Episode No. 741 features curator Ed Schad and critic Gabriella Nugent.

Schad is the curator of "Robert Therrien: This is a Story" at The Broad in Los Angeles. The retrospective presents Therrien's meditations on scale and material, while revealing Therrien's repeatedly mined vocabulary of forms and symbols. The exhibition is on view through April 5. The Broad published a fine catalogue to accompany the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.

Nugent is a London-based art historian and curator who routinely publishes essays in Burlington Contemporary and Art Monthly. She particularly discusses her recent essay "On the problem of artists' biographies in exhibitions," which was published in Burlington Contemporary in December 2025.

Instagram: Ed Schad, Gabriella Nugent, Tyler Green.

Air date: January 15, 2026. 

Episode No. 740 features artist Firelei Báez and curators Charlene Foggie-Barnett and Dan Leers.

The MCA Chicago is presenting "Firelei Báez," the first North American mid-career survey of the artist's paintings and installations. Báez's work often explores the legacies of colonialism across the American and the African diaspora, in the Caribbean, and beyond. Her works are often explosively colorful and use complex and layered materials, including archival material and paint, to unsettle fixed categories and historical events. The exhibition was curated by Eva Respini with Tessa Bachi Haas; the MCA Chicago presentation was organized by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Cecelia González Godino and Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 31. A catalogue was published by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in association with DelMonico Books. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $36-56.

Institutions that have previously presented major Báez exhibitions include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, The Momentary in Bentonville, Ark., the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Foggie-Barnett and Leers are the co-curators of "Black Photojournalism" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The exhibition presents work by nearly 60 photographers chronicling historic events and daily life in the United States between 1945 and 1984. The exhibition was designed by David Hartt. It is on view through January 19, before traveling to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60.

In addition to the video below, the CMOA has produced an outstanding podcast series to accompany the show.

Instagram: Firelei Báez, Charlene Foggie-Barnett, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 739 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Dara Birnbaum.

Birnbaum, a pioneering titan of video art, passed away this year at 78. "Her work is now displayed in museum collections around the world as the example of feminist video art," wrote curator and critic Karen Archey in an Artforum obituary.

Birnbaum's work often included 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.

Several of the Birnbaums discussed on this program are available online, including:

• Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79);
• Kiss The Girls: Make Them Cry (1979) (clip);
• Canon: Taking to the Street (1990) (clip); and
• Walkthrough of Psalm 29(30) (2016) at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris.

This program was recorded in 2017 when Dara Birnbaum's Local TV News Analysis (1980), which Birnbaum made with Dan Graham, was included in "Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition examined 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.

Air date: January 1, 2026.

Episode No. 738 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Wafaa Bilal.

Earlier this year the MCA Chicago presented "Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me," the first major survey of Bilal's work. Across his genres-busting career, the Iraqi-American Bilal has made performances, sculptures and related digital presentations that have interrogated the United States' relationship with and conduct within Iraq, the Middle East, and broader geopolitics. Bilal's work also investigates the notion of cultural cannibalism, the ways in which the culture of one people may be used, disassembled, and consumed by another. "Indulge Me" was curated by Bana Kattan. An invaluable catalogue was published by the MCA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $20-32.

Bilal's work is in the collections of museums as unalike as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE; the Art Gallery at NYU Abu Dhabi; and the 2015 Venice Biennale.

For images, please see Episode No. 704.

Instagram: Wafaa Bilal, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 737 features curators Beverly Adams and Jamillah James.

With Christophe Cherix, Adams is the co-curator of "Wifredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition includes more than 130 works made between the 1920s and 1970s, making it the most extensive Lam retrospective presented in the United States. "When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" argues that Lam, a Cuban-born artist who spent much of his life in Spain, France, and Italy, was a prototypical transnational artist. It is on view in New York through April 11, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-70.

Jamillah James has organized the presentation of "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition is one of the most comprehensive presentations to date of the pioneering Fluxus artist, musician, and world peace activist. "Music of the Mind" includes over 200 works across a vast array of media, including performance footage, music and sound recording, film, photography, installation, and more. It is on view at the MCA through February 22, 2026. An exhibition catalogue was published in North America by Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $38-47.

Air date: December 18, 2025.

Episode No. 736 features artist Dyani White Hawk.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is presenting "Dyani White Hawk: Love Language," a 15-year survey of White Hawk's career. The exhibition spotlights how White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) has foregrounded Lakota forms and motifs to challenge prevailing histories and practices around abstract art. The exhibition was curated by Siri Engberg and Tarah Hogue with Brandon Eng. The Walker has published an excellent catalogue; Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $50. After closing at the Walker on February 15, "Love Language" will travel to the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

White Hawk's work is in the collection of institutions such as the Walker, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

White Hawk was previously a guest on Episode No. 610 of The MAN Podcast.

Instagram: Dyani White Hawk, Tyler Green.

Air date: December 11, 2025.

Episode No. 735 features curators Dan Nadel and Laura Phipps, and curator Alexander J. Noelle.

With Elizabeth Sussman and Scott Rothkopf, Nadel and Phipps are the co-curators of "Sixties Surreal" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition works to complicate the march of -isms which, outside the academy and too few art museums, has too often ossified into the the era's US art history. "Sixties Surreal" offers some of the ways in which artists working around the US (and not only in New York or for its market) mined surrealist thought and theory to help them reckon with the era's sociopolitical extremes. The exhibition is on view through January 19, 2026. The thought-provoking exhibition catalogue was published by the Whitney. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40-45. Also, Nadel and Phipps have made a 113-song Spotify playlist to accompany the show.

The Cleveland Museum of Art's remarkable autumn of major Italian Renaissance presentations continues with Noelle's "Filippino Lippi and Rome," a look at the Florentine's painter's work in and informed by travel to Rome. The impetus for the exhibition was Cleveland's own tondo The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret (ca. 1488-93), a masterpiece and the only known independent work that Filippino produced in Rome. Filippino is the son of the famed Fra Filippo Lippi, and apprenticed and collaborated with Sandro Botticelli before working on his own. "Lippi and Rome" is on view through February 22, 2026. A superb catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40. Several months ago the Cleveland Museum of Art debuted Giambologna's Fata Morgana, a high-profile acquisition of a rare Giambologna marble sculpture.

Instagram: Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Alexander J. Noelle, and Tyler Green.

Episode No. 734 is a Thanksgiving weekend clips program featuring artist Aliza Nisenbaum.

The Des Moines Art Center is presenting "Aliza Nisenbaum: Día de los Muertos" through January 11, 2026. For the latest iteration of DMAC's annual Día de los Muertos celebration, and as the museum's Toni and Tim Urban International Artist-in-Residence, Nisenbaum created five paintings. The presentation was curated by Beth Gollnick.

Earlier this fall, the Obama Presidential Center announced that it had commissioned a mural from Nisenbaum. Titled Reading Circles/ Weaving Dreams/ Seeding Futures, the mural will depict moments of civic life within a public library, offering a living portrait of community in action.

This episode was taped in 2021. For images, please see Episode No. 522.

Instagram: Aliza Nisenbaum, Tyler Green.

Air date: November 26/27, 2025.

Episode No. 733 features curators Diana Seave Greenwald and Megan Fontanella.

With Christina Michelon, Greenwald is the co-curator of "Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Boston Athenaeum. Both presentations are on view through January 19, 2026. (Theodore Landsmark co-curated the ISGM presentation.) The exhibition surveys the career of Boston-based Crite, whose work spotlighted Boston neighborhoods such as Lower Roxbury and the South End, the challenges they faced from gentrification and so-called urban renewal, and Christianity.  A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the two institutions. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42.

Fontanella is the curator of "Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Across more than 50 paintings and almost 20 photographs, the exhibition survey's Münter's work and finds that it was involved in avant-garde presentations of landscape, still life, and portraiture. Fontanella curated the photography section of the exhibition with Victoria Horrocks. "Contours of a World" is on view through April 26, 2026. A catalogue was published by the Guggenheim. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55.

Instagram: Diana Seave Greenwald, Megan Fontanella, Tyler Green.

Air date: November 20, 2025.

Episode No. 732 features artist Igshaan Adams and curator and Jenkintown, Penn. school board-electee Laura Igoe.

The Hill Art Foundation, New York is presenting "Igshaan Adams: I've been here all along, I've been waiting" through December 20, 2025. The exhibition features work from the last 15 years of Adams' practice, and emphasizes how his work engages and serves his community. Adams tapestries and sculptures build from weaving traditions to make the routine, even mundane the subject of rich, detailed artworks. On the occasion of the exhibition, the Hill Art Foundation has published this essay by Siddhartha Mitter.

