The Modern Art Notes Podcast (visual art)

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:30pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:59pm EDT

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:

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:10pm EDT

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. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeKrugerclips.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 11:47am EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:15pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:37pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:38pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:48pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFiftyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:09pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFifty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:18pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:35pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:56pm EDT

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. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:41pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:26pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:26pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 10:06pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:37pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFortyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:56pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredForty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:52pm EDT

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. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:36pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:26pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:34pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:53pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:52pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:48pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:04pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirtyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:40pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:50pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:03pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:47pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:28pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:58pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:48pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastFive_HundredTwentyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:23pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:57pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwentyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwenty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:07pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredNineteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:10pm EDT

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."

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredEighteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:22pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredSeventeen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:10pm EDT

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:

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredSixteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:51pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFifteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFive_HundredFourteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:01pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThirteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:37pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwelve.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:44pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredEleven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:30pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:18pm EDT

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:

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:35pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:40pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredSeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:45pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredSix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:29pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:02pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:10pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:26pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:36pm EDT

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:

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundredOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:55am EDT

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:

Waddell's work examines both real and imagined histories, often with materials and processes that themselves reference the past.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFiveHundred.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:35pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcast_EpisodeFourHundredNinetyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:34am EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:15pm EDT

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:

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:09pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:05pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 10:03am EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:00pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 1:54pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinetyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:50pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredNinety.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:50pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:42pm EDT

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!"

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:02pm EDT

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.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:45pm EDT

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. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:02pm EDT

Episode No. 485 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday week clips episode featuring former curator and historian Kelli Morgan.

Earlier this week, Charles Venable, the director of Newfields, the institution formerly and best known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, resigned in the wake of the museum's publishing a series of racist job postings via the executive search firm m/Oppenheim. Once its racism became a national news story and after Venable resigned, Newfields released an institutional apology that said, "We are sorry. We have made mistakes. We have let you down. We are ashamed of Newfields' leadership and of ourselves. We have ignored, excluded, and disappointed members of our community and staff."

The final event that instigated change in Indianapolis was a letter that called for Venable's resignation and major board reforms that was signed by 85 Newfields staffers. The instigating event of the public crisis at Newfields was the resignation of curator Kelli Morgan last summer. Morgan departed the museum via a much-circulated letter that specifically addressed the museum's racism and dedication to whiteness. Just before resigning, Moran she published an assessment of the art museum field titled "To Bear Witness: Real Talk about White Supremacy in Art Museums Today" in multiple venues, including in Burnaway and the Indianapolis Recorder. 

Just before Morgan left Indianapolis, she joined host Tyler Green to discuss the challenges and opportunities within presenting permanent collection galleries of nineteenth-century American art when most American art museums’ collections of the period consist of primarily white artists. This week's episode is a re-airing of that conversation.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:43pm EDT

Episode No. 484 features historian Deborah Willis and artist Leidy Churchman.

Willis is the author of "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship," which was just published by New York University Press. The book joins 99 photographs of Black Civil War soldiers and Black men and women who served within military regiments with primary source materials such as letters in an effort to provide a fuller picture of how Black men and women fought the war. Indiebound and Amazon offer the book for about $35.

Willis is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and Department of Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. She has written or contributed to at least 28 books, has won two NAACP Image Awards and a MacArthur 'genius' fellowship. Just this week the College Art Association awarded her its 2021 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art. 

On the second segment, Leidy Churchman discusses their work on the occasion of "FOCUS: Leidy Churchman" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The show was curated by Alison Hearst and will be on view through March 21.

Churchman's paintings address a seemingly endless array of subjects, and in so doing take on the infinite abundance of images in modern society. The Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College has hosted a survey of Churchman's work; they have been included in group shows at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:27pm EDT

Episode No. 483 features artists Alison Saar and Maria Antelman.

The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Calif. are presenting "Alison Saar: Of Aether and Earthe" through May 16. The exhibition, which was curated by Rebecca McGrew and Irene Tsatsos, surveys Saar's work related to myths and hidden histories and archetypes. Neither institution is presently open due to the pandemic; the shows are currently scheduled to remain installed through May 16. The catalogue for the exhibition was published by the Benton. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $45.

