- Mark Ruwedel;
- Paul Mpagi Sepuya (second visit);
- Stephanie Syjuco (second visit); and
- Carrie Mae Weems.
Instagram: Myra Greene, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 653 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features critic and author Deborah Solomon and host Tyler Green's 2016 conversation with Frank Stella.
Frank Stella died on May 4 at the age of 87. For two decades, from the late 1950s until the late 1970s or early 1980s, Stella was one of the United States' most important painters. The Museum of Modern Art, New York famously devoted two mid-career retrospectives to Stella's work, in 1970 and again in 1987.
Solomon is a critic whose work can often be found in the New York Times, and the author of biographies of Jackson Pollock, Joseph Cornell, Norman Rockwell. Her biography of Jasper Johns is forthcoming. She wrote this critical obit of Stella for the NYT.
The next segment is Stella's 2016 visit to the Modern Art Notes Podcast on the occasion of a Stella retrospective at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. The exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco.
Episode No. 652 features curators Denise Murrell and Larisa Grollemond.
Murrell is the curator of "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition, which is on view through July 28, explores the ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday life and impacted art on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. An outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-60.
Grollemond curated "Blood: Medieval/Modern," which is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles through May 19. The exhibition looks at how and why blood has been represented in medieval manuscripts and in some contemporary art too.
Instagram: Denise Murrell, Larisa Grollemond, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 651 features art historian Richard Shiff, curator and art historian Michelle White, and a clip from Kirk Varnedoe's 2003 National Gallery of Art Mellon Lectures.
Serra died last month at age 85. He may be the most honored sculptor of the post-war era. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which holds the most important institutional collection of his art, has produced Serra retrospectives in 1986 and 2007. The Menil Collection organized a drawings retrospective in 2011; it traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Serra's hometown museum. The most extensive survey of Serra's films and videotapes was presented by the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2017. Serra was a guest on Episode No. 18 of this program.
Shiff is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the director of the Center for the Study of Modernism. He has written or contributed to books on Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Donald Judd, and Serra, including "Forged Steel," which was published by Steidl and David Zwirner Books in 2016.
White is a curator at the Menil Collection. With Bernice Rose and Gary Garrels she curated the 2011 Serra drawings retrospective.
Kirk Varnedoe was the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1988 to 2001. He delivered the 2003 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art on the subject "Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock."
Episode No. 650 features curator Anne-Lise Desmas and author Jim Moske.
With Emerson Bowyer, Desmas is the co-curator of "Camille Claudel," a retrospective of the French modernist sculptor's career, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Until now, Claudel's work has often been under-considered as scholars have focused on her professional and personal relationship with Auguste Rodin; "Claudel" foregrounds the artist's work through a presentation of about 60 sculptures. The exhibition is on view through July 21. Getty Publications has published a excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $65-75.
Moske is the author of "Deaths of Artists." The book uses two fragile scrapbooks in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York both to look at how newspapers in the early twentieth century covered the deaths of artists, and to jump off from that often sensational coverage to learn more about how artists were considered and remembered. The Met has recently digitized the scrapbooks that instigated Moske's examination. Amazon and Bookshop offer the book for about $37.
Instagram: Jim Moske, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 649 features artist Patrick Martinez and author Nell Irvin Painter.
Dallas Contemporary is showing "Patrick Martinez: Histories" through September 1. The exhibition surveys work Martinez has made since 2016, including his Pee Chee folder-referencing paintings, cake paintings, neons, and his recent multi-media paintings which often feature stucco, paint, and neon. It was curated by Rafael Barrientos Martínez.
Martinez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work investigates socio-economic position, immigration, police violence, and civic and cultural loss. He's had solo shows at museums and kunsthalles such as the ICA San Francisco, the Tucson (Ariz.) Museum of Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Vincent Price Art Museums. He's been in recent group shows at the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum, The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and El Museo del Barrio, New York.
Painter's new book is "I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays." The book features essays on Painter's experience of art school, the construction of whiteness, and a sub-collection of essays on visual culture that addresses topics such as Alma Thomas' life and career, and the exhibition "Soul of a Nation." "I Just Keep Talking" is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $30-35.
Painter's previous books include "The History of White People," "Standing at Armageddon," "Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol," and "Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over." The “starting over” of the title refers to Painter’s retirement after a career as a top Ivy League historian to return to college as a sixty-something student — first to take undergraduate studio art courses at Rutgers, then to pursue an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Instagram: Patrick Martinez, Nell Irvin Painter, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 648 features curator Dita Amory and artist Isabelle Frances McGuire.
Along with Ann Dumas, Amory is the curator of "Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origins of Fauvism," which is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through May 27. The exhibition presents works Henri Matisse and André Derain made in Collioure, a fishing village in the south of France, in the summer of 1905. The work the two men made that summer was crucial to the development of fauvism, the first significant movement of twentieth-century art. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42-47.
McGuire's work is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in "Descending the Staircase." The exhibition, which considers artists' approaches to the human body, was curated by Jadine Collingwood and Jack Schneider. It is on view through August 25. McGuire is a Chicago-based artist whose work considers the body and how our understanding of it can be filtered by video games, film, animatronics, and other technologies. This is their first inclusion in a museum exhibition; they will also be on view at Artist's Space, New York, next month.
Episode No. 647 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Kahlil Robert Irving.
The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis is presenting "Kahlil Robert Irving: Archaeology of the Present" through July 29. "Archaeology of the Present" is a presentation of new Irving sculptures, video, and found objects. Irving has situated his sculptures and other items within a large plywood platform, resembling a stage. Viewers can move onto the structure to encounter both artworks and manufactured objects alike.
The episode was taped in 2023 when Irving was included in “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen” at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition was an examination of the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. It was curated by Alison Hearst. Concurrently, the exhibition now at the Kemper had just opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was curated by William Hernández Luege. At the Kemper, the show was curated by Meredith Malone.
Irving’s assemblages of images and replicas of every day objects challenge constructions of Western identity and culture. His ceramic sculptures incorporate neglected objects that represent a historical moment, as do his room-sized, image-driven installations. Irving has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis; he’s been featured in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and more.
Episode No. 646 features curators Edouard Kopp and Shelley Langdale.
With Kim Conaty, Kopp is the co-curator of "Ruth Asawa: Through Line," a survey of Asawa's lifelong drawing practice. (Kirsten Marples and Scout Hutchinson assisted Kopp and Conaty.) The exhibition, which is at Houston's Menil Collection through July 21, presents drawings, collages, watercolors, sketchbooks, paper-folds and other work. The show is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $36-$46.
Langdale is the curator of "The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy," an exhibition of German expressionist works on paper from the rich collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The show features a wide range of rarely exhibited (and little-known) drawings, as well as prints. It is on view through May 27.
Episode No. 645 features curator María Elena Ortiz and artist Kenny Rivero.
Ortiz is the curator of "Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition investigates the history of surrealism in the Caribbean and posits that Caribbean intellectuals were key to the development of surrealism in other sites, such as Europe. The exhibition also examines the relationship between Caribbean surrealism and the Afrosurreal in the United States. The exhibition is at MAMFW through July 28. An excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50.
Rivero is among the artists whose work is included in "Surrealism and Us." Rivero's work deconstructs histories and explores the construction of identity through paintings, collage, drawings, and sculpture. His work is in the collections of museums such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Instagram: María Elena Ortiz, Kenny Rivero, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 644 features artists Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Trey Burns.
The Hammer Museum is presenting "Hammer Projects: Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi" through August 11. The exhibition features ARENA V (2024), Nkosi's latest investigation of the social and psychological experiences of Black gymnasts. "Nkosi" is curated by Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi with Connie Butler.
Nkosi is a South Africa-based artist whose work often uses the world of sport, and especially athletes, to consider imperial histories and their impacts on the present, fellowship, competition, and performance.
She has been featured in group exhibitions at the 15th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, and more. In collaboration with East Side Projects, Nkosi presented the multimedia work Equations for a Body at Rest across many spaces in Birmingham, UK as part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Nkosi's short film The Same Track, referenced on the program, may be viewed here.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Nasher Public: Trey Burns" through April 21. The exhibition features Burns' Prairie Piece which examines north Texas' ecology through seemingly incongruent subjects such as Robert Smithson's unrealized proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, and the George W. Bush administration and Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University.
Burns has exhibited at the Pavilion Vendôme and the Ecole Nationale d'Architecture in Paris, at Wassaic Projects, and more. He is also the co-director of Dallas' Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, a non-profit that provides space and support for outdoor sculpture.
Episode No. 643 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator and art historian John P. Bowles and artist Stacy Kranitz.
Along with Dennis Carr and Jacqueline Francis, Bowles is the co-curator of "Sargent Claude Johnson," a survey of the artist's career at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. through May 20. The exhibition features over 40 works Johnson, a major Harlem Renaissance-era sculptor who lived in Oakland, Calif., made between the Great Depression and the civil rights era. It is the first Johnson exhibition in over 25 years. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the Huntington. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40.
The second segment features photographer Stacy Kranitz. Earlier this month Pro Publica published "The year after a denied abortion," an extraordinary story and photo essay by Kranitz and Kavitha Surama. The piece follows Mayron Michelle Hollis as the state of Tennessee simultaneously questioned Hollis' fitness to care for her four children and forced her to continue a life-threatening pregnancy.
Kranitz was featured on the program in September 2023 when “A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845” debuted at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass., this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31.
The exhibition considers the South as a forger of American identity and examines how Southern photographers have contributed to both the advance of their medium, and the US project. “A Long Arc” was curated by Gregory J. Harris and Sarah Kennel. The catalogue was published by Aperture. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $70.
Kranitz’s work, primarily made in the southern Appalachian Mountains, presents the complexity and instability of a rugged region on which industry has preyed. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her 2022 book As it Was Give(n) to Me was published by Twin Palms and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $75-80.
For images of Kranitz's work discussed on the program presented by series or project, please see Episode No. 620 and:
- As it Was Give(n) to Me;
- From the Study on Post Pubescent Manhood;
- Fulcrum of Malice; and
- Target Unknown.
Episode No. 642 features curator Simon Kelly and artist Marc Bauer.
Kelly is the curator of "Matisse and the Sea," at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 12. The exhibition examines the significance of the sea across Matisse's oeuvre. It especially examines SLAM's own 1907-08 Bathers with a Turtle, long considered one of Matisse's most challenging, enigmatic paintings. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the museum and Hirmer. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.
Bauer is showing a 36-foot-wide charcoal and pastel mural titled RESILIENCE, Drawing the Line, 2023 in the latest installment of The Menil Collection's wall drawing series. The work adapts imagery from art history with cultural references specific to global and Houston-specific events. For this work Bauer is trying something new: he's repeatedly modifying the work over the course of its year-long display. It will be on view through this summer.
Bauer was the 2020 recipient of the Prix Meret Oppenheim, Switzerland's most prestigious art award. His work is in the collections of museums such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and he was included in the 2022 Congo Biennial in Kinshasa.
Instagram: Simon Kelly, Marc Bauer, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 641 is a President's Day weekend clips show featuring artist Stanley Whitney.
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum (née the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) is presenting "Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon," a retrospective of Whitney's fifty-year career. The exhibition features the square-format, semi-gridded abstract canvases Whitney has been making since 2002, as well as works preceding them as far back as the 1970s. The exhibition was curated by Cathleen Chaffee and will be on view through May 26. From Buffalo, the exhibition will travel to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. A catalogue was published by DelMonico Books and the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75.
This program was taped on the occasion of an exhibition of Whitney's then-recent work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2017. For images, see Episode No. 272.
Episode No. 640 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Ledgerwood and curator Lisa Volpe.
Ledgerwood is included within "50 Paintings" at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition features paintings made in the last five years by 50 artists from around the world. It was curated by Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner and is on view through June 23. Ledgerwood is also on view in "Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations" at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington through June 1.
Ever since the 1980s, Ledgerwood's paintings have engaged transatlantic histories related to abstraction and decoration from a distinctive feminist point-of-view. Her work is in the collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the MCA Chicago.
Volpe is the curator of “Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955”, which opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31. The exhibition presents work the famed Frank and the less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.
Frank and Webb images are at Episode No. 630.
Instagram: Judy Ledgerwood, Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 639 features artists Sin Wai Kin and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork.
The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley is presenting "MATRIX 284/Sin Wai Kin: The Story Changing," the artist's first US exhibition. BAMPFA's exhibition includes Sin's two most recent video works: The Breaking Story (2022) and Dreaming the End (2023). "The Story Changing" was curated by Victoria Sung and is on view through March 10. BAMPFA's eight-page exhibition brochure features a conversation between Sung and Sin.
Sin often uses speculative fiction and narrative in performance and in filmic works. Informed by their experience in London's drag scene, Sin's work asks questions about history, the present, and the construction of reality and factuality. Sin was shortlisted for the UK's Turner Prize in 2022. Their work has been shown at museums such as Fondazione Memmo, Rome, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Somerset House, London, The British Museum, London, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the 2019 Venice Biennale, and more.
On the second segment, a re-air of a 2017 segment with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork. The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University is presenting "Poems of Electronic Air," Gork's East Coast institutional debut, through April 7. The exhibition combines recent sculpture with a commissioned, site-specific installation made for the CCVA's Le Corbusier-designed building. Gork has previously exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, SFMOMA, SculptureCenter, New York, BAMPFA, and in the Hammer Museum's 2019 Made in L.A. biennial. For images, see Episode No. 302.
Instagram: Sin Wai Kin, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 638 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Saif Azzuz and Maryam Taghavi.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting "Saif Azzuz: Cost of Living," an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and installation that considers settler colonialism and gentrification as related processes. The exhibition is on view through May 19.
Azzuz is a Libyan-Yurok artist based in suburban San Francisco. His work, which often addresses nature, land, and California Native American cultural practices, is in the collections of museums such as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. He was a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist.
Taghavi's work is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Chicago in "Chicago Works: Maryam Taghavi مریم تقوی." Taghavi's work explores perception, often by wielding or adapting Persian calligraphy. The exhibition was curated by Bana Kattan with Kamala GhaneaBassiri.
Taghavi has previously exhibited at museums such as LAXART, Los Angeles and the Queens Museum. Chicago's O'Hare Airport has recently installed a commissioned work by Taghavi in its Terminal Five.
Instagram: Saif Azzuz, Maryam Taghavi.
Episode No. 637 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Jamillah James and author Brent Martin.
James has organized "Faith Ringgold: American People," a retrospective of Ringgold's career as an artist and activist, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, which presents Ringgold as a key bridge between the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary practice, originated at the New Museum, New York, where it was curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari. "Ringgold" is on view in Chicago through February 25. The outstanding catalogue was published by the New Museum and Phaidon. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55-75.
On the occasion of photographer and scholar Angelyn Whitmeyer's launching of the George Masa Photo Database -- an important new website that makes images of Masa's pictures available via a single point-of-access for the first time, this week's show re-airs a 2022 segment with author Brent Martin. Masa was an Asheville, North Carolina-based photographer who had a significant impact on the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and on determining the Southern route of the Appalachian Trail, the two crown jewels of the eastern United States' natural infrastructure. His work was almost lost and forgotten, in part because the region in which he worked was remote, but also due to his status as a Japanese-American immigrant at a time of intense anti-Japanese bigotry.
Martin came onto the program to discuss his 2022 book "George Masa's Wild Vision," which was published by Hub City Press. Amazon and Indiebound offer the book for around $25. For images, see Episode No. 567.
Episode No. 636 features curators Furio Rinaldi and Jonathan Stuhlman.
Rinaldi is the curator of "Botticelli Drawings" at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Legion of Honor, the first exhibition dedicated to the drawings of Sandro Botticelli. The show follows Botticelli from his time with Fra Filippo Lippi to the establishment of his own workshop in Florence. The exhibition is on view through February 11. The exhibition catalogue was published by FAMSF in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55-70.
Stuhlman is the curator of “Southern/Modern,” a survey of modernism from artists who were from, worked in, or visited the American South. The exhibition opens arrives at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville on January 26, and will remain on view through April 28. The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by University of North Carolina Press. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $30-75. For images, see Episode No. 606.
Episode No. 635 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Leslie Martinez and curator Anthony Graham.
MoMA PS1 in Queens is presenting "Leslie Martinez: The Fault of Formation," through April 8. The exhibition features paintings built with paint, folds, pools, and collaged materials such as rags and dried acrylics. Martinez's way of making paintings both mines the history of abstraction, but also a no-waste approach informed by methodologies of rasquachismo, a term coined by scholar Tomás Ybarra-Fausto to describe a Chicano "attitude rooted in resourcefulness yet mindful of stance and style." The show was curated by Elena Ketelsen González.
Martinez was previously featured in a solo show at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston. Their work is in the collection of museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
The Speed Art Museum in Louisville is showing Martinez's work in "Current Speed: Angel Otero/Leslie Martinez" through March 24. The exhibition features works by the two artists that are new to the Speed's collection. The presentation was organized by Tyler Blackwell.
On the second segment, a re-presentation of curator Anthony Graham on the Alexis Smith retrospective he organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2022. Smith died earlier this week. She was 74. For images, see Episode No. 568.
Episode No. 634 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Amalia Mesa-Bains.
The Phoenix Art Museum is presenting “Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory,” the first retrospective of the pioneering Chicana artist. The exhibition includes nearly 60 works including fourteen of Mesa-Bains’ major installations. It was curated by María Esther Fernández and Laura E. Pérez and is on view in Phoenix through February 25, 2024. The exhibition originated at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. The outstanding catalogue was published by BAMPFA in association with University of California Press. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $50.
Across a half-century, Mesa-Bains has foregrounded Chicana forms such as altares (home altars), ofrendas (offerings to the dead), descansos (roadside resting places), and capillas (home yard shrines) within contemporary art. Her work often spotlights domestic spaces and the construction of landscape in ways that highlight colonial erasure. Among the museums which have presented solo exhibitions of Mesa-Bains’ work are the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
As promised on the program:
- Sandy Rodriguez on Episode No. 532.
- “New World Wunderkammer” at the Fowler Museum.
For more images, see Episode No. 592.
Episode No. 633 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Gary Simmons.
The Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,” a survey of Simmons’ 35-year career. The exhibition reveals how Simmons has addressed race, class and US history in ways that have remained persistently au courant. It was curated by René Morales and Jadine Collingwood, with Jack Schneider. It's on view in Miami through April 28, 2024. The exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The MCA and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $56-60.
For images of artworks discussed on the program, see Episode No. 613.
Episode No. 632 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Philip Brookman and Julian Brooks.
Brookman is the curator of "Dorothea Lange: Seeing People," at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition presents Lange's decades-long portraiture practice in over 100 photographs, pictures that range from the Great Depression through the 1960s. "Seeing People" is on view through March 31, 2024. The exhibition catalogue was published by the NGA in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $43-51.
With Edina Adam, Brooks is the co-curator of "William Blake: Visionary," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Blake was a printmaker and painter who built an unconventional, fantastical, often narrative world view that he presented across both poetry and art. The presentation includes a colored copy of Blake's illuminated book America a Prophecy, a mindfully careful telling of the story of the American Revolution. "Blake" is at the Getty through January 14, 2024. The Getty-published exhibition catalogue is available from Bookshop and Amazon for $29-33.
Episode No. 631 features curators Anne Umland and Kelly Montana.
Umland is the curator of "Picasso in Fontainebleau" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition examines work Pablo Picasso made during the summer of 1921 in Fontainebleau, an exurb of Paris. It reunites four major works on canvas, both versions of Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring. The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2024. Umland was assisted by Alexandra Morrison and Francesca Ferrari. The excellent catalogue was published by MoMA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $55-60.
Montana is the curator of "Hanne Darboven -- Writing Time" at the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition explores three kinds of work Darboven produced -- abstract drawings, date calculations, and monumental installations -- and explains how they were informed by Darboven's involvement in New York's embrace of conceptualism in the 1960s. The exhibition is on view through February 11, 2024. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.
Episode No. 630 features curators Stephan Wolohojian and Lisa Volpe.
With Ashley Dunn and in collaboration with Laurence des Cars, Isolde Pludermacher, and Stéphane Guégan, Wolohojian is the co-curator of "Manet/Degas" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition explores the artistic dialogue between Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas and considers their work in the context of their shared family relationships, friendships, and intellectual circles. It is on view through January 7, 2024. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $32-60.