Adams grew up in a Muslim-Christian household in the segregated suburb of Bonteheuwel in apartheid-era South Africa, and employs Bonteheuwel residents and family members in his studio. His work has been the subject of solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Art Institute of Chicago; Kunsthalle Zurich, the Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark; and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work is in the permanent collection of museums such as the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Tate Modern, London, and Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil.

Discussed on the program:

• Adams' 2016 exhibition "Oorskot" at Blank Projects, Cape Town; and
• Adams' 2022 exhibition "Desire Lines" at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Igoe, the chief curator of the Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Penn. was just elected to the Jenkintown, Penn. school board.

Instagram: Igshaan Adams, Laura Igoe, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 731 features artist Hew Locke.

The Yale Center for British Art is presenting "Hew Locke: Passages," the first US survey of Locke's career. Across sculpture, painting, photography and installations, Locke's work considers colonialism, its power, and the ways in which we respond to colonialism and its impacts. Locke, who is Guyanese-British, particularly focuses on British imperialism and how it was constructed, including through monarchy, trade, and (sometimes forced) migration. The exhibition, which is on view through January 11, 2026, was curated by Martina Droth. The catalogue, which was edited by Droth and Allie Biswas, was published by the YCBA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $60-70. In-gallery materials are available here in both English and Spanish.

Locke's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Tate Britain, London, the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more.

In addition to the images below, here are links to works and exhibitions discussed on the program:

• Hew Locke, Ark, 1994.
• Hew Locke, Menace to Society (series), 1999-2001.
• Hew Locke, The Nameless, 2010.
• "Hew Locke: what have we here" at the British Museum;
• "A Conspiracy of Icons: The Art of Donald Locke," at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and
• "The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain" at the Hayward Gallery, London.

Instagram: Hew Locke, Tyler Green.

Air date: November 6, 2025.

Episode No. 730 features author Amy Newman.

Newman is the author of Barnett Newman: Here a biography out this week from Princeton University Press. The book presents Newman as devoted to art but initially unsure of what a Newman would be, as a dedicated, almost blindered New Yorker, and as an artist intensely interested in what US art had to contribute to the US national and global project. Amazon and Bookshop offer Newman for around $40. (It will be available in the UK in January 2026. Amy Newman and Barnett Newman are not related.)

Newman is the author of the author of Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962–1974 and the editor, with Irving Sandler, of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

Works discussed on the program include:

• Black With Yellow (Euclidian Abyss), 1946-47;
• Onement I, 1948;
• Two Edges, 1948;
• Onement VI, 1953;
• Here I, 1950; and
• Broken Obelisk, 1963-69.

Instagram: Amy Newman, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 729 features artists Justin Favela and David-Jeremiah.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery is presenting a commission from Favela titled Capilla de Maíz (Maize Chapel) through a not-yet determined date. The Favela makes the Renwick's grand salon gallery a fantastical space, complete with shimmering gold-fringed walls and piñata corncobs that highlight the role of maize in North American visual culture. It accompanies "State Fairs: Growing American Craft," an exhibition that details artists' contribution to the US tradition of state fairs that is on view at the Renwick through September 7, 2026. (The Renwick is temporarily closed because Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill have shut down the federal government.)

Favela's work typically investigates Mexican or Latin American craft practices, especially cartoneria (more commonly known as piñata making). His work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, the Des Moines Art Center, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and more.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "David-Jeremiah: The Fire this Time" through November 2. The exhibition presents a group of vertical assemblages of black and other polychromatic paintings on shaped wood that form an installation. The twenty-eight works stand over ten feet tall. The primary configuration surrounds viewers completely before giving way to a final suite of paintings featuring abstract assemblages that include references to fire. The exhibition was curated by Christopher Blay. A catalogue is available from MAMFW.

David-Jeremiah's work reflects the artist’s experience of Black masculinity in America. Previous David-Jeremiah solo exhibitions have been at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., and the Houston Museum of African American Culture; he has participated in group shows at institutions such as Project Row Houses, Houston. In 2020, David-Jeremiah received a Nasher Sculpture Center Artist Grant Award.

Instagram: Justin Favela, David-Jeremiah, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 728 features curators Anna Lovatt and Kelly Montana, and artist/curator Pablo Helguera.

Lovatt and Montana are the curators of "Lines of Resolution: Drawing at the Advent of Television and Video" at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The exhibition examines the intersection of drawing, television, and video from the late 1950s into the 1980s. "Lines of Resolution" features the work of 25 artists, including Nam June Paik, Howardena Pindell, Sigmar Polke, and Joan Jonas. It is on view through February 8, 2026. A fascinating catalogue was published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35-40.

In addition to the works shown below, works discussed on the program include:

• Ulrike Rosenbach, Bonnet Drawing, 1972.
• Catherine Elwes, Two Drawings on Glass, 1978.

Along with representatives from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's curatorial and learning teams, Helguera is the co-curator of "Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera," which is at the MCA through July 5, 2026. The exhibition is the product of questions that Helguera, a New York-based artist and educator, posed to a group of 20 Chicago artists, writers, activists, and educators in the fall of 2024. It's on view through July 5, 2026.

In addition to the works shown below, works discussed on the program include:

• Susan Philipsz, We Shall Be All, 2011. 
• Public Collectors, QUARANZINE: A printed space for work produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020. 

Instagram: Pablo Helguera, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 727 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Andrea Carlson.

The Denver Art Museum just opened "Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky," a mid-career survey. The exhibition spotlights how Carlson, who is Ojibwe and of European settler descent, creates works that challenge the colonial narratives presented by modern artists, museum collections, and cannibal genre horror films, all in ways that challenge and depart from the US landscape tradition. The exhibition was curated by Dakota Hoska, and will remain on view through February 16, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by Scala, Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $30-35.

Museums that have featured solo exhibitions of Carlson's work include the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Denver Art Museum. She is also the co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.

This program was taped on the occasion of Carlson's 2024 solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago. For images, please see Episode No. 677.

Instagram: Andrea Carlson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 726 features artist Danielle Joy Mckinney.

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is presenting "Danille Mckinney: Tell Me More" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition, Mckinney's first solo presentation in a US museum, spotlights Mckinney's introspective explorations of Black womanhood. It was curated by Gannit Ankori. Concurrently, Galerie Max Hetzler is presenting Mckinney's work in "Second Wind" in London through November 1.

Mckinney has been featured in exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and many more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

Instagram: Danielle Joy Mckinney, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 725 features curators Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis (and a cameo, of sorts, from artist Anthony Barboza).

Brookman and Willis are the co-curators of "Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-85" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition considers photography's engagement with the post-war cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty, and which often influenced the broader civil rights movement of which it was a part. The exhibition features 150 works from photographers and other artists who used photography in their work, such as in collage or assemblage. It is on view through January 11, 2026. An excellent catalogue was published by the NGA In association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60.

Instagram: Philip Brookman, Anthony Barboza, Deborah Willis, Tyler Green.

Air date: September 25, 2025.

Episode No. 724 features artist Antony Gormley. It was taped before a live audience at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.

The Nasher is showing "SURVEY: Antony Gormley" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition is the first major museum survey of Gormley's work in the United States. Across sculptures, models, and notebooks, "SURVEY" spans Gormley's career from the 1980s to today. The exhibition extends beyond the Nasher's galleries to include sculptures installed on the rooftops of both the Nasher and skyscrapers in and around downtown Dallas. It was curated by Jed Morse.

Gormley is the UK's most honored living sculptor. His works often use the body to address fundamental questions of where humans stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Major exhibitions of his work have been held at museums and in biennials all over the world.

Air date: September 18, 2025.

Episode No. 723 features curator Michelle White and artist Nanette Carter.

White is the curator of "Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s" at The Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition considers Rauschenberg's conceptual, expressive use of fabric as a medium through a focus on three groups of works from the 1970s: Venetians (1972-73), Jammers (1975-76), and Hoarfrosts (1974-76). It is on view through March 1, 2026. "Fabric" is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-65.

The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is presenting "Nanette Carter: Afro Sentinels" through January 11, 2026. The exhibition features works Carter has made over the last decade, including work from her Cantilevered, Destabilizing, and Shifting Perspectives series, plus new sculptural works commissioned by the Wexner. It was curated by Rebecca Lowery. Carter's abstract collages, produced in Mylar, often engage with contemporary social issues. The Montclair Art Museum presented a retrospective of Carter's career last year.

As discussed on the program:

• Carter's 2021 oral history for the Archives of American Art.

Instagram: Michelle White, Nanette Carter, Tyler Green.

Air date: September 11, 2025.

Episode No. 722 features museum director and human rights activist Ann Burroughs, and curator Cory Korkow.

