The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 443 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features author Blake Gopnik.

Gopnik is the author of "Warhol," a new biography of artist Andy Warhol. The book was published by Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint. Amazon offers it for $34.

Gopnik was formerly the art critic at the Washington Post and Toronto's Globe and Mail.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFortyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:12pm EDT

In a special pandemic bonus episode, art museum directors Sabine Eckmann (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis) and Rebecca Rabinow (Menil Collection, Houston) discuss operating art museums in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Direct download: MANPodcastCOVAD19bonus14.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:16pm EDT

Episode No. 442 features curators Nathaniel Silver and Alison de Lima Greene.

Silver is the curator of "Boston's Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The museum is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; pending re-opening, it has extended the exhibition through September.

The exhibition examines Sargent works for which McKeller, an elevator attendant at Boston's Hotel Vendome, modeled. Those works include the Sargent murals in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and drawings. The exhibition also includes historical materials that animate McKeller's life and his engagements with Sargent. The terrific exhibition catalogue was published by the Gardner and distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $44.

On the second segment, de Lima Greene discusses "Francis Bacon: Late Paintings" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The museum is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "Bacon" is scheduled to run through May 25. The exhibition, which was organized by the Centre Pompidou, considers the paintings Bacon made between 1971, as he prepared for a major retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, and his death in 1992. The exhibition was curated by Didier Ottinger; de Lima Greene organized the Houston presentation.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFortyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 5:39pm EDT

Episode No. 441 features curator Sarah Eckhardt and author and art historian Anne Monahan.

Eckhardt is the curator of "Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The VMFA is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the exhibition is scheduled to be on view through June 14. From Richmond, the exhibition will travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a revelatory catalogue. Amazon offers it for just $32.

"Working Together" features nearly 180 photographs by 15 of the early members of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black artists dedicated to photography during the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition had its roots in the work and archive of Louis Draper, a Richmond-area native who moved to New York in 1957 and who built a community of photographers who came together as the Kamoinge Workshop. In 2015, the VMFA acquired Draper's archive.

On the second segment, art historian Anne Monahan discusses her new book "Horace Pippin, American Modern," a Yale University Press-published monograph about the mid-century American modernist painter. Amazon offers it for $32.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFortyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:38pm EDT

In a special pandemic bonus episode, artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Kate Shepherd discuss the extraordinary experience of having an exhibition of new work open and close at just about the same time. 

Direct download: MANPodcastCOVAD19bonus3.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:08pm EDT

Episode No. 440 is an Easter weekend and Passover holiday clips edition featuring author and artist Nell Painter.

Painter is the author of Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. The “starting over” of the title refers to Painter’s retirement after an 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 ArmageddonSojourner 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. Earlier this year, Painter assumed the chairmanship of The MacDowell Colony.

Old in Art School came out in paperback late last year; Amazon offers the Kindle edition for just $4.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredForty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:45pm EDT

COVAD-19 pandemic bonus episode No. 2. Critics on looking (or not) during a pandemic. 

Christopher Knight is the longtime art critic at the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this year he won the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award in Art Journalism from the Rabkin Foundation, just the second time that's been awarded.

Antwaun Sargent's most recent book is titled "The New Black Vanguard." His writing regularly pops up in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books Daily, and a whole bunch of other places.

Direct download: MANPodcastCOVAD19bonus2.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:59pm EDT

Episode No. 439 features author and art historian William E. Wallace and curator Julian Brooks.

Wallace is the author of "Michelangelo, God's Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece." The book offers a rich and lively biographical examination of the last two decades of Michelangelo's life, a period when he became the architect of St. Peter's Basilica and other buildings, even as he continued to sculpt and draw.

Wallace is a professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author or editor of seven books on Michelangelo. "Michelangelo, God's Architect" was published by Princeton University Press. Amazon offers it for $21, $16 on Kindle.

Along with Emily J. Peters, Julian Brooks is the co-curator of "Michelangelo: Mind of the Master" at the J. Paul Getty Museum. (The Getty is temporarily closed due to the COVAD-19 pandemic.) The exhibition features 28 drawings, many on sheets that feature sketches on both sides of the paper. It is scheduled to be at the Getty through June 7. The Cleveland Museum of Art, which debuted the exhibition, has produced an accompanying catalogue which is distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $29.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredThirtyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:57pm EDT

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