Volpe is the curator of "Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition presents the work the famed Frank and the enormously less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. It is on view through January 7, 2024. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.
Episode No. 629 features artist Alexandro Segade of My Barbarian, and a re-air of a 2013 conversation with artist Eleanor Antin.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is presenting "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian," a fiftieth anniversary celebration of Antin's landmark 100 Boots (1973). The exhibition also includes work featuring Antin's alter ego, the King of Solana Beach, and My Barbarian's Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse (2013), a feminist performance work that centers matrilineal creative inheritance. The work's title references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was co-authored by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, and Melanie Klein's 1929 essay "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and the Creative Impulse." Performers include Segade and his My Barbarian mates Malik Gaines and Jade Gordon, as well as artists Mary Kelly and Antin. "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian is on view through February 18, 2024.
My Barbarian's work has been presented at museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in a 2021-22 survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
This Bomb magazine interview between My Barbarian and Andrea Fraser was referenced on the program.
For Antin images, see Episode No. 104.
Episode No. 628 features artist Lyle Ashton Harris and curator Scott Allan.
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love," a survey of Harris' career featuring photographs, collage, archival material, and more. It's on view through January 7. 2024. Harris' work engages transatlantic social and political dialogues even has he foregrounds personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. The exhibition was co-curated by Caitlin Julia Rubin and Lauren Haynes. A catalogue is forthcoming.
Harris' work is also included in "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility," at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition, which was curated by Ashley James with Faith Hunter, presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, works that conceal the body to explore a key tension in contemporary society: the desire to be seen, and the desire to be hidden from sight. It's on view through April 7, 2004. A catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $60-65.
With Nii Obodai, Harris is the co-editor of the latest issue of Aperture magazine, which considers the Ghanaian capital of Accra as a site of dynamic photographic voices and histories that connect visual culture in West Africa to the world. It's available from Aperture for $25.
Allan curated "Reckoning with Millet's Man with a Hoe," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition is an intensive look at arguably the most historically significant painting in the JPGM's collection of nineteenth-century European art. Man with a Hoe debuted in Paris in 1863, where it was attacked for its depiction and glorification of peasant labor. The exhibition is on view through December 10. The Getty-published catalogue is available from Amazon and Indiebound for about $27-30.
Instagram: Lyle Ashton Harris, Scott Allan, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 627 features artists Erica Mahinay and Teresa Baker.
Mahinay and Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) are both included in "Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living," the sixth iteration of the Hammer Museum's biennial. The exhibition, which is on view through December 31, was curated by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, with Ashton Cooper. This is the second of two MAN Podcast episodes that will feature artists from the program. The first featured artists Melissa Cody and Roksana Pirouzmand.
Mahinay is a painter and sculptor whose work references and updates modernism in address of the body. She has had solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Rome.
Baker's mixed-media works combine artificial and natural materials to make abstracted landscapes that explore space and movement. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, and in group exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kan., and Marin MOCA, Novato, Calif.
Instagram: Erica Mahinay, Teresa Baker, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 626 features curator Michelle White and artist Kenneth Tam.
With Megan Holly Witko, White is the co-curator of "Chryssa & New York," a survey of work the Greek-born Chryssa made while living in New York from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It's at the Menil Collection in Houston through March 10, 2024. During the years featured in the exhibition, Chryssa used neon and elements of commercial signage to bridge ideas rooted in the pop, conceptual, and minimalist movements. It is the first major survey of the artist’s work in the United States in more than fifty years. The excellent exhibition catalogue was co-published by the Menil and the Dia Art Foundation, with which the Menil co-organized the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $49.
The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive is exhibiting "MATRIX 281 / Kenneth Tam: The Founding of the World" through November 26. The exhibition presents The Founding of the World, a video and sculptural installation in which Tam explores the history and practices of fraternities as a way of probing the dynamics of male intimacy and ritualized violence. The presentation was curated by Victoria Sung.
Tam's work is also included in:
- "Cowboy," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through February 18, 2024. "Cowboy" features the work of 27 artists who are shifting cowboy mythology. It was curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash.
- "Kenneth Tam: All of M" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. All of M is Tam's re-staging of the high school prom as a way of exploring how men perform their identities in spaces of social ritual. It is on view through November 11.
Instagram: Michelle White, Kenneth Tam, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 625B features artists Tammy Nguyen and Jammie Holmes.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston is presenting "Tammy Nguyen," an exhibition of Nguyen's new paintings, works on paper, and unique artist books. The interconnected body of work, informed by East Asian landscape painting, addresses the relationship between man and nature and landscape as presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1836 book Nature. The exhibition, which is on view through January 28, 2024, was organized by Jeffrey De Blois.
Nguyen was a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship, and has exhibited at museums such as MoMA PS1, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and the Dallas Museum of Art. This is her first museum solo exhibition.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible," a survey of approximately 15 paintings Holmes has made since 2019. The exhibition reveals Holmes' interest in Black domestic spaces, particularly as they relate to his hometown of Thibodaux, Louisiana, and the continuing impacts of the Black Panther Party. The exhibition, which was curated by María Elena Ortiz, is on view through November 26. The MAMFW-published catalogue is available from the museum for $65.
Instagram: Tammy Nguyen, Jammie Holmes, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 625A remembers artist Robert Irwin.
Nota bene: Episode No. 625B, which will post here on the evening of Friday, October 27, will feature artists Tammy Nguyen and Jammie Holmes.
Irwin, a painter and anti-sculptor who substantially invented the Light and Space movement (and responses to it as a teacher), died on October 25, 2023. He was 95. This program remembers Irwin with two curators who worked with him, and by re-playing Irwin's two appearances on The Modern Art Notes Podcast.
Michael Auping retired from the chief curatorship of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2017 after curatorial stints at the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Fla., and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. He organized "Robert Irwin / Matrix 15" for what is now the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in 1978.
Evelyn Hankins is head curator at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC. She organized "Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change," a survey of Irwin's transition from painting to installation, in 2016.
The two Irwin interview segments on the program are from 2012's Episode No. 26; and 2016's Episode No. 231.
Episode No. 624 features curator Leigh Arnold and artist Sarah Crowner.
Arnold is the curator of "Groundswell: Women of Land Art," a survey of artists who have worked in the land that revises ossified male-centric histories at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The exhibition provides a broad overview of themes, interests, and artworks that women created beginning in the 'usual' land art era, the 1960s and 1970s, and updates our understanding of land art to include not only work made in the most rural reaches of North America, but also work made and installed in and around urban and suburban centers. The exhibition is on view through January 7, 2024. An excellent catalogue was published by the Nasher and DelMonico Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $55.
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is presenting "Sarah Crowner: Around Orange," a presentation of site-specific artworks that engage with the Pulitzer's Tadao Ando building and Ellsworth Kelly, whose monumental sculpture Blue Black is on permanent view at the Pulitzer. The exhibition, which was curated by Stephanie Weissberg, is on view through February 4, 2024. Concurrently, The Hill Art Foundation, New York, is showing "The Sea, the Sky, a Window," an exhibition of site-specific works Crowner is presenting with sculptures and paintings from several private collections. The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2024.
Instagram: Leigh Arnold, Sarah Crowner, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 623 features artists Melissa Cody and Roksana Pirouzmand.
Cody and Pirouzmand are both included in "Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living," the sixth iteration of the Hammer Museum's biennial. The exhibition, which is on view through December 31, was curated by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, with Ashton Cooper. This is the first of two MAN Podcast episodes that will feature artists from the program.
Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver, creates tapestries from traditional techniques that engage both ancestral and contemporary ideas and forms. Her work is partly informed by the Germantown style, developed in the nineteenth century by weavers who used industrially dyed yarns produced in Germantown, Pennsylvania and shipped west to be used by Diné weavers. Cody's work has been included in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, SITE Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and more.
Pirouzmand is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist whose work reference and use the human body to address diaspora and memory. She has exhibited across southern California at venues such as the California Institute of the Arts' REDCAT.
Instagram: Melissa Cody, Roksana Pirouzmand, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 622 is a holiday clips episode that features artists Otobong Nkanga and Griselda Rosas.
Nkanga was just awarded the 2025 Nasher Prize, for "weaving together powerful works that delve into the complex, often fragile relationships between humans, the land, and its resources, touching on issues of consumption, global circulation, connectivity, and care."
This segment was taped in 2018 on the occasion of “Otobong Nkanga: To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, a survey of her work, was curated by Omar Kholeif. For images, see Episode No. 340.
Rosas' work is on view at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in "Matrix 282/Griselda Rosas: Yo te cuido." The exhibition presents Rosas’ textile drawings and sculptural installations that explore themes of inheritance, colonialism, and intergenerational knowledge. The exhibition, which debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and which is on view in Berkeley through November 19, was curated by Anthony Graham with assistance from Jill Dawsey. This segment was taped in the spring when the MCASD presentation was on view. For images, see Episode No. 607.
Instagram: Otobong Nkanga, Griselda Rosas, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 621 features artist Carmen Winant and curator Negar Azimi.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is exhibiting Winant's "The last safe abortion" through December 31. It features Winant's assemblages of historical photographs gathered from across the Midwest that detail the work of providing health care to women. That work includes answering phones, presenting training sessions, scheduling appointments, and more. "The last safe abortion" was curated by Casey Riley.
Winant's work typically explores representations of women through strategies such as collage and installation. Her exhibition credits include the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sculpture Center, Queens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and many venues in Europe.
Azimi discusses her exhibition "Becoming Van Leo," the first international survey of the photography of the late Armenian artist known as Van Leo. It's on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through November 5. Born Levon Boyadjian in Turkey, Leo became a leading studio photographer in Cairo between the 1940s and the 1960s. Azimi's exhibition includes some of Leo's earliest pictures from the 1930s, his extensive experiments with self-portraiture, and his challenging of East-West binaries.
Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 620 features artists Stacy Kranitz and Kristine Potter.
Kranitz and Potter are included in "A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845" at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition considers the South as a forger of American identity and examines how Southern photographers have contributed to both the advance of their medium, and the US project. "A Long Arc" was curated by Gregory J. Harris and Sarah Kennel, and will be on view through January 14, 2024 before traveling to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The catalogue was published by Aperture. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $70.
Kranitz's work, primarily made in the southern Appalachian Mountains, presents the complexity and instability of a rugged region on which industry has preyed. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her 2022 book As it Was Give(n) to Me was published by Twin Palms and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $75-80.
Aperture has just published Potter's second monograph, Dark Waters. The book extends Potter's interest in using the US landscape as an ideological site by exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century 'murder ballads' marry site to misogynistic violence. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $43-61.
Instagram: Stacy Kranitz, Kristine Potter, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 619 features artists Edra Soto and José Lerma.
Soto and Lerma are among the 18 artists featured in "entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago, which is home to third-largest mainland population of Puerto Ricans. "entre horizontes" was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 5, 2024.
Edra Soto's sculpture and installations prompt viewers to reconsider cross-cultural dynamics, the legacy of colonialism, and personal responsibility. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in the 2020-21 El Museo del Barrio, New York, triennial, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more. In 2023 Soto was awarded a US LatinX Art Forum fellowship. Soto also is the co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin.
Lerma is a painter whose work blends the historical, autobiographical, art historical and mythological, often through portraits that suggest (or name) specific individuals while pointing to how much of their public personae are manufactured. Simultaneously riffing on European portraiture traditions and popular representation, his work is smart, funny, and always painterly. The Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the MCA Chicago have all presented solo exhibitions of his work.
Episode No. 618 is a holiday clips episode that remembers Steve Roden. He died yesterday after fighting Alzheimer's disease. Roden was 59.
The program features:
- a 2012 segment with Roden and Stephen Vitiello on the occasion of their inclusion in the Menil Collection, Houston exhibition "Silence," and a related improvised performance at the Rothko Chapel;
- an excerpt from that performance;
- the full sound Roden created for The Modern Art Notes Podcast; and
- a 2013 segment with Roden pegged to concurrent exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and at CRG Gallery in New York.
Episode No. 617 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist vanessa german.
german is one of six artists featured in "Beyond Granite," a series of installations on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The exhibition, which was curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab, is on view through September 18, 2024. german's Of Thee We Sing (2023) considers Marian Anderson's 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (near which german's work is installed).
Two other artists included in the exhibition have been featured on The MAN Podcast: Tiffany Chung and Wendy Red Star.
Instagram: vanessa german, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 616 features artist Gary Simmons and curator Sarah L. Eckhardt.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is presenting "Gary Simmons: Public Enemy," a survey of Simmons' 35-year career. The exhibition reveals how Simmons has addressed race, class and US history in ways that have remained persistently au courant. It was curated by René Morales and Jadine Collingwood, with Jack Schneider. After closing on October 1, the exhibition will be on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from December 5 through April 24, 2024. The MCA Chicago and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $56-60.
Along with Drew Thompson, Eckhardt is the co-curator of "Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village." It's at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through September 10. The exhibition is a survey of Richmond-native Wigfall's work, and a historicization of Communications Village, the interdisciplinary artist-run project that Wigfall instigated while teaching at the State University of New York, New Paltz in the early 1970s, as the instigator of what we now call social practice. The excellent catalogue was published by the VMFA, which offers it for $40.
Instagram: Gary Simmons, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 615 features historian and author David Bindman, and artist Nicki Green.
Bindman's new book is 'Race Is Everything': Art and Human Difference. It examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century racializing science (sometimes referred to as pseudoscience) and how European art both influenced it, and was itself influenced by it. The book pays special attention to the racialization of people of African and Jewish descent. It considers the skull as a racializing marker, Darwin and Darwinism, the construction of the Mediterranean 'race,' Anglo-Saxonism, the racializing debate over Egyptians, and plenty more. 'Race is Everything' was just published by Reaktion Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $37.
Bindman is an emeritus professor at University College London, and a fellow of the Hutchings Center, Harvard University. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century.
Green's work is included in "What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection" which runs through July 7, 2024 at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition was curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm with Anthony Graham. Green is a transdisciplinary artist who works primarily in clay. Her work explores topics such as history preservation, conceptual ornamentation, and aesthetics of otherness. She has exhibited at the biennial in Lyon, France, at the New Museum, New York, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. Next spring she'll be included in "New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
Episode No. 614 features curator Kate Clarke Lemay and artist Maia Cruz Palileo.
With Taína Caragol, Lemay is the co-curator of "1898: US Imperial Visions and Revisions" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington. (Carlina Maestre assisted them.) The exhibition examines late-nineteenth-century US imperialism, especially the War of 1898 (often called the Spanish-American War), the Congressional Joint Resolution to annex Hawai'i (which was passed in July 1898), the Philippine-American War (1899-1913) and the US extension of its sphere to include Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The exhibition particularly -- but not exclusively -- looks at how portraiture was used by the US in an attempt to define peoples, and by both the US and by the leaders of other countries to establish status within the community of nations, and to project power. "1898" is on view through February 25, 2024.
The forthcoming exhibition catalogue features an essay by Caragol that looks at how several contemporary artists are addressing the legacies of US imperialism in their work. Among the artists on whom Caragol focuses is Palileo, whose work often addresses her family’s arrival in the United States from the Philippines, as well as the colonial relationship between the two countries. (The other artists Caragol addresses in her essay are Stephanie Syjuco, Gisela McDaniel, and Miguel Luciano.)
Palileo's work often extends from research she conducted at the Newberry Library in 2017. The library's holds significant research collections related to the US imperial project in the Philippines, including a watercolor album by Damián Domingo and photographs made by Dean C. Worcester, a US zoologist who worked in the Philippines. Worcester's work was influential in shaping US public opinion about Filipinos. Palileo's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Katzen Arts Center at Washington's American University and at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College for the Arts in San Francisco. She's been in group shows at institutions such as the Moderna Museet in Sweden, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Bemis Center, Omaha, and the NPG.
On September 8-9 the NPG will convene over 40 scholars and artists from the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, Cuba, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US for a two-day symposium. In addition to panel discussions and gallery talks, the event will feature a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ada Ferrer. All panels and the keynote address will take place in the McEvoy Auditorium in the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in Washington. RSVP here (it's free).
Instagram: Kate Lemay, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 613 features author Prudence Peiffer and museum director Timothy Potts.
Peiffer is the author of "The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever." The book, out this week from Harper, is a group biography of seven artists -- Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman -- who worked on Coenties Slip in the 1950s and '60s. Coenties Slip was a street that overlooked the East River in lower Manhattan. Peiffer's book argues for not only the importance of the artists themselves, but for where and how they worked as being important to the development of post-war art in New York. Peiffer is director of content at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Amazon and Bookshop offer "The Slip" for $22-36.
Potts discusses the J. Paul Getty Museum's co-acquisition (with the National Portrait Gallery, London) of Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Mai (ca. 1776). The painting, among Reynolds' finest works, is on view at the National Portrait Gallery. The first presentation at the Getty will be in 2026.
An as-yet-unidentified error at Liberated Syndication, which publishes The MAN Podcast to RSS feeds and podcatchers, is preventing the uploading of this week's show to this feed. We're working with them to solve the issue.
If you're eager, see manpodcast.com for this week's show!
Episode No. 612 features curators Susan Davidson and Stephanie Schrader.
Davidson is the curator of "Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting," which is at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through September 3. The exhibition is the first Motherwell paintings retrospective in a quarter-century. Motherwell was a New York-based painter prominent in the development of abstract expressionism. The exhibition catalogue was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55. From Fort Worth, "Motherwell" will travel to the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna.
Along with Freyda Spira and Thomas Lederballe, Schrader is a co-curator of "Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in 19th-Century Danish Art," which is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through August 20. The exception looks at the development of Danish art across both paintings and drawings, and shows how artists helped develop the nation's cultural identity. The excellent catalogue was published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which originated the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 611 features artist Wendy Red Star.
The Columbus Museum of Art is presenting the career-length survey "Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth." It's on view through September 3. The exhibition was curated by Tricia Laughlin Bloom and Nadiah Rivera Fellah, and is accompanied by a publication from the Newark Museum of Art, which originated the exhibition.
An enrolled member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe, Red Star's work explores both Native American ideologies and colonialist structures in ways that point to both the past and the present. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, the Joslyn Art Museum, MASS MoCA, the Missoula (Mont.) Art Museum, and more.
Episode No. 610 features artist Dyani White Hawk and curator Kelly Montana.
White Hawk is included in "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America" at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition presents new works that examine the question, "Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy?" The exhibition was organized by a six-person curatorial team and is on view through October 8.
White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) makes works multiple media that often foreground Lakota art forms and cultural knowledge and blend both Native American and non-Native interests and art histories. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston. She's also been in group shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and more.
Montana is the curator of "Si Lewen: The Parade" which is at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston through September 3. The Parade is an epic narrative that unfolds across 63 drawings. Lewen, a Polish-born immigrant who lived and worked in New York and Pennsylvania, witnessed the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 while serving in the United States Army. In the 1950s he published a graphic novel that responded to the horrors he encountered as part of his war-time experience. This exhibition is the first in the United States to bring together the complete set of works from The Parade.
Episode No. 609 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a summer clips episode featuring artist Virginia Jaramillo.
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City is presenting "Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence," the first retrospective of Jaramillo's work. The exhibition includes 73 paintings and handmade paper works extending back over 70 years. The exhibition was curated by Erin Dziedzic and will be on view through August 26. A catalogue is forthcoming.
This episode was recorded on the occasion of “Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969-74” which was at the Menil Collection in 2020. The show was the first solo museum exhibition of Jaramillo’s career. Curated by Michelle White, it featured a series of paintings that Jaramillo made featuring the joining of line to color against mostly monochromatic backgrounds.
See Episode No. 469 for images.
Episode No. 608 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Ebony G. Patterson.
The New York Botanical Garden is presenting "…things come to thrive…in the shedding…in the molting…," a site-specific exhibition that immerses Patterson's work in the NYBG's spaces. It is on view in the Bronx through October 22.
