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.