The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento is also presenting Saar's work in "Legends from Los Angeles." The exhibition spotlights the work of Betye, Lezley and Alison Saar. The Crocker is presently closed due to the pandemic; "Legends" is scheduled to be on view through August 15.

On the second segment, Maria Antelman discusses her work on the occasion of "Soft Interface" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha. The exhibition was curated by Rachel Adams and will remain on view through April 24. Antelman was also selected for the Museum of Modern Art's New Photography 2020, which was (and is) presented digitally due to the pandemic. Antelman's pictures, sculptures and video installations explore the relationship between the body and stone, flesh and mineral, past and present and geologic time and human temporality. Antelman has been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and she's been in many group shows in Greece, Chile, the United States, and in Germany.

Direct download: MANPodcastFourHundredEightyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 10:47am EDT

Episode No. 482 features curator Shawnya L. Harris and artist Marie Watt.

Harris is the curator of "Emma Amos: Color Odyssey," a retrospective of Amos's career that opens Saturday, Jan. 30 at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. Amos was important in bringing second-wave feminism into American art, in addressing many American and art histories within her work, and in making work that synthesized her interest in printmaking, weaving and painting. "Emma Amos" will remain on view in Athens through April 25, when it will travel to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The show features about 60 paintings, prints and woven works.

The show's outstanding catalogue, which features essays by Lisa Farrington, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Laurel Garber, Kay Walkingstick, and Phoebe Wolfskill, was published by the Georgia Museum of Art. It's available from GMOA for $40, and should be on Indiebound and Amazon soon.

On the second segment, Marie Watt discusses her work on the occasion of  "Companion Species" at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Native American History, both in Bentonville, Ark. (As of show-posting, Crystal Bridges is open; "Companion Species" will be on view there through May 24. MONAH has yet to announce its re-opening plans.) The exhibition spotlights and builds upon Watt's Companion Species (Speech Bubble), which Crystal Bridges recently acquired.

Watt is a citizen of the Seneca Nation whose work often explores ideas related to community, history, storytelling. She often works in textile, including in works that are partially sewed by community-embracing sewing circles. She has had solo exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Boise Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Missoula Art Museum, and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University. She sits on the board of the Portland (Ore.) Art Museum.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:14pm EDT

Episode No. 481 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Michael Rakowitz and curator Julie Aronson.

Rakowitz is the winner of the 2020 Nasher Prize, given by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The Nasher is showing an exhibition of Rakowitz's work through April 18. It includes work from Rakowitz's series The invisible enemy should not exist, a 2007-and-after engagement with the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in the wake of the United States-led invasion. The series includes placeholders for many of the 15,000 artifacts that were stolen or lost in the museum's partial dissolution. The Nasher exhibition also includes Rakowitz's stop-motion film The Ballad of Special Ops Cody.

The Wellin Museum at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY is presenting "Michael Rakowitz: Nimrud" through June 18. As of the publishing of this episode, the exhibition is open only to members of the Hamilton College community.

On the second segment, curator Julie Aronson discusses "Frank Duveneck: American Master," a retrospective of the Gilded Age, Cincinnati-based painter whose teaching and work was also influential in the American northeast and in Europe. The exhibition is on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum through March 28.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEightyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:31pm EDT

Episode No. 480 features artists Jill Mulleady and Umar Rashid.

Mulleady and Rashid are included in "Made in L.A. 2020: A Vision" the Hammer Museum's biennial that has been installed -- but is not yet on public view because of the pandemic -- at the Hammer and The Huntington Library. The exhibition was scheduled to open last year; its opening date is dependent upon Los Angeles County guidance. (As of the publishing of this episode, COVID rates in LA County are nearly double the national average.) Online and offsite MinLA projects by Larry Johnson and Kahlil Joseph, and Ligia Lewis are on view now. Late last year, a small number of critics and journalists received a preview of the exhibition; The MAN Podcast is airing MinLA-oriented episodes last week and this week in an effort to support the artists in the exhibition while we wait.

Mulleady's paintings, often or present-day scenes, are built from specific geographies and often from additions pulled from art's history, including references to specific paintings, as well as to familiar metaphors and allegories. Mulleady was born in Uruguay, schooled in London and lives in Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute in New York and the Kunsthalle Bern, and she was included in curator Ralph Rugoff's 2019 Venice Biennale.