Burroughs is the director of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, which has led the museum sector in resisting Trumpism and the rise of fascism in the United States. Even as many US institutions capitulated when the Trump administration demanded a return to racist and white supremacist policies and practices, JANM stood by its diversity and equity foci and programs. Over the summer, armed and often masked  Border Patrol agents conducted what appeared to be an operation aimed at intimidating speakers at a program at the museum's Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, including at a press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The museum aggressively resisted the federal show of force, drawing lines between illegal federal actions in 1942 and the present.

JANM's mission is "to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience." Its collections and programs feature art and art's history. The museum holds work by and the archives of artists such as Hisako Hibi, George Hoshida, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugimoto, Chikashi Tanaka, Kango Takamura, and Jack Iwata.

In addition to leading JANM, Burroughs is the two-time former chairperson of the board of Amnesty International USA, the chair of the Amnesty International Global Assembly, and presently sits on the board of Amnesty International.

As mentioned on the program:

• Burroughs' op-ed for the American Alliance of Museums; and
• JANM's "History Unpacked" program.

Korkow helped lead the Cleveland Museum of Art's acquisition and initial installation of Giambologna's Fata Morgana (ca. 1572), which had been the last of the roughly dozen marble sculptures made by the artist remaining in private hands. Giambologna made the sculpture for installation in a fountain at Bernardo Vecchietti's Villa il Reposo in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy.

Instagram: Cory Korkow, Tyler Green.

Air date: September 4, 2025.

Episode No. 721 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Saif Azzuz.

The Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, is presenting "Saif Azzuz: Keet Hegehlpa' (the water is rising)," which interrogates the privatization of land, water, and natural resources within settler-colonial systems. Across the exhibition, Azzuz and family members Lulu Thrower, Elizabeth Azzuz, Viola Azzuz, Moya Azzuz, and Colleen Colegrove reference the myths, origin stories, and fabricated tales animating the land now known as Houston. The artists in the exhibition draw upon ecological knowledge to visualize histories of land stewardship and rematriation practices that gesture to Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor’s notion of survivance, the fusion of resistance and survival. The exhibition was curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum and will be on view through December 20.

Azzuz is a Libyan-Yurok artist based in suburban San Francisco. His work, which often addresses nature, land, and California Native American cultural practices, is in the collections of museums such as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.

This episode was taped on the occasion of ICA San Francisco's presentation of Azzuz' work in 2024. For images, see Episode No. 638.

Instagram: Saif Azzuz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 720 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tidawhitney Lek.

Lek is among the 30+ artists featured in "Spirit House" at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. The exhibition considers how 33 contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art, including how the spiritual relates to diaspora, connections to ancestral homelands, and the experience of feeling present within multiple cultures and multiple geographies. The show’s curatorial framework was inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter for the supernatural. "Spirit House" originated at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, and was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua. It is on view in Seattle through January 11, 2026. An excellent exhibition catalogue, titled “Spirit House: Hauntings in Contemporary Art of the Asian Diaspora,” was published by the Cantor and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.

Lek is a southern California-based, Cambodian-American artist whose work examines narratives surrounding and the daily experiences of a first-generation American born to immigrant parents. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and she's been featured in the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Her first museum solo show was at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 2023.

Discussed on the program:

• Martha Rosler’s “House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home” series may be viewed on the website of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• The work of Amir Fallah and Annie Lapin.
• Lek’s website.

Instagram: Tidawhitney Lek, Tyler Green.

Air date: August 21, 2025.

Episode No. 719 features curator Laura Katzman.

Katzman is the curator of "Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity" at the Jewish Museum, New York. Shahn's first US retrospective in nearly 50 years. The exhibition examines Shahn's progressive commitment to the major issues between the Great Depression and the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. The exhibition features 175 paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs and more, spotlighting Shahn's skill and vision across media. The exhibition debuted at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and was adapted by the Jewish Museum. It's on view through October 26. A catalogue was published by Princeton University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $32-42.

Episode No. 718 features artist Masako Miki and artist/curator Katherine Simóne Reynolds.

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting "Midnight March," a far-ranging presentation of Miki's two-dimensional and three-dimensional practice.

The Japanese-born Miki's paintings, sculptures, and installations live between the sacred and the secular. Her often exuberant sculptures are rooted in the blending of Japanese and US cultures. Her previous solo shows have been at museums such as the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, and the ICA San José. Her work is in the permanent collections of BAMPFA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and more.

Reynolds is the curator of "Held Impermanence (Artists Select: Katherine Simóne Reynolds)" at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. The exhibition uses the museum's art collection and archive to consider multiple competing desires, including Still's and the desires of art institutions, such as the unknown future museum to which he directed his art and archive be entrusted. Reynolds is an artist and curator who investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies of Blackness. Her previous exhibitions have been at venues such as SculptureCenter, New York, Counterpublic 2023, St. Louis, and the Stanley Museum of Art, University of Iowa.

As mentioned on the program:

• The CSM's gallery booklet.

Instagram: Masako Miki, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 717 features artist Erin Shirreff, curator Davide Gasparotto, and conservator Ulrich Birkmaier.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is presenting "Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts" through September 1. Across 40 recent collages, photographs, sculptures, and videos, the exhibition reveals Shirreff's interest in the space between images and the objects they picture. The exhibition was curated by Kristen Gaylord. Among the museums that have presented solo exhibitions of Shirreff's work are SITE Santa Fe, the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., SFMOMA, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

"Artemisia's Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece" is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles through September 14. The exhibition reveals conservation work done on Gentileschi's ~1635-37 Hercules and Omphale, a significant painting damaged in a massive explosion in Beirut in 2020. Birkmaier led the conservation of the work, which Gasparotto joined to four other Gentileschis in this exhibition, which particularly highlights Gentileschi's focus on strong women from the classical and Biblical traditions.

Instagram: Davide Gasparotto, Tyler Green.

Air date: July 31, 2025.

Episode No. 716 features curator Eleanor Nairne and artist Francesca Fuchs.

With Wells Fray-Smith, Nairne is the co-curator of "Noah Davis," an eponymous retrospective at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Davis, who passed away from a rare cancer in 2015 at age 32, was a painter whose work addressed current affairs, every day life, family histories, and architecture. Davis often addressed the subjects that interested him by fusing his interest in art history to his interest in vernacular sources, such as flea market photographs or personal archives. The exhibition is on view through August 31. A catalogue is available from Prestel. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-46.

The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House" through November 2. The exhibition starts, as it were, in 1970, when John de Menil wrote to German classical archeologist Dr. Werner Fuchs (1927–2016) seeking to identify the subject of a Roman male torso in his collection. Forty-nine years later, Francesca Fuchs’s discovery of the black-and-white photographs John de Menil sent to her father that depict the marble torso led Fuchs to find the original letter in the museum archives. "The Space Between" presents Fuchs's response to the unanswered letter and familial collection through Fuchs' own paintings, selections from the Menil's collection and archives, and more. The exhibition was curated by Paul R. Davis.

• As mentioned on the program:
• See Francesca Fuchs' letter to John de Menil (also below); and
• Fuchs' 2013 exhibition at Texas Gallery.

Instagram: Francesca Fuchs, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 715 features artist Kandis Williams.

The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis is presenting "Kandis Williams: A Surface," the first survey of Williams' career. The exhibition spotlights how Williams has used collage as a tool of Black feminist resistance, to dismantle entrenched histories and power structures, and to rebuild dominant narratives. The exhibition, which was curated by Taylor Jasper with Laurel Rand-Lewis, is on view through August 24. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Walker. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $45.

Williams is also included in "Performance on Paper" at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. It features prints and drawings created at the intersection of music and dance by about twenty artists active from the 1960s to the present. It was curated by Naoko Takahatake with Jennie Waldow, and is on view through August 10.

Williams' previous museum solo exhibition was at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University. They have been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in the Hammer Museum's Made in LA biennial.

Instagram: Kandis Williams, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 714 features curator and art historian Jonathan D. Katz and curators Allison Kemmerer and Gordon Wilkins.

With Johnny Willis, Katz is the co-curator of "The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939" at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. The exhibition details the emergence of a significant change in how societies around the world regarded homosexuality in the wake of the coining of the term 'homosexual' in 1869, and the ways in which images have represented a range of identities ever since. It is on view through July 26. The fascinating exhibition catalogue was published by Monacelli. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75.

Kemmerer and Wilkins are the curators of "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass. The exhibition surveys a 75-year career during which Leaf explored the human experience in works that are layered, whimsical, playful, and sometimes dark. It is on view through July 31. The Addison, the Grey Art Museum, New York University, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College co-published the exhibition catalogue with Rizzoli. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $42-60.

Episode No. 713 is a Fourth of July weekend clips episode featuring artist Carmen Winant.

