Episode No. 346 features historian and artist Nell Painter and artist Mark Ruwedel.

Painter is the author of Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, which is out this week from Counterpoint Press. The "starting over" of the title refers to Painter's retirement after a elite career as an Ivy League historian to return to college as a sixty-something student -- first to take undergraduate studio art courses at Rutgers, then to pursue an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Painter's memoir details her interactions with students and faculty, and how she tried to think through how to make art after having spent decades teaching and writing history. 

Before going to art school, Painter was one of America's most distinguished historians. She is the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University. Her books include Standing at Armageddon, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, and the New York Times bestseller The History of White People. She is a past president of both the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association.

Amazon is offering Old in Art School for about $15 in both Kindle and hardcover.

On the second segment, an excerpt from host Tyler Green's 2017 conversation with Mark Ruwedel. The Tate Modern is showing an extensive selection of Ruwedel's through December 3, an installation that was curated by Sarah Allen and Simon Baker. The Ruwedels in London include work from most parts of his career, including his famed railway cuts and his so-called pictures from hell, photographs of Western landscape features named for the devil or his (his?) underworld home. Ruwedel is also included in an exhibition the Denver Art Museum opens this weekend: "New Territory: Landscape Photography Today," a survey of global landscape photography. Curated by Eric Paddock, it's on view through September 16.

Episode No. 345 features artist Ursula von Rydingsvard.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia is presenting "Ursula von Rydingsvard: The Contour of Feeling," an exhibition of roughly 20 von Rydingsvards mostly made since 2000. Curated by Mark Rosenthal, the show is on view through August 26. The exhibition catalogue, which is not yet available, will be published by FWM and Hirmer. In addition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is showing two von Rydingsvards through April 28, 2019, New York's Galerie Lelong is showing an exhibition of von Rydingsvard's work through June 23, and von Rydingsvard is included in "Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through July 22.

Ursula von Rydingsvard is one of America's leading sculptors. Since her first solo exhibition 43 years ago, she has had solo exhibitions at or fulfilled commissions for museums such as the Storm King Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center and many more.

See images discussed on this week's program. 

Episode No. 344 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Luke Syson and artist Anne Appleby.

Along with Sheena Wagstaff, Brinda Kumar, Emerson Bowyer and Elyse Nelson, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Luke Syson is a co-curator of "Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300-now)" at the Met's Breuer building through July 22. The exhibition features 120 sculptures from the first or second century to the present and considers how artists have presented the human body, especially with color. The outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the Met and is distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $43.

On the second segment, artist Anne Appleby discusses new work she's showing in "We Sit Together the Mountain and Me" at the Tacoma Art Museum. The exhibition, which is on view through July 8, was curated by Rock Hushka. Appleby's work is held by the Portland Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, SFMOMA, and more. This interview was recorded in April.

Episode No. 343 features artists Carrie Moyer and Aram Han Sifuentes.

Moyer is included in "Inherent Structures" at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The exhibition features 16 artists who complicate abstract painting's traditional association with chance and aesthetic purity with work that addresses concerns that range from an exploration of materials and paints to the artists' sociopolitical interests. The exhibition was curated by Michael Goodson and is on view through August 12.

Carrie Moyer is a New York-based painter whose work has mined the history of abstract painting, particularly composition and the way artists have used different materials and techniques. Moyer's work -- and titles -- often point to contemporary life and politics. Moyer frequently writes criticism for outlets such as Art in America. In 1991 she co-founded the lesbian public art project Dyke Action Machine! The Tang Museum organized a survey of Moyer's work in 2013; she's also had solo shows at the Worcester Art Museum, and at the Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, DC.

On the second segment, Aram Han Sifuentes discusses her Protest Banner Lending Library, which she's organizing during a summer-long residency at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. Protest Banner Lending Library is an ongoing, multi-city project in which Sifuentes works with a community to create banners and to borrown from her ever-growing library of handmade banners. The banners typically address contemporary sociopolitical issues. Her work has been exhibited at numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the MCA Chicago.

Episode No. 342 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend presentation of previously recorded interview with curator and historian Ilona Katzew.

Along with Jaime Cuadriello, Paula Mues Orts, and previous MAN Podcast guest Luis Elena Alcala, Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Ilona Katzew is a co-curator of "Painted in Mexico, 1700-1790: Pinxit Mexici." The exhibition is a broad survey of many kinds of 18th-century Mexican painting, including religious narratives, altarpieces, portraits, casta painting and more. It is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 22. The remarkable exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Prestel. Amazon offers it for $60.

Katzew is one of the world's foremost experts on New Spanish painting. She was previously on the program to discuss LACMA's acquisition of a significant Miguel Cabrera casta painting.

Episode No. 341 features artist Inka Essenhigh and curator Kenneth Myers.

The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach is showing "Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line," a mid-career survey of the New York-based Essenhigh's work. The exhibition was curated by Heather Hakimzadeh and remains on view through August 19. The exhibition's catalogue, an impressive 216-page monograph that also features work not in the show, was published by the museum. It's available from Virginia MOCA for $45.

Concurrently, The Drawing Center in New York is showing Essenhigh's Manhattanhenge, a site-specific commission for the museum's stairwell. It's on view through August 4, 2019.

On the second segment, Detroit Institute of Arts curator Kenneth Myers discusses his exhibition "Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage." The exhibition considers the paintings Frederic Edwin Church made in the late 1860s and 1870s of his trip to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. It opens at the Wadsworth Atheneum on June 2; the conversation on this week's program was recorded in December, 2017. The exhibition's excellent catalogue was published by the DIA. Amazon offers it for $41.

