Episode No. 436 features artist Ebony G. Patterson and art historian Shaina Larrivee.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is showing "Ebony G. Patterson... while the dew is still on the roses...", a survey of work Patterson has made over the last decade. The exhibition originated at the Perez Art Museum Miami, and was curated by Tobias Ostrander. The exhibition is on view at the Nasher through July 12. The exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon offers it for $30.

Patterson's installations, tapestries, videos and sculptures wield beauty to address disenfranchised communities, violence, masculinity and the impacts of colonialism. "... while the dew" especially examines her consideration of gardens. Patterson's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bermuda National Gallery, and more.

Patterson was previously a guest on The MAN Podcast's monuments-and-memorials program in May 2019.

On the second segment, Hedda Sterne Foundation director Shaina Larrivee discusses "Hedda Sterne: Imagination & Machine" at the Des Moines Art Center. The exhibition, which was curated by DMAC's Jared Ledesma, features work informed by John Deere tractor parts that Fortune magazine commissioned from Sterne in 1961. It is on view through April 15. Larrivee wrote the essay in the exhibition's brochure.

Episode No. 435 features curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner and artist Bethany Collins.

Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner is the co-curator of "Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle." The exhibition, which is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts through April 26, presents Lawrence's 1954-56 "Struggle: From the History of the American People." The series presents a revisionist and pictorial history of the first five decades of the American republic, or what Lawrence called "the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy." The PEM exhibition marks the first time in more than 60 years that the paintings have been together. 

The exhibition also features three artists engaging with Lawrence's work and ideas: Derrick Adams, Hank Willis Thomas and Bethany Collins, who presents her America: A Hymnal, a 2017 artist's book featuring 100 versions of the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," written from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The song's ever-changing lyrics remain legible, while the tunes that (ostensibly) unify the songs has been nearly burned away in favor of scorch marks and other residue. The gallery includes artist-made wallpaper and a six-track audio recording of six different versions of the song.

Collins's work frequently addresses language, song and how they relate to national and racial identities. She's had solo shows at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the University of Kentucky and at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Last year alone she was featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Richmond, Va. 

On June 26 the Frist Art Museum in Nashville will present "Evensong," an exhibition featuring Collins's address of a related song, "The Star Spangled Banner." 

Episode No. 434 features artists Peter Saul and Barry X Ball.

The New Museum in New York City is presenting "Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment," a survey of Saul's career. The exhibition includes 60 paintings Saul has made over the last 60 years, from his investigations of domestic space and consumerism, to his pioneering anti-war paintings of the Vietnam War era, to his arch looks at right-wing politicians (which continue into the present). It is on view through May 31. 

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," is on view through April 19. 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.

Episode No. 433 features curator Simon Kelly and author/historian Robin Mitchell.

Along with Maite van Dijk of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, Kelly is the curator of "Millet and Modern Art: From Van Gogh to Dali." It's at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 17. The exhibition examines, for the first time, Jean-François Millet's influence on succeeding generations of painters, from Cezanne and Pissarro to Monet, Gauguin and even Homer, Modersohn-Becker, Munch and Picasso. The smart, richly illustrated exhibition catalogue was published by the museums in association with Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $27.

On the second segment, Robin Mitchell discusses her new book "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France."  The book examines how images of Black women helped shape France's post-revolutionary identity, particularly in response to the French defeat in the Haitian Revolution. Mitchell particularly focuses on Sarah Baartmann, Ourika, a West African girl effectively kept as a house pet by a French noblewoman, and Jeanne Duval, the partner of Charles Baudelaire who was painted (and un-painted) by Courbet and Manet. Mitchell is an assistant professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "Venus Noire" was published by University of Georgia Press. Amazon offers it for $35.

Episode No. 432 is a President's Day weekend clips show featuring artist LaToya Ruby Frazier.

The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is showing "LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze." The exhibition features a new body of work that focuses on the United Auto Workers members at General Motors's Lordstown, Ohio plant. The facility, which had produced automobiles for over 50 years, was recently "unallocated" by GM -- a term-of-art that indicates the plant has been shut down. Until recently it produced the Chevrolet Cruze. Frazier's pictures present members of UAW Local 1112, and tell the story of their lives and the community they've built in northeastern Ohio. On September 14, the day the exhibition opened in Chicago, the UAW's current national contract with the Big Three automakers -- GM, Ford and Chrysler -- ended. The UAW instigate a strike at GM plants. It is already the longest strike against GM since 1970. "The Last Cruze" is on view at the Wexner through April 26. It was curated by Karsten Lund and Solveig Øvstebø.

On Tuesday, February 18, Frazier and documentary filmmaker Julia Reichert, whose American Factory just won the Academy Award for best documentary, will be in conversation with Sen. Sherrod Brown at the Wexner.  (Last year the Wexner organized a touring 50-year retrospective of Reichert's work.) The conversation is free, but an RSVP is strongly recommended to ensure entry.

LaToya Ruby Frazier is a Chicago-based artist whose work most often examines the ways in which corporations have impacted the lives of workers, their families and their communities. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at numerous museums in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and across the United States. She was the recipient of a 2015 MacArthur Foundation 'genius' grant, and has also received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and USA Artists.

For images of the work discussed on this week's program, please see Episode No. 412.

Episode No. 431 features artists Mark Dion and Nancy Lupo.