This episode was taped in 2023 on the occasion of the Minneapolis Institute of Art's presentation of Winant’s “The last safe abortion” through December 31. It features Winant’s assemblages of historical photographs gathered from across the Midwest that detail the work of providing health care to women. That work includes answering phones, presenting training sessions, scheduling appointments, and more. “The last safe abortion” was curated by Casey Riley.

Winant’s work typically explores representations of women through strategies such as collage and installation. Her exhibition credits include the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sculpture Center, Queens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and many venues in Europe.

For images, see Episode No. 621.

Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 712 features artist Julian Hoeber and curator María Elena Ortiz.

Hoeber is included in "Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The exhibition offers a new selection of works from the Nasher collection that offers conversations between works from the past and present.

Hoeber's practice centers perception and searches for ways to exceed and reconcile limits set by binary ideas such as interior and exterior, or psychic and somatic. Paradoxically, he often uses binary systems, such as stereoscopic vision, in his work. His exhibition credits include Desert X 2019, a Hammer Projects show in 2010, and gallery shows in San Francisco, New York, Milan, Los Angeles, London, and more. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. 

Ortiz is the curator of "Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. "Feeling Color" pairs the work of two Guyanese artists and considers their roles in the history of late-twentieth-century abstract painting. "Feeling Color" is on view through July 27.

Instagram: Julian Hoeber, María Elena Ortiz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 711 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Patrick Martinez.

Martinez is among the artists showing in the Boston Public Art Triennial, which was developed by Pedro Alonzo, Tess Lukey, and a(n unspecified) curatorial advisory group. Martinez's 2025 Cost of Living may be seen at Boston's Downtown Crossing.

Martinez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work investigates socio-economic position, immigration, police violence, and civic and cultural loss. He’s had solo shows at museums and kunsthalles such as the ICA San Francisco, the Tucson (Ariz.) Museum of Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Vincent Price Art Museums. He’s been in recent group shows at the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum, The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and El Museo del Barrio, New York. Martinez also operates Mixed Media Editions.

This program was taped in 2024 on the occasion of “Patrick Martinez: Histories” at the Dallas Contemporary. For images, see Episode No. 649.

Instagram: Patrick Martinez, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 710 features curator Timothy Anglin Burgard and artist Tony Lewis.

Burgard is the curator of "Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art" at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The exhibition details how Thiebaud drew ideas from and reimagined European and US artworks both old and new. It is on view through August 17. A superb catalogue was published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in association with University of California Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $54-60.

Lewis is featured in "What drawing can be: four responses" at the Menil Collection's Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The exhibition, which also offers work by Jillian Conrad, Teresita Fernández, and Constantin Luser, presents ways in which the four artists stretch the boundaries of drawing and offer new ideas of what it can be. It's on view through August 10. The gallery guide is available here.

Lewis’ work examines the relationship between semiotics and language as a means to confront subjects such as race, power, communication, and labor. His solo exhibition credits include the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Instagram: Tony Lewis, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 709 features author Adrienne L. Childs and curator Iris Moon.

Childs is the author of "Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts." The book, which was published by Yale University Press, examines the role decorative arts played in the representation of Black people within European visual and material culture. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $44-78.

From the show:

• The exhibition guide to the 2022-23 Henry Moore Institute exhibition "Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture," which Childs co-curated.

Moon is the curator of "Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition is a feminist construction of the story of European porcelain. Chinese porcelain arrived in early modern Europe and led to the emergence of chinoiserie, a decorative style that foregrounded European fantasies about the East and the exotic, as well as about women, sexuality, and race. It is on view through August 17. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.

Instagram: Adrienne Childs, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 708 features artist Paul Pfeiffer.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is showing the retrospective "Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom." For over 25 years, Pfeiffer has investigated spectacle and mass culture, especially sport, and has found within it the power to create and extend political narratives. Included within the exhibition is only the second US presentation of Pfeiffer's landmark 2007 The Saints, an immersive sound and video installation that considers the 1966 men's World Cup final between England and West Germany that is one of the most significant works of the 21st century.

"Pfeiffer" was curated by Clara Kim and Paula Kroll. The MCA presentation, which is on view through August 31, was organized by Bana Kattan with Iris Colburn. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and MACK. Amazon offers it for $65.

Instagram: Paul Pfeiffer, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 707 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Lorna Simpson.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is presenting "Lorna Simpson: Source Notes," a survey that focuses on paintings that Simpson has made over the last decade. Across more than 30 works, "Simpson" spotlights the artist's explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. The exhibition, which is on view through November 2, was curated by Lauren Rosati in "close collaboration with the artist." The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40-45.

This conversation was taped in 2017 on the occasion of “FOCUS: Lorna Simpson," at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition featured new work that juxtaposes beauty and promise with disaster and upheaval, often in the context of the representation of black women in Ebony magazine from the 1950s to the 1970s. It was curated by Alison Hearst.

Instagram: Lorna Simpson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 706 features curators Leslie King-Hammond and Edward Saywell, and curator Jared Ledesma.

Along with Patrick Murphy and Jennifer Farrell, Hammond and Saywell are the co-curators of "Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition surveys Wilson's 60-year career, spotlighting the ways in which Wilson addressed anti-Black violence, the civil rights movement, labor, family life, and more. "Wilson" is on view in Boston through June 22 before traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in the fall. The richly illustrated exhibition catalogue was published by the MFA. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for about $50.

Ledesma is the curator of "Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention" at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. The exhibition is a focused examination of how Hartigan's relationships with New York poets, including Barbara Guest, James Merrill, and Frank O'Hara, influenced her paintings and works on paper. It is on view through August 10, 2025 before traveling to the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art and the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. An excellent catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $35.

Instagram: Jared Ledesma, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 705 features curators Dalila Scruggs and Catherine Morris, and artist Beatriz Cortez.

With Mary Lee Corlett, Scruggs and Morris are the co-curators of "Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition surveys Catlett's career across over 150 sculptures, prints, paintings, and drawings. The exhibition is on view through July 6. An exceptional exhibition catalogue, titled Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies was published by the The University of Chicago Press, the NGA and the Brooklyn Museum, which originated the exhibition. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $56-60.

Catlett was a feminist, activist, and radical who helped join the Black Left in the US to influences from the Mexican Revolution. Her work continued the practice of earlier US artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Carleton Watkins by using cultural production to advance ideas and ideologies.

Cortez is featured in "Seeds: Containers of a World to Come" at the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. The exhibition features work by ten artists whose research-driven practices are informed by inquiry into plant-human-land relations. "Seeds" was curated by Meredith Malone and Svea Braeunert, and remains on view through July 28. The exhibition brochure is available here. "Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos" is at the Americas Society, New York through May 17. The show considers the idea of ancient objects traveling across space and time.

Cortez's work explores simultaneity, life in different temporalities, and imaginaries of the future. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY,; the Williams College Museum of Art; Clockshop, Los Angeles; and more.

Instagram: Catherine Janet Morris, Beatriz Cortez, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 704 features artist Wafaa Bilal.

The MCA Chicago is presenting "Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me," the first major survey of Bilal's work. Across his genres-busting career, the Iraqi-American Bilal has made performances, sculptures and related digital presentations that have interrogated the United States' relationship with and conduct within Iraq, the Middle East, and broader geopolitics. Bilal's work also investigates the notion of cultural cannibalism, the ways in which the culture of one people may be used, disassembled, and consumed by another. "Indulge Me" was curated by Bana Kattan, and is on view in Chicago through October 19. An invaluable catalogue was published by the MCA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $20-32.

Bilal's work is in the collections of museums as unalike as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE; the Art Gallery at NYU Abu Dhabi; and the 32015 Venice Biennale.

Instagram: Wafaa Bilal, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 703 features artist Dakota Mace and curator Claire Howard.

SITE Santa Fe is showing "Dakota Mace: DAHODIYINII—SACRED PLACES," an investigation of an atrocity during which the United States expelled the Diné people from Dinétah, their ancestral homeland, and forced them to march as many as 400 miles to the Bosque Redondo in central-eastern New Mexico, where they were forced to remain in a concentration camp from 1864-68. The exhibition is organized into themes such as memory, land, and the stars; with each section of the show considering Diné cosmology. The exhibition, which is on view through May 19, was curated by Brandee Caoba.

Mace is also featured in "Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time" at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. The exhibition examines how Native artists have explored memory and time, including how the past is continually remembered and reimagined. It was curated by Sháńdíín Brown and will remain on view through August 31, 2025. "Smoke in Our Hair" features previous MAN Podcast guests such as Saif Azzuz, Teresa Baker, and Andrea Carlson.