This episode was taped in 2020 on the occasion of “Ebony G. Patterson… while the dew is still on the roses…”, a survey of work Patterson had made in the previous decade that was on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Patterson’s installations, tapestries, videos and sculptures wield beauty to address disenfranchised communities, violence, masculinity and the impacts of colonialism. “… while the dew” especially examines her consideration of gardens. Patterson’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bermuda National Gallery, and more.
For images, see Episode No. 436.
Episode No. 607 features curator C.D. Dickerson III and artist Griselda Rosas.
With Emerson Bowyer, Dickerson is the co-curator of "Canova: Sketching in Clay." The exhibition features more than 30 of the 60 surviving sketch models Antonio Canova made in clay, handsy works which helped him plan his designs for his large sculptures. In addition to clay models, the exhibition also includes a number of plaster works and final marbles, such as Canova's iconic, influential 1805/07 portrait of Letizia Bonaparte, often known as Madame Mère. "Canova" is at the National Gallery of Art through October 9. The excellent catalogue was published by the NGA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-65.
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is presenting "Griselda Rosas: Yo te cuido" an exhibition of Rosas' textile drawings and sculptural installations that explore themes of inheritance, colonialism, and intergenerational knowledge. The exhibition, which was curated by Anthony Graham with assistance from Jill Dawsey, is on view through August 13.
Episode No. 606 features curators Samantha Friedman and Jonathan Stuhlman.
Friedman is the curator of "Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. (Laura Neufeld and Emily Olek also worked on the exhibition.) The exhibition presents works on paper that O'Keeffe made in series. Some of these series informed paintings, several of which are also included. The exhibition is on view through August 12. A catalogue was published by MoMA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $40.
Stuhlman is the curator of "Southern/Modern," a survey of modernism from artists who were from, worked in, or visited the American South that opens this weekend at the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. It will remain on view through December 10. The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by University of North Carolina Press. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $30-75.
Episode No. 605 features artist Gio Swaby, and curator Leslie Jones.
The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting "Gio Swaby: Fresh Up," a solo exhibition of work Swaby made in 2017-2021. Swaby's embroidered portraits celebrate both Blackness and her subjects' self-awareness and self-empowerment. The AIC's Melinda Watt co-curated the show with the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Fla. curator Katherine Pill. Rizzoli Electa published an accompanying catalogue in association with the two museums. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.
This is Swaby's first museum solo exhibition. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Jones is the curator of "Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition examines how artists embraced computer technology in the first decades of the computer age. It is on view through July 2. DelMonico Books and LACMA co-published the exhibition catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60-70.
Instagram: Gio Swaby, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 604 features artist Lotus Laurie Kang and curator Apsara DiQuinzio.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is presenting "Atrium Project: Lotus Laurie Kang," a large-scale installation in the MCA's two-story entrance lobby. Kang's work, Molt (New York-Lethbridge-Los Angeles-Toronto-Chicago- ) (2018–2023), hangs from the atrium ceiling. To make it, Kang exposed to natural light lengths of light-sensitive, unfixed photographic film, resulting in colors that evoke the body and landscape. Lotus root-shaped chimes made of cast aluminum and bronze hang alongside these light-sensitive surfaces. Curated by Jack Schneider, the work will be on view through February 11, 2024.
Kang's work is also at London's Chisenhale Gallery in a solo presentation titled "In Cascades." It's up through July 30.
Kang's work often blends sculpture, photography and installation in address of bodies, memories, and histories change over time. Kang has been featured in exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, and in the 2021 triennial at New York's New Museum.
On the second segment, DiQuinzio discusses "Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity," the artist's first retrospective. Kent (1900-1957), was a leading modernist sculptor whose work addressed nature and the drama of the Sierra Nevada, especially within the context of narratives promoted by the Sierra Club and the nascent second-generation environmental movement. "Kent" is at Reno's Nevada Museum of Art through September 10. The show's fine catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45-60.
Instagram: Lotus Laurie Kang, Apsara DiQuinzio, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 603 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Eamon Ore-Giron.
Ore-Giron is one of twenty artists that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the African American Museum in Philadelphia asked to respond to the question: is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy? The artists' answers are featured in the two-venue exhibition "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America." Ore-Giron's work is in the PAFA section of the exhibition. The exhibition was organized by a six-person curatorial team and is on view through October 8.
Ore-Giron’s work joins histories, geographies and abstraction as a means by which to explore the layered past and present of the Americas. He’s been featured in solo shows and two-person shows at the MCA Denver, LAXART, Los Angeles, the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, and at PAFA.
This episode was taped in January 2022 when The Anderson Collection at Stanford University presented “Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra.” For images, see Episode No. 534.
Episode No. 602 features artist Christina Fernandez and curators Nolan Jimbo and Rachel Federman.
Fernandez's work is included in the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles' post-renovation-and-expansion debut exhibition "Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer's Contemporary Collection." It's on view through August 20.
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth is also showing "Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures," a survey of Fernandez's career, through July 9. It was curated by Joanna Szupinska and Chon Noriega. A fine catalogue was published by the California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside, which organized the show, and the Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles. Fernandez is a photographer whose work examines migration, labor, gender, and Mexican American identity. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50.
Jimbo is the curator of "Endless," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition brings together art that touches upon the concept of infinity, including works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, David Lamelas, Etel Adnan, and Charles Gaines. It's on view through April 14, 2024.
With Cynthia Burlingham and Jay A. Clarke, Federman is the co-curator of "Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist's Studio," a survey of Riley's drawing practice primarily drawn from the artist's own collection. It is on view at the Hammer through May 28 before traveling to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Morgan Library, New York. An excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Modern Art Press, London. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $30.
Episode No. 601 features artists Jonathan Lyndon Chase and Sheldon Scott.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase is included in "The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century" at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibition, on view through July 16, presents art, fashion and high-end consumer goods in consideration of the influence hip hop has had on contemporary society. It was curated by Asma Naeem, Gamynne Guillotte, Hannah Klemm, and Andréa Purnell. A catalogue was published by the BMA, the Saint Louis Art Museum and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55.
Chase's paintings, video, sound, and sculpture depicts queer Black love and community. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; they have been included in recent group shows at the ICA Miami, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the RISD Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and soon at the Whitney Museum of American Art (opening June 28).
Scott is included in "Spirit in the Land" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition considers today’s ecological concerns and demonstrates how our identities and natural environments are intertwined. The show particularly focuses on the relationship between the mainland United States and the Caribbean. Curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, it is on view through July 9. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which is available only at the Nasher. Scott is presenting a performance titled "Portrait, numba 1 MAN (day clean ta sun down)" at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans on May 13.
Scott's work builds upon his upbringing in Gullah/Geechee culture and his background in storytelling to examine the Black male form. His work has been exhibited at the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and more.
Episode No. 600 features artist Anna Tsouhlarakis and curator Michael Hartman.
Anna Tsouhlarakis is in several exhibitions around the United States. A solo presentation of her "The Native Guide Project" (2019-present) is at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University through July 9. The indoor-outdoor exhibition presents the Wexner's commissioning of "The Native Guide Project: Columbus," which includes boldface phrases such as "I LIKE HOW YOU SEE NATIVE AMERICANS AS YOUR INTELLECTUAL EQUAL" both within and around the Wexner's famed Peter Eisenman-designed building. The presentation was curated by Kelly Kivland with Bethani Blake.
Tsouhlarakis is among the artists included in the second edition of the St. Louis triennial Counterpublic, which weaves contemporary art into the fabric of St. Louis. Counterpublic's curatorial ensemble included Allison Glenn, Diya Vij, NEw Red Order, and Risa Puleo. Counterpublic is on view through July 15.
At the Scottsdale Museum of Art through August 27, Tsouhlarakis is in "Language in Times of Miscommunication," an exhibition of artworks that use language to critically examine the complexities of social reality. It was curated by Lauren R. O’Connell with Keshia Turley.
Next month the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver will present a survey of Tsouhlarakis's Indigenous Absurdities sculptures which center Indigenous knowledge and systems as ways of teaching starting points. Curated by Leilani Lynch, the exhibition will be on view from June 14 to September 10.
Tsouhlarakis, who is Navajo, Creek and Greek, often challenges and stretches the aesthetic and conceptual boundaries of Native art, often with humor and even sarcasm.
Michael Hartman discusses "Historical Imaginary," at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The exhibition pairs an unfinished study for Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware with other works to explore how artists have constructed American memory. It's on view through November 11.
Episode No. 599 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators David Pullins and Veronica Roberts.
With Vanessa K. Valdés, Pullins is the co-curator of "Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition is the first examination of the life and oeuvre of Pareja, who was enslaved in Velázquez's studio before developing his own independent practice. The Met's exhibition features works by Velázquez and Pareja, as well as examinations of how Spanish painters presented Black and Morisco populations. It is on view through July 16. A superb exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $46.
Roberts discusses "Day Jobs" at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. The exhibition explores how artists have taken jobs beyond their studios, and how those jobs have informed their work. "Day Jobs" is on view through July 23.
Episode No. 598 features artist Faye HeavyShield and curator Glenn Phillips.
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation in Saint Louis is presenting "Faye HeavyShield: Confluences," a career-spanning presentation of HeavyShield's work that includes drawings, sculptures and installations, and two commissions that engage the landscapes and histories of the Saint Louis region. HeavyShield's spare, often minimal vocabulary and use of modest materials often addresses land, traditional Kainai stories, and HeavyShield's experiences in the residential school system. The exhibition, which was curated by Tamara Schenkenberg, will be on view through August 6.
A member of the Kainai (Blood) Nation, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Heavyshield lives and works in the foothills of southern Alberta.
Phillips discusses "Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be," a presentation of work from the first 50 years of Smith's career (1931-81). Phillips co-curated the exhibition with Pietro Rigolo. It's on view at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles through July 16.
Smith is a pioneering second-wave feminist artist whose work addressed the seemingly limited options available to women from Smith's class and racial background. Phillips worked with Smith to present the exhibition in her own voice, which coincides with the Getty's publication of Smith's memoir, "The Way to Be: A Memoir." Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $24-46.
Episode No. 597 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Binh Danh and curator Jeffrey Richmond-Moll.
Radius Books has just published a two-volume monograph titled, "Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging." The book, Danh's first monograph, brings together Danh's prints on plant matter that consider images associated with the war in Vietnam, and Danh's daguerreotypes of scenic vistas in the American West, his attempt to negotiate the land and history of a still-contested region. The book features essays by Danh, Boreth Ly, Joshua Chuang, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and Andrew Lam. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $60.
Danh's work is on view in "Ansel Adams in Our Time" at the de Young Museum, San Francisco. The exhibition, which was curated by Karen Haas for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is on view through July 23.
Danh has had solo shows at museums such as the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska. He's in many major US museum collections, including at the Eastman House in Rochester, NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.
Richmond-Moll discusses "Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum" at the Georgia Museum of Art. The exhibition features work from PUAM that present artworks about American history, culture, and society in ways that reveal how Princeton has taught and presented US art history. It's on view through May 14. A catalogue was published by PUAM. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $30-40.
Episode No. 596 is a holiday weekend clips show featuring artist Renée Stout.
Stout is included in the Nasher's "Spirit in the Land," an exhibition that considers today’s ecological concerns and demonstrates how our identities and natural environments are intertwined. The show particularly focuses on the relationship between the mainland United States and the Caribbean. Curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, it will be on view through July 9. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which, as of the show posting date, is available only at the Nasher.
Her work is also in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's version of "Afro-Atlantic Histories." LACMA's presentation is a mostly contemporary version of an exhibition that originated at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil in 2018 before traveling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington last year. "Afro-Atlantic Histories" is at LACMA through September 10.
If it seems like Stout has been in every major contemporary group show in the last year, it may be because she has been: she was included in both "The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse," organized last year by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and "Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art," which was put together by the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
An exhibition of Stout's recent work, "Renée Stout: Navigating the Abyss," closed at New York's Marc Straus gallery last month.
This program was taped on the occasion of Stout's inclusion in "Person of Interest" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska in 2020. For images related to this program, see Episode No. 437.
Episode No. 595 features curators JR Henneman and Stephanie Tung.
Henneman is the curator of "Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism" at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition explores how the style and substance of French Orientalism -- art inspired by French colonial expansion into North Africa and the Islamic world -- informed United States artists and their representations of lands the US acquired as part of its imperial expansion. The exhibition is on view through May 29. Its superb catalogue was published by the Denver Art Museum. Amazon offers it for about $65.
Along with Karina H. Corrigan, Tung is the curator of "Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The exhibition reveals how photographers helped determine how the world viewed nineteenth-century China. The exhibition features 130 photographs, as well as paintings, decorative arts, and prints. It is on view through April 2. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon offers it for about $60.
Episode No. 594 features curators Stephanie Mayer Heydt and Isabel Casso.
With Audrey Lewis, Heydt is the co-curator of "Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature," a survey of the American modernist's nature-based artworks at Atlanta's High Museum of Art. While Stella is best known today for his futurism-informed studies of urbanity, most especially for his paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge, Lewis and Heydt's exhibition reveals him to be every bit as much as interested in re-making America's century-long Emersonian landscape and nature traditions as his Precisionist colleagues were. The exhibition features over 100 paintings and works on paper. It's on view through May 21. A fine catalogue was published by the High Museum of Art and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $55.
With Kate Green, Casso is the curator of "Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Breaking the Binding," the artist's first retrospective, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The exhibition features over 40 of Muñoz's large-scale installations, book projects, and shows how Muñoz built a witty, often funny style built from conceptualist puns even as she styled herself as an "artivist" who engaged issues informed by her experiences living along the US-Mexico borderlands. It's on view at MCASD's La Jolla location through August 13. A catalogue is forthcoming.
Episode No. 593 remembers artist Phyllida Barlow.
Barlow died this week. She was 78.
Barlow came from an illustrious British family, one thick with Huxleys and Wedgwoods, a royal physician, and one particularly famous Darwin. Instead of joining a parade of ancestors within the British establishment, she devoted her life and career to questioning, upturning, and reinventing. Her chosen profession was teaching, at University College London's Slade School of Fine Art, and sculpting, a medium which she seemed to reject and change in equal measure. She represented Britain in the Venice Biennale, and had had solo shows in at museums in Nuremberg, West Palm Beach, Des Moines, Munich, and Zurich, and in London at the Tate and the Royal Academy. Her first US shows were in Dallas, in 2003 and 2005.
This week's episode features Barlow's two visits to The MAN Podcast: in 2013 on the occasion of the Carnegie International (in which Barlow was the breakout star); and in 2015 when Barlow installed a spectacular solo exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.
Episode No. 592 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Amalia Mesa-Bains and curator Michael Duncan.
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is presenting "Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory," the first retrospective of the pioneering Chicana artist. The exhibition includes nearly 60 works including fourteen of Mesa-Bains' major installations. It was curated by María Esther Fernández and Laura E. Pérez and is on view through July 23. The outstanding catalogue was published by the Berkeley Art Museum in association with University of California Press. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $50.
Across a half-century, Mesa-Bains has foregrounded Chicana forms such as altares (home altars), ofrendas (offerings to the dead), descansos (roadside resting places), and capillas (home yard shrines) into contemporary art. Her work often spotlights domestic spaces and the construction of landscape in ways that highlight colonial erasure. Among the museums which have presented solo exhibitions of Mesa-Bains' work are the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
As promised on the program:
- Sandy Rodriguez on Episode No. 532.
On the second segment, curator Michael Duncan discusses "Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, 1938-45," which is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through June 19. The exhibition presents a group of mostly northern New Mexico-based artists, including Raymond Jonson and Agnes Pelton, who built a spiritually-informed abstraction with a painterly language that included symbols and images drawn from the collective unconscious. The show's catalogue was published by the Crocker Art Museum and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $60.
Episode No. 591 features artists Kahlil Robert Irving and Rogelio Báez Vega.
Kahlil Robert Irving is included in "I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen" at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Across more than 25,000 square feet, the exhibition examines the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. It was curated by Alison Hearst and remains on view through April 30. Irving will deliver a lecture at MAMFW on March 7 at 6 pm.
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has just opened "Kahlil Robert Irving: Archaeology of the Present", a presentation of new Irving sculptures, video, and found objects. Irving has situated his sculptures and other items within a large plywood platform, resembling a stage. Viewers can move onto the structure to encounter both artworks and manufactured objects alike. The show, which was curated by William Hernández Luege, will be on view through January 21, 2024.
Irving's assemblages of images and replicas of every day objects challenge constructions of Western identity and culture. His ceramic sculptures incorporate neglected objects that represent a historical moment, as do his room-sized, image-driven installations. Irving has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis; he's been featured in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and more.
Rogelio Báez Vega is included in "no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria" at the Whitney. The exhibition, organized to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Maria, explores how artists have responded to the years since that event. It includes 15 artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora. It was curated by Marcela Guerrero with Angelica Arbelaez, and will be on view through April 23.
Báez Vega's paintings often portray modernist buildings dating from Puerto Rico's post-war boom. While his pictures sometimes show the island's rich vegetation overtaking physical structures, they imply both a dystopian future and nature's promise.
Instagram: Kahlil Robert Irving, Rogelio Báez Vega, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 590 features artist Monique Verdin. It was taped live at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Verdin is included in the Nasher's "Spirit in the Land," an exhibition that considers today’s ecological concerns and demonstrates how our identities and natural environments are intertwined. The show particularly focuses on the relationship between the mainland United States and the Caribbean. Curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, it will be on view through July 9. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which, as of the show posting date, is available only at the Nasher.
Verdin's work is also on view at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans in "The Float Lab: The Heartbeat of Invisible Rivers." It is a project of Verdin's The Land Memory Bank, Mondo Bizarro and Jeff Becker that uses music, theater, visual art, and boat-building to respond to Louisiana's interconnected struggles against land loss, environmental racism, and displacement. "The Float Lab" is on view through Oct. 1.
Verdin's photography, filmmaking and collages most often examine how climate change and industry are impacting traditional lifeways in a part of southwest Louisiana known to the Houma people as Yakni Chitto. Among her many exhibition credits is Prospect Four in New Orleans. Verdin is also the director of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange, a former member of the United Houma Nation Tribal Council and is part of the Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative core leadership circle of brown (indigenous, latinx and desi) women, from Texas to Florida, working to envision just economies, vibrant communities and sustainable ecologies.
Instagram: Monique Verdin, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 589 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Rose B. Simpson.
Rose B. Simpson is included in two ongoing presentations in New England: her Counterculture is installed at Field Farm, a Trustees property in Williamstown, Mass.; and in "Ceramics in the Expanded Field," at MASS MoCA through April 10. Counterculture was organized by Jamilee Lacy and will be on view through April 30, 2023. "Ceramics," which is up until April 10, was curated by Susan Cross.
Elsewhere, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia is featuring "Rose B. Simpson: Dream House" through May 7, and Simpson is included with in "Thick as Mud" at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. The exhibition examines how eight artists use mud as material or subject. Curated by Nina Bozicnik, it's on view through May 7.
Across ceramic sculpture, performance, installation, and more, Simpson's work addresses ideas as far ranging as resistance, apocalypse, spirituality, and automobile design. Museums such as the University of New Mexico Art Museum (Simpson lives in Santa Clara Pueblo), Nevada Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD Museum of Art, and the Pomona College Museum of Art have all presented solo exhibitions of her work, and Simpson has been in group shows at the Henry Art Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Denver Museum of Art, and plenty more.
The program was taped on the occasion of these shows and the ICA Boston exhibition "Rose B. Simpson: Legacies."
From the program:
- Video from Simpson's 2013 Denver Art Museum performance.
For images, see Episode No. 567.
Air date: February 16, 2023.
Episode No. 588 features author Jennifer Van Horn and curator Elizabeth Kornhauser.
Van Horn is the author of "Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery," which was recently published by Yale University Press. The book investigates American portraiture, a discipline which until recently was dominated by European-American artists and their wealthy, self-image-creating clients. The book discovers within some of these portraits and the artists who made them histories of Black resistance, agency, viewership, and even iconoclasm. While the book primarily focuses on the era before the Civil War, it also reaches well into the twentieth century. Amazon and Indiebound offer "Portraits of Resistance" for about $60.
Kornhauser discusses a new installation of portraiture miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American galleries. Portrait miniatures -- often tiny watercolor pictures on ivory -- were popular in the US in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The production of portrait miniatures was one form of production particularly open to women artists.