Rashid's paintings at the Hammer present the fictional Battle of Malibu, an exploration of the maritime exploits of the Tongva and Chumash peoples native to the southern California coast. At the Huntington, Rashid critiques the Spanish dominion over indigenous Californians, including through the mission-and-presidio system and related colonial agricultural practices.

Rashid has had solo exhibitions at the art museums at the University of Arizona and the University of Memphis, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredEighty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:40pm EDT

Episode No. 479 features artists Monica Majoli and Mario Ayala.

Majoli and Ayala are included in "Made in L.A. 2020: A Vision" the Hammer Museum's biennial that has been installed -- but is not yet on public view because of the pandemic -- at the Hammer and The Huntington Library. Its opening date is dependent upon Los Angeles County guidance. 

Majoli is primarily a painter whose work has explored subjects related to sex, sexuality, and power. She has been included in group exhibitions at museums such as SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art; her work is in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum.

Ayala is a painter who mines Latinx material culture and the Western painting tradition in ways that foreground Chicano culture. He's had solo exhibitions at galleries in the U.S., Sweden and Belgium. MinLA is his first museum group show.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 1:41pm EDT

Episode No. 478 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Dread Scott.

For thirty years, across sculpture, installation, performance, photography and video, Scott’s art has relentlessly addressed the racism within and failures of the American system.

This program was recorded and aired the week after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:07pm EDT

Episode No. 477 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya. 

The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha is showing "Intimate Actions," a set of three solo exhibitions -- of Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Maria Antelman, and Joey Fauerso -- that explore intimacy and how artists represent it, our connection to space and surroundings, and relationships. The exhibitions were curated by Rachel Adams and will be on view through April 24.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:19pm EDT

Episode No. 476 features journalist and critic Siddhartha Mitter and artist Marina Adams.

The New York-based Mitter writes about artists and communities of artists that fall outside the commercial art world's interest. He publishes in the New York Times and Artforum, and was previously a critic at The Village Voice.

On the second segment, Marina Adams discusses her work on the occasion of "FOCUS: Marina Adams" at the The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Curated by Alison Hearst, the exhibition is on view through January 10, 2021. Adams is an abstract painter whose works celebrate the joining of color to form to scale.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:56pm EDT

Episode No. 475 features artist Amy Cutler and curator Samantha Friedman.

Cutler is included in "Telling Stories: Resilience and Struggle in Contemporary Narrative Drawing" at the Toledo Museum of Art. The exhibition, which also features Robyn O'Neil and Annie Pootoogook examines how the three artists have used contemporary drawing to build and explore narrative. Curated by Robin Reisenfeld, "Telling Stories" will be on view through February 14, 2021.

Cutler's paintings join feminism-informed suggested or hinted-at narratives to traditions that include miniature painting, textile design, nature and landscape, and more. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, at SITE Santa Fe, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and more.

In February 2021 the Madison (Wisc.) Museum of Contemporary Art will present a survey of Cutler's work.

On the second segment, Museum of Modern Art, New York curator Samantha Friedman discusses "Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury." On view through February 6, 2021, the exhibition examines how artists on five continents used drawing to create new visual languages in the years after World War II.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:49pm EDT

Episode No. 474 features curators Stephanie Weissberg and Mari Carmen Ramírez.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is presenting "Terry Adkins: Resounding" through February 7, 2021. a survey of more than 40 works from across Adkins's career, including several installations that have not been exhibited since Adkins debuted them. It also includes books, musical instruments and other objects from Adkins's own collection. Adkins was a pioneer in blending sculpture, sound, performance and other media in his engagement with the canon of African American culture. The exhibition was curated by Weissberg with Heather Alexis Smith. The Pulitzer's exhibition guide is available online for free; the exhibition website also includes a reading list, a video walkthrough, and more.

On the second segment, we continue our consideration of the opening installations in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's new, Steven Holl-designed, 237,000-square-foot Kinder Building. This week's program features MFAH curator Mari Carmen Ramírez, MFAH's curator of Latin American art and director of the museum's International Center for the Arts of the Americas, on her new galleries and installations. Episode No. 472 featured MFAH photography curator Malcolm Daniel on his Kinder Building-opening presentations.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:15pm EDT

Episode No. 473 is a Thanksgiving weekend clips episode featuring author and curator Nicole R. Fleetwood. 