Series of Mace's work discussed on the program and presented in full on her website include:

• Dahodiyinii;
• Distorted Landscapes;
• Łichíí (Red) Series; and
• Akágí (Skin).

Host Tyler Green mentions two books on the program:

• Hardship, Greed, and Sorrow: An Officer's Photo Album of 1866 New Mexico Territory, by Daniel Kosharek and Deborah Romanek, with a forward by Jennifer Nez Dennetdale;
• Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, by Keith Basso.

Howard is the curator of one section of "In Creative Harmony: Three Artistic Partnerships" an exhibition that considers artistic discourse, at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Howard's section considers the relationship between Arshile Gorky and Isamu Noguchi. Other sections present dialogue between Nora Naranjo Morse and her daughter Eliza Naranjo Morse and José Guadalupe Posada and Artemio Rodríguez. It's on view through July 20.

Instagram: Dakota Mace, Claire Howard, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 702 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles is presenting "María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold" through May 4. It is the first multimedia survey of Campos-Pons’ work in 17 years. The exhibition spotlights Campos-Pons’ photography, installation, and performance-based practices, which typically address global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration — and how their impacts continue into the present. It was curated by Carmen Hermo and Mazie Harris with Jenée-Daria Strand. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-42.

This program was taped on the occasion of the exhibition's presentation at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2024. For images, please see Episode No. 656.

Episode No. 701 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Scott Allan, and curators Will Hansen and River Ian Kerstetter.

With Gloria Groom and Paul Perrin, Allan is the co-curator of "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through May 25, looks at how Caillebotte's interest in male subjects significantly distinguishes him from his impressionist colleagues. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Getty. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50-58.

Hansen and Kerstetter are the curators of "Native Pop!" at the Newberry Library, Chicago. "Native Pop" examines how Indigenous people, and art by and of them, are central to the story of our popular culture. The exhibition is on view through July 19.

Instagram: Scott Allan, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 700 (!) features artist Tarrah Krajnak and curator Jennifer Raab.

Krajnak is featured in two exhibitions on opposite sides of the United States. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Krajnak is featured in "Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography" through July 13. The exhibition was curated by Shana Lopes, Erin O’Toole, and Delphine Sims, with Sally Katz and Alex Landry. At the International Center of Photography, New York, Kraynak's work is included in "To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography." Organized by Sara Ickow, Keisha Scarville, and Elisabeth Sherman, the exhibition presents the ways in which seven photographers are reimagining what an archive can be, or might look like.

A third US exhibition of Krajnak's work opens April 16 at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. It will be curated by Georgia Erger.

Krajnak works between photography, performance, and poetry. Krajnak, who was born in Peru to an Indigenous mother and who was raised by a transracial US family, often interrogates photography standards and finds that they have limited women, and furthered the violent loss of Native land, lives, and rights. She has won most major photography prizes; her work is in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.

Raab is the author of "Relics of War: The History of a Photograph" from Princeton University Press. It examines a photograph made by Clara Barton and published by Matthew Brady that features relics from the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. "Relics of War" traces how the photograph was a central part of Barton's work of addressing mass death and related grief. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42-59.

Instagram: Tarrah Krajnak, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 699 features two conversations with artist Jack Whitten. 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York is presenting "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the third major US survey of Whitten's work since 2014. (Previous exhibitions include a paintings retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2014-15, and a sculpture retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017-18.) "The Messenger," which is on view through August 2, was curated by Michelle Kuo with assistance from Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge. Next month MoMA will publish a catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75. 

This episode features Whitten's two visits to The MAN Podcast. The first was recorded in 2013 on the occasion of "Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73" at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum. The second was recorded before a live audience at the opening of "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting" at MCASD in 2014. For images, please see Episode No. 98 and Episode No. 151. 

Episode No. 698 features artist Alex Da Corte and curator Mark Castro.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "Alex Da Corte: The Whale," a survey of Da Corte's relationship with painting. Featuring more than 40 works, the exhibition examines Da Corte's interest in consumerism, persona, sex, invisible labor, taste, power, and desire. Curated by Alison Hearst, "Da Corte" will be on view through Sept. 7. A catalogue from MAMFW and DelMonico Books is forthcoming. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.

Da Corte's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MOCA Toronto, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, MASS MoCA, North Adams, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Castro is the curator of "Oaxaca Central: Contemporary Mexican Printmaking" at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va. Across 100 works, the exhibition surveys recent printmaking practice in Oaxaca, home to a vibrant, activist printmaking community. Artists in the exhibition include Ricardo Pinto, Mercedes López, Dr. Lakra, Colectivo Subterráneos, and Emi Winter. "Oaxaca Central is on view through May 11.

Episode No. 697 features curator Sarah Humphreville and author Marisa Anne Bass.

With Eric Crosby, Humphreville is the co-curator of "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery." The exhibition survey's Abercrombie's synthesis of surrealism, landscape, portraiture and still-life, and is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date. It is at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh through June 1 before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55.

Bass is the author of The Monument's End: Public Art and the Modern Republic, which was recently released by Princeton University Press. The book finds the origin of many of today's questions around monuments and memory within the early modern Netherlands. Among the artists Bass discusses are Rembrandt, Dirck van Delen, Hendrick de Keyser, Spencer Finch, Thomas Hirschhorn, and more. Bass is a professor at Yale University. Her previous books include Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt and Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity. Amazon and Bookshop offer "The Monument's End" for $20-42.

Instagram: Sarah Humphreville, Marisa Bass, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 696 features curators Natalie Dupêcher and Leigh Arnold.

Dupêcher is the curator of "Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight" at the Menil Collection, Houston. "Taking Flight" offers work from three of Overstreet's abstract painting series: Flight Pattern (early 1970s), and related bodies of work from the 1960s and 1990s. While recent exhibitions such as "Now Dig This!" (Hammer Museum, 2011) and "Soul of a Nation" (Tate Modern, 2017) have included Overstreets, this is the first solo museum exhibition of his work in 30 years. The Menil's exhbition guide is available here. An exhibition catalogue will be available in the late spring. "Taking Flight" is on view through July 13.

Arnold is the curator of "Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. Across two floors, the exhibition reveals Yang's critique of the modernist project and its tendency toward singular Western domination. It is on view through April 27.

Works discussed on the program include:

• Yang's Spring Sailors – Six Synecologies Aloft (2024) at 2024's Lahore Biennial.

Instagram: Natalie Dupêcher, Leigh Arnold, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 695 features artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and curator Ken Myers.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless," an examination of the complications of colonial histories from an Indigenous perspective. "Speechless" particularly focuses on how narratives, myths, and histories are constructed through the concept of the cargo cult, which developed as a result of Western military campaigns that delivered supplies to foreign lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. These cults formed around the provisions that were delivered by the imperial forces (such as radios), the very groups that were colonizing Indigenous lands. The exhibition was curated by Apsara DiQuinzio and remains on view through July 6.

Concurrently, Luger's work may be seen in the 16th Sharjah Biennial, "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" at the Moody Center, Rice University, and in "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always" at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University.

Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. His work, across a wide range of media, extends cultural awareness and enables action. His work has been presented in solo or two-person shows by the Public Art Fund, New York; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., and more.

Works discussed on the program include:

• A single-channel version of Luger's Future Ancestral Technologies: New Myth, 2021;
• Luger's extended Mirror Shield project; and
• Luger's Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta installation series, which celebrates the Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI), 2021-.

Myers is the curator of "Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery" at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "Painted with Silk" looks at how US schoolgirl embroideries made from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries helped build and extend ideas around nation, gender, class, and religion. It also includes contemporary embroideries by Elaine Reichek that repurpose the form of earlier embroideries and investigate their constructions of gender, class, and race. The exhibition is on view through June 15.

Instagram: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 694 features artists Tacita Dean and Ilana Harris-Babou.

The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "Tacita Dean: Blind Folly," the first major museum survey of Dean's work in the United States. The exhibition examines a range of Dean's production, with a special emphasis on her drawing practice. "Blind Folly" includes new works informed by Dean's time in Houston, including her residency at (and in!) the Menil's Cy Twombly Gallery. It is on view through April 19.

The Menil, MACK, and Dean have produced several books related to the Menil exhibition:

• Why Cy, an artist's book of images Dean produced during her residency in the Twombly Gallery. Within it is a small booklet of notes and drawings that Dean conceived during the same residency.
• Tacita Dean: Blind Folly, a book by exhibition curator Michelle White that addresses Dean's practice and oeuvre in a strikingly legible, almost narrative way.

Why Cy is available from Amazon for about $95; White's Blind Folly is available from Amazon for about $28 - or just $10 on Kindle.

