Episode No. 542 features curator Paul Martineau and artist Marie Watt.

Martineau is the curator of "Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective," which has finally arrived at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, after a two-year pandemic delay. The exhibition will be on view through June 12. Cunningham had a remarkable 75-year career that touched on seemingly every movement in American art and photography between the first decade of the 20th century and her death in 1976. She is particularly well-known for her address of pictorialism, her turn to modernism, as well as street photography, nudes and portraits. This interview was recorded when the Getty published the catalogue in 2020.

For images, see Episode No. 470.

On the second segment, a segment recorded with Marie Watt in 2020 when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Native American History, both in Bentonville, Ark., presented an exhibition of her work called "Companion Species." Now the University of San Diego is presenting a survey of her printmaking titled "Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt," which is on view through May 13. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is showing "Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger," an exhibition that spotlights the two artists' shared interests in collaboration, community engagement, materiality and the land. It's on view through May 8.

For images, see Episode No. 482.

Episode No. 541 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Shahzia Sikander.

This weekend the Museum of Fine Arts Houston opens "Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities," a survey of the first 15 years of Sikander's career, from roughly the mid-to-late 1980s and until the early 2000s. It was curated by Jan Howard and Marny Kindness, and at the MFAH by Dena M. Woodall. The exhibition will remain on view through June 5, when it will travel to the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. The RISD Museum and Hirmer have published an excellent book of the same title in association with the exhibition. It was edited by Sadia Abbas and Jan Howard. Indiebound and Amazon each offer it for about $45.

Sikander came to prominence by melding Indo-Persian manuscript painting traditions with contemporary life and issues such as feminism, cultural identity, and more. Among the dozens of museums that have presented solo shows of her work are the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

Episode No. 540 features curator Judith W. Mann and artist Nicholas Galanin.

Mann is the curator of "Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530-1800," which is on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 15. (Mann was assisted by Andrea Miller.) The exhibition, which includes more than 70 works by 58 artists, is the first examination of the pan-European practice of painting on stones such as lapis lazuli, slate and marble. The exhibition is accompanied by a terrific catalogue. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $50.

On April 7-8 SLAM will be presenting a virtual symposium that explores painting on stone and the role that stone played in the meaning of individual artworks. The symposium is free but requires Zoom registration.

Nicholas Galanin's work is on view in "The Scene Changes: Sculpture from the Sheldon's Collection" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The Sheldon acquired Galanin's 2012 The American Dream is Alie and Well in 2020.

Galanin's work has been the subject of solo shows at Davidson College, the BYU Museum of Art, the Montclair Art Museum, the Missoula Art Museum, the Anchorage Museum and more. In 2018 The Heard Museum in Phoenix presented a survey of Galanin's career. Later this year the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. will present exhibitions of Galanin's work.

Galanin is a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist whose work examines contemporary Indigenous identity, culture and representation and interrogates the routine misappropriation of Native culture, colonialism and collective amnesia.

Episode No. 539 features artist Stephanie Syjuco and historian Kate Wilson.

Stephanie Syjuco's work is featured in several exhibitions around the United States. The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth is presenting "Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision," a site-specific commission that builds from the Carter's collection to investigate historical and art historical narratives around American imperialism in the West. The project was curated by Kristen Gaylord and will be on view through January 2023.

Syjuco is also in "Futures," a 32,000-square-foot pan-Smithsonian exhibition on view at the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries building through July 6; "Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through August 21; and "Stephanie Syjuco: Latent Images" at New York's Ryan Lee Gallery through March 12.

Syjuco works across media such as installation and photography to investigate how images have helped build racialized, exclusionary narratives that have helped construct history and determine citizenship. Among the institutions that have presented her projects and solo exhibitions of her work are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the University of Kentucky, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and the Asian Art, Havana and Bucharest biennials.

Wilson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Last semester she taught a class called "Race and Identity in Greco-Roman Antiquity." Concurrently she organized a teaching gallery exhibition in Wash U's Kemper Art Museum titled, "Colonizing the Past: Constructing Race in Ancient Greece in Rome." The project was the rare presentation of whiteness studies-informed exhibition in American art museum.

Instagram: Stephanie Syjuco, Tyler Green. 

Episode No. 538 features curator Virginia Mecklenburg and artist Elizabeth Alexander.

Mecklenburg is the curator of "Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice," which is at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston through August 7.

The exhibition features a series of paintings Johnson made in the 1940s. It shows mostly Black activists, scientists, and educators, and spotlights their impacts on their communities and on the American nation. Johnson's subjects include Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman, Marian Anderson, and John Brown. The series also the international heads of state who brought an end to World War II.

The exhibition was organized from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which holds over 1,000 Johnsons within its collection. Mecklenburg is a senior curator at SAAM. The exhibition will travel to SAAM in 2023-24; a significant national tour is in development.

