Episode No. 621 features artist Carmen Winant and curator Negar Azimi.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is exhibiting Winant's "The last safe abortion" through December 31. It features Winant's assemblages of historical photographs gathered from across the Midwest that detail the work of providing health care to women. That work includes answering phones, presenting training sessions, scheduling appointments, and more. "The last safe abortion" was curated by Casey Riley.

Winant's work typically explores representations of women through strategies such as collage and installation. Her exhibition credits include the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sculpture Center, Queens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and many venues in Europe.

Azimi discusses her exhibition "Becoming Van Leo," the first international survey of the photography of the late Armenian artist known as Van Leo. It's on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through November 5. Born Levon Boyadjian in Turkey, Leo became a leading studio photographer in Cairo between the 1940s and the 1960s. Azimi's exhibition includes some of Leo's earliest pictures from the 1930s, his extensive experiments with self-portraiture, and his challenging of East-West binaries.

Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 620 features artists Stacy Kranitz and Kristine Potter.

Kranitz and Potter are included in "A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845" at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition considers the South as a forger of American identity and examines how Southern photographers have contributed to both the advance of their medium, and the US project. "A Long Arc" was curated by Gregory J. Harris and Sarah Kennel, and will be on view through January 14, 2024 before traveling to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The catalogue was published by Aperture. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $70.

Kranitz's work, primarily made in the southern Appalachian Mountains, presents the complexity and instability of a rugged region on which industry has preyed. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her 2022 book As it Was Give(n) to Me was published by Twin Palms and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $75-80.

Aperture has just published Potter's second monograph, Dark Waters. The book extends Potter's interest in using the US landscape as an ideological site by exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century 'murder ballads' marry site to misogynistic violence. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $43-61.

Instagram: Stacy Kranitz, Kristine Potter, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 619 features artists Edra Soto and José Lerma.

Soto and Lerma are among the 18 artists featured in "entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago, which is home to third-largest mainland population of Puerto Ricans. "entre horizontes" was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 5, 2024. 

Edra Soto's sculpture and installations prompt viewers to reconsider cross-cultural dynamics, the legacy of colonialism, and personal responsibility. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in the 2020-21 El Museo del Barrio, New York, triennial, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more. In 2023 Soto was awarded a US LatinX Art Forum fellowship. Soto also is the co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin. 

Lerma is a painter whose work blends the historical, autobiographical, art historical and mythological, often through portraits that suggest (or name) specific individuals while pointing to how much of their public personae are manufactured. Simultaneously riffing on European portraiture traditions and popular representation, his work is smart, funny, and always painterly. The Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the MCA Chicago have all presented solo exhibitions of his work. 

Episode No. 618 is a holiday clips episode that remembers Steve Roden. He died yesterday after fighting Alzheimer's disease. Roden was 59. 

The program features:

• a 2012 segment with Roden and Stephen Vitiello on the occasion of their inclusion in the Menil Collection, Houston exhibition "Silence," and a related improvised performance at the Rothko Chapel;
• an excerpt from that performance;
• the full sound Roden created for The Modern Art Notes Podcast; and
• a 2013 segment with Roden pegged to concurrent exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and at CRG Gallery in New York.

Episode No. 617 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist vanessa german.  

german is one of six artists featured in "Beyond Granite," a series of installations on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The exhibition, which was curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab, is on view through September 18, 2024. german's Of Thee We Sing (2023) considers Marian Anderson's 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (near which german's work is installed).

Two other artists included in the exhibition have been featured on The MAN Podcast: Tiffany Chung and Wendy Red Star. 

Instagram: vanessa german, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 616 features artist Gary Simmons and curator Sarah L. Eckhardt.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is presenting "Gary Simmons: Public Enemy," a survey of Simmons' 35-year career. The exhibition reveals how Simmons has addressed race, class and US history in ways that have remained persistently au courant. It was curated by René Morales and Jadine Collingwood, with Jack Schneider. After closing on October 1, the exhibition will be on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from December 5 through April 24, 2024. The MCA Chicago and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $56-60.

Along with Drew Thompson, Eckhardt is the co-curator of "Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village." It's at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through September 10. The exhibition is a survey of Richmond-native Wigfall's work, and a historicization of Communications Village, the interdisciplinary artist-run project that Wigfall instigated while teaching at the State University of New York, New Paltz in the early 1970s, as the instigator of what we now call social practice. The excellent catalogue was published by the VMFA, which offers it for $40.