Fleetwood is the author of “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” an examination of how the imprisoned have turned to art-making in an attempt to resist the brutality and depravity of American imprisonment. The book was published by Harvard University Press.

An exhibition of the same title is on view at MoMA PS1 through April 4, 2021. It was curated by Fleetwood and Amy Rosenblum-Martin, with Jocelyn Miller.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 9:43pm EDT

Episode No. 472 features artist Bisa Butler and curator Malcolm Daniel.

The Art Institute of Chicago is showing "Bisa Butler: Portraits," a presentation of Butler's recent art along with some works from the AIC's collection that have informed Butler. The exhibition, which the AIC co-organized with the Katonah Museum of Art, was curated by Erica Warren. It will be on view in Chicago through April 19, 2021.

Butler's work will also be included in the Toledo Museum of Art's "Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change," which examines how artists and other makers have used quilts to address America's present and future between the Civil War era and the present. The exhibition was curated by Lauren Applebaum and will be on view through February 14, 2021.

Butler's work frequently addresses African diasporic history, American art and the transit of textiles around the globe. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the AIC. Among her many group show credits is "Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary" at the California African American Museum, which she and host Tyler Green mention on the program.

With the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opening its new Kinder Building this week, the program includes the first of two conversations with two leading MFAH curators about their new galleries and collection presentations. This week's program features MFAH photography curator Malcolm Daniel. The MFAH features one of America's top photography collections.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 10:52am EDT

Episode No. 471 features artist Radcliffe Bailey.

Bailey is included in "Person of Interest" at Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The exhibition explores portraiture from the late nineteenth century to the present in ways that test the definition of the genre. It was curated by Melissa Yuen and will be on view through July 3, 2021.

Bailey's paintings, sculptures, and installations explores themes such as history, migration, and the relationship between geography and ancestry. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Aldrich in Ridgefield, Conn., the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Toledo Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and plenty more.

The episode was recorded for a live digital audience on Nov. 5.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:02pm EDT

Episode No. 471 features artist Radcliffe Bailey.

Bailey is included in "Person of Interest" at Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The exhibition explores portraiture from the late nineteenth century to the present in ways that test the definition of the genre. It was curated by Melissa Yuen and will be on view through July 3, 2021.

Bailey's paintings, sculptures, and installations explores themes such as history, migration, and the relationship between geography and ancestry. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Aldrich in Ridgefield, Conn., the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Toledo Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and plenty more.

The episode was recorded for a live digital audience on Nov. 5.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:02pm EDT

Episode No. 470 features curators Paul Martineau and Jane L. Aspinwall.

Martineau is the author of "Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective," which was recently published by Getty Publications. Susan Ehrens also contributed to the volume. The book will serve as the catalogue for a presently unscheduled Cunningham retrospective at the Getty Center, the first major retrospective of Cunningham's work in over 35 years. (The exhibition had been scheduled to open at the Getty back in June and has been delayed by the pandemic.) Amazon and Indiebound each offer the book for $45-50.

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 address of modernism, street photography, nudes and portraits.

On the second segment, former Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Jane L. Aspinwall discussed her exhibition “Golden Prospects: California Gold Rush Daguerreotypes.” The show argues that the Gold Rush was the first “broadly significant event in American history” to be broadly documented in substantial depth by photography. It included rich images of San Francisco and of the Sierra foothills transformed by miners in pursuit of gold. It debuted in Kansas City last year, and was to have traveled to the Peabody Essex and Yale before the pandemic interceded. The fantastic exhibition catalogue was published by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $47.

Aspinwall, a two-time MAN Podcast guest, was recently laid off by the Nelson-Atkins as part of the museum's inexplicable decimation of its photography department, one of the best and most-admired photography departments in America.  

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventy.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:57pm EDT

Episode No. 469 features artist Alia Ali and historian Molly Rogers.

The New Orleans Museum of Art is exhibiting "Alia Ali: FLUX" through November 15. 

The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College is showing Alia Ali's work in a "projects series" exhibition. The Benton is closed to the public as a result of the pandemic. The Benton will offer four bodies of Ali's work, three at the museum and one which is will soon be streaming on the Benton's website.