Episode No. 587 features curators Jed Morse and Perrin Lathrop.
Morse is the curator of "Mark di Suvero: Steel Like Paper" at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The exhibition surveys di Suvero's career with a special focus on di Suvero's in-studio practice, such as his drawings and his little-considered modestly scaled sculptures (which make up the vast majority of his oeuvre). It is the most extensive survey of di Suvero's work in over 30 years, and the largest museum exhibition of such since 1975. "di Suvero" is on view through August 27. The excellent catalogue was published by the museum.
Along with Nikoo Paydar and Jamaal Sheats, Lathrop is a co-curator of "African Modernism in America, 1947-67" at the Fisk University Galleries in Nashville. The exhibition investigates the connections between African artists and American patrons, artists, and cultural organizations such as the Harmon Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and HBCUs during the early Cold War. It also features The Politics of Selection, a commission from Lagos-based sculptor Ndidi Dike that interrogates the collecting histories presented in the exhibition. "African Modernism" is on view through February 12, after which it will travel to the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, Saint Louis; the Phillips Collection in Washington; and the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati. The outstanding catalogue was published by the American Federation of Arts. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 586 features artist Justine Kurland.
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford recently acquired a complete vintage set of Kurland's 69-picture "Girl Pictures" suite (1997-2002) and has installed it in the museum's 1934 Avery Court. (The building is known for having the first international style spaces of any American art museum.) The exhibition is on view through August.
Kurland's series presents a fictional semi-narrative of an empowered, self-sufficient, ever-traveling community of young women. It is a feminist recasting of the long tradition of adolescent and vagabond narratives that foreground boys and young men. Aperture published the entire series in a book that includes a story by Rebecca Bengal. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $47.
Instagram: Justine Kurland, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 585 features artist Matthew Ritchie.
The Frist Art Museum in Nashville is presenting "Matthew Ritchie: A Garden in the Flood," a survey of the last 20 years of Matthew Ritchie's career. The exhibition shows how Ritchie has brought together biology, physics, creation stories, epic poetry and history across painting, sculpture, video and installation. At the core of the exhibition is a new Ritchie video work featuring composer Hanna Benn in collaboration with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and their late music director Dr. Paul T. Kwami. The exhibition was curated by Mark Scala and is on view through March 5. An exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Books in association with the Frist. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $50.
Ritchie's most recent institutional solo exhibitions have been at the CVAD Galleries at the University of North Texas, the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, and the ICA Boston.
Instagram: Matthew Ritchie, Tyler Green.
Air date: January 19, 2023.
Episode No. 584 features curators Gretchen Hirschauer and Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington is presenting "Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice," through February 12. The exhibition was curated by Peter Humfrey in collaboration with Andrea Bellieni and Hirschauer. It presents Carpaccio, a Venetian master who worked in the period between Bellini and the rise of Tintoretto, as the producer of spectacular narrative pictures that brought storytelling more fully into the practice of Venetian painters. The exhibition includes 45 paintings and 30 drawings. The NGA and Yale University Press copublished an excellent catalogue. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for $51-65.
- For Carpaccio's Scuola degli Albanesi 'Life of the Virgin' cycle, see here.
Alexander discusses "East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art" at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center. The exhibition engages an American art history centered on transpacific migration and discourse rather than the traditional transatlantic address. It features roughly chronological sections that highlight key narratives in Asian American art between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. "East of the Pacific" is one of the three inaugural Asian American Art Initiative exhibitions at the Cantor. It is on view through February 12.
- In addition to the images below, see the Cantor's collection site for Henry Sugimoto's linocuts, and Sarah Kim's Bernice Bing zine Bingo!.
After a brief introduction, this episode is a re-air of host Tyler Green's 2014 conversation with artist Michael Snow.
Snow died on January 5. He was 94.
Episode No. 583 features artist William Cordova and curator Michelle White.
Cordova is featured in "Beyond the Surface: Collage, Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition is on view through May 14.
Cordova's work uses a range of media to address and re-make historical narratives. His practice understands that present knowledge of history is always changing, and that artists are part of the process of revising our understandings of the past. Cordova has had solo shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and at LAXART in Los Angeles. In 2019 he was included in the Havana Biennial, previously he was included in -ennials at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and in Prague, Venice, and New Orleans (Prospect).
On the second segment, White discusses "Walter de Maria: Boxes for Meaningless Work," a survey of de Maria's career drawn mostly from the Menil Collection's outstanding de Maria collection. The exhibition is on view in Houston through April 23.
Episode No. 582 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday clips episode with artist Lari Pittman.
Museo Jumex in Mexico City is presenting "Lo que se ve, se pregunta," a retrospective of Pittman's work that descends from a 2019 version of the exhibition that originated at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition was curated by Connie Butler; the Mexico City presentation was coordinated with Adriana Kuri Alamillo. It is on view through February 26, 2023.
This program, the second of two, was taped in 2019 on the occasion of the debut iteration of this project, “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence,” at the Hammer. The exhibition revealed Pittman’s engagements with America’s history and with issues and subjects that have been core to our history and identity, including landscape, violence, citizenship, belonging and more. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $50-65.
Pittman is one of America’s most-honored artists. His work is in the collection of virtually every important American art museum. Pittman has received awards from the International Association of Art Critics, the Skowhegan Medal, and he has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. His work has been featured in many important international exhibitions, including Documenta and the Venice Biennale.
For images, see Episode No. 415.
Episode No. 581 is a holiday clips episode with artist Lari Pittman.
Museo Jumex in Mexico City is presenting "Lo que se ve, se pregunta," a retrospective of Pittman's work that descends from a 2019 version of the exhibition that originated at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2019. The exhibition was curated by Connie Butler; the Mexico CIty presentation was coordinated with Adriana Kuri Alamillo. It is on view through February 26, 2023.
This program, the first of two, was taped in 2019 on the occasion of the debut iteration of this project, “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence,” at the Hammer. The exhibition revealed Pittman’s engagements with America’s history and with issues and subjects that have been core to our history and identity, including landscape, violence, citizenship, belonging and more. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $50-65.
Pittman is one of America’s most-honored artists. His work is in the collection of virtually every important American art museum. Pittman has received awards from the International Association of Art Critics, the Skowhegan Medal, and he has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. His work has been featured in many important international exhibitions, including Documenta and the Venice Biennale.
For images, see Episode No. 415.
Episode No. 580 features artist Sheila Pree Bright.
Sheila Pree Bright is included in "Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund," which is at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia through January 8, 2023. The Do Good Fund is a Columbus, Ga.-based charity that collects and makes available to museums photography of the American South made from the 1950s to the present. The exhibition includes artists such as Jill Frank, Baldwin Lee, Deborah Luster, Gordon Parks, and RaMell Ross.
Bright's work builds narratives about social, political and historical events through series of pictures of landscape, social justice movements, suburbia, and more. Solo exhibitions of Bright's work have been held at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and more. Bright's book "#1960Now: Photographs of Civil Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter Protests" was published by Chronicle Books in 2018. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $18-30.
This episode was taped live at the GMOA.
Air date: December 15, 2022.
Episode No. 579 features artist Uta Barth.
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is presenting "Uta Barth: Peripheral Vision," a retrospective of Barth's work. For over forty years Barth has made work about the act of looking, perception, movement and the passage of time. The exhibition debuts Barth's newest work: a project commissioned in celebration of the Getty Center’s twentieth anniversary. The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs, and is on view through February 19, 2023. A catalogue is forthcoming in 2023.
A previous mid-career survey, "Uta Barth: I Between Places" was organized by the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in 2000. Barth's work is in nearly every major museum collection in North America.
Episode No. 578 features curators Diana Tuite and Allegra Pesenti.
Tuite is the curator of "Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine," a retrospective of Thompson's brief but hugely productive career. It is at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through January 8, 2023. The Hammer's presentation was coordinated by Erin Christovale with Vanessa Arizmendi. An outstanding catalogue was published by the Colby College Museum of Art, which organized the exhibition, in association with Yale University Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $45.
Pesenti discusses "Picasso Cut Papers," an examination of artworks Pablo Picasso made by cutting paper. The exhibition features work Picasso made between his childhood and the end of his life. Pesenti co-curated the exhibition with Cynthia Burlingham. The exhibition is on view through December 31. The catalogue was published by the Hammer Museum and DelMonico Books. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 577 is a holiday clips episode featuring author Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore.
Gilmore is the author of "Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination," which was just published by the University of North Carolina Press. The book examines how Bearden's address of his native South -- he was born and was initially raised in the Charlotte, NC area before his family was effectively forced to leave the South -- was informed by the vagaries of memory and even imagination. Gilmore is the Peter V. & C. Vann Woodward Professor Emerita of History at Yale University. Her previous books include "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920," and "Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950." Indiebound and Amazon offer "Bearden" for $26-40.
Audio from Session Six of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Episode No. 576 features photographer Anthony Barboza and curator Maika Pollack.
"Eye Dreaming," a monograph spanning Barboza's sixty-year career was just published by Getty Publications. The book comes out just as the two-year, four-venue exhibition "Working Together: Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop," an exhibition which presented Barboza as a major and instigating figure in Kamoinge, concluded. "Eye Dreaming" features Barboza's 1960s addresses of the condition of the United States, his portraits of major figures in the humanities, sport, and entertainment, his photographs of jazz musicians, street photography, fashion photography, examples of his editorial, album cover and advertising work, and more. The book features contributions from Aaron Bryant, Mazie M. Harris and Hilton Als. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40.
Pollack discusses "Tadashi Sato: Atomic Abstraction in the Fiftieth State, 1954-63" at the John Young Museum of Art at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa. The exhibition examines the first decade of Sato's car. Sato, melded New York-informed engagements with modernism with influences from nature to become one of the most significant Hawaiʻi-born painters of the twentieth century. This is the first major exhibition of Sato's work in over two decades. It also includes work by several of his Hawaiʻian colleagues and reveals how they helped create space for artists and public art in what was then the new state of Hawaiʻi. It is on view through December 11.
Instagram: Maika Pollack, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 575 features curators Vincenzo de Bellis and Leo Mazow.
de Bellis is the curator of the retrospective "Jannis Kounellis in Six Acts," which is at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis through February 26, 2023. Kounellis was a significant figure in the arte povera movement of the 1960s and 1970s whose work was on the vanguard of melding sculpture, installation and performance as is common in today's artistic practice. "Kounellis" will travel to Museo Jumex in Mexico City in April 2023. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Walker. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $55.
Mazow is the curator of "Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. It's on view through March 19, 2023. The exhibition follows artists' interest in the guitar as a visual subject, revealing its cultural significance as a tool that reveals class, gender, identity and that amplifies protest and progressive change. "Storied Strings" will travel to the Frist Art Museum in May 2023. The exhibition catalogue was published by VMFA. It is available from the museum for $40.
Audio from Session Five of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Five (November 17, 3:30 pm ET).
Episode No. 574 features curator Emily Braun and artist Mark Steinmetz.
With Elizabeth Cowling, Braun is the co-curator of "Cubism and the Trompe L'Oeil Tradition" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition considers cubist works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso in the context of the centuries-long trompe l'oeil painting tradition. In addition to dozens of major cubist works, the exhibition includes paintings by Samuel van Hoogstraten, William Harnett, and more. "Cubism" is on view through January 22, 2023. It is accompanied by an outstanding catalogue that was published by the museum. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $43-50.
Steinmetz is included in "Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund" at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. The Do Good Fund is a Columbus, Ga.-based charity that collects and makes available to museums photography of the American South made from the 1950s to the present. The exhibition, which includes artists such as Jill Frank, Baldwin Lee, Deborah Luster, Gordon Parks, and RaMell Ross. It's at the GMOA through January 8, 2023.
Steinmetz also contributed a portfolio titled "Irina & Amelia" to the new, 70th anniversary issue of Aperture magazine. The issue also features work by John Edmonds, Hannah Whitaker, Dayanita Singh, and others, and is available from Aperture for $25.
Air date: November 3, 2022.
Episode No. 573 features artists Matthew Ronay and Jade Doskow.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is presenting "Matthew Ronay: The Crack, the Swell, an Earth, an Ode" through January 15, 2023. The exhibition features a nearly 24-foot-long sculpture that functions as both an introduction to Ronay's exploration of surrealism, abstraction, representation and art's history, and also as a summary of the last decade of his work. The exhibition was curated by Leigh Arnold and is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Nasher and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $55.
Ronay's work has been featured in solo shows at the Blaffer Art Gallery and at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He has been included in group shows at the Dallas Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, and more.
The John Hartell Gallery at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning is presenting "A New Wilderness: Freshkills." The exhibition features photographs by Freshkills photographer-in-residence Jade Doskow and a series of soundscapes by Heather Campanelli. The work shows the evolution of Staten Island's Freshkills from a landfill -- the world's largest household garbage dump -- into a 2,200-acre city park. The exhibition is on view through November 4.
Doskow's Freshkills work debuted in The New York Times. Black Dog London published a monograph of Doskow's "Lost Utopias" work in 2016.
Instagram: Matthew Ronay, Jade Doskow, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 573 features artists Matthew Ronay and Jade Doskow.
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is presenting "Matthew Ronay: The Crack, the Swell, an Earth, an Ode" through January 15, 2023. The exhibition features a nearly 24-foot-long sculpture that functions as both an introduction to Ronay's exploration of surrealism, abstraction, representation and art's history, and also as a summary of the last decade of his work. The exhibition was curated by Leigh Arnold and is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Nasher and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $55.
Ronay's work has been featured in solo shows at the Blaffer Art Gallery and at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He has been included in group shows at the Dallas Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, and more.
The John Hartell Gallery at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning is presenting "A New Wilderness: Freshkills." The exhibition features photographs by Freshkills photographer-in-residence Jade Doskow and a series of soundscapes by Heather Campanelli. The work shows the evolution of Staten Island's Freshkills from a landfill -- the world's largest household garbage dump -- into a 2,200-acre city park. The exhibition is on view through November 4.
Doskow's Freshkills work debuted in The New York Times. Black Dog London published a monograph of Doskow's "Lost Utopias" work in 2016.
Instagram: Matthew Ronay, Jade Doskow, Tyler Green.
Audio from Session Four of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Five (November 3, 3:30 pm ET).
Audio from Session Four of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Five (November 3, 3:30 pm ET).
Episode No. 572 features curators Reto Thüring and Lisa Volpe.
With Akili Tommasino, Thüring is the co-curator of "Frank Bowling's America's," which opens at the MFA Boston this weekend. The exhibition work that the British Guiana–born Bowling made when he lived in New York from 1966-75 (at which point he returned to London, his previous home). The show features the often enormous paintings Bowling made in those years, and considers them within the context of his art criticism and curatorial projects. The exhibition is on view through April 9, 2023. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the museum. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40-50.
Volpe discusses "Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power," which is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through January 16, 2023. The exhibition presents and considers pictures of Carmichael that Parks made for Life magazine in 1967. Also included in the show are footage of Carmichael’s speeches and interviews. Indiebound and Amazon offer the catalogue, a co-publication of Steidl, The Gordon Parks Foundation, and the MFAH, for $45-50.
Instagram: Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 572 features curators Reto Thüring and Lisa Volpe.
With Akili Tommasino, Thüring is the co-curator of "Frank Bowling's America's," which opens at the MFA Boston this weekend. The exhibition work that the British Guiana–born Bowling made when he lived in New York from 1966-75 (at which point he returned to London, his previous home). The show features the often enormous paintings Bowling made in those years, and considers them within the context of his art criticism and curatorial projects. The exhibition is on view through April 9, 2023. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the museum. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40-50.
Volpe discusses "Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power," which is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through January 16, 2023. The exhibition presents and considers pictures of Carmichael that Parks made for Life magazine in 1967. Also included in the show are footage of Carmichael’s speeches and interviews. Indiebound and Amazon offer the catalogue, a co-publication of Steidl, The Gordon Parks Foundation, and the MFAH, for $45-50.
Instagram: Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 571 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday week clips episode featuring curator Elyse Nelson.
Along with Wendy S. Walters, Nelson is the co-curator of "Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition interrogates French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 1868/73 marble bust Why Born Enslaved! and places the sculpture in the context of French history, racialization, and in the representation of Black men and women by sculptors in Europe and the US during and after the nineteenth century. It's on view through March 5, 2023.
The Met has published an excellent catalogue for the project. It includes contributions from Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris Moon, Caitlin Meehye Beach, Rachel Hunter Himes, James Smalls, Adrienne Childs, Nelson, and Walters. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for about $25.
For images, see Episode No. 543.
Instagram: Elyse Nelson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 571 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday week clips episode featuring curator Elyse Nelson.
Along with Wendy S. Walters, Nelson is the co-curator of "Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition interrogates French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 1868/73 marble bust Why Born Enslaved! and places the sculpture in the context of French history, racialization, and in the representation of Black men and women by sculptors in Europe and the US during and after the nineteenth century. It's on view through March 5, 2023.
The Met has published an excellent catalogue for the project. It includes contributions from Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris Moon, Caitlin Meehye Beach, Rachel Hunter Himes, James Smalls, Adrienne Childs, Nelson, and Walters. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for about $25.
For images, see Episode No. 543.
Instagram: Elyse Nelson, Tyler Green.
Audio from Session Three of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Four (October 20, 3:30 pm ET).
Audio from Session Three of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Four (October 20, 3:30 pm ET).
Episode No. 570 features artist vanessa german and curator Kimberli Gant.
german is included in "Start Talking: Fischer/Shull Collection of Contemporary Art," an exhibition of gifts to the North Carolina Museum of Art pledged by Hedy Fischer and Randy Shull. The show is on view through February 5, 2023.
The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is presenting "THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH," german’s response to the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, an early 20th-century cabinet of curiosities at Mount Holyoke. The exhibition is in previews through October 12, the artist will perform at the museum on October 13, at which point the show will remain on view through May 28, 2023.
german is showing recent work at New York City's Kasmin Gallery in "Sad Rapper" through October 22.
With Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Gant is the co-curator of "Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club" which is at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va. through January 8, 2023. The exhibition explores the connection between Lawrence and his contemporaries based in the Global South via the Nigerian journal "Black Orpheus" and the presentation of their work at Nigeria's Mbari Artists & Writers Club. After debuting in Norfolk, the show will travel to New Orleans and Toledo. The exhibition is accompanied by an outstanding catalogue published by Yale University Press in association with the Chrysler and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $50.
Instagram: vanessa german, Kimberli Gant, Tyler Green.
Air date: October 6, 2022.
Episode No. 570 features artist vanessa german and curator Kimberli Gant.
german is included in "Start Talking: Fischer/Shull Collection of Contemporary Art," an exhibition of gifts to the North Carolina Museum of Art pledged by Hedy Fischer and Randy Shull. The show is on view through February 5, 2023.
The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is presenting "THE RAREST BLACK WOMAN ON THE PLANET EARTH," german’s response to the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, an early 20th-century cabinet of curiosities at Mount Holyoke. The exhibition is in previews through October 12, the artist will perform at the museum on October 13, at which point the show will remain on view through May 28, 2023.
german is showing recent work at New York City's Kasmin Gallery in "Sad Rapper" through October 22.
With Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Gant is the co-curator of "Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club" which is at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va. through January 8, 2023. The exhibition explores the connection between Lawrence and his contemporaries based in the Global South via the Nigerian journal "Black Orpheus" and the presentation of their work at Nigeria's Mbari Artists & Writers Club. After debuting in Norfolk, the show will travel to New Orleans and Toledo. The exhibition is accompanied by an outstanding catalogue published by Yale University Press in association with the Chrysler and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $50.
Instagram: vanessa german, Kimberli Gant, Tyler Green.
Air date: October 6, 2022.
Episode No. 569 features curator Stephanie Weissberg and artist Rosamond Purcell.
Weissberg is the curator of "Barbara Chase-Riboud Monumentale: The Bronzes," the artist's first retrospective in 40 years and the largest exhibition of her work to date. In addition to sculptures, such as from Chase-Riboud's "Malcolm X," "Zanzibar," and "La Musica" series, the exhibition includes nearly two dozen works on paper and a selection of Chase-Riboud’s poetry. "Chase-Riboud Monumentale" is on view through February 5, 2023. A catalogue will be available in January 2023.