Instagram: Gary Simmons, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 615 features historian and author David Bindman, and artist Nicki Green.

Bindman's new book is 'Race Is Everything': Art and Human Difference. It examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century racializing science (sometimes referred to as pseudoscience) and how European art both influenced it, and was itself influenced by it. The book pays special attention to the racialization of people of African and Jewish descent. It considers the skull as a racializing marker, Darwin and Darwinism, the construction of the Mediterranean 'race,' Anglo-Saxonism, the racializing debate over Egyptians, and plenty more. 'Race is Everything' was just published by Reaktion Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $37.

Bindman is an emeritus professor at University College London, and a fellow of the Hutchings Center, Harvard University. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century.

Green's work is included in "What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection" which runs through July 7, 2024 at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition was curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm with Anthony Graham. Green is a transdisciplinary artist who works primarily in clay. Her work explores topics such as history preservation, conceptual ornamentation, and aesthetics of otherness. She has exhibited at the biennial in Lyon, France, at the New Museum, New York, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. Next spring she'll be included in "New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

Episode No. 614 features curator Kate Clarke Lemay and artist Maia Cruz Palileo.

With Taína Caragol, Lemay is the co-curator of "1898: US Imperial Visions and Revisions" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington. (Carlina Maestre assisted them.) The exhibition examines late-nineteenth-century US imperialism, especially the War of 1898 (often called the Spanish-American War), the Congressional Joint Resolution to annex Hawai'i (which was passed in July 1898), the Philippine-American War (1899-1913) and the US extension of its sphere to include Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The exhibition particularly -- but not exclusively -- looks at how portraiture was used by the US in an attempt to define peoples, and by both the US and by the leaders of other countries to establish status within the community of nations, and to project power. "1898" is on view through February 25, 2024.

The forthcoming exhibition catalogue features an essay by Caragol that looks at how several contemporary artists are addressing the legacies of US imperialism in their work. Among the artists on whom Caragol focuses is Palileo, whose work often addresses their family’s arrival in the United States from the Philippines, as well as the colonial relationship between the two countries. (The other artists Caragol addresses in her essay are Stephanie Syjuco, Gisela McDaniel, and Miguel Luciano.)

Palileo's work often extends from research she conducted at the Newberry Library in 2017. The library holds significant research collections related to the US imperial project in the Philippines, including a watercolor album by Damián Domingo and photographs made by Dean C. Worcester, a US zoologist who worked in the Philippines. Worcester's work was influential in shaping US public opinion about Filipinos. Palileo's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Katzen Arts Center at Washington's American University and at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College for the Arts in San Francisco. They have been in group shows at institutions such as the Moderna Museet in Sweden, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Bemis Center, Omaha, and the NPG.

On September 8-9 the NPG will convene over 40 scholars and artists from the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, Cuba, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US for a two-day symposium. In addition to panel discussions and gallery talks, the event will feature a keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ada Ferrer. All panels and the keynote address will take place in the McEvoy Auditorium in the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in Washington. RSVP here (it's free).

Instagram: Kate Lemay, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 613 features author Prudence Peiffer and museum director Timothy Potts.

Peiffer is the author of "The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever." The book, out this week from Harper, is a group biography of seven artists -- Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman -- who worked on Coenties Slip in the 1950s and '60s. Coenties Slip was a street that overlooked the East River in lower Manhattan. Peiffer's book argues for not only the importance of the artists themselves, but for where and how they worked as being important to the development of post-war art in New York. Peiffer is director of content at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Amazon and Bookshop offer "The Slip" for $22-36.

Potts discusses the J. Paul Getty Museum's co-acquisition (with the National Portrait Gallery, London) of Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Mai (ca. 1776). The painting, among Reynolds' finest works, is on view at the National Portrait Gallery. The first presentation at the Getty will be in 2026.

Episode No. 612 features curators Susan Davidson and Stephanie Schrader.

Davidson is the curator of "Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting," which is at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through September 3. The exhibition is the first Motherwell paintings retrospective in a quarter-century. Motherwell was a New York-based painter prominent in the development of abstract expressionism. The exhibition catalogue was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55. From Fort Worth, "Motherwell" will travel to the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna.

Along with Freyda Spira and Thomas Lederballe, Schrader is a co-curator of "Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in 19th-Century Danish Art," which is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through August 20. The exception looks at the development of Danish art across both paintings and drawings, and shows how artists helped develop the nation's cultural identity. The excellent catalogue was published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which originated the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.