Dean is one of Britain's most celebrated artists. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums such as the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. In 2011 Dean's work FILM was shown in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

Harris-Babou's 2018 Reparation Hardware is included within "Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica" at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which was curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, survey's Pan-Africanism's cultural manifestations across 350 objects made over the last 100 or so years. It is on view through March 30.

Reparation Hardware, which was made for DIS.ART, is streamed below.

Harris-Babou has been included in group shows at the Wellcome Collection, London, Apex Art, New York, and at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. Her work is in the collections of museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Episode No. 693 is a Presidents' Day weekend clips episode featuring artist John Edmonds. 

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York recently announced the acquisition of Edmonds’s complete 2018 Untitled (Hood) series. The work was included in last year's Guggenheim exhibition "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility."

Edmonds discussed his Untitled (Hood) series in detail when he came onto the program in 2020 on the occasion of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Among the institutions that have collected Edmonds' work are the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and SFMOMA.  

For images, see Episode No. 446. 

Instagram: John Edmonds, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 692 features curators Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, and Danielle Canter. 

Hokanson and Seidenstein are the co-curators of "Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature," which opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend and is on view through May 11. It is the first retrospective of the German Romantic artist's work in the United States. Friedrich was a leader in German Romanticism, which offered new understandings of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Last year was the 250th anniversary of Friedrich's birth. The Met has published an excellent catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50. 

Canter is the curator of "A Brush with Nature: Romantic Landscape Drawings," which opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum on Feb. 18. The exhibition features dozens of drawings in which artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Théodore Géricault, and Friedrich respond to the natural world around them. "A Brush with Nature" will be on view through May 25. 

Instagram: Alison Hokanson, Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 691 features artists Kota Ezawa and Amy Pleasant. 

The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture is presenting "Kota Ezawa: Here and There - Now and Then," an investigation into the creation of memory in the Bay Area and nationally, through March 9. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, features Ezawa and Julian Brave NoiseCat's Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), and Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021), and Ursonate (2022), which were among 11 Ezawas recently acquired by SFMOMA. "Ezawa" was curated by Frank Smigiel. Fort Mason will publish a catalogue on the closing weekend. SFMOMA is showing Ezawa's National Anthem (2018) in "Count Me In"  through April 27.

Ezawa's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at many museums, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. His work is in the collection most major US art museums, and in museums in seven other countries. 

Pleasant is included in "Synchronicities: Intersecting Figuration with Abstraction" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha. The exhibition examines some of the ways in which nine artists have recently navigated the space between abstraction and figuration. "Synchronicities" was curated by Rachel Adams, and is on view through May 4.

Pleasant's work is also on view at The Carnegie, Covington, KY in "Southern Democratic" through February 15, and in "Vivid: A Fresh Take" at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN through June 1. 

Pleasant has been included in exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and more. 

Instagram: Amy Pleasant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 690 features curators Vivien Greene and Michael Hartman.

With Tracey Bashkoff, Greene is the co-curator of "Harmony & Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition surveys a transnational art movement that joined abstraction to dance, music, and poetry and that engaged with ideas of simultaneity across kaleidoscopic pictures and sculpture. Among the artists included in "Harmony & Dissonance" are Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. The exhibition is on view through March 9. The Guggenheim published an excellent catalogue for the exhibition. It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for about $60.

Hartman is the curator of "Beyond the Bouquet: Arranging Flowers in American Art" at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The exhibition looks at how North American artists have made use of floral beauty.

Instagram: Michael Hartman, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 689 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist B. Ingrid Olson.

Olson's work is included in "Descending the Staircase" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition considers novel artistic approaches to representing the human body. The exhibition is curated by Jadine Collingwood, Associate Curator, and Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator and is on view through July 6.

This episode was recorded in 2022 on the occasion of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University's presentation of two concurrent B. Ingrid Olson exhibitions, “History Mother,” and “Little Sister.” Each exhibition was on a separate floor of CCVA’s building. Olson’s exhibitions feature site-specific presentations that engage with doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, the interplay between photography and sculpture, and between the body and the built environment. The exhibitions were curated by Dan Byers.

The week this show originally aired, the Secession in Vienna had just closed an exhibition of Olson’s work titled “Elastic X.” In addition, Olson’s work has previously been featured in solo presentations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

For images please see Episode No. 566.

Instagram: B. Ingrid Olson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 688 features artist Sayre Gomez and curator Anna Katz. 

Gomez is included in two of the season's major contemporary group shows: "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2000," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.  

Gomez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work uses hyperrealism to address current events and representation and visuality in US society.  

Katz is the curator of "Ordinary People," which is at MOCA through May 4. The exhibition's fine catalogue was published by the museum and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $65. 

"The Living End" was curated by Jamillah James, who discussed her exhibition on Episode No. 683. It is on view through March 16. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20.

Instagram: Sayre Gomez, Anna Katz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 687 features artist Laurie Simmons.

Simmons is included in "Diaries of Home" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features works by women and nonbinary photographers who explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home. The exhibition, which is on view through February 2, is co-curated by Andrea Karnes and Clare Milliken. 

This conversation was taped in 2018, on the occasion of "Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera," a retrospective of Simmons' work (also at MAMFW). 

For images, see Episode No. 362.

Episode No. 686 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold. 

An untitled 1966 Plimack Mangold painting is on view in the current permanent collection installation at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The NGA has one of the finest institutional collections of Plimack Mangold's work: eight paintings and at least a dozen works on paper. 

New York's Craig Starr Gallery is showing "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975-84" through January 25, 2025.

Plimack Mangold's paintings, seemingly rooted in realism but often undermining it, play with perspective, flatness, engage the centuries-long tradition of painters making paintings about painting. In 1994 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo organized a retrospective of her paintings; two years earlier the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized a works on paper survey.

For images, see 2018's Episode No. 349. 

Episode No. 685 features artist Vincent Valdez and curators Theresa Harlan and Drew Johnson.

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is presenting "Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..." the first major survey of Valdez's career. The exhibition, which features Valdez's work across media, reveals Valdez's construction of US national memory. It was co-curated by Patricia Restrepo and Denise Markonish. It's on view at CAMH through March 23, 2025, when it will travel to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue is forthcoming.

Also, Valdez is included in "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition surveys post-war photorealism up to the present. It was curated by Anna Katz with Paula Kroll and is on view through May 4, 2025. MOCA and DelMonico Books published an excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $65.

Harlan and Johnson are the curators of "Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar's Photographs of Native California" at the Oakland Museum of California. It's on view through June 22, 2025. The exhibition surveys Aguilar's presentation of Native life and land, mostly between 1982 and 2018. The exhibition is OMCA's first presentation of Aguilar's work after the Aguilar's family gift of his archive to the museum in 2022. The show does not have a catalogue, but many of the works in the show are featured within Harlan's 2015 Aguilar monograph for Heyday Books, "She Sang Me a Good Luck Song."

Episode No. 684 features curators Akili Tommasino and Mark Mitchell. 

Tommasino is the curator of "Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-now" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition examines how Black artists and other cultural figures have engaged with ancient Egypt from the American centennial, through the Harlem Renaissance, to the present. "Flight into Egypt" is on view through February 17, 2025. The fascinating catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.

Artists in the exhibition who are previous MAN Podcast guests include: 

• Lauren Halsey;
• Julie Mehretu: Episode No. 82, No. 255; No. 417;
• Robert Pruitt;
• Betye Saar;
• Lorna Simpson; and 
• Fred Wilson.

Mitchell curated "The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876-1917," which is at the Yale University Art Gallery through January 5, 2025. The exhibition looks at how two generations of post-Civil War artists adopted the human figure as their focus (partly in response to the mass death of the Civil War era). "The Dance of Life" particularly focuses on studies related to artistic commissions for major US public sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, Washington, and the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. YUAG published a valuable catalogue It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for $50-60.

Instagram: Akili Tommasino, Tyler Green.

Air date: December 12, 2024.

Episode No. 683 features artist Tala Madani and curator Jamillah James.

James is the curator of "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Madani is among the 60-plus artists included in the exhibition. "The Living End" surveys the arc of painting over the last half-century with a particular focus on artists who have redefined painting by using new technologies, imaging techniques, and their own bodies. The exhibition will be on view through March 16, 2025. Jack Schneider assisted James with the show. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20.

The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington is presenting "Tala Madani: Be flat," a solo exhibition featuring recent and newly commissioned work that explores the influence of symbols, language, and mark-making on power dynamics and individual agency. It was curated by Shamim M. Momin and is on view through August 17, 2025.

Madani makes paintings and painting-informed animations that consider gender, political authority, and representation. Her work typically includes bald, middle-aged men in bizarre, often hilarious circumstances. She has had solo shows at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Secession, Vienna; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

Episode No. 682 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Leslie Martinez.