Purcell discusses her work on the occasion of "Rosamond Purcell: Nature Stands Aside" at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The retrospective exhibition examines how Purcell has collaborated with paleontologists, anthropologists, historians, curators, and more in exploration of the shifting lines between art and science. The exhibition was curated by Gordon Wilkins and is on view through December 31. The museum has published an excellent catalogue in collaboration with Rizzoli Electa. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $45-65.
Episode No. 569 features curator Stephanie Weissberg and artist Rosamond Purcell.
Weissberg is the curator of "Barbara Chase-Riboud Monumentale: The Bronzes," the artist's first retrospective in 40 years and the largest exhibition of her work to date. In addition to sculptures, such as from Chase-Riboud's "Malcolm X," "Zanzibar," and "La Musica" series, the exhibition includes nearly two dozen works on paper and a selection of Chase-Riboud’s poetry. "Chase-Riboud Monumentale" is on view through February 5, 2023. A catalogue will be available in January 2023.
Purcell discusses her work on the occasion of "Rosamond Purcell: Nature Stands Aside" at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The retrospective exhibition examines how Purcell has collaborated with paleontologists, anthropologists, historians, curators, and more in exploration of the shifting lines between art and science. The exhibition was curated by Gordon Wilkins and is on view through December 31. The museum has published an excellent catalogue in collaboration with Rizzoli Electa. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $45-65.
Audio from Session Two of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Two (October 6, 3:30 pm ET).
Audio from Session Two of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Two (October 6, 3:30 pm ET).
Episode No. 568 features curators Anthony Graham and Brian Piper.
Graham is the curator of the retrospective "Alexis Smith: The American Way." Across Smith's career she has used collage and installation to explore how we are shaped by the culture and media around us. The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's new La Jolla building through January 29, 2023. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Scala. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $50.
Piper discusses his exhibition "Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers," which is at the New Orleans Museum of Art through January 8, 2023. The show examines how Black photographers have worked to produce beautiful portraits, while also engaging in a range of other photographic work. "Called to the Camera" also reveals how Black studio photographers engaged movements such as pictorialism, modernism, and abstraction. The museum will publish the exhibition catalogue next month; Amazon offers it for $50.
Instagram: Anthony Graham, Brian Piper, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 568 features curators Anthony Graham and Brian Piper.
Graham is the curator of the retrospective "Alexis Smith: The American Way." Across Smith's career she has used collage and installation to explore how we are shaped by the culture and media around us. The exhibition is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's new La Jolla building through January 29, 2023. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Scala. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $50.
Piper discusses his exhibition "Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers," which is at the New Orleans Museum of Art through January 8, 2023. The show examines how Black photographers have worked to produce beautiful portraits, while also engaging in a range of other photographic work. "Called to the Camera" also reveals how Black studio photographers engaged movements such as pictorialism, modernism, and abstraction. The museum will publish the exhibition catalogue next month; Amazon offers it for $50.
Instagram: Anthony Graham, Brian Piper, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 567 features artist Rose B. Simpson and author Brent Martin.
The Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston is showing "Rose B. Simpson: Legacies," an exhibition of 14 sculptures Simpson has made over the last eight years. It was curated by Jeffrey De Blois and is on view through January 29, 2023.
Rose B. Simpson is included in two other New England presentations: her Counterculture is installed at Field Farm, a Trustees property in Williamstown, Mass.; and in "Ceramics in the Expanded Field," at MASS MoCA. Counterculture was organized by Jamilee Lacy and will be on view through April 30, 2023. "Ceramics," which is up until early March 2023, was curated by Susan Cross.
This fall The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia will feature "Rose B. Simpson: Dream House." The exhibition opens October 7.
Across ceramic sculpture, performance, installation, and more, Simpson's work addresses ideas as far ranging as resistance, apocalypse, spirituality, and automobile design. Museums such as the University of New Mexico Art Museum (Simpson lives in Santa Clara Pueblo), Nevada Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD Museum of Art, and the Pomona College Museum of Art have all presented solo exhibitions of her work, and Simpson has been in group shows at the Henry Art Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Denver Museum of Art, and plenty more.
Martin discusses his new book "George Masa's Wild Vision," which was recently published by Hub City Press. Masa was an Asheville, North Carolina-based photographer who had a significant impact on the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and on determining the Southern route of the Appalachian Trail, the two crown jewels of the eastern United States' natural infrastructure. Amazon and Indiebound offer the book for around $25.
Episode No. 567 features artist Rose B. Simpson and author Brent Martin.
The Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston is showing "Rose B. Simpson: Legacies," an exhibition of 14 sculptures Simpson has made over the last eight years. It was curated by Jeffrey De Blois and is on view through January 29, 2023.
Rose B. Simpson is included in two other New England presentations: her Counterculture is installed at Field Farm, a Trustees property in Williamstown, Mass.; and in "Ceramics in the Expanded Field," at MASS MoCA. Counterculture was organized by Jamilee Lacy and will be on view through April 30, 2023. "Ceramics," which is up until early March 2023, was curated by Susan Cross.
This fall The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia will feature "Rose B. Simpson: Dream House." The exhibition opens October 7.
Across ceramic sculpture, performance, installation, and more, Simpson's work addresses ideas as far ranging as resistance, apocalypse, spirituality, and automobile design. Museums such as the University of New Mexico Art Museum (Simpson lives in Santa Clara Pueblo), Nevada Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD Museum of Art, and the Pomona College Museum of Art have all presented solo exhibitions of her work, and Simpson has been in group shows at the Henry Art Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Denver Museum of Art, and plenty more.
Martin discusses his new book "George Masa's Wild Vision," which was recently published by Hub City Press. Masa was an Asheville, North Carolina-based photographer who had a significant impact on the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and on determining the Southern route of the Appalachian Trail, the two crown jewels of the eastern United States' natural infrastructure. Amazon and Indiebound offer the book for around $25.
Audio from Session One of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Two (September 22, 3:30 pm ET).
Audio from Session One of The Darkwater Project's 2022 digital colloquium, "Historical American Art, Whiteness, and the Idea of the American Nation."
Watch the session on YouTube.
Follow The Darkwater Project on Instagram.
Sign up for Session Two (September 22, 3:30 pm ET).
Episode No. 566 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist B. Ingrid Olson and curator Idurre Alonso.
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University is presenting two concurrent B. Ingrid Olson exhibitions, "History Mother," and "Little Sister" through December 23. Each exhibition is on a separate floor of CCVA's building. Olson's exhibitions feature site-specific presentations that engage with doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, the interplay between photography and sculpture, and between the body and the built environment. The exhibitions were curated by Dan Byers. A catalogue will be available.
This week, the Secession in Vienna closed an exhibition of Olson's work titled "Elastic X." In addition, Olson's work has previously been featured in solo presentations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.
Alonso discusses her new exhibition "Reinventing the Américas: Construct. Erase. Repeat" at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The exhibition considers the ways in which artists have helped construct ideas about the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the decades after the arrival of Europeans. It is on view through January 8, 2023.
Instagram: B. Ingrid Olson, Idurre Alonso, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 566 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist B. Ingrid Olson and curator Idurre Alonso.
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University is presenting two concurrent B. Ingrid Olson exhibitions, "History Mother," and "Little Sister" through December 23. Each exhibition is on a separate floor of CCVA's building. Olson's exhibitions feature site-specific presentations that engage with doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, the interplay between photography and sculpture, and between the body and the built environment. The exhibitions were curated by Dan Byers. A catalogue will be available.
This week, the Secession in Vienna closed an exhibition of Olson's work titled "Elastic X." In addition, Olson's work has previously been featured in solo presentations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.
Alonso discusses her new exhibition "Reinventing the Américas: Construct. Erase. Repeat" at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The exhibition considers the ways in which artists have helped construct ideas about the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the decades after the arrival of Europeans. It is on view through January 8, 2023.
Instagram: B. Ingrid Olson, Idurre Alonso, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 565 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a summer clips episode featuring artist Sandy Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is included in "Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche," which is at the Albuquerque Museum through September 4. The exhibition examines the historical and cultural legacy of the Indigenous woman at the heart of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521) known colloquially as La Malinche. The show originated at the Denver Art Museum and was curated by Victoria I. Lyall and independent curator Terezita Romo. This fall it travels to the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Sandy Rodriguez’s work remains on view in “Borderlands” at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.
Rodriguez’s work explores the methods and materials of painting in works that address Native and colonial histories, memory, and contemporary events. Among her exhibition credits are the recent triennial at El Museo del Barrio, LACMA, the Riverside Art Museum, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, and more.
Episode No. 565 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a summer clips episode featuring artist Sandy Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is included in "Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche," which is at the Albuquerque Museum through September 4. The exhibition examines the historical and cultural legacy of the Indigenous woman at the heart of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521) known colloquially as La Malinche. The show originated at the Denver Art Museum and was curated by Victoria I. Lyall and independent curator Terezita Romo. This fall it travels to the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Sandy Rodriguez’s work remains on view in “Borderlands” at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.
Rodriguez’s work explores the methods and materials of painting in works that address Native and colonial histories, memory, and contemporary events. Among her exhibition credits are the recent triennial at El Museo del Barrio, LACMA, the Riverside Art Museum, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, and more.
Episode No. 487 is a summer clips episode featuring curators Marshall N. Price and Elizabeth Finch.
Price and Finch are the co-curators of "Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-60." The exhibition examines Lichtenstein's early work, with particular attention to Lichtenstein's synthesis of European modernism, American painting and contemporary vernacular sources. The exhibition is on view at the Colby Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University through January 8, 2023. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $33. From Waterville, Maine, the exhibition will travel to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Price and Finch are curators at the Nasher and Colby, which originated the show, respectively.
For images see Episode No. 487.
Episode No. 487 is a summer clips episode featuring curators Marshall N. Price and Elizabeth Finch.
Price and Finch are the co-curators of "Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-60." The exhibition examines Lichtenstein's early work, with particular attention to Lichtenstein's synthesis of European modernism, American painting and contemporary vernacular sources. The exhibition is on view at the Colby Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University through January 8, 2023. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $33. From Waterville, Maine, the exhibition will travel to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Price and Finch are curators at the Nasher and Colby, which originated the show, respectively.
For images see Episode No. 487.
Episode No. 563 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander and artist Katherine Bradford.
Alexander is the curator of "The Faces of Ruth Asawa," a new permanent installation at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University featuring Asawa's Untitled (LC.012, Wall of Masks). Wall of Masks is made up of ceramic face masks Asawa made with the cooperation of friends and visitors. The masks once hung on the exterior of the Asawa family's home. The artwork was the first acquisition made by Stanford's Asian American Art Initiative, which Alexander founded with Stanford professor Marci Kwon, and which she co-leads.
"Faces" also includes three vessels by Asawa’s son Paul Lanier. Each was made with clay mixed with the ashes of Asawa, her husband Albert, and their late son, Adam. Upon Asawa’s death, by her request, Lanier threw these materials into a set of vessels, one for each surviving sibling.
The second segment is a re-air of painter Katherine Bradford's 2018 appearance on the program. This summer, the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art is presenting "Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford," the first solo museum survey of Bradford's career. It was curated by Jaime DeSimone and is on view through September 11. The segment was taped on the occasion of “FOCUS: Katherine Bradford” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Episode No. 562 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Sarah Chasse and Karen Kramer, and artist Jason Garcia (Okuu Pin).
Chasse and Kramer are the co-curators of a new installation of the Peabody Essex Museum's Native American and American collections titled "On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America." The installation joins two separate institutional collections in a way that joins art to 10,000 years of North American history. "On This Ground" often suggests and reveals how art influenced and extended ideas core to the continental story. The installation is on view indefinitely.
Garcia's work -- specifically artworks from his Tewa Tales of Suspense! series -- is included in the PEM's collection and in "On This Ground." Garcia's work often examines and interprets American and Pueblo history in ways that revise old, whites-centering narratives. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
Episode No. 561 features author Helen Langdon and curator Erin Garcia.
Langdon is the author of "Salvator Rosa: Paint and Performance," a new biography of the Renaissance painter and actor. The book explains Rosa's thirst for fame, his philosophical pursuits and how they melded with his painting, his acting career, and the ways in which his desire to be a celebrity often interfered with his ability to accomplish his career goals. The book was published by Reaktion and is distributed in the US by University of Chicago Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $25.
Garcia discusses "Chinese Pioneers: Power and Politics in Exclusion Era Photographs," which is at the California Historical Society in San Francisco through August 13. The exhibition offers a CHS collection-driven visual history of the social, political, and judicial disenfranchisement of Chinese Californians -- as well as portrayals of Chinese agency and resilience -- during the Chinese exclusion era.
Episode No. 560 features artist Kiyan Williams and historian Paul M. Farber.
The Hammer Museum is presenting "Hammer Projects: Kiyan Williams", the artist's first solo museum presentation, through August 28. The show features Williams' 2022 installation Between Starshine and Clay, a work that features earth taken from sites that are familial or that hold Black American histories, and sculptural forms that reveal or refer to the human body. "Williams" was curated by Erin Christovale.
Williams is also included in "Black Atlantic," a Public Art Fund exhibition at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York. The exhibition, which was curated by Hugh Hayden and Daniel S. Palmer, was motivated by an exploration of transatlantic diaspora. It includes Williams' 2022 Ruins of Empire, a reimagining of Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom, which was installed atop the US Capitol dome in 1863. (The full-size plaster model for Freedom is in the Capitol Visitor Center.) "Black Atlantic" is on view through November 27.
In addition, they are also in "52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone" at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. The exhibition, which was curated by Amy Smith-Stewart and is on view through January 8, 2023, showcases work by artists in the Aldrich's 1971 "Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists" show, augmented by work by 26 female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists.
On the second segment, a re-air of an October 2021 conversation with Monument Lab director Paul M. Farber on Monument Lab's National Monument Audit, which Farber co-directed with Laurie Allen and Sue Mobley. In addition to the project website, Monument Lab offers a free PDF of the audit. This week, Monument Lab's Future Memory podcast returned. Click here for information and here to subscribe.
Episode No. 559 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Jess T. Dugan.
The Momentary in Bentonville, Ark. is presenting "Esteban Cabeza de Baca: Let Earth Breathe" through September 25. Across the exhibition, Cabeza de Baca deconstructs the colonial European-American landscape tradition by re-considering painting and sculpture as a collaboration with nature. It was curated by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas with Taylor Jasper. Cabeza de Baca's work is also included in "Plein Air" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. The exhibition was curated by Aurora Tang and will be on view through February 5, 2023.
Cabeza de Baca's work has been shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, The Drawing Center, New York City.
Jess T. Dugan's work is included within "Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births," which is at the MassArt Art Museum through December 18. This conversation previously aired on Episode No. 468 when photographs from Dugan‘s “To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults” project were at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Dugan produced “To Survive on This Shore” with their partner, Vanessa Fabbre, a social worker and professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The book related to the project was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2018. It is available from Amazon and from Indiebound.
Instagram: Cabeza de Baca, Dugan, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 558 features author Hugh Eakin and artist Jordan Weber.
Eakin is the author of "Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America," which tells a story of how New York City slowly, eventually, came to embrace both European modernism and the art of Pablo Picasso. Eakin's history begins with John Quinn, a white-shoe attorney with a yen for progressive literature and art, and follow's Quinn's involvement and influence across New York and Europe, through the Armory Show, Alfred Barr, and more. The book is full of original research, new angles that give life to once-ossified narratives, and bright, well-paced prose. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $33.
Jordan Weber discusses "All Our Liberations," an art installation and space for community learning, reflection and healing organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in Saint Louis. The project, which runs from July 16-24, takes place at the Spring Church near the Pulitzer in Saint Louis's Grand Center Arts District. The project includes a three-tiered sculpture Weber made with black obsidian stones and participation from collaborators Weber met during a 2021 residency. During the week-long program Weber will host programs for both formerly incarcerated individuals and members of the public. Urban farmers, healers, and organizers from Close the Workhouse -- a Saint Louis-area campaign working to end mass incarceration -- are Weber's programming co-host. In April 2023, Weber will expand "All Our Liberation" as part of Counterpublic, a city-wide triennial.
Episode No. 557 features artist Meghann Riepenhoff and curator Michelle White.
Meghann Riepenhoff is included in "Watershed," an exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art that considers the interconnected histories, present lives, and imagined futures of the Great Lakes region. "Watershed" features work by 15 artists, six of whom were commissioned to make new work for the show. Riepenhoff's 2022 Waters of the Americas: EPA ID NYD980592497, Eastman Kodak’s Emissions B (Confluence of the Genesee River and Lake Ontario, Rochester, NY, 03.12.2022) is among those commissions. The exhibition was curated by Jennifer M. Friess, and is on view through October 23.
Riepenhoff's work foregrounds the chemical processes from which pictures are and have been made since the nineteenth century, and brings those processes into contact with nature, including rivers, lakes and oceans. Her work has been included in exhibitions at SFMOMA, the High Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and more. This September, Radius and Yossi Milo Gallery will publish Riepenhoff's new book Ice; and Yossi Milo will present related work in its New York space. Indiebound and Amazon offer the book for about $60.
White discusses "Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s," which is at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through July 17. The exhibition examines two of Saint Phalle's most important bodies of work: the Tirs, or “shooting paintings,” and exuberant sculptures of women Saint Phalle called Nanas. White co-curated the show with Jill Dawsey. The excellent exhibition catalogue was co-published by MCASD and The Menil Collection, which originated the exhibition, and distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for about $50.
Episode No. 556 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Maya Dunietz.
The Bemis Center Contemporary Arts in Omaha is presenting "Maya Dunietz: Root of Two," a 13,000-square-foot exhibition that foregrounds the physicality of sound via a series of installations. The exhibition was curated by Rachel Adams and will remain on view through September 18.
This program was taped before a live audience at the Bemis Center last November when Dunietz was in residence putting the finishing touches on this exhibition.
For works discussed on this week's program, see Dunietz's website:
- Mammoths and Five Chilling Mammoths (2021);
- Installation at the University Botanical Garden (2021) in Jerusalem;
- The Turning Wheel (2010);
- Air Sculpture 1 (2013);
- Talking Wall (2016);
- Trembling Piano (2016); and
- Thicket (2016).
Two clips of Barbara Kruger discussing works she has made that address abortion.
The first work(s) is from 1991 and 1992; the second addresses Kruger's recent engagements with her 1989 masterpiece "Your Body is a Battleground."
Nota bene: This mini-episode is available only via feed, including at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.
Episode No. 555 features artist Robert Adams.
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, is presenting "American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams" through October 2. The exhibition, a career survey, includes about 175 pictures Adams made between 1965 and 2015. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by the NGA and Aperture. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $44-65.
Adams is among the world's greatest living photographers. His work has taken a critical eye to the United States, and especially to its stewardship of the West and the people who live there.
This is Adams' third visit to the program. He was previously the guest on Episodes No. 41 and 227.
Episode No. 554 features artists Andrea Bowers and Suzanne Lacy.
The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles is presenting a retrospective of Bowers' work. The exhibition reveals how Bowers has combined her artistic practice with activism. Both focus on structural inequities, elevating and celebrating the work of activists trying to create a more just nation and world, and tying present day struggles to historical movements such as the global labor movement. The show features about 60 works reflecting Bowers's use of many media, including drawing, installation, video and sculpture. "Andrea Bowers" was curated by Connie Butler and Michael Darling. After debuting at the MCA Chicago, it's on view at the Hammer through September 4. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Books in association with the two museums. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40-60.
On the second segment, our 2019 conversation with Bowers' sometime-collaborator, Suzanne Lacy. The program was recorded when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts jointly presented the retrospective “Suzanne Lacy: We are Here.” The exhibition explores Lacy’s roots in early conceptualism and her emergence as a pioneer of what has become known as social practice, the use of community organizing and media-focused strategies to prompt events and discussions. The exhibitions are on view in San Francisco through August 4.
Suzanne Lacy is best known for her ambitious Three Weeks in May (1977), a project that exposed the extent of reported rapes in Los Angeles. It was the first of Lacy’s large-scale works that addressed violence against women and that revealed Lacy’s strategies for melding art and organizing practices.
Links and images to artworks Lacy discusses are at Episode No. 393.
