Episode No. 282 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Diane Waggoner and curator Katy Rothkopf.

Waggoner is the curator of "East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography." For several decades, the story of America's nineteenth-century photographic history has mostly run through the West. Waggoner's exhibition instead looks at how photographers looked at the region between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. The exhibition features 175 nineteenth-century photographs, including daguerreotypes, salted paper prints, albumen prints, stereographic prints and even paintings. It's on view at the National Gallery of Art through July 16, when it will travel to the New Orleans Museum of Art. 

On the second segment, Baltimore Museum of Art curator Katy Rothkopf discusses Richard Diebenkorn's 1964 visit to the Soviet Union in the context of "Matisse/Diebenkorn." The exhibition, which Rothkopf co-curated with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Janet Bishop, is on view at SFMOMA through May 29. Bishop discussed "Matisse/Diebenkorn" on Episode No. 266.

Episode No. 281 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast considers federal arts and humanities funding with Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation executive vice president for programs and research Mariët Westermann.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities make up eight one-thousandths of one percent of the federal budget. Still, in the name of austerity, the Trump White House has targeted the endowments, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for elimination in its first budget. The endowments each received $148 million in appropriations in the federal government's most recent fiscal year, while the IMLS received $230 million and CPB $445 million. Meanwhile, the Trump budget asks for a 10 percent increase in defense spending, a single-year bump of $54 billion -- or 365 times the NEA or NEH's total annual appropriation.

No American art or arts critic has written more about the role of federal arts and humanities funding and especially the national endowments over more years than Christopher Knight. He has been the art critic of the Los Angeles Times since 1989. He is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism from the College Art Association in 1997. 

On the second segment, Mellon foundation VP Mariët Westermann discusses federal arts and humanities funding from a funder's perspective. Prior to joining Mellon in 2010, was the provost and chief academic officer of New York University Abu Dhabi; director of NYU's Institute of Fine Arts; associate director of research at the Clark Art Institute, and an associate professor at Rutgers University. As a historian of Netherlandish art, Westermann has written books on Jan Steen, Rembrandt, Vermeer and more.

Episode No. 280 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Simon Kelly and Gail Stavitsky.

Along with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Esther Bell, Kelly is the co-curator of "Degas, Impressionism & the Paris Millinery Trade." The exhibition melds the social history of modernizing 19th-century Paris with the ways in which painters, especially Edgar Degas, captured one the city's boomingest industries, the manufacturing and selling of hats, an industry that was a gateway into the city, employment and the bourgeoisie for tens of thousands of French women. The exhibition is at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 7, when it will travel to San Francisco's Legion of Honor. The exhibition's superb catalogue was published by the two museums and DelMonico Prestel.

On the second segment, Gail Stavitsky discusses "Matisse and American Art," her new exhibition on the impact Matisse's work has had on American artists. The show, which features 65 paintings, sculptures, prints and archival objects is on view at New Jersey's Montclair Art Museum through June 18. Stavitsky curated the show with assistance from John Cauman and Lisa Mintz Messinger. The exhibition catalogue was published by the museum.

Episode No. 279 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Dara Birnbaum and curator Julie J. Thomson.

Dara Birnbaum is included in "Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition examines how artists have used newspapers, magazines and televised news programs to consider media, news and the messages included therein. The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs and will be on view through April 30.

Birnbaum is among the pioneers of video art. Her work often includes pointedly feminist critiques of mass media, including of entertainment and journalism. Retrospectives of her work include "The Dark Matter of Media Light" at SMAK, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, and "Dara Birnbaum Retrospective exhibition" at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria and at the Norrtalje Konsthall in Sweden.

On the second segment, Julie J. Thomson discusses "Begin to See: The Photographers of Black Mountain College." The exhibition surveys photography made at Black Mountain College, including landscapes, documentary work (including of performance), experiments with the medium and more. The exhibition is at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center in Asheville, North Carolina through May 20. 

Episode No. 278 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Kay Rosen and curator Anne-Lise Desmas.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum opens "Kay Rosen: H Is for House," this weekend. It is Rosen's first solo museum exhibition in the northeast in almost 20 years. It is curated by the Aldrich's Richard Klein. The exhibition will be on view through September 4.

Rosen's text-based works, presented as wall-drawings, paintings and works on paper, use language, words, humor and two-dimensional forms to explore ideas, histories and contemporary life. Rosen's work is in the collection . Her museum exhibitions and installations have included projects at the Aspen (Colo.) Art Museum, the University Art Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, The Drawing Center, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Otis College of Art and Design, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the MCA Chicago and more.

On the second segment, J. Paul Getty Museum curator Anne-Lise Desmas discusses "Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment." The exhibition examines the sculpture and drawings of Edme Bouchardon, who worked as the Royal Artist during the eighteenth-century reign of Louis XV. The exhibition, which Desmas co-curated with Edouard Kopp, is on view through April 2.