Martinez is included within "Shifting Landscapes," which is at the the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York until January 2026. The exhibition considers how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists as they address the world around them (which is to say US artists are addressing land and landscape as they have since the days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Cole.) The show was curated by Jennie Goldstein, Marcela Guerrero, and Roxanne Smith, with Angelica Arbelaez.

Seven previous MAN Podcast guests are in the exhibition, including Robert Adams (Episode No. 41,  227, 555), Teresita Fernández, LaToya Ruby Frazier, An-My Lê, Patrick Martinez, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Alison Saar.

Martinez was previously featured in solo shows at MoMA PS1 in Queens, and the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston. Their work is in the collection of museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

For images, see Episode No. 635.

Instagram: Leslie Martinez, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 681 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Tidawhitney Lek.

Lek is featured in "Spirit House" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. The exhibition considers how 33 contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art, including how the spiritual relates to diaspora, connections to ancestral homelands, and the experience of feeling present within multiple cultures and multiple geographies. The show's curatorial framework was inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter for the supernatural. The exhibition was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua. It is on view through January 26, 2025. An excellent exhibition catalogue, titled "Spirit House: Hauntings in Contemporary Art of the Asian Diaspora,"  was published by the Cantor and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50.

Discussed on the program:

• Martha Rosler's "House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home" series may be viewed on the website of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• The work of Amir Fallah and Annie Lapin.
• Lek's website.

Lek is a southern California-based, Cambodian-American artist whose work examines narratives surrounding and the daily experiences of a first-generation American born to immigrant parents. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami. Her first museum solo show was at the Long Beach Museum of Art last year.

Instagram: Tidawhitney Lek, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 680 features artist Ronny Quevedo and curator Jillian Kruse.

The Menil Drawing Institute is presenting "Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo" through August 2025. The work on view, titled C A R A A C A R A, is a site-specific drawing that explores the relationship between origin, transfer, and translation. Each of the drawing's three panels reveals a different step in Quevedo's process. The presentation was curated by Kelly Montana.

Quevedo has had a solo show at the Queens Museum, New York. He's been included in group shows at the Buffalo AKG Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and more.

Kruse is the curator of "Imagination in the Age of Reason" at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition examines how Enlightenment artists presented fantasy and folly in works on paper during an era obsessed with truth and knowledge. It is on view through March 2, 2025.

Instagram: Ronny Quevedo, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 679 features artist Hugh Hayden. 

The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is presenting "Hugh Hayden: Homecoming," an exhibition of new works informed by Hayden's upbringing in Dallas. The show includes sculptures that explore themes such as nostalgia, childhood, education, and religion. The exhibition was curated by Leigh Arnold and will be on view through January 5, 2025. 

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is presenting "Hugh Hayden: Home Work," a survey of the last decade of Hayden's work. The show includes a site-responsive installation conceived for the Rose. "Home Work" was curated by Gannit Ankori and Sarah Montross, and will be on view through June 1, 2025.

Among the museums that have presented solo shows of Hayden's work are the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass.; the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and White Columns, New York. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

Instagram: Hugh Hayden, Tyler Green. 

Episode No. 678 features curator Stephan Wolohojian.

Along with Laura Llewellyn, Caroline Campbell and Joanna Cannon, Wolohojian is the curator of "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition examines the role of Sienese artists such as Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini in the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and before the onset of the plague in around 1350. While Florence is typically considered the most important city of the Italian Renaissance, "Siena" argues for a broadening of our understanding of the dawn of a new era. "Siena" is on view through January 26, 2025. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the National Gallery, London. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.

Some of the works referenced on the program are most easily seen via websites that aggregate multiple paintings into single pages, including:

• Ambrogia Lorenzetti, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, 1838-39, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
• Duccio, Maestà, 1311, Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena.
• Ugolino di Nerio, Santa Croce altarpiece, 1325-28.

Episode No. 677 features artist Andrea Carlson.

As mentioned at the beginning of this week's program:

Help Asheville and my friends and neighbors across the southern Appalachians! These are all local organizations helping people in western North Carolina:

• Southern Smoke Foundation;
• Asheville Food & Beverage United (also here); and
• Beloved Asheville.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is presenting "Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons," the latest exhibition in its "Chicago Works" series. Across painting, video, sculpture, and two billboards (along Interstate 94 between Illinois and Wisconsin), "Shimmer on Horizons" presents Carlson's investigation of how landscapes are constructed both politically and culturally. The exhibition was curated by Iris Colburn and is on view through February 2, 2025.

Carlson's work may also be seen in "Andrea Carlson: Future Cache" at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which features a 40-foot-tall memorial wall that towers over visitors, commemorating the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians who were violently burned from their land in Northern Michigan on October 15, 1900. Curated by Jennifer Friess, the presentation is on view through June 2025.

Carlson is also included within "Scientia Sexualis" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through March 2, 2025. The exhibition, realized as part of the Getty's "PST ART: Art & Science Collide" program, centers research-driven interventions into raced and gendered assumptions that structure scientific disciplines governing our sense of the sexual body. It was curated by Jennifer Doyle and Jeanne Vaccaro.

Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent) typically addresses land and its history by foregrounding decolonization narratives. Museums that have featured solo exhibitions of her work include the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, New York, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Denver Art Museum. She is also the co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.

Chicagoans: on Saturday Carlson and poet Heid E. Erdrich will be in conversation at the MCA at 2:30 pm. A program at the Center for Native Futures precedes the event.

Instagram: Andrea Carlson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 676 features curator Jay A. Clarke.

With Jill Lloyd, Clarke is the co-curator of "Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me," which is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through January 12, 2025. The career-surveying exhibition features Modersohn-Becker's proto-expressionist works that address subjects and themes such as childhood, the bodily experience of motherhood, pregnancy, and old age. "Modersohn-Becker" also features many of the artist's self-portraits, including the first nude self-portraits known to have been made by a woman. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by Prestel Verlag. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-47. 

Episode No. 675 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Ken Gonzales-Day. 

The Yale Center for British Art is presenting "Ken Gonzales-Day: Composition in Black and Brown" a two-part public art project informed by Gonzales-Day's investigation of YCBA's collections. Both works, a billboard along Interstate 95 in West Haven, Conn., and a site-specific vinyl work on the museum, feature Gonzales-Day's interrogations of historical constructions of race and the limits of representation. The billboard is on view into October 2024; the work at YCBA is on view until December 2024. 

Gonzales-Day’s work considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems, such as photographs of lynchings and museum displays. His book “Lynching in the West: 1850-1935” expanded our understanding of racialized violence in the United States through the discovery of photographs of lynchings of Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and African-Americans in California. His work has been the subject of solo or two-person exhibitions at museums such as the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

This episode was taped in 2021 on the occasion of Gonzales-Day's inclusion in at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. For images, see Episode No. 498. 

Episode No. 674 features curators Kristen Collins and Nancy K. Turner, and curator Thea Liberty Nichols.

Collins and Turner are the curators of "Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. "Lumen" explores how scientific understandings of light shaped the visual culture of the Middle Ages. It includes over 100 works, including celestial globes, golden altars, and illuminated manuscripts from the Christian and Islamic worlds. It's on view through December 8, 2024. "Lumen" is part of PST ART : Art & Science Collide, a regional cultural celebration taking place across over 70 Southland exhibition and performance spaces. It is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Getty. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-70.

With Mark Pascale, Thea Liberty Nichols is the co-curator of "Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective," which opens at the Hammer Museum on October 12 and which runs through January 5, 2025. Ramberg was a painter who developed an intense visual vocabulary derived from often fetishized objects such as corsets, hands, high-heeled shoes and hair, building from them into arresting compositions. Late in her life -- Ramberg died in 1995 at the age of 49 -- she also made an extraordinary series of quilts. The exhibition was a significant critical hit at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on view over the summer. The wonderful catalogue was published by the Art Institute of Chicago, which originated the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.

Episode No. 673 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Matthew Brandt. 

Brandt is included in "Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene" at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition shows how 45 photo-based artists from around the world have examined the Anthropocene. "Second Nature" was curated by Jessica May and Marshall N. Price and is on view through January 5, 2025. An excellent catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $49-60. 

Brandt's works often join physical elements from the subjects he photographs to investigations of the land and our impacts on it. He's received solo shows at museums such as the Newark Museum, and he's been included in major group shows at museums such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and more. His work is in nearly all major institutional US photography collections. 

Brandt's website includes extensive galleries of the series of work discussed on the program, including: 

• Lakes and Reservoirs;
• Carbon;
• Trees (including George Bush Park 1, 2009-11);
• Taste Tests (featuring Yosemite);
• Eagles;
• Woodblocks;
• Waterfalls; and
• 1864.