Episode No. 553 features artist Hayv Kahraman and conservator and author Susan Lake.
Hayv Kahraman is included in "Women Painting Women" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. It was curated by Andrea Karnes and is on view through September 25. The exhibition catalogue was published by Delmonico Books. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $39-50.
Kahraman is a Baghdad-born, Los Angeles-based painter whose work explores the non-fixity of diasporic culture. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Joslyn Museum of Art, Omaha and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
On the second segment, Lake discusses "Clyfford Still," a new book in the Getty Conservation Institute's "The Artists Materials" series. Lake co-authored the book with Barbara A. Ramsay. Built from unprecedented access to art in the Clyfford Still estate and later in the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, the book offers a detailed account of Still's materials, working methods and techniques. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40.
Episode No. 552 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Marilyn Minter.
Minter is included in "Women Painting Women," which is at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through September 25. It features 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. It was curated by Andrea Karnes.
This conversation was taped in 2015 on the occasion of a mid-career survey of Minter's work that opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston before traveling to Denver, Orange County and Brooklyn.
Episode No. 551 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Allison Janae Hamilton.
Allison Janae Hamilton is included in “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration” at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. The exhibition, which was curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown, features newly commissioned work from 12 Black artists that addresses the Great Migration. The Great Migration was the movement of more than six million Black Americans from the South to cities across the United States. The exhibition is in Jackson through September 11, when it will travel to Baltimore.
This program was taped on the occasion of Hamilton's inclusion in “Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse,” which was organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and which is at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. through July 25.
Hamilton’s work investigates and reveals the South’s history and landscape and their influence on the American story across photographs, sculpture, video and installation. She has had solo exhibitions at Recess in New York, the Atlanta Contemporary and at MASS MoCA, and New York’s Times Square Arts and Creative Time have presented her work.
Episode No. 550 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features historian and author Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and curator Edith Devaney.
Gilmore is the author of "Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination," which was just published by the University of North Carolina Press. The book examines how Bearden's address of his native South -- he was born and was initially raised in the Charlotte, NC area before his family was effectively forced to leave the South -- was informed by the vagaries of memory and even imagination. Gilmore is the Peter V. & C. Vann Woodward Professor Emerita of History at Yale University. Her previous books include "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920," and "Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950." Indiebound and Amazon offer "Bearden" for $26-40.
Devaney discusses “Milton Avery,” a survey of the artist’s career now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. The exhibition debuted at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and is in Hartford through June 5. The exhibition features about 70 paintings Avery made between the 1910s and the mid-1960s and emphasizes Avery’s interest in color. It’s on view at the Wadsworth through June 5. “Avery” was co-organized by the Royal Academy, London, the Wadsworth and MAMFW. Its catalogue was published by the Royal Academy. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 549 features artists Aubrey Levinthal and Doron Langberg.
Levinthal and Langberg are included in "A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. The exhibition, which was curated by Ruth Erickson, spotlights painters who are particularly interested in depicting what is near and dear to them, including friends, lovers, family, studio spaces, and their homes. "A Place for Me" is at the ICA through September 5.
Aubrey Levinthal is a Philadelphia-based artist whose work explores the everyday in ways that engage with painting's history. She's shown her work in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Philadelphia. In addition to the ICA Boston exhibition, Levinthal's work is in "Women of Now: Dialogues of Memory, Place & Identity" at the Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas. It was curated by Clare Milliken and Bailey Summers, and is on view through May 15.
Doron Langberg is a New York-based artist whose often large-scale works explore intimacy, color and touch. Langberg has been included in group shows at the RISD Museum, the Frick Madison, and the LSU Museum. His work is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the RISD Museum.
Episode No. 548 features curators Ann Temkin and Stephanie Weissberg.
Along with Dorthe Aagesen, Temkin is the co-curate of "Matisse: The Red Studio," an exhibition that investigates Matisse's making of his famed 1911 The Red Studio. The exhibition, which is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through September 10, features each of the surviving works Matisse portrayed in The Red Studio, as well as related archival photographs, correspondence and related paintings and drawings. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $55.
Weissberg discusses her exhibition "Assembly Required," which is at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis through July 31. The show features eight artists -- Francis Alÿs, Rasheed Araeen, Siah Armajani, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Lygia Pape, and Franz Erhard Walther -- who believed that public action is vital to transform society. The work Weissberg has selected for the exhibition invites a viewer's physical participation.
Episode No. 547 features artists Leslie Hewitt and Cornell Watson.
Hewitt is included in "A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration" at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. The exhibition, which was curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown, features newly commissioned work from 12 Black artists that addresses the Great Migration. The Great Migration was the movement of more than six million Black Americans from the South to cities across the United States. The exhibition is in Jackson through September 11, when it will travel to Baltimore.
Hewitt's photography and sculpture revisit art historical forms such as the still-life and minimalist sculpture through the lens of personal history, biography and America's past. The Minneapolis Institute of Art, the MCA Chicago, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Des Moines Art Center and the Menil Collection are among the institutions that have presented solo or two-person exhibitions of her work.
Cornell Watson's work is included in “Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now” at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition features over 100 works by 30 artists working across North Carolina. It features work from Watson's "Behind the Mask" series, a visual consideration of Black life in present-day America.
Instagram: Leslie Hewitt, Cornell Watson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 546 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Natalie Dupêcher and Laura de Becker.
Along with Anne Umland and Nina Zimmer, Dupêcher is the co-curator of "Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition," a retrospective that spans the Swiss artists' 1930s work in Paris, her engagements with surrealism, and her broad post-war synthesis of nouveau réalisme, pop, abstraction and addresses of nature. The exhibition is at the Menil Collection, Houston, through September 18 before traveling to the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It debuted at the Kunstmuseum Bern last fall. (The Kunstmuseum Bern created a "digitorial" for the exhibition.) "Oppenheim" is accompanied by a catalogue published by MoMA. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $27-45.
de Becker is the curator of "Wish You Were Here: African Art and Restitution" at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The exhibition takes a unique approach to an examination of eleven objects from the museum's African collection: instead of researching their provenances' relationship to the era of colonization in private, the museum is conducting its research into those objects publicly and in near-real time via a gallery exhibition. Both the exhibition and the website UMMA has launched for the project are models of transparency. de Becker is UMMA's curator for African art and interim chief curator. She is assisted in the project by Timnet Gedar, Bridget Grier, Caitlyn Webster and Ozi Uduma.
Episode No. 545 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Charles Ray.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is showing "Charles Ray: Figure Ground" through June 5. The exhibition surveys Ray's career beginning with photographs from the early 1970s and continuing through the sculptures he's made over the last several decades. The exhibition was organized by Kelly Baum and Brinda Kumar.
Ray came on the program in 2014 when he showed two new works at Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles: Baled Truck, a sculpture of a truck that’s been crushed into a rectangular block junkyard-style, and Mime, a sculpture of a reclining male figure on a cot.
In 1998, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles presented a Paul Schimmel-curated retrospective of Ray’s work that traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the MCA Chicago. In 2014 the Kunstmuseum Basel presented an exhibition of 15 Ray sculptures made since 1997. An expanded version of that show will opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.
Images are available here.
Episode No. 545 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Charles Ray.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is showing "Charles Ray: Figure Ground" through June 5. The exhibition surveys Ray's career beginning with photographs from the early 1970s and continuing through the sculptures he's made over the last several decades. The exhibition was organized by Kelly Baum and Brinda Kumar.
Ray came on the program in 2014 when he showed two new works at Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles: Baled Truck, a sculpture of a truck that’s been crushed into a rectangular block junkyard-style, and Mime, a sculpture of a reclining male figure on a cot.
In 1998, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles presented a Paul Schimmel-curated retrospective of Ray’s work that traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the MCA Chicago. In 2014 the Kunstmuseum Basel presented an exhibition of 15 Ray sculptures made since 1997. An expanded version of that show will opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.
Images are available here.
Episode No. 544 features curators Perrin Stein and Frederick Ilchman.
Stein is the curator of "Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Met says it's the first exhibition devoted to David's works on paper. "David" features over 80 drawings, preparatory studies and oil sketches related to significant paintings that helped shape public understandings of major events in the years before, during and after the French Revolution. The exhibition is on view through May 15. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $54-65.
Ilchman organized the MFA Boston presentation of "Turner's Modern World" with Julia Welch and Cara Wolahan. (The exhibition, which originated at the Tate, was curated David Brown, Amy Concannon, James Finch, and Sam Smiles with Hattie Spires.) "Turner's Modern World" features about 100 Turners, including paintings, watercolors, drawings and sketchbooks, and argues for the present sociopolitical relevance of Turner's work. In Boston, the presentation centers one of Turner's most important works, Slave Ship (1840), a dramatic indictment of the transatlantic slave trade. "Turner's Modern World" is on view through July 10. The catalogue was published by the Tate. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $42-55.
Images will post on Saturday, April 9.
Episode No. 543 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Elyse Nelson.
Along with Wendy S. Walters, Nelson is the co-curator of "Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition interrogates French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 1868/73 marble bust Why Born Enslaved! and places the sculpture in the context of French history, racialization, and in the representation of Black men and women by sculptors in Europe and the US during and after the nineteenth century. It's on view through March 5, 2023.
The Met has published an excellent catalogue for the project. It includes contributions from Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris Moon, Caitlin Meehye Beach, Rachel Hunter Himes, James Smalls, Adrienne Childs, Nelson, and Walters. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for about $25.
Instagram: Elyse Nelson, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 542 features curator Paul Martineau and artist Marie Watt.
Martineau is the curator of "Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective," which has finally arrived at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, after a two-year pandemic delay. The exhibition will be on view through June 12. Cunningham had a remarkable 75-year career that touched on seemingly every movement in American art and photography between the first decade of the 20th century and her death in 1976. She is particularly well-known for her address of pictorialism, her turn to modernism, as well as street photography, nudes and portraits. This interview was recorded when the Getty published the catalogue in 2020.
For images, see Episode No. 470.
On the second segment, a segment recorded with Marie Watt in 2020 when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Native American History, both in Bentonville, Ark., presented an exhibition of her work called "Companion Species." Now the University of San Diego is presenting a survey of her printmaking titled "Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt," which is on view through May 13. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is showing "Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger," an exhibition that spotlights the two artists' shared interests in collaboration, community engagement, materiality and the land. It's on view through May 8.
For images, see Episode No. 482.
Episode No. 541 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Shahzia Sikander.
This weekend the Museum of Fine Arts Houston opens "Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities," a survey of the first 15 years of Sikander's career, from roughly the mid-to-late 1980s and until the early 2000s. It was curated by Jan Howard and Marny Kindness, and at the MFAH by Dena M. Woodall. The exhibition will remain on view through June 5, when it will travel to the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. The RISD Museum and Hirmer have published an excellent book of the same title in association with the exhibition. It was edited by Sadia Abbas and Jan Howard. Indiebound and Amazon each offer it for about $45.
Sikander came to prominence by melding Indo-Persian manuscript painting traditions with contemporary life and issues such as feminism, cultural identity, and more. Among the dozens of museums that have presented solo shows of her work are the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.
Episode No. 540 features curator Judith W. Mann and artist Nicholas Galanin.
Mann is the curator of "Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530-1800," which is on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 15. (Mann was assisted by Andrea Miller.) The exhibition, which includes more than 70 works by 58 artists, is the first examination of the pan-European practice of painting on stones such as lapis lazuli, slate and marble. The exhibition is accompanied by a terrific catalogue. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $50.
On April 7-8 SLAM will be presenting a virtual symposium that explores painting on stone and the role that stone played in the meaning of individual artworks. The symposium is free but requires Zoom registration.
Nicholas Galanin's work is on view in "The Scene Changes: Sculpture from the Sheldon's Collection" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The Sheldon acquired Galanin's 2012 The American Dream is Alie and Well in 2020.
Galanin's work has been the subject of solo shows at Davidson College, the BYU Museum of Art, the Montclair Art Museum, the Missoula Art Museum, the Anchorage Museum and more. In 2018 The Heard Museum in Phoenix presented a survey of Galanin's career. Later this year the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. will present exhibitions of Galanin's work.
Galanin is a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist whose work examines contemporary Indigenous identity, culture and representation and interrogates the routine misappropriation of Native culture, colonialism and collective amnesia.
Episode No. 539 features artist Stephanie Syjuco and historian Kate Wilson.
Stephanie Syjuco's work is featured in several exhibitions around the United States. The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth is presenting "Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision," a site-specific commission that builds from the Carter's collection to investigate historical and art historical narratives around American imperialism in the West. The project was curated by Kristen Gaylord and will be on view through January 2023.
Syjuco is also in "Futures," a 32,000-square-foot pan-Smithsonian exhibition on view at the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries building through July 6; "Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through August 21; and "Stephanie Syjuco: Latent Images" at New York's Ryan Lee Gallery through March 12.
Syjuco works across media such as installation and photography to investigate how images have helped build racialized, exclusionary narratives that have helped construct history and determine citizenship. Among the institutions that have presented her projects and solo exhibitions of her work are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the University of Kentucky, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and the Asian Art, Havana and Bucharest biennials.
Wilson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Last semester she taught a class called "Race and Identity in Greco-Roman Antiquity." Concurrently she organized a teaching gallery exhibition in Wash U's Kemper Art Museum titled, "Colonizing the Past: Constructing Race in Ancient Greece in Rome." The project was the rare presentation of whiteness studies-informed exhibition in American art museum.
Instagram: Stephanie Syjuco, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 538 features curator Virginia Mecklenburg and artist Elizabeth Alexander.
Mecklenburg is the curator of "Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice," which is at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston through August 7.
The exhibition features a series of paintings Johnson made in the 1940s. It shows mostly Black activists, scientists, and educators, and spotlights their impacts on their communities and on the American nation. Johnson's subjects include Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman, Marian Anderson, and John Brown. The series also the international heads of state who brought an end to World War II.
The exhibition was organized from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which holds over 1,000 Johnsons within its collection. Mecklenburg is a senior curator at SAAM. The exhibition will travel to SAAM in 2023-24; a significant national tour is in development.
Elizabeth Alexander is included in "Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition features over 100 works by 30 artists working across North Carolina. Alexander's sculptures and installation are often made from deconstructed domestic materials and address America's history, especially the construction and memory of white supremacy. She's been included in exhibitions at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Museums such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and the Mint Museum, Charlotte hold her work in their collections.
Episode No. 537 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring curators Erin Christovale and Anne T. Woollett.
Christovale discusses the retrospective “Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation,” which is at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through May 15. Christovale co-curated the exhibition with Meg Onli. Jenkins is an influential video and performance artist whose work has examined how cultural iconography and history have informed representation. The exhibition catalogue was published by the hammer and the ICA Philadelphia, which debuted the show last year. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40. The museums will also republish Jenkins’s memoir, “Doggerel Life: Stories of a Los Angeles Griot.” Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $15.
With Austėja Mackelaitė and John T. McQuillen, Woollett is a co-curator of “Hans Holbein: Capturing Character,” which is at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, through May 15, 2022. The exhibition presents Hans Holbein the Younger as German but transnational, and situates his portraiture between not only influential court figures, but the leading intellectuals of contemporary Switzerland and England.
Remarkably, it is the first major Holbein exhibition in the US. Co-organized with the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, “Holbein” features over 50 objects including 33 Holbein paintings and drawings. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the Getty. Amazon offers it for about $50.
Bloemink is the author of "Florine Stettheimer: A Biography," which was recently published by Hirmer Verlag. "Stettheimer" offers the early American modernist as a voracious consumer of European modernism, a networker who built impactful relationships with the New York avant garde, and as a major painter. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $30-42.
Magid's work is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as part of the museum's "Focus" series. The exhibition features work in which Magid juxtaposes the COVID pandemic with the nation's often economically motivated response to it. To date, nearly one million Americans have been confirmed as dying from COVID, provisional counts based on statistical modeling are significantly higher. The exhibition, which was curated by Alison Hearst, will be on view through March 20.
Magid's work typically examines systems through conceptual strategies that allow her to investigate those systems from within.
Episode No. 535 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator and historian Marin Sullivan and artist Olivia Block.
Along with Jed Morse, Sullivan is the co-curator of "Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life," the first American museum retrospective of Bertoia's work in over 50 years. The exhibition is at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas through April 24. The exhibition features over 100 works, including Bertoia's early jewelry and furniture designs, monotypes, sculptures, and commissions he fulfilled for architect-clients such as Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki. The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the museum in collaboration with Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $59.
The Nasher has commissioned Olivia Block to make a new sound installation from recordings of Bertoia’s so-called sonambient sculptures. Block's new composition, titled The Speed of Sound in Infinite Copper, will highlight the Bertoias' ability to create a palpable sonic space while allowing the audience to activate the sonic experience by moving about a gallery. The Speed of Sound in Infinite Copper will be presented at the museum through April 24.
Block's discography includes over 20 solo and collaborative recordings. She has performed and exhibited around the world including in Chicago's Millennium Park, and at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Episode No. 534 features artist Eamon Ore-Giron and curator Caitlin Haskell.
The Anderson Collection at Stanford University is presenting "Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra" through February 20. The exhibition features paintings Ore-Giron has made while on a Stanford residency, installed with works from the Anderson's collection. It was curated by Ore-Giron and Jason Linetzky.
Next month, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver opens a survey of Ore-Giron's 20-year career titled "Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago." The exhibition, which was curated by Miranda Lash, will be on view from February 16 to May 22.
Ore-Giron's work joins histories, geographies and abstraction as a means by which to explore the layered past and present of the Americas. He's been featured in solo shows and two-person shows at LAXART and the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in group shows at SFMOMA, the Hammer Museum, Ballroom Marfa, and more.
Haskell discusses "Ray Johnson c/o," which spotlight's Johnson's work from almost exclusively within the AIC's recently acquired William S. Wilson Collection of Ray Johnson—the original archives of the international mail art network known as the New York Correspondence School (NYCS). It is on view through March 21. Haskell co-curated the show with Jordan Carter; the remarkable catalogue was designed by Irma Boom. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon from about $60.
Episode No. 533 features curator Anne Umland and art historian Jonathan Brown.
Along with Walburga Krupp, Eva Reifert and Natalia Sidlina, Umland is a co-curator of "Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition surveys Taeuber-Arp's pioneering interests in Dada and abstraction across over 300 works, including textiles, beadwork, polychrome marionettes, architectural and interior designs, stained glass windows, works on paper, paintings, and relief sculptures. The exhibition is on view through March 12. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $57-75.
Brown was one of the world's leading scholars of art of Spain and the Spanish colonial world. He died on January 17 at 82. In addition to teaching at New York University, Brown was the editor, author or co-author of about 20 books on Spanish and Latin American art. He also curated exhibitions that explored the works of Murillo, Goya, Velazquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera, and more.
This clip was taken from Episode No. 137.
Episode No. 532 features artist Sandy Rodriguez and curator Austen Barron Bailly.
Sandy Rodriguez's history-and-the-present addressing work is featured in four ongoing museum presentations, including:
"Mixpantli: Contemporary Echoes" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through June 12;
"Borderlands" at the Huntington Library until fall;
"Re:Visión Art in the Americas" at the Denver Art Museum through July 17; and
"Sandy Rodriguez: In Isolation," a solo exhibition of 30 new works on paper that join addresses of American history to present events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and mass responses to police violence. It's on view through April 17.
In addition, Rodriguez is included in the Denver Art Museum exhibition "Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche," which will open February 6 before traveling to the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Rodriguez's work explores the methods and materials of painting in works that address Native and colonial histories, memory and contemporary events. Among her exhibition credits are the recent triennial at El Museo del Barrio, the Riverside Art Museum, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, and more.
On the second segment, Austen Barron Bailly discusses "In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting." The exhibition, which is at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art through January 31, features assorted pictures of marine art from across 250 years of US history. Bailly co-curated the show with Daniel Finamore.
Episode No. 531 features artist Beverly Semmes and curator Jeffrey Spier.
Beverly Semmes is included in "Witch Hunt," an exhibition that presents how 16 women artists have used feminist, queer, and decolonial strategies to explore gender, power, and the global impacts of patriarchy. It is on view across two venues, the Hammer Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through January 9.