Elizabeth Alexander is included in "Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition features over 100 works by 30 artists working across North Carolina. Alexander's sculptures and installation are often made from deconstructed domestic materials and address America's history, especially the construction and memory of white supremacy. She's been included in exhibitions at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Museums such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and the Mint Museum, Charlotte hold her work in their collections.

Episode No. 537 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring curators Erin Christovale and Anne T. Woollett.

Christovale discusses the retrospective “Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation,” which is at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through May 15. Christovale co-curated the exhibition with Meg Onli. Jenkins is an influential video and performance artist whose work has examined how cultural iconography and history have informed representation. The exhibition catalogue was published by the hammer and the ICA Philadelphia, which debuted the show last year. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $40. The museums will also republish Jenkins’s memoir, “Doggerel Life: Stories of a Los Angeles Griot.” Amazon and Indiebound offer it for $15.

With Austėja Mackelaitė and John T. McQuillen, Woollett is a co-curator of “Hans Holbein: Capturing Character,” which is at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, through May 15, 2022. The exhibition presents Hans Holbein the Younger as German but transnational, and situates his portraiture between not only influential court figures, but the leading intellectuals of contemporary Switzerland and England.

Remarkably, it is the first major Holbein exhibition in the US. Co-organized with the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, “Holbein” features over 50 objects including 33 Holbein paintings and drawings. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the Getty. Amazon offers it for about $50.

Bloemink is the author of "Florine Stettheimer: A Biography," which was recently published by Hirmer Verlag. "Stettheimer" offers the early American modernist as a voracious consumer of European modernism, a networker who built impactful relationships with the New York avant garde, and as a major painter. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $30-42.

Magid's work is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as part of the museum's "Focus" series. The exhibition features work in which Magid juxtaposes the COVID pandemic with the nation's often economically motivated response to it. To date, nearly one million Americans have been confirmed as dying from COVID, provisional counts based on statistical modeling are significantly higher. The exhibition, which was curated by Alison Hearst, will be on view through March 20.

Magid's work typically examines systems through conceptual strategies that allow her to investigate those systems from within.

Episode No. 535 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator and historian Marin Sullivan and artist Olivia Block.

Along with Jed Morse, Sullivan is the co-curator of "Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life," the first American museum retrospective of Bertoia's work in over 50 years. The exhibition is at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas through April 24. The exhibition features over 100 works, including Bertoia's early jewelry and furniture designs, monotypes, sculptures, and commissions he fulfilled for architect-clients such as Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki. The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the museum in collaboration with Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $59.

The Nasher has commissioned Olivia Block to make a new sound installation from recordings of Bertoia’s so-called sonambient sculptures. Block's new composition, titled The Speed of Sound in Infinite Copper, will highlight the Bertoias' ability to create a palpable sonic space while allowing the audience to activate the sonic experience by moving about a gallery. The Speed of Sound in Infinite Copper will be presented at the museum through April 24.

Block's discography includes over 20 solo and collaborative recordings. She has performed and exhibited around the world including in Chicago's Millennium Park, and at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Episode No. 534 features artist Eamon Ore-Giron and curator Caitlin Haskell.

The Anderson Collection at Stanford University is presenting "Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra" through February 20. The exhibition features paintings Ore-Giron has made while on a Stanford residency, installed with works from the Anderson's collection. It was curated by Ore-Giron and Jason Linetzky.

Next month, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver opens a survey of Ore-Giron's 20-year career titled "Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago." The exhibition, which was curated by Miranda Lash, will be on view from February 16 to May 22.

Ore-Giron's work joins histories, geographies and abstraction as a means by which to explore the layered past and present of the Americas. He's been featured in solo shows and two-person shows at LAXART and the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in group shows at SFMOMA, the Hammer Museum, Ballroom Marfa, and more.

Haskell discusses "Ray Johnson c/o," which spotlight's Johnson's work from almost exclusively within the AIC's recently acquired William S. Wilson Collection of Ray Johnson—the original archives of the international mail art network known as the New York Correspondence School (NYCS). It is on view through March 21. Haskell co-curated the show with Jordan Carter; the remarkable catalogue was designed by Irma Boom. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon from about $60.

Episode No. 533 features curator Anne Umland and art historian Jonathan Brown.

Along with Walburga Krupp, Eva Reifert and Natalia Sidlina, Umland is a co-curator of "Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition surveys Taeuber-Arp's pioneering interests in Dada and abstraction across over 300 works, including textiles, beadwork, polychrome marionettes, architectural and interior designs, stained glass windows, works on paper, paintings, and relief sculptures.  The exhibition is on view through March 12. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $57-75.

Brown was one of the world's leading scholars of art of Spain and the Spanish colonial world. He died on January 17 at 82. In addition to teaching at New York University, Brown was the editor, author or co-author of about 20 books on Spanish and Latin American art. He also curated exhibitions that explored the works of Murillo, Goya, Velazquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera, and more.

This clip was taken from Episode No. 137.