Along with Ilisa Barbash and Deborah Willis, Rogers is the editor of "To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes." The book, which was co-published by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press, provides a broad historical and artistic consideration of fifteen daguerreotypes of two enslaved women and five enslaved men acquired by Harvard professor Louis Agassiz in support of his notion that Black men and women were inferior to whites.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:25pm EDT

Episode No. 468 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Jeffrey Gibson and Jess T. Dugan.

The Brooklyn Museum is showing "Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks," an exhibition in which Gibson selected artworks and archival material from Brooklyn's collection to be shown with his recent work. It was organized by Gibson and Christian Ayne Crouch with assistance from a Brooklyn Museum team and will be on view through January 10, 2021.

Gibson will also be in several soon-to-open group exhibitions including "Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church and Our Contemporary Moment," which opens at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville on October 28 before traveling to Olana State Historic Site and Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill and Hudson, New York, and to Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Ark.; and "Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change" which opens at the Toledo Museum of Art on November 21.

Gibson, who is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, often addresses America's past and present by bringing elements of Native American craft and art to his paintings, sculptures and installations. Gibson was awarded a MacArthur Foundation 'genius' fellowship in 2019.

Photographs from Jess. T. Dugan's "To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults" project are on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as part of the MIA's year-long exploration of contemporary photographic portraiture. Dugan produced "To Survive on This Shore" with their partner, Vanessa Fabbre, a social worker and professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The exhibition, which was curated by Casey Riley, is on view in Minneapolis through March 7, 2021. The book related to the project was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2018. It is available from Amazon and from Indiebound. Dugan's work is also on view in half a dozen group exhibitions scheduled to be on view around the United States, including "Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond" at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:02pm EDT

Episode No. 467 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Tomashi Jackson and curator Stephen Wicks.

The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is showing "Tomashi Jackson: Love Rollercoaster," an exhibition of five new Jackson paintings that address disenfranchisement and voter suppression in Ohio's Black communities. The exhibition was originally conceived by Michael Goodson and was curated by Kristin Helmick-Brunet, Dionne Custer Edwards, and Megan Cavanaugh. It is on view in Columbus through December 27.

Jackson is also included in "States of Mind: Art and American Democracy" at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston. The exhibition investigates how artists have addressed issues before the nation this season, including equality, voting access, gun control and immigration policy. It was curated by Ylinka Barotto along with Julia Fisher and Julia Kidd. It's on view through December 19.

Jackson's work examines the relationship between politics, race, history and aesthetics, most often in ways that emphasize how history has created the present. She's previously had solo exhibitions at Kennesaw State University and at Michigan State University; with exhibitions at the Parrish Art Museum and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University forthcoming. Her work is in the collections of MOCA in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

On the second segment, Stephen Wicks discusses his exhibition "Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door" at the Knoxville Museum of Art. It is on view through October 25. The exhibition uses over 50 paintings and works on paper and unpublished archival material to examine the nearly four-decade-long relationship between the Knoxville-born Delaney and Baldwin and the ways in which their friendship and intellectual exchange impacted their work.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 9:30am EDT

Episode No. 466 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring curators Eleanor Jones Harvey and Adrienne L. Childs.

Harvey is the curator of “Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. The exhibition examines the impacts of Humboldt’s six-week visit to the United States in 1804, and how his influence extended into American art, science, literature, diplomacy, and more. It will remain on view through January 3, 2021. SAAM has re-opened and "Humboldt" is on view. Timed entry passes are required. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Princeton University Press. Amazon offers it for $63.

Images are on the show page for Episode No. 445.

Childs is the curator of “Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition” at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. The museum has extended the show through January 3, 2021. “Riffs and Relations” offers works by African American artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries alongside works of the European modernists whose work they engaged. The Phillips is re-opening on Oct. 15. Timed tickets will be required. The exhibition catalogue includes contributions from Childs, Renee Maurer, Valerie Cassel Oliver and Dorothy Kosinski. It was published by Rizzoli Electa. Amazon offers it for $43.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:01am EDT

Episode No. 465 features artist Virginia Jaramillo.

The Menil Collection is presenting "Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969-74" through July 3, 2021. It is the first solo museum exhibition of Jaramillo's sixty-year career. Curated by Michelle White, the show features a series of paintings that Jaramillo made featuring the joining of line to color against mostly monochromatic backgrounds.