On January 9, the JOAN exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles was scheduled to host "Pool," a performance and installation developed as a collaboration between Jennifer Minniti and Semmes' CarWash Collective and Emily Mast. It has been postponed due to the pandemic. The performance will feature a new collection of CarWash garments based on Semmes' Feminist Responsibility Project. In New York, Susan Inglett Gallery will show new work from Semmes beginning February 3.
Semmes's multi-disciplinary work explores the body and its representation. Her work has been the subject of solo shows at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and more.
On the second segment, Spier discusses "Rubens: Picturing Antiquity," a Getty Villa exhibition that looks at how Rubens's work was informed by classical antiquity. It was curated by Anne T. Woollett, Davide Gasparotto, and Spier. It is on view through January 24. The excellent catalogue for the exhibition was published by the Getty. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $40.
Instagram: Beverly Semmes, Tyler Green.
Episode No. 530 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Wayne Thiebaud.
Thiebaud died on Christmas Day; he was 101. This episode was recorded in the final days of 2017, and aired in early 2018. For images see Episode No. 324.
Episode No. 529 is a holiday clips episode with art historian Debra Bricker Balken.
Balken is the author of "Arthur Dove: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings and Things," a thorough presentation that includes Dove's assemblages. Jessie Sentivan contributed to the book. It contains 537 illustrations, almost all of them in color, of each work Balken was able to identify, find, photograph and document. "Dove" includes a an essay on Dove's work and its critical reception, as well as mini-essays on major works. Many of the materials and images in the book are published for the first time here. It lists for $125 via Indiebound or Amazon.
Dove is among the most prominent American modernists of the early twentieth century, a key link between the American nature tradition and abstraction.
Episode No. 528 features artist Mitch Epstein and curator Edith Devaney.
Steidl has just published Epstein's newest book "Property Rights." Featuring 197 pictures across 288 pages, "Property Rights" examines the relationship between the United States, land and the impact of the American nation on the people who live here. The book was edited by Susan Bell and includes texts by both Epstein and Bell. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $75.
Epstein has published 15 books including "In India," "American Power," and "Family Business."
Devaney discusses "Milton Avery," a survey of the artist's career at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features about 70 paintings Avery made between the 1910s and the mid-1960s and emphasizes Avery's interest in color. It's on view at MAMFW through January 30. "Avery" was co-organized by the Royal Academy, London, the Wadsworth Atheneum and MAMFW. Its catalogue was published by the Royal Academy. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $45.
Episode No. 527 features artist Jim Isermann and curator Oliver Tostmann.
Radius Books has just published the monograph "Jim Isermann." For forty years the California-based Isermann has joined sculpture and painting to design, examinations of domesticity and queerness. Last year the Palm Springs Art Museum presented a survey of Isermann's career. Isermann has fulfilled commissions for sites as unalike as football stadiums at the University of Houston and in Arlington, Texas, and for Stanford and Princeton Universities. His work is in many major art museum collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art and the Hammer Museum.
"Isermann" was designed by David Chickey and Mat Patalano. It features an essay by Christopher Knight and a conversation between Isermann and John Burtle. The book is available from Radius, Indiebound and Amazon for $60-65.
With Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Tostmann is the co-curator of "By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800" at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. The exhibition explores how women artists succeeded even though many paths to professional development and patronage were closed to them. Among the artists whose work is included in the project are Gentileschi, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rosalba Carriera, Lavinia Fontana, and Virginia da Vezzo. "By Her Hand" is on view at the Wadsworth through January 9, when it will travel to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The exhibition catalogue was published by the DIA and is distributed by Yale University Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40.
Episode No. 526 features artist Maya Dunietz and historian Jordana Mendelson.
Maya Dunietz is currently in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha in preparation for a 13,000-square-foot exhibition that will open May 5, 2022. Dunietz's exhibition will foreground the physicality of sound through a series of installations, including a 17-piano installation that builds on her 2021 work Five Chilling Mammoths and on 2016's Trembling Piano. This segment was taped before a live audience at the Bemis.
Dunietz is a composer, performer, and sound artist whose work investigates the nexus of music, visual art, performance and technologies. She has created exhibitions, site-specific sound installations and performances for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Reykjavik Arts Festival, the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, the Centre Pompidou and the Botanical Gardens in Jerusalem.
Mendelson discusses her essay, "The 'Mild' Manifesting of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder in Protest Ephemera and International Art Expositions during the Postwar" in the catalogue for "Calder-Picasso" which is at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through January 30, 2022. Mendelson is the director of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University.
Episode No. 525 is a holiday clips episode that features curator Shawnya L. Harris.
Harris is the curator of "Emma Amos: Color Odyssey," a retrospective of Amos's career at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is on view through January 17, 2022.
Episode No. 524 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Odili Donald Odita and David Hartt.
Odili Donald Odita is featured in "Point of Departure: Abstraction 1958-Present" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska. The exhibition is drawn from the Sheldon's excellent collection of two-dimensional abstraction and reveals how artists have used abstraction to advance ideas and ideologies from outside art's own history.
Odita's abstract paintings marry color and composition to history, sociopolitical investigation and ideology. He has fulfilled major mural commissions for museums such as the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Recent exhibitions of his work have included the Laumeier and Jeske Sculpture Parks in Saint Louis and Ferguson, Missouri, the ICA Miami, the Sarasota Museum of Art, the Front International triennial in Cleveland, the Newark Museum of Art, and more.
David Hartt is the subject of a Hammer Projects exhibition on view at the Hammer Museum through January 2, 2022. The show features Hartt's 2020 The Histories (Old Black Joe), two jacquard-woven tapestries and a quadraphonic soundtrack arranged by musician Van Dyke Parks. Hartt's work joins and interrogates three nineteenth-century figures : American painter Robert S. Duncanson, Trinidadian painter Michel-Jean Cazabon, and composer Stephen Foster, whose song “Old Black Joe” has endured as a dying slave’s lament even though of Foster mostly wrote for blackface minstrel shows. The Hammer presentation was curated by Aram Moshayedi with Nicholas Barlow.
Other Hartt museum projects have included "David Hartt: A Colored Garden," which just closed at The Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., and exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Graham Foundation in Chicago, LAXArt in Los Angeles, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Episode No. 523 features curators Anne T. Woollett and Shannon Vittoria.
With Austėja Mackelaitė and John T. McQuillen, Woollett is a co-curator of "Hans Holbein: Capturing Character in the Renaissance" at the J. Paul Getty Museum through January 9, 2022. The exhibition presents Hans Holbein the Younger as German but transnational, and situates his portraiture between not only influential court figures, but the leading intellectuals of contemporary Switzerland and England.
Remarkably, it is the first major Holbein exhibition in the US. Co-organized with the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, "Holbein" features over 50 objects including 33 Holbein paintings and drawings.
Along with Elizabeth Kornhauser, Vittoria is the co-curator of "Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo." Vittoria wrote the essay on the Elem Pomo work included in the exhibition for The Met Bulletin that functions as the show's catalogue. It's at the Met through November 28.
Episode No. 522 features artist Aliza Nisenbaum and curator Davide Gasparotto.
Aliza Nisenbaum's work is on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art in "Picturing Motherhood Now," a look at how contemporary artists represent motherhood. Curated by Emily Liebert, it is on view through March 13, 2022.
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City is showing "Aliza Nisenbaum: Aquí Se Puede (Here You Can)," an exhibition of large-scale portraits of individuals connected to Kansas City salsa music and dance communities. It was curated by Erin Dziedzic and is up through July 31, 2022.
Tate Liverpool and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts are among the museums that have presented solo exhibitions of Nisenbaum's work.
Gasparotto discusses the J. Paul Getty Museum's acquisition of Jacopo Bassano's 1554 The Miracle of the Quails. The picture goes on view at the Getty today.
The nearly eight-foot-wide painting is a rare depiction of the Old Testament detailing of the miracle of the quails. Bassano based his visual account from a single line in the Bible's story.
Episode No. 521 features artists Barbara Kruger and Samantha Nye.
The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting "THINKING OF ~~YOU~~. I MEAN ~~ME~~. I MEAN YOU.," a survey spanning Kruger's career. The exhibition includes works on vinyl, site-specific installations, animations, and multichannel video installations installed in many disparate parts of the museum. It was organized by the AIC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to which it will travel after closing in Chicago on January 24, 2022. The exhibition was curated by James Rondeau, Robyn Farrell, Michael Govan, Rebecca Morse, and Peter Eleey. The handsome catalogue was co-published by LACMA and DelMonico Books. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $45-60.
Kruger has also fulfilled a commission from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston titled "Body Language." The work, which is installed on the exterior of the ISGM's Renzo Piano-designed addition, features a detail from Titian's painting Diana and Actaeon, and was installed on the occasion of "Titian: Women, Myth & Power" at the museum. Kruger's work is on view through February 1, 2022.
The Kruger exhibition shop mentioned on the program is here.
Kruger was previously a guest on Episode No. 36.
Samantha Nye's work is on view in two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: "Samantha Nye: My Heart's in a Whirl," which closes this weekend, and "New Light: Encounters and Connections," which is on view through July 24, 2022. Nye's work broadens artistic constructs of beauty and sexuality by queering them and by foregrounding older people in her paintings, installations and videos.
Episode No. 520 features artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, and historian Paul Farber.
New Kelleys are featured in two ongoing museum exhibitions.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is presenting the Kelleys' The Rape of Europa, a commission that engages the ISGM's 1559-1562 Titian, Rape of Europa (which is on view in "Titian: Women, Myth and Power"). The Rape of Europa will be on view through January 2, 2022. Pieranna Cavalchini oversaw the project for the ISGM.
Nathaniel Silver, who curated the ISGM's presentation of "Titian: Women, Myth and Power" was the first guest on Episode No. 514.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia is showing "Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: Blood Moon," which features two new Kelley film works and an immersive installation. The project was curated by Alec Unkovic and remains on view through February 20, 2022.
On the second segment, Monument Lab director Paul M. Farber discusses Monument Lab's National Monument Audit, which he co-directed with Laurie Allen and Sue Mobley. In addition to the project website, Monument Lab offers a free PDF of the audit.
Episode No. 519 features author Gabrielle Selz and curator Malcolm Daniel.
Selz is the author of the new biography "Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis." The book tells the story of Francis' wild, often tumultuous, multi-continental life -- Selz was a California native who was always more interested in Europe and Asia than he was in New York -- and details the making of his work, its global reception, and his efforts to help found art museums, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The book was published by University of California Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $35.
On the second segment, Daniel discusses the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's acquisition of a major Julia Margaret Cameron album. The album, known as The Norman Album because it remained in the family of Cameron's daughter Julia Hay Norman until it was acquired by the MFAH, includes over 70 prints, including Cameron's famed portraits of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, John Herschel and others. Cameron's daughter introduced her to photography; Cameron gave her the album as thanks.
Episode No. 518 features artist Hugo McCloud and curator Erin Christovale.
McCloud's work is on view in "In Relation to Power: Politically Engaged Works from the Collection" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, which was curated by Marshall Price and Adria Gunter, and is on view through February 13, 2022; and in "Hugo McCloud: from where I stand" at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, which was curated by Richard Klein and is on view through January 2, 2022.
McCloud's work engages questions around labor, environmental impacts and global markets and politics often through materials that relate to the people, histories and issues he addresses. He has been featured in group shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at The Drawing Center in New York. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.
On the second segment, Christovale discusses the retrospective "Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation," which is at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia through December 30, 2021. Christovale co-curated the exhibition with Meg Onli. Jenkins is an influential video and performance artist whose work has examined how cultural iconography and history have informed representation.The exhibition will travel to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles next year. The exhibition catalogue was published by the two museums. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40. The museums will also republish Jenkins's memoir, "Doggerel Life: Stories of a Los Angeles Griot."
Episode No. 517 features author Tyler Green with curator and art historian Elizabeth Kornhauser; and artist Lisa Corinne Davis.
Tyler Green is the author of "Emerson's Nature and the Artists," which features a new appraisal of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s classic text, new research that reveals how it was informed by Emerson’s engagement with American art, and critical analysis of how the ideas Emerson offered in "Nature" informed American art for 100 years after it was published.
Green is (usually) the producer/host of The Modern Art Notes Podcast.
Green is interviewed by Elizabeth Kornhauser, a curator in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Along with Tim Barringer, Kornhauser curated "Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and London's National Gallery, which helped motivate his new book. Kornhauser's "Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo," which she co-curated with Shannon Vittoria, is on view now at the Met. She discussed it on Episode No. 515 of The MAN Podcast.
"Emerson's Nature and the Artists" was published by Prestel. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $25. For a personalized, signed copy, contact the author.
On the second segment, Lisa Corinne Davis discusses her work on the occasion of "Point of Departure: Abstraction 1958–Present" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska. The exhibition, drawn primarily from the museum's collection, surveys two-dimensional abstraction and is on view through December 23. Davis' work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Among her many awards are a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award.
Episode No. 516 features art historian and author Mary Beard and artist Tabitha Soren.
Beard's new book is Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. It details how for more than two millennia, portraits of the rich and powerful have been informed by portraits of Roman emperors (and often by portraits believed to be Roman emperors), and investigates how 12 murderous rulers came to be so prominent in the work of artists -- and in the minds of patrons -- ever after.
The book descends from Beard's 2011 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art. Indiebound and Amazon offer the book for about $35.
Material referenced on the program includes:
- Aegidius Sadeler II's prints after Titian's Eleven Caesars (which were destroyed by fire in 1734).
- Hall of the Emperors, Capitoline Museums, Rome.
On the second segment, Tabitha Soren discusses her work on the occasion of "Surface Tension" at the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, Calif. The exhibition features work from Soren's series of the same title, pictures of iPad screens made to reveal how we interact with digital screens in ways that join touch, art history and the present. The exhibition is on view through December 12.
Concurrently, RVB Books has published a book of pictures from the series. It's also titled Surface Tension and includes an essay by Jia Tolentino. As of taping, it's available from RVB Books for 29€.
Works from the series have previously been shown at museums such as the Davis Museum at Wellesley College and at Transformer Station in Cleveland. Soren's work is in the collections of many museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the George Eastman Museum.
Episode No. 515 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Betsy Kornhauser and art historian Aaron M. Hyman.
Along with Shannon Vittoria, Kornhauser is the co-curator of "Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition examines the cultural interchange within Tavernier's Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), which the Met acquired in 2016, and the Elem Pomo portrayed within it. It also complicates Tavernier's picture and oeuvre by examining his other representations of Indigenous life as well as his engagement with the international banking and mining interests that developed the Clear Lake site and region represented in this picture, much of which had been made toxic by borax and mercury extraction.
The exhibition is on view in New York through November 28 before traveling to the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It is accompanied by an issue of the Met Bulletin that includes contributions from Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Joseph Geary. The Bulletin is not available via the web, but it may be purchased for $14.95 at the Met or via phone by calling 212-570-3894 and asking for item number 80054339.
(A later MAN Podcast segment will focus on the Pomo material within the exhibition.)
On the second segment, Hyman discusses his new book Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America. It examines the impact Peter Paul Rubens's prints had on art in Spanish colonies in the Americas, and how artists in the New World came to deviate from Rubens's constructions to build a new art history. Hyman teaches art history at Johns Hopkins University. Rubens in Repeat is published by the Getty Research Institute and Getty Publications, and will be available next month. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $70.
Episode No. 514 features curators Nathaniel Silver and Amy L. Powell.
Silver is the curator of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's presentation of "Titian: Women, Myth & Power," which re-unites Titian's greatest series of mythological paintings for the first time in more than 400 years.
In 1550, Prince Philip of Spain, the future King Philip II, commissioned Titian to make a group of paintings. Among them is the Gardner's 1559-62 The Rape of Europa, as well as The Wallace Collection, London's Perseus and Andromeda, The Wellington Collection's Danaë, the Prado's Venus and Adonis, and Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, which are jointly owned by the National Gallery, London and the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Curators of the exhibition include Silver, Matthias Wivel at the National Gallery, London (where it was titled "Love, Desire, Death"), and at the Prado, Miguel Falomir and Alejandro Vergara curated "Mythological Passions," which included the Titian suite. A planned exhibition in Scotland was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The exhibition is on view in Boston through January 2, 2022. On the occasion of the exhibition, the ISGM has published "Titian's Rape of Europa," a consideration of the ISGM's picture. It was edited by Silver and published by the ISGM and Paul Holberton Publishing. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $25.
On the second segment, Powell discusses her survey "A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing" at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois. The exhibition, the first survey of Fishman's works on paper, is on view through February 26, 2022. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the museum. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40.
Episode No. 513 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring curator Nicole R. Myers.
With Katherine Rothkopf, Myers is the co-curator of "Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris", which opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art on September 12. Myers is a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art. Across more than 40 paintings, the exhibition explores how Gris brought color to cubism in still-life painting of striking vivacity. It will be on view in Baltimore through January 9, 2022. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the two museums and distributed by Yale University Press. It's available for about $45 from Indiebound and Amazon.
Episode No. 512 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Pipilotti Rist.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles opens "Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor" at its Geffen Contemporary building on September 12. Curated by Anna Katz, the exhibition will be Rist's first West Coast survey. It will remain on view through June 6, 2022.
Host Tyler Green's conversation with Rist was taped in 2016 on the occasion of a survey at the New Museum, New York.
Episode No. 511 features author Laura Raicovich.
Raichovich is the author of "Culture Strike: Art and Museums in the Age of Protest," which was published by Verso. The book examines the ways in which art museums have too often insisted on policies and presentations that are allegedly neutral and centrist. Raicovich argues that in working to maintain a broad status quo, too many art museums have failed to prioritize investigation and truth, details the protest movements that have urged museums to be truer to their missions and ideals, and offers some ways forward. "Culture Strike" is available from Indiebound and Amazon for $23-27.
Raicovich is the former director of the Queens Museum and held leadership positions at Creative Time and the Dia Art Foundation. Most recently, she was the interim director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art.
Episode No. 510 features curator Seth Feman and historian Bernard L. Herman.
Along with Jonathan Frederick Walz, Feman is the co-curator of "Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful," a retrospective at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va. through October 3. The exhibition includes about 100 works, including paintings on canvas and paper, theatrical designs, and more. From the Chrysler it will travel to the Phillips Collection in Washington, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, and to Thomas's hometown Columbus (Ga.) Museum. The exhibition's outstanding catalogue is now the go-to monograph on the artist. It was published by the Chrysler and Columbus in association with Yale University Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $65.
On the second segment, Herman discusses the work of Ronald Lockett. Lockett's work is on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Fayetteville, Ark. through October 11 in "What I Know: Gifts from Gordon W. Bailey," and in "In Dialogue: Artist, Mentor, Friend: Ronald Lockett and Thornton Dial Sr." at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens through November 28. Herman curated the 2016-17 Lockett retrospective "Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett" and edited the exhibition's superb catalogue, which was published by University of North Carolina Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $36-45.
Episode No. 509 features artist Allison Janae Hamilton and curator Tamara Schenkenberg.
Allison Janae Hamilton is included in "Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse," which is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through September 6. The exhibition, which was curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, examines the aesthetics of early 20th-century Black culture across the South. It details how sonic and visual parallels in Southern Black culture have informed and shaped broader contemporary American culture. She's also included in "Enunciated Life" at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, which considers Black spirituality. It was curated by Taylor Renee Aldridge and runs through August 15.
Hamilton's work investigates and reveals the South's history and landscape and their influence on the American story across photographs, sculpture, video and installation. She has had solo exhibitions at Recess in New York, the Atlanta Contemporary and at MASS MoCA, and New York's Times Square Arts and Creative Time have presented her work.
Clips from several of the Hamilton video installations discussed on this program are available on Hamilton's Vimeo page, including:
- Wacissa (2019);
- Waters of a Lower Register (2020); and
- A Pale Horse (2021);
On the second segment, Schenkenberg discusses her exhibition "Hannah Wilke: Art for Life's Sake," which is at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in Saint Louis through January 16, 2022. The career-spanning exhibition features 120 works that reveal how Wilke considered the vulnerability of the human body as essential to experiencing life and connection. The museum's exhibition guide is available as a free download.
Episode No. 508 features curators Jodi Hauptman and Samantha Friedman; a clip from a performance by Marcus Fischer, and curator Laura Llewellyn.