This weekend, the Amon Carter Museum opens "The Perilous Texas Adventures of Mark Dion." For the exhibition, Dion retraced the steps of four nineteenth-century Texas explorers: Sarah Ann Lillie Hardinge, Charles Wright, John James Audubon and Frederick Law Olmsted, accumulating material and experiences all along. The Carter exhibition features both Dion's discoveries and related works from its collection. Curated by Margaret C. Adler, it will remain on view through May 17. The Amon Carter has published an extraordinary book in association with the project, in some ways an adaptation of and Dion & Co. updating of Olmsted's Texas travel diary, that is distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $40.

Dion works at the intersection of art, natural history, history and anthropology. His work examines and often critiques humanity’s approach to nature, landscape and science through witty address of scientific methodologies and installations that often have roots in Victorian-era presentation.

Dion has fulfilled commissions and had exhibitions at museums all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the British Museum of Natural History in London. He is also a co-director of Mildred’s Lane, a visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania.

Dion was previously a guest on Episode No. 309. Olmsted's books on his travels through Texas and the South are available for free and in multiple formats from the Internet Archive's Open Library. Installation and related Dion images will be available early on the week of Feb. 10.

On the second segment, Lupo discusses her work on the occasion of "Nancy Lupo: Scripts for the Pageant" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Curated by Anthony Edwards, the exhibition is on view at MCASD's downtown location through March 15. Lupo's previous exhibition credits include the 2018 version of the Hammer Museum's "Made in LA," and solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute, New York, LAXART, and the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas.

Episode No. 430 features artists Alison Rossiter and David Maisel.

Rossiter is featured in "Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs" at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition shares photographs from the Getty's rich collection that have never been shown at the museum, including many Rossiters. The exhibition is organized by Jim Ganz in collaboration with Mazie Harris, Virginia Heckert, Karen Hellman, Arpad Kovacs, Amanda Maddox, and Paul Martineau. It's on view through March 8.

On March 6, Yossi Milo Gallery in New York will debut new Rossiters in "Substance of Density." It will remain on view through April 25.

In just the last couple years, Rossiter has been featured in group exhibitions at the George Eastman Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the High Museum of Art, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the New York Public Library, the Tate Modern, the Denver Art Museum, the Musee de l'ELysee and Lausanne and the Centre for COntemporary Photography, Melbourne. In 2017 Radius published "Alison Rossiter: Expired Paper." Amazon offers it for $40.

On the second segment, Maisel discusses his new book "Proving Ground." The book presents aerial and on-site photographs made at Dugway Proving Ground, a military facility covering nearly 800,000 acres south of Salt Lake City. The U.S. government uses Dugway to develop, test and implement chemical and biological weaponry and related defense programs. The book is an extended meditation on land use in the American West, secrecy, and the dangers present in that which we can and cannot see. MAN Podcast host Tyler Green wrote an essay for the book. It was published by Radius. Amazon lists it for $65.

Episode No. 429 features curators Sarah Meister and Lauren Palmor.

On February 9, the Museum of Modern Art, New York opens "Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures," the first significant solo presentation of Lange's work at MoMA since this 1966 survey. The exhibition, which is drawn from MoMA's collection, was curated by Meister with River Bullock and Madeline Weisburg. It will be on view through May 9. It is accompanied by a book featuring contributions by Julie Ault, Sandy Phillips, Sally Mann, Wendy Red Star, and others. Amazon offers it for $55.

"Lange" specifically examines the way words -- including Lange's own, which Lange often presented in extended captions, and the words in Lange's photographs -- have guided our understanding of Lange's work.

Host Tyler Green and Meister discuss Lange and Pirkle Jones's 1956 series "Death of a Valley." See each picture on SFMOMA's website.

On the second segment, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco curator Lauren Palmor discusses additions FAMSF made to "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983."  The exhibition, which is at the de Young Museum through March 15, examines art made during two decades during which Black political and cultural power ascended in the United States. "Soul of a Nation" originated at the Tate Modern and was curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley. Palmor and a team of FAMSF curators added a range of Bay Area-made art to the exhibition.

Episode No. 428 features curators Courtenay Finn and Jay Clarke.

Finn is the curator of "Margaret Kilgallen: that's where the beauty is." The exhibition, which originated at the Aspen (Colo.) Art Museum last year opens at moCa Cleveland on Jan. 31 and will be on view through May 17.

On the second segment, Art Institute of Chicago curator Jay Clarke discusses "Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics" which is at the Getty through March 29.

Episode No. 427 features artists Sanford Biggers and Michelle Angela Ortiz.

Sanford Biggers's work is on view in "Cosmic Rhythm Vibrations," at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition, substantially but not entirely from the Nasher's collection, considers artworks that engage visual and musical rhythm. It was curated by the Nasher's Trevor Schoonmaker and will be on view through March 1.

On April 8, the Bronx Museum of Art will originate a major survey of Biggers's quilts titled "Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch." Curated by Antonio Sergio Bessa and Andrea Andersson, the exhibition will feature around 80 of the quilt-based works Biggers has made between 2009 and 2019. From the Bronx it will travel to New Orleans and Los Angeles. 

On the second segment, Michelle Angela Ortiz discusses her work on the occasion of "When Home Won't Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. The exhibition was curated by Ruth Erickson and Eva Respini and will be on view through January 26, when it will travel to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. 

Ortiz is a Philadelphia-based artist whose artworks, often made in and for public sites, activate, embolden and advocate for the under-represented. In 2018 she was a fellow at the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and was a Rauschenberg Foundation Artist as Activist fellow.