Instagram: Matthew Brandt, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 672 features curators Kimberly A. Jones and Mary Morton; and curators Sant Khalsa and Juniper Harrower.

Along with Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins, Jones and Morton are the curators of "1874: The Impressionist Moment" at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition examines the condition of Parisian art in 1874, both official standards exhibited at and effectively promoted via the official salon, and the renegade works exhibited at the first impressionist exhibition. Included are impressionist stalwarts such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, and also salon lions such as William Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme. The smart, delightful catalogue was published by the Musee d'Orsay and the NGA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $46-60. "1874" is on view through January 19, 2025.

Khalsa and Harrower are the curators of "Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees" at the Lancaster (Calif.) Museum of Art and History. Part of this year's sprawling Getty PST ART initiative, it's on view through December 29. "Desert Forest" examines how artists from Carleton Watkins to Cara Romero to Nancy Baker Cahill have presented Joshua trees and the fragile Mojave Desert ecosystem in their work. A fine catalogue was published by Inlandia Institute. It's available from MOAH.

Instagram: Mary Morton, Kimberly Jones, Sant Khalsa, Juniper Harrower, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 671 features curator, professor, and former museum director Dean Sobel, and artist Jackie Winsor.

Winsor, a leading Canadian-American post-minimalist and feminist sculptor, died last week at 82. She was the first female sculptor to receive a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1979), which holds five of her works in its collection. The most recent institutional survey of Winsor's work was at MAMCO Geneva in 2022.

This week's program opens with Sobel, who organized the 1991 Winsor retrospective at the Milwaukee Art Museum. (The show traveled to the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Calif., the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Akron Art Museum in Ohio.  Sobel was later the director of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, and is a professor at the University of Denver.

Next will be host Tyler Green's 2014 conversation with Winsor, apparently the next-to-last interview for which she sat. (See her 2019 program with MoMA curator Christophe Cherix.) The program was recorded on the occasion of "Jackie Winsor: With and Within" at The Aldrich, Ridgefield, Conn. For images, see Episode No. 154.

Episode No. 670 features artist Arlene Shechet. 

Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY is showing "Arlene Shechet: Girl Group" through November 10. The exhibition joins Shechet's recent work exhibited in a typical gallery setting to six new monumental sculptures Shechet  created for installation at Storm King. The exhibition was co-curated by Nora Lawrence and Eric Booker, with Adela Goldsmith. 

On September 27 and 28, a group of six women will gather to dance at dusk in the midst of Shechet's outdoor sculptures. The performances are choreographed by Annie-B Parson in collaboration with the dancers: Cecily Campbell, Elizabeth DeMent, Natalie Green, Kashia Kancey, Brooke Ashley Rucker, and Jin Ju Song-Begin. Costumes for the performances were designed by Shechet. Tickets are available through Storm King's events page. 

Shechet's work is also on view at many art museums around the United States, including at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass., in "Disrupt the View: Arlene Shechet at the Harvard Art Museums," and more.

Shechet is one of the nation's greatest living sculptors. Among the institutions that have presented solo exhibitions of her work are The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; The Frick Collection, New York; and the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha. In 2015 the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston presented a mid-career survey. (On the occasion of that exhibition, Shechet was a guest on Episode No. 194 of The MAN Podcast.) 

Instagram: Arlene Shechet, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 669 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tammy Nguyen.

This late summer and fall Nguyen will be featured in two institutional exhibitions, one a solo show and the other a group show. On October 4, the Sarasota (Fla.) Art Museum will present "Tammy Nguyen: Timaeus and the Nations." The show was curated by Rangsook Yoon. On September 4 the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University will present "Spirit House." It's an examination of how contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art. It was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua.

Nguyen was a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship, and has exhibited at museums such as MoMA PS1, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and the Dallas Museum of Art. This program was taped in 2023 on the occasion of her first museum solo exhibition, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She is also the founder of Passenger Pigeon Press, an artists’ book publisher.

For images, see Episode No. 625B.

Episode No. 668 is a summer clips episode featuring historian and author David Bindman.

Bindman’s most recent book is ‘Race Is Everything’: Art and Human Difference. It examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century racializing science (sometimes referred to as pseudoscience) and how European art both influenced it, and was itself influenced by it. The book pays special attention to the racialization of people of African and Jewish descent. It considers the skull as a racializing marker, Darwin and Darwinism, the construction of the Mediterranean ‘race,’ Anglo-Saxonism, the racializing debate over Egyptians, and plenty more. ‘Race is Everything’ was published by Reaktion Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $30-37.

Episode No. 667 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Melissa Cody.

MoMA PS1 is presenting "Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies," through September 9. The exhibition features over 30 weavings and a new work. It was curated by Isabella Rjeille and Ruba Katrib.

Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver, creates tapestries from traditional techniques that engage both ancestral and contemporary ideas and forms. Her work is partly informed by the Germantown style, developed in the nineteenth century by weavers who used industrially dyed yarns produced in Germantown, Pennsylvania and shipped west to be used by Diné weavers. Cody’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, SITE Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and more.

This program was taped on the occasion of Cody's inclusion in the 2023 Hammer Museum "Made in LA" biennial. For images, see Episode No. 623.

Instagram: Melissa Cody, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 666 features author and art historian Michael Lobel.

Lobel is the author of "Van Gogh and the End of Nature," which was just published by Yale University Press. The book interrogates Van Gogh's presentation of nature, and finds that Van Gogh was looking more intently at industry, pollution, and environmental degradation than is typically recognized. Bookshop and Amazon offer the book for about $42.

Lobel is a professor of art history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His previous books include Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art (Yale University Press, 2002), James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics and History in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2009) and John Sloan: Drawing on Illustration (Yale University Press, 2014).

Instagram: Michael Lobel, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 665 features curator Cathleen Chaffee and critic Elisabeth Kirsch. 

Chaffee is the curator of "Marisol: A Retrospective," which is at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) through January 6, 2025. The exhibition presents work Marisol, sometimes remembered as 'the forgotten star of pop art,' made between the 1950s and the early 2000s. It builds on an extraordinary collection of works that Marisol left to the Buffalo AKG Museum upon her death. The museum and DelMonico Books have published a superb catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-70. Chaffee curated the exhibition with the assistance of Julia Vázquez. 

Kirsch is the author of "Handmade Papers, 1980-2005," an essay in the catalogue for "Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence," a retrospective now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The catalogue was edited, and the exhibition curated, by Erin Dziedzic. At the MCA, where "Jaramillo" is on view through January 5, 2025, its presentation was organized by René Morales and Iris Colburn. The exhibition's middle gallery presents an extensive mini-survey of Jaramillo's paper-constructed works. Amazon and Bookshop offer the catalogue for about $50.

Instagram: Cathleen Chaffee, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 664 features curator Sarah Kelly Oehler and artist Rebecca Manson.

With Annelise K. Madsen, Oehler is the co-curator of "Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks." The exhibition spotlights O'Keeffe's paintings of New York City, surrounding them with pictures she made of Lake George and the Southwest. It's at the Art Institute of Chicago through September 22, when it will travel to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The exhibition catalogue was published by the AIC. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40-46.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is showing "Rebecca Manson: Barbecue," an immersive installation made from ceramic. Manson's work has been shown in group shows at institutions such as Ballroom Marfa in Texas, and the Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, and at Tribeca Park in New York. "Manson" was curated by Clare Milliken and will be on view through August 25.

Instagram: Sarah Kelly Oehler, Rebecca Manson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 663 features artist Jeremy Frey and curator Sarah Humphreville.

The Portland Museum of Art is presenting "Jeremy Frey: Woven," a twenty-year survey of Frey's basketry and printmaking. The exhibition features more than fifty baskets made from natural materials such as black ash and sweetgrass, as well as prints and video. The exhibition is in Maine through September 15, when it will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was curated by Ramey Mize and Jaime DeSimone. The excellent catalogue was published by Rizzoli Electa in association with the PMA. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $35-46.

In 2011, Frey became the first basket-maker to win Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market, in 2011, a feat he repeated in 2014. His work has been included in exhibitions at institutions such as The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass.

Frey, a seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket-maker, makes his baskets from ash trees, which are threatened by an invasive species called the emerald ash borer. The exhibition also presents this threat to Wabanaki cultural traditions and northeastern forests.

Humphreville is the curator of "Eastman Johnson and Maine," at the Colby Museum of Art at Colby College. The show celebrates the bicentennial of Johnson's birth with a presentation of works Johnson made in Maine, his home state. It is accompanied by a gallery of works made by Johnson's peers. "Johnson and Maine" is on view through December 8.

Patricia Hills, the director of the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné Project, served as a scholarