Episode No. 543 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Elyse Nelson.

Along with Wendy S. Walters, Nelson is the co-curator of "Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition interrogates French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's 1868/73 marble bust Why Born Enslaved! and places the sculpture in the context of French history, racialization, and in the representation of Black men and women by sculptors in Europe and the US during and after the nineteenth century. It's on view through March 5, 2023.

The Met has published an excellent catalogue for the project. It includes contributions from Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris Moon, Caitlin Meehye Beach, Rachel Hunter Himes, James Smalls, Adrienne Childs, Nelson, and Walters. It is available from Indiebound and Amazon for about $25.

Instagram: Elyse Nelson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 542 features curator Paul Martineau and artist Marie Watt.

Martineau is the curator of "Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective," which has finally arrived at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, after a two-year pandemic delay. The exhibition will be on view through June 12. 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 turn to modernism, as well as street photography, nudes and portraits. This interview was recorded when the Getty published the catalogue in 2020.

For images, see Episode No. 470.

On the second segment, a segment recorded with Marie Watt in 2020 when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Native American History, both in Bentonville, Ark., presented an exhibition of her work called "Companion Species." Now the University of San Diego is presenting a survey of her printmaking titled "Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt," which is on view through May 13. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is showing "Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger," an exhibition that spotlights the two artists' shared interests in collaboration, community engagement, materiality and the land. It's on view through May 8.

For images, see Episode No. 482.

Episode No. 541 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Shahzia Sikander.

This weekend the Museum of Fine Arts Houston opens "Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities," a survey of the first 15 years of Sikander's career, from roughly the mid-to-late 1980s and until the early 2000s. It was curated by Jan Howard and Marny Kindness, and at the MFAH by Dena M. Woodall. The exhibition will remain on view through June 5, when it will travel to the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. The RISD Museum and Hirmer have published an excellent book of the same title in association with the exhibition. It was edited by Sadia Abbas and Jan Howard. Indiebound and Amazon each offer it for about $45.

Sikander came to prominence by melding Indo-Persian manuscript painting traditions with contemporary life and issues such as feminism, cultural identity, and more. Among the dozens of museums that have presented solo shows of her work are the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

Episode No. 540 features curator Judith W. Mann and artist Nicholas Galanin.

Mann is the curator of "Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530-1800," which is on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 15. (Mann was assisted by Andrea Miller.) The exhibition, which includes more than 70 works by 58 artists, is the first examination of the pan-European practice of painting on stones such as lapis lazuli, slate and marble. The exhibition is accompanied by a terrific catalogue. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $50.

On April 7-8 SLAM will be presenting a virtual symposium that explores painting on stone and the role that stone played in the meaning of individual artworks. The symposium is free but requires Zoom registration.

Nicholas Galanin's work is on view in "The Scene Changes: Sculpture from the Sheldon's Collection" at the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The Sheldon acquired Galanin's 2012 The American Dream is Alie and Well in 2020.

Galanin's work has been the subject of solo shows at Davidson College, the BYU Museum of Art, the Montclair Art Museum, the Missoula Art Museum, the Anchorage Museum and more. In 2018 The Heard Museum in Phoenix presented a survey of Galanin's career. Later this year the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. will present exhibitions of Galanin's work.

Galanin is a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist whose work examines contemporary Indigenous identity, culture and representation and interrogates the routine misappropriation of Native culture, colonialism and collective amnesia.

Episode No. 539 features artist Stephanie Syjuco and historian Kate Wilson.

Stephanie Syjuco's work is featured in several exhibitions around the United States. The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth is presenting "Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision," a site-specific commission that builds from the Carter's collection to investigate historical and art historical narratives around American imperialism in the West. The project was curated by Kristen Gaylord and will be on view through January 2023.

Syjuco is also in "Futures," a 32,000-square-foot pan-Smithsonian exhibition on view at the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries building through July 6; "Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through August 21; and "Stephanie Syjuco: Latent Images" at New York's Ryan Lee Gallery through March 12.

Syjuco works across media such as installation and photography to investigate how images have helped build racialized, exclusionary narratives that have helped construct history and determine citizenship. Among the institutions that have presented her projects and solo exhibitions of her work are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the University of Kentucky, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and the Asian Art, Havana and Bucharest biennials.

Wilson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Last semester she taught a class called "Race and Identity in Greco-Roman Antiquity." Concurrently she organized a teaching gallery exhibition in Wash U's Kemper Art Museum titled, "Colonizing the Past: Constructing Race in Ancient Greece in Rome." The project was the rare presentation of whiteness studies-informed exhibition in American art museum.

Instagram: Stephanie Syjuco, Tyler Green.