The exhibition is also a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of "The De Luxe Show," one of the first racially integrated exhibitions in the United States, which was presented in Houston in 1971. (Art historian Darby English's book 1971: A Year in the Life of Color examined the exhibition. English discussed the book on The MAN Podcast in 2017.)

Jaramillo is a California-born painter whose abstractions have long explored space, line, geography and the physical remnants of civilizations. In the last decade alone, she has been included in major scholarly exhibitions such as curator and art historian Kellie Jones's "Now Dig This: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-80" and "Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties," which Jones curated with A. Carbone, and Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley's "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power." Jaramillo's paintings are in the collections of museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Kemper in Kansas City, the Metropolitan in New York, the Norton Simon in Pasadena and the Virginia MFA in Richmond.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:44pm EDT

Episode No. 464 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Torkwase Dyson and historian Dennis Reed.

The New Orleans Museum of Art is showing "Torkwase Dyson: Black Compositional Thought, 15 Paintings for the Plantationocene," a series of works made for the museum. These new paintings were inspired by Dyson's interest in the systems that underlay water delivery, energy infrastructure and by the physical impacts of climate change. Through this and other work, Dyson investigates the legacy of agriculture enabled by slave economies and its relationship to the environmental and infrastructural issues of the present, a relationship known as the “plantationocene.” The exhibition is on view through December 31, 2020.

Dyson is an artist-in-residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. She is preparing work that will be included in "Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment," which is scheduled to debut at the Wexner on January 30, 2021.

Dyson's previous solo museum exhibitions have been at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University, at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at Cooper Union, at the Colby College Museum of Art, The Drawing Center, Eyebeam, and more. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Smith College Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

On the second segment, historian and curator Dennis Reed discusses the J. Paul Getty Museum's acquisition of 79 pictures made by Japanese-American photographers between 1919 and 1940. Reed's collection and the Getty's acquisition of it is a result of 35 years of work Reed and his students at Los Angeles Valley College did to learn about Japanese-American photographers who made work before the war. Reed and his students built a list of 186 names from photography catalogues at UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library and painstakingly cold-called the photographers and their relatives in an effort to build knowledge related to an art-making community that was disappeared by the illegal American internment of Japanese-Americans.

Reed's collection -- which includes the only surviving work by several of the artists -- has been exhibited in venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

The Getty, which remains closed due to the pandemic, will be exhibiting work from the acquisition at a date to be announced. In addition to the images below, the Getty and Google created this slideshow.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:46pm EDT

Episode No. 463 features curator Shirley Reece-Hughes and artist Barry X Ball.

Reece-Hughes is the curator of "Texas Made Modern: The Art of Everett Spruce" at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. The exhibition will be on view through November 1. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Texas A&M University Press. It is available from Amazon and from Indiebound for $35.

The exhibition includes nearly 50 works Spruce made between 1929 and 1977. Spruce was an Arkansas-born painter who lived and worked in Dallas. Across his career, Spruce applied lessons learned from early Renaissance painting and early modernism to the Texas landscape. He exhibited widely was collected by institutions across the United States, including those in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York. As the American art world began to narrowly focus on the coasts in the 1960s and beyond, Spruce's work and career were substantially neglected.

On the second segment, sculptor Barry X Ball discusses his work on the occasion of a career-spanning survey at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. That exhibition, “Barry X Ball: Remaking Sculpture,” has been extended through January 3, 2021. It was curated by Jed Morse.

Ball’s sculptures are typically created out of rare stones with the assistance of 3-D scanning and printing technology and CNC milling machines. His work typically addresses and often updates mostly European major work from sculpture’s history, such as Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta or Medardo Rossos. This is Ball’s first survey exhibition in the United States; previous exhibitions of his work have been at Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, and the Villa Panza in Varese. The fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Nasher.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:49pm EDT

Episode No. 462 features author Janis A. Tomlinson and Stuart Collection director and author Mary Beebe.

Tomlinson is the author of "Goya: A Portrait of the Artist," which Princeton University Press will publish this week. It is just the second English-language biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes.

Beebe discusses "Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection at the University of California San Diego," which was just published by University of California Press. The Stuart Collection is one of the leading public collections of contemporary sculpture.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSixtyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 4:08pm EDT