Hauptman and Friedman are the curators of "Cézanne Drawing" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. (They were assisted by Kiko Aebi.) The exhibition surveys 250 of Cezanne's works on paper, from drawings to watercolors, and includes several key paintings as well. It is on view through September 25. The exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for $40-45.
Along with John Witty, Laura Llewellyn is the co-curator of "Paolo Veneziano Art & Devotion in 14th-Century Venice" at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition, the first of Paolo's work in the United States, reunites panels that originally formed a larger ensemble but are today scattered across different collections, including the Getty's. It is on view at the Getty through October 3. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Frick Collection in association with Paul Holberton Publishing. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for $60.
The program also includes a clip from Marcus Fischer, one of the artists curator Rachel Adams included in "All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha.
Episode No. 507 features authors Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan; and Kathryn Brown.
Stevens and Swan are the co-authors of the biography "Francis Bacon: Revelations," a broad-ranging look at the British artist's life and work. It was recently published by Knopf. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $18-60. Stevens and Swan's 2005 biography of Willem de Kooning won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Kathryn Brown is the author of "Henri Matisse," a critical biography just released as part of Reaktion Books' "Critical Lives" series. Brown's book offers new ideas about important paintings and presents the ways in which contemporary critics engaged with and presented Matisse's work. Amazon offers it for $10-19.
Episode No. 506 features artist Sarah Cain and curator Robert Cozzolino.
The National Gallery of Art is showing Cain's "My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy" into December.
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY is showing Cain in "Enter the Center" through January 2, 2022.
A site-responsive exhibition of her work titled "Sarah Cain: In Nature" closed at The Momentary in Bentonville, Ark. at the end of May.
Previously Cain received solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and she fulfilled a permanent commission at the San Francisco International Airport.
Cozzolino is the curator of "Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art," which is at the Toledo Museum of Art through September 5. It examines the relationship between American art and ideas of the supernatural across several centuries. The exhibition will travel from Toledo to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville before arriving at Cozzolino's home institution, the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Episode No. 505 features artists Joel Meyerowitz and Elizabeth James-Perry.
Damiani has published a new edition of Joel Meyerowitz's 1983 book "Wild Flowers." The new, expanded edition includes pictures both from the 1983 book, and new pictures that expand on the ways in which Meyerowitz found flowers recurring throughout much of his work. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for around $55.
Meyerowitz came to prominence as a street photographer in the 1960s, was a leader in adopting color photography, and has published 26 books, including the classics Cape Light, St. Louis and the Arch, and Aftermath.
Along with Ekua Holmes, Elizabeth James-Perry has created a "Garden for Boston" outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's main, Huntington Avenue-facing entrance. The installations respond to Cyrus Dallin’s monumental bronze sculpture Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) which has stood at the entrance to the museum for over 100 years. James-Perry is a Aquinnah Wampanoag artist whose work extends coastal Algonquian culture through craft and conceptual projects.
Episode No. 504 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Alison Saar.
The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Calif. have partnered to present “Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe.” The exhibition, which was curated by Rebecca McGrew and Irene Tsatsos, surveys Saar’s work related to myths and hidden histories and archetypes. The Benton has re-opened for groups of up to six for one-hour visits Tuesdays through Saturdays. Reservations are required. The Armory Center for the Arts is open Friday through Sunday beginning July 16. Required reservations will be available on July 8.
Episode No. 503 features artist Wael Shawky and curator Elaine Yau.
Shawky's work is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in "FOCUS: Wael Shawky" through July 25. The exhibition features a film from Shawky's Cabaret Crusades trilogy, along with new and related drawings and sculpture. The MAMFW presentation was curated by Alison Hearst.
Shawky's research-driven work considers and revises global histories through film, peformance, sculpture and installation. His work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, MOCA, the Hammer Museum, the Castello di Rivoli and Turin, and more.
On the second segment, Berkeley Art Museum curator Elaine Yau discusses "Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective," which is on view at the museum through July 18. Tompkins was an Arkansas-born, East Bay-based quiltmaker whose work addressed textile traditions, the Bible, and American histories.
Episode No. 501 features curator Davide Gasporotto and conservator Marcia Steele.
Gasporotto, the senior curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, recently acquired Artemisia Gentileschi's Lucretia (about 1627) for the museum. It went on view for the first time when the Getty re-opened after its pandemic-related closure.
Gentileschi's Lucretia shows the wife of Roman nobleman Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. After Lucretia was raped by a son of the king, she stabbed herself to death. Her suicide led to a rebellion that drove the ruling family from Rome and led to the the foundation of the Roman Republic. She was favorite subject of Renaissance and Baroque art.
Marcia Steele led the conservation of Orazio Gentileschi's 1621-22 Danaë at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The conserved picture debuts in "Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi," which is on view through August 22. Steele just retired as senior conservator at the museum.
Episode No. 501 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Ekene Ijeoma and Chloë Bass.
Ijeoma is featured in "All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha. The exhibition, which was curated by Rachel Adams, examines how artists have centered empathy within their work. It is on view through September 19.
Ekene Ijeoma is the director of Poetic Justice at the MIT Media Lab. His work brings together data with aesthetics and social issues across disciplines such as performance and installation. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as Storefront for Art and Architecture, The Kennedy Center, Washington, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. His A Counting, a series of multimedia linguistic portraits of the United States created by crowdsourced recording, is currently on view in Houston, St. Louis and at the Bemis. Listeners may participate by calling a toll-free number via this link.
Ijeoma's website has extensive detailing of additional projects discussed on the program, including:
- Breathing Pavilion, 2021;
- Heartfelt #2, 2019-present;
- Wage Islands #2, 2019;
- Deconstructed Anthems, 2017-present; and
- The Refugee Project, 2014-present.
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is showing "Chloë Bass: Wayfinding" through October 31. The exhibition is an installation of sculpture informed by public wayfinding signage of the sort that directs tourists through a city. Chloë Bass created more than 30 signs which she then placed throughout the Pulitzer's outdoor spaces. "Wayfinding" is part of Bass's "Obligation to Others Holds Me In My Place" project.
"Wayfinding" includes a site-specific audio work narrated by both the artist and a group of Saint Louis collaborators. Listeners may access the site-specific audio work by calling via this link or via the SoundCloud file below. See the Pulitzer's exhibition guide.
Bass's often conceptual practice examines daily life and human intimacy. Her work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York's Public Art Fund, the Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven in Germany, and plenty more.
Episode No. 500 features artists Nancy Grossman and Stacy Lynn Waddell.
Grossman is featured in "Nasher Mixtape," a series of micro-exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas through September 26; and in "Vibrant: Artists Engage with Color" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro through June 26.
Grossman's leather-wrapped wooden sculptures are among the most iconic works of twentieth-century art, but are far from her only engagements with the figure. Grossman started her career by painting the female figure, went on to collages built from leather and other found material, to dyed-paper collages of the human figure and more. The Tang Museum at Skidmore College presented a retrospective of her work in 2012.
Waddell is included in three ongoing museum exhibitions, including:
- "Graphic Pull: Contemporary Prints from the Collection" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University through June 6. The exhibition is open to to the Duke community only; a thorough virtual tour is available here.
- "Silent Streets: Art in the Time of the Pandemic" at the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte. A closing date has not yet been determined; and
- "Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale" at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia through September 5.
Waddell's work examines both real and imagined histories, often with materials and processes that themselves reference the past.
Episode No. 499 is a Memorial Day weekend clips episode featuring Senga Nengudi.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting "Senga Nengudi: Topologies," a survey of Nengudi's career. It is on view through July 25. It was organized by Stephanie Weber for the Lenbachhaus Munich; the Philadelphia presentation was spearheaded by Amanda Sroka with assistance from Alexis Assam.
Episode No. 498 features artist Ken Gonzales-Day and curator Rachel Adams.
Gonzales-Day is among the artists included in "Photo Flux: Unshuttering LA" at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition opens when Getty Center re-opens on May 25, and will be on view through October 10. "Photo Flux" features pictures by 35 Los Angeles-based artists who challenge ideals related to beauty, representation, cultural capital and objectivity. It was curated by jill moniz.
Gonzales-Day's work considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems, such as photographs of lynchings and museum displays. His book "Lynching in the West: 1850-1935" expanded our understanding of racialized violence in the United States through the discovery of photographs of lynchings of Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and African-Americans in California. His work has been the subject of solo or two-person exhibitions at museums such as the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
On the second segment, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts chief curator and director of programs Rachel Adams previews "Celebrating Tony Conrad," a two-day online streaming festival honoring and highlighting Conrad's collaborations with musicians and performers from around the world. The event streams from the Bemis YouTube page on May 27 and 28 at 5 pm ET.
Conrad was a pioneering experimental media artist whose work, beginning in the early 1960s, helped initiate ways in which artists have explored audio and video.
Episode No. 497 features curator E. Carmen Ramos and artist Michael Menchaca.
Ramos has curated "¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now," which is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through August 8. (SAAM re-opens on Friday, May 14 with separate, timed-entry passes required for each of its buildings.) Ramos was assisted by Claudia Zapata. Menchaca is among the artists included in the exhibition.
"¡Printing the Revolution!" reveals how activist Chicano artists from the 1960s forward have engaged in printmaking practices that brought social activism to aesthetics and that helped instigate new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent in the U.S. The fantastic exhibition catalogue was published by Princeton University Press. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $38 and up.
Links, including those promised on the program:
- Tomás Ybarra-Frausto's papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.
- The exhibition's artists page.
- Enrique Chagoya, The Ghost of Liberty, 2004.
Menchaca is also included in "Estamos Bien - La Triennial 20/21," which is on view at El Museo del Barrio in New York through September 26. It was curated by Rodrigo Moura, Susanna V. Temkin and Elia Alba. Menchaca is also presently in residence at Artpace San Antonio.
Menchaca uses both print and new media to disrupt racist narratives that target Black and indigenous people by creating anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-capitalist scenes. He has had solo exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, and the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. His recent group show credits include the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.
Episode No. 496 features curator Kelly Baum and art historian Judith Zilczer.
Along with Randall Griffey, Baum is the co-curator of the retrospective exhibition "Alice Neel: People Come First" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition is on view through August 1. It presents Neel as a radical portraitist whose work most often foregrounded humanism and social justice. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for around $50.
On the second segment, Judith Zilczer discusses Willem de Kooning's engagement with Chaim Soutine's work on the occasion of "Soutine/de Kooning: Conversations in Paint" at the Barnes Foundation. Zilczer contributed an essay to the catalogue, which was published by the Barnes in association with the Musees d'Orsay and l'Orangerie in Paris, and Paul Holberton Publishing. The exhibition was curated by Simonetta Fraquelli and Claire Bernardi. It is on view in Philadelphia through August 8.
Episode No. 495 features curators Chris Oliver and Corey Piper.
Oliver is the curator of "Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The exhibition, which is on view through August 1, examines how artists portrayed the Natural Bridge, the famed landscape feature in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Despite being in the South, a region rarely visited by artists who tended to focus their work on the northeast, the Natural Bridge attracted artists such as Frederic Church and David Johnson who were interested in its geology, its association with Thomas Jefferson (who owned the land that contains the Natural Bridge), how it could be used to address American republicanism and Union, and more. The exhibition is accompanied by a small catalogue published by VMFA, which offers it for $20.
Along with Brandon Ruud, Corey Piper is the co-curator of "Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820-1920" at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. It looks at a period when both American artists and Europeans rushed into Spain to chronicle its scenic landscapes and cities and to learn from painters such as Velasquez, and considers how Spain and Spanish art informed America's art. The exhibition is at the Chrysler through May 16; it will travel to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The fine exhibition catalogue is available from Indiebound and Amazon for about $60.
Episode No. 494 features art historian Jennifer Roberts and master printer and author Phil Sanders.
Beginning this Sunday, April 25, Roberts will deliver the 2021 Mellon Lectures, America's leading series of annual lectures about art. Typically delivered at the National Gallery of Art each year over six consecutive Sundays in the early spring, the pandemic has required an adjustment. Roberts will deliver this year's Mellons digitally. As ever they will be presented weekly and on Sundays. You can watch them on the NGA's website, where they will remain available for viewing. (No registration is required.)
Roberts's lectures are titled "Contact: Art and the Pull of the Print." Roberts will consider printmaking as a physical experience, and will point to how artists have used the physicality inherent in printmaking as metaphors for the themes and topics they address in their work. Roberts's lectures will primarily focus on American and European contemporary art, and will address work by artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hammons, Christiane Baumgartner and Glenn Ligon.
Roberts is a professor at Harvard University.
On the second segment, Phil Sanders discusses his new book "Prints and their Makers," which was published by Princeton University Press.
Episode No. 493 features artist Buck Ellison and curator Lewis Tanner Moore.
Buck Ellison is included in "Made in LA 2020: a vision," the fifth iteration of the Hammer Museum's biennial. The exhibition, curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, opens to the general public on April 17 at both the Hammer and The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Gardens. Online and offsite projects by Larry Johnson and Kahlil Joseph, Ligia Lewis, and Justen LeRoy on view now.
Ellison is a photographer whose work often engages the social codes (and excesses) of whiteness. "Living Trust," his first monograph, investigates the presentation of white privilege, often through staged and performed pictures. It won the 2020 Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook of the Year Award.
Five Made in L.A. 2020 artists have been featured on The MAN Podcast: Monica Majoli and Mario Ayala; Jill Mulleady and Umar Rashid; and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork.
On the second segment, Lewis Tanner Moore discusses painter Louis Sloan, whose work is on view in "Barriers and Disparities: Housing in America" at the Sheldon Museum of Art. Sloan had a long, celebrated career as a painter, teacher and conservator in Philadelphia. Moore curated a survey of Sloan's work at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2008.
Episode No. 492 features curators Allison Glenn and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll.
Glenn is the curator of "Promise, Witness, Remembrance," at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville. The exhibition reflects on the life of Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician who was killed by Louisville police, and the subsequent year of protests and remembrance. The exhibition is on view through June 6. Glenn is a curator at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Artists in "Promise, Witness, Remembrance" who have been guests on The MAN Podcast include Bethany Collins, Kerry James Marshall (twice), Lorna Simpson and Amy Sherald; artists whose work has been the subject of MAN Podcast episodes include: Terry Adkins (with Stephaine Weissberg) and Sherald (on the Vanity Fair cover with Nzinga Simmons). A clip from Jon-Sesrie Goff's 2016 A Site of Reckoning: Battlefield is here.
On the second segment Jeffrey Richmond-Moll discusses "Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mystery and Imagination in American Art" at the Georgia Museum of Art. The exhibition surveys American artists who rejected abstraction to make representational, often hyper-real paintings that addressed the strangeness of changing, churning American life. The exhibition is on view through June 13. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by GMOA. Amazon offers it for about $50.
Episode No. 491 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Torkwase Dyson.
Dyson is included in “Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment” at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio through May 9. The exhibition looks at how artists engage with social issues and how they may shape institutions at a time when both racism and a global pandemic have caused many institutions to re-consider their construction and practices. The exhibition was curated by Lucy I. Zimmerman. “Climate Changing” features nine artworks commissioned by the Wexner, including work Torkwase Dyson discussed on the program last September, when this conversation first aired.
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is exhibiting paintings from Dyson's "Bird and Lava" series, an exploration of spaces of geographic, architectural, and infrastructural liberation, in "Stories of Resistance." Dyson developed "Bird and Lava" during a residency at the Wexner. Curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi with Misa Jeffereis, "Stories" looks at artistic forms of resistance in the U.S. and abroad. It's on view through August 15.
Episode No. 490 features curators Nicole R. Myers and Julie McGee.
With Katherine Rothkopf, Nicole R. Myers is the co-curator of "Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris" at the Dallas Museum of Art. Across more than 40 paintings, the exhibition explores how Gris brought color to cubism in still-life painting of striking vivacity. It is on view in Dallas through July 25 before traveling to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the two museums and distributed by Yale University Press. It's available for about $45 from Indiebound and Amazon.
On the second segment, Julie McGee discusses "David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History" at the High Museum of Art. The exhibition is on view through May 9. From Atlanta the exhibition will travel to the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection in Washington, and to the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition catalogue was edited by Jessica May and published by Rizzoli Electa. It's available for $40-50 from Indiebound and Amazon.
Episode No. 489 features art historians Debra Bricker Balken and Celeste Brusati.
Balken is the author of "Arthur Dove: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings and Things," a thorough presentation that includes Dove's assemblages. Jessie Sentivan contributed to the book. It contains 537 illustrations, almost all of them in color, of each work Balken was able to identify, find, photograph and document. "Dove" includes a an essay on Dove's work and its criticial reception, as well as mini-essays on major works. Many of the materials and images in the book are published for the first time here. It lists for $125 via Indiebound or Amazon.
Dove is among the most prominent American modernists of the early twentieth century, a key link between the American nature tradition and abstraction.
On the second segment, Celeste Brusati discusses "Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Introduction to the Academy of Painting; or, The Visible World," a new edited volume on Hoogstraten's landmark discourse on painting, his experience in Rembrandt's studio, and engagements with optics, perspective, and philosophy. Brusati edited the volume; Jaap Jacobs translated Hoogstarten's text. Brusati is a professor emerita of art and art history at the University of Michigan. The book was published by Getty Publications. It lists for about $75 via Indiebound or Amazon.
Episode No. 488 features artist Alex Bradley Cohen and curator Ann Dumas.
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University has recently acquired Alex Bradley Cohen's 2015 For a More Just Future.
Cohen's paintings of people and places are often blendings of his personal relationships with art history. His work has been exhibited in "State of the Art 2020" at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary and at group shows at the University Art Museum at the University of Albany, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
On the second segment, curator Ann Dumas discusses "Hockney-Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature," which is at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through June 20. The exhibition reveals how David Hockney has mined Vincent Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in ways that have informed his mark-making, compositions and more.
BONUS: Hear an excerpt from recent Bemis Center resident Lea Bertucci's forthcoming album "A Visible Length of Light!"
Episode No. 487 features curators Marshall N. Price and Elizabeth Finch, and artist Candice Lin.
Price and Finch are the co-curators of "Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-60." The exhibition examines Lichtenstein's early work, with particular attention to Lichtenstein's synthesis of European modernism, American painting and contemporary vernacular sources. The exhibition is at the Colby College Museum of Art through June 6. For now, the museum is open only to current Colby students, faculty and staff. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $33. From Maine, the exhibition will travel to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Finch and Price are curators at Colby and at the Nasher, respectively.
On the second segment, Candice Lin discusses her work on the occasion of "Visionary New England" at the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Mass. The exhibition, which was curated by Sarah Montross, jumps off from New England's embrace of visionary and utopian cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- think Brook Farm, Fruitlands and experimental psychology -- to look at how artists address some of the same ideas. It is on view through March 14.
Lin's work examines trade routes and material histories as part of her investigation of colonialism, racism and sexism. Her first solo museum show will open at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in August before traveling to Harvard's Carpenter Center in 2022.
Episode No. 486 features artists Baseera Khan and Amy Franceschini of Futurefarmers.
Kahn and Futurefarmers are among the artists included in "Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment" at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio through May 9. The exhibition looks at how artists engage with social issues and how they may shape institutions at a time when both racism and a global pandemic have caused many institutions to re-consider their construction and practices. The exhibition was curated by Lucy I. Zimmerman. "Climate Changing" features nine artworks commissioned by the Wexner, including work Torkwase Dyson discussed on the program last September.
Baseera Khan addresses colonial histories, exile, place and displacement, and belonging within the context of capitalism and its impacts. Their work takes many forms, including performance, sculpture and, soon, a TV pilot produced during a recent residency at The Kitchen in New York City. Later this year they will have their first museum solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
Futurefarmers is an ever-changing design studio and collective that supports art projects and research interests. Founded in 1995 by Amy Franceschini, the group has focused on using projects to propose alternatives to present social, political and environmental constructs. Futurefarmers' project "Seed Journey" is included in "Climate Changing." Initiated in 2016, "Seed Journey" is a collaboration between Futurefarmers and local farmers and scholars to return heirloom grain seeds to their native lands. It began with a voyage from Oslo, Norway to Belgium, and expanded in subsequent years to include other seeds, nations and continents.