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 their 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 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. They have 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.