This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Doug Wheeler, one of the pioneers of light-and-space art. A major Wheeler 'infinity environment' installation is on view now at Chelsea's David Zwirner Gallery. Also, a major Wheeler was just acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, which featured Wheeler prominently in its light-and-space survey "Phenomenal." 

In the show's second segment, Helen A. Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center joins me to talk about a new exhibition she's curated for the Archives of American Art in Washington. Titled "Memories Arrested in Space," the show comes from the AAA's collection and celebrates the 100th anniversary of Pollock's birth.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features trickster-cum-artist Tom Friedman, whose first New York show in six years opens this weekend at Chelsea gallery Luhring Augustine. Friedman is also included in "Lifelike," a major exhibition opening this month at the Walker Art Center. The show will travel to the New Orleans Museum of Art, MCASD and to the Blanton. 

In the show's second segment, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra and I discuss "Reflections of the Buddha," on view at the Pulitzer through March 10. The museum recently published its online catalogue for the show. 

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features sculptor Mark Handforth, whose work is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami in the survey exhibition, "Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop." 

In the show's second segment, LACMA curator Sofia Sanabrais and I discuss the seemingly unlikely story of how exactly Japanese screen painting came to influence Mexican painters during the Spanish colonial period.

Larry Bell joins me to discuss his career as one of the foremost sculptors of the post-war period. Installations of Bell's work in Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, including in "Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (see this week's banner), were among the highlights of the series. PST especially revealed Bell, 72, as a key pivot between California hard-edge painting, light-and-space and minimalism, which Bell anticipated in his sculptural work of the late 1950s. Bell's work is in the collection of virtually every major museum of modern and contemporary art.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features New York-based artist Shirin Neshat, who joins me to discuss the art she's made in response to Iran's Green Revolution and the Arab Spring. An exhibition of Neshat's work is on view at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York through February 11.

Neshat has been the subject of major survey exhibitions at museums in Spain, Germany, England, Italy, Mexico, Canada and the United States. Among many other honors, She won the Silver Lion at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival for her movie "Women Without Men." Next year the Detroit Institute of Arts will present a major retrospective of her work.

This week's program also features Museum of Fine Arts Houston curator and MFAH International Center for the Arts of the Americas director Mari Carmen Ramirez. Today the ICAA launches a new project: Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art, a major online archive that will include 10,000 primary source documents about Latin American and Latino modern and contemporary art.

Artist Zoe Strauss joins me to discuss the new exhibition that surveys her 10-year "Under I-95" project at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The show opens on Saturday and is on view through April 22. A terrific catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes particularly strong essays by Strauss and exhibition curator Peter Barberie. Strauss and the Philly Museum have also installed 54 billboards featuring her work throughout Philadelphia. The museum has set up a dedicated website for the billboard project. It includes images of the billboards, a map and even some help with driving the circuit. Zoe Strauss's own website/blog is here.

This week's draft features artist Kianja Strobert, whose first New York solo show is on view at Zach Feuer Gallery through Saturday. Clyfford Still is one of Strobert's major influences, so she and I draft some favorite Still paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox, SFMOMA and the Hirshhorn.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight, who joins me to for a look at the Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions in southern California.

In this week's draft, Ed Schad discusses  his story in this week's LA Weekly, "Hastings Plastics: Legendary Maker of Sculptures for L.A. Artists Closes After 55 Years." In the story and on the program, Schad explains how and why Hastings was so important to light-and-space artists, and picks three of his favorite Hastings-related pieces.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features Huntington curator Jennifer A. Watts, a leading expert on Carleton Watkins. Watts contributed two essays to "Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs," which was recently published by the Getty. I reviewed the book here and included it in my 2011 top ten list here.

Watts's essays address two of Watkins's lesser-known series: his California missions photographs and his pictures of southern California and Kern County. The Huntington has over 300 Watkins mammoth-plate pictures and hundreds of other Watkinses, making it the second-largest repository of Watkins' art.

In this week's draft, The Stranger art critic Jen Graves and I burrow into "Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs" to pick some favorite individual artworks.

This week’s program is a very special, seasonal episode, a show that focuses on what the holidays are all about: Shopping!

My guest is artist Brian Ulrich, whose work examines American consumerism. His work is the subject of “Brian Ulrich: Copia — Retail, Thrift and Dark Stores, 2001-2011,” a solo exhibition on view now at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Aperture just published his new book, “Is This Place Great or What,” which features works from the “Copia” series.

For this week's draft, I'm joined by Andrew Russeth, who writes about art for the New York Observer and who edits the paper's visual art website, GalleristNY. His personal website is the fantastic 16 Miles of String. On the occasion of the Frick Collection opening a new space, Andrew and I will discuss our favorite single galleries in American museums.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features biographer and critic Mark Stevens, one of the top experts on the life and art of Willem de Kooning. Along with co-author Annalyn Swan, Stevens wrote "de Kooning: An American Master," which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Prior to writing "de Kooning," Stevens was the art critic for New York magazine.

In this week's draft, Charlotte Eyerman joins me to discuss her Pacific Standard Time exhibition"Artistic Evolution: Southern California Artists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County." Eyerman is the American director of the French Regional and American Museum Exchange and also works as an independent curator. She and I talk about how a many important artists, including Robert Irwin, Larry Bell and more, showed early works at the annual exhibitions of what is now the Natural History Museum, and how that work presages their more well-known art.