The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 456 features museum director Trevor Schoonmaker and art historian Sarah Beetham.

Schoonmaker, the director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, joins host Tyler Green to discuss how art museums engage America's history. The Nasher, of which Schoonmaker was the chief curator before becoming director earlier this year, is a sector-leader in addressing under-represented histories in its collecting, exhibition and programming practices.

Beetham is an assistant professor of art history at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She came onto the program in May 2019 to discuss art and its relationship to monuments and memorials in the United States. Beetham's forthcoming book on the subject is titled “Monumental Crisis: Accident, Vandalism and the Civil War Citizen Soldier.” It will examine how monuments have become central to a range of American discourses in the decades since the Civil War.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFiftySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:33pm EDT

Episode No. 455 features curator Ilona Katzew and artist Lava Thomas.

Katzew is the department head and curator of Latin American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She joins host Tyler Green to discuss how she tries to do her work, especially investigation, research, and acquisition, at a time when the pandemic is challenging researchers to find ways to work without traveling to sites or the usual institutional resources (such as libraries).

On the second segment, artist Lava Thomas discusses her experience with the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco board of supervisors regarding her proposed monument to Maya Angelou for the entrance to the San Francisco Public Library on Civic Center Plaza. Thomas had been the SFAC's top choice for the Angelou monument until a member of San Francisco's board of supervisors objected, demanding a simple, straightforward bronze statue.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFiftyFive.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 11:24am EDT

Episode No. 454 features art historian Diane Waggoner and curator and historian Paul Farber.

Waggoner is the author of "Lewis Carroll's Photography and Modern Childhood" which is new from Princeton University Press. The book examines how Carroll's photographs of children helped inform changing English ideas about childhood during the Victorian era. Amazon offers it for $60. Waggoner is a curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

On the second segment, Farber discusses Monument Lab's recent two-year research residency at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in Saint Louis. Farber is the co-founder of Monument Lab, a public art and history studio that cultivates conversations around civic monuments.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFiftyFour.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:47pm EDT

Episode No. 453 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Naima J. Keith and Kelli Morgan.

Along with Diana Nawi, Keith is the curator of the forthcoming Prospect triennial, "Yesterday We Said Tomorrow," in New Orleans. The fifth edition of Prospect was scheduled to open this fall, but was postponed a year, to Oct. 23, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (The exhibition will now run through Jan. 23, 2022.) Keith joins host Tyler Green to discuss what postponing a 51-artist show requires, especially for artists who had built schedules around a 2020 time-frame, how postponing an exhibition of new work originally scheduled to open just a couple weeks before an American presidential election may change it, and more.

In addition to co-curating Prospect 5, Keith is the vice president for education and public programming at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

On the second segment, Indianapolis Museum of Art curator Kelli Morgan discusses the challenges and opportunities within presenting permanent collection galleries of nineteenth-century American art when most American art museums' collections of the period consist of primarily white artists.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFiftyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:41pm EDT

Episode No. 452 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Beuford Smith and art historian Shaina Larrivee.

Smith is featured in two exhibitions that are on view at recently re-opened American art museums: "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power" at the MFA Houston, and "Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop" at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Hedda Sterne Foundation director Shaina Larrivee discusses “Hedda Sterne: Imagination & Machine” at the Des Moines Art Center.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredFiftyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:54pm EDT

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