The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 473 is a Thanksgiving weekend clips episode featuring author and curator Nicole R. Fleetwood. 

Fleetwood is the author of “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” an examination of how the imprisoned have turned to art-making in an attempt to resist the brutality and depravity of American imprisonment. The book was published by Harvard University Press.

An exhibition of the same title is on view at MoMA PS1 through April 4, 2021. It was curated by Fleetwood and Amy Rosenblum-Martin, with Jocelyn Miller.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyThree.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 9:43pm EDT

Episode No. 472 features artist Bisa Butler and curator Malcolm Daniel.

The Art Institute of Chicago is showing "Bisa Butler: Portraits," a presentation of Butler's recent art along with some works from the AIC's collection that have informed Butler. The exhibition, which the AIC co-organized with the Katonah Museum of Art, was curated by Erica Warren. It will be on view in Chicago through April 19, 2021.

Butler's work will also be included in the Toledo Museum of Art's "Radical Tradition: American Quilts and Social Change," which examines how artists and other makers have used quilts to address America's present and future between the Civil War era and the present. The exhibition was curated by Lauren Applebaum and will be on view through February 14, 2021.

Butler's work frequently addresses African diasporic history, American art and the transit of textiles around the globe. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the AIC. Among her many group show credits is "Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary" at the California African American Museum, which she and host Tyler Green mention on the program.

With the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opening its new Kinder Building this week, the program includes the first of two conversations with two leading MFAH curators about their new galleries and collection presentations. This week's program features MFAH photography curator Malcolm Daniel. The MFAH features one of America's top photography collections.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyTwo.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 10:52am EDT

Episode No. 471 features artist Radcliffe Bailey.

Bailey is included in "Person of Interest" at Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The exhibition explores portraiture from the late nineteenth century to the present in ways that test the definition of the genre. It was curated by Melissa Yuen and will be on view through July 3, 2021.

Bailey's paintings, sculptures, and installations explores themes such as history, migration, and the relationship between geography and ancestry. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Aldrich in Ridgefield, Conn., the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Toledo Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and plenty more.

The episode was recorded for a live digital audience on Nov. 5.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:02pm EDT

Episode No. 471 features artist Radcliffe Bailey.

Bailey is included in "Person of Interest" at Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The exhibition explores portraiture from the late nineteenth century to the present in ways that test the definition of the genre. It was curated by Melissa Yuen and will be on view through July 3, 2021.

Bailey's paintings, sculptures, and installations explores themes such as history, migration, and the relationship between geography and ancestry. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Aldrich in Ridgefield, Conn., the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Toledo Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and plenty more.

The episode was recorded for a live digital audience on Nov. 5.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 6:02pm EDT

Episode No. 470 features curators Paul Martineau and Jane L. Aspinwall.

Martineau is the author of "Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective," which was recently published by Getty Publications. Susan Ehrens also contributed to the volume. The book will serve as the catalogue for a presently unscheduled Cunningham retrospective at the Getty Center, the first major retrospective of Cunningham's work in over 35 years. (The exhibition had been scheduled to open at the Getty back in June and has been delayed by the pandemic.) Amazon and Indiebound each offer the book for $45-50.

Cunningham had a remarkable 75-year career that touched on seemingly every movement in American art and photography between the first decade of the 20th century and her death in 1976. She is particularly well-known for her address of pictorialism, her address of modernism, street photography, nudes and portraits.

On the second segment, former Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curator Jane L. Aspinwall discussed her exhibition “Golden Prospects: California Gold Rush Daguerreotypes.” The show argues that the Gold Rush was the first “broadly significant event in American history” to be broadly documented in substantial depth by photography. It included rich images of San Francisco and of the Sierra foothills transformed by miners in pursuit of gold. It debuted in Kansas City last year, and was to have traveled to the Peabody Essex and Yale before the pandemic interceded. The fantastic exhibition catalogue was published by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $47.

Aspinwall, a two-time MAN Podcast guest, was recently laid off by the Nelson-Atkins as part of the museum's inexplicable decimation of its photography department, one of the best and most-admired photography departments in America.  

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeFourHundredSeventy.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:57pm EDT

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