Episode No. 340 features author and historian Daniel E. Sutherland and artist Otobong Nkanga.

With Georgia Toutziari, Daniel Sutherland is the co-author of "Whistler's Mother: Portrait of an Extraordinary Life." The book, a biography of Anna Whistler, explains both the austere woman represented in James Abbott McNeill Whistler's famed 1871 painting Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1, better known as Whistler's Mother, and Anna Whistler's involvement in her son's career. Anna Whistler lived a remarkable life that started in the slaveholding South, continued in the rapidly industrializing northeast via her marriage to one of the most prominent railroad engineers of the time, and which took her and her family to St. Petersburg, Russia, Europe and London, where she became her son's unofficial art-world manager and agent. "Whistler's Mother" was published by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $13. (!)

Sutherland was previously a guest on The MAN Podcast in 2014 to discuss "Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake," his terrific biography of the artist. Yale University Press has just released it in paperback. Amazon sells it for $15.

On the second segment, Otobong Nkanga discusses her work on the occasion of "Otobong Nkanga: To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, a survey of her work which continues through September 2, was curated by Omar Kholeif. Nkanga, who was born in Nigeria and who lives and works in Antwerp, makes paintings, drawings, tapestry, installation and gives performances that explore the history and impact of colonialism, especially in Africa. Much of her work addresses the way such histories have impacted the land, and the viewer's likely connections with that past. She has performed at or her work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Stedelijk Museum Arnhem, the Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou, and Documenta 14. The exhibition catalogue was published by Delmonico Prestel. Amazon offers it for $25.

Episode No. 339 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist John Akomfrah.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting John Akomfrah's three-channel video installation Precarity (2017-18), a work that it commissioned for its collection and that debuted at the Ogden Museum as part of the recent Prospect 4 triennial in New Orleans. (Nasher chief curator Trevor Schoonmaker was the curator of Prospect 4.)

Precarity loosely tells the story of coronet player Buddy "King" Bolden, the most popular musician in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans and a man known for improvisation and volume. In 1907, under circumstances that remain unclear, he was permanently committed to the State Insane Asylum in Jackson with schizophrenia. There are no known surviving recordings of Bolden's work, but historian Ted Gioia credits Bolden and his band with being the originator of what we now call jazz. The film is as much an exploration of New Orleans and southern Louisiana, its history and how its history impacts the present as it is a consideration of Bolden. Precarity is on view at the Nasher through September 2.

Akomfrah, a British artist of Ghanaian descent, is one of the founders of the Black Audio Film Collective, which was active between 1982 and 1998. The collective used film and media to examine issues of Black British identity through film and media. Since then Akomfrah and his producing partners Lina Gopaul and David Lawson co-founded Smoking Dogs Films. Akomfrah's work has been shown at the Tate Britain, the ICA London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

On the second segment, we'll hear host Tyler Green's March conversation with Akomfrah, taped when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented the U.S. debut of John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea in “Sublime Seas: John Akomfrah and J.M.W. Turner.” The exhibition, which pairs a film installation Akomfrah made for the Venice Biennale in 2015 with Turner’s The Deluge, is at SFMOMA through September 16. It was curated by Rudolf Frieling.

Episode No. 338 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Terry Winters and art historian Stefanie Heckmann.

The Drawing Center in New York is showing "Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions," a nearly four-decade survey of Winters's drawing practice. The exhibition includes both wall-hung large-scale drawings and smaller works presented in vitrines. It was curated by Claire Gilman. The Drawing Center sells the catalogue for $20. It may be read online for free. Next month, New York's Matthew Marks Gallery will present an exhibition of Winters's recent paintings.

Terry Winters's work has been the subject of many major exhibitions, including most recently a 2016-17 prints survey at the MFA Boston, a 2015 prints survey at the Louisiana in Denmark. Winters has also been the subject of exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, the Whitechapel in London and the Kunsthalle Basel.

Winters was previously a guest on the program in 2012.

On the second segment, Stefanie Heckmann discusses "Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s" at New York's Neue Galerie. The exhibition was curated by Olaf Peters; Heckmann wrote for the catalogue and is the head of the fine arts collection at the Berlinische Galerie Museum fur Moderne Kunst. The exhibition, which includes around 150 paintings and works on paper, looks at how artists in Germany and Austria responded to a decade marked by social disintegration, political chaos, and that effectively ended with the beginning of World War II. The exhibition's excellent catalogue is available from Amazon for $37. The show is on view through May 28.

A Harvard Art Museums exhibition on the succeeding decade was featured on the program in February.

See MANPodcast.com for images of art discussed on the program. 

Episode No. 337 features artists Kamrooz Aram and Matthew Angelo Harrison.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is showing "FOCUS: Kamrooz Aram," an installation of Aram's recent sculpture, collage and painting. The exhibition continues Aram's investigation into the complex and non-linear relationship between non-Western art and (Western) modernism, particularly as various artistic traditions push toward abstraction. Curated by Andrea Karnes, the exhibition is on view through June 17.

Kamrooz Aram has had solo exhibitions at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Belgium, at LA><ART in Los Angeles and at MASS MoCA. He's been included in group shows such as MoMA PS1's "Greater New York," and at Busan and Prague biennials.

On the second segment, Matthew Angelo Harrison discusses his recent work. It's included in "Songs for Sabotage," the New Museum triennial, and in a solo exhibition at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco. The NuMu triennial was curated by and is on view through May 27. The Silverman Gallery show is up through April 21. He'll also be included in the forthcoming "I Was Raised on the Internet," a group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

See images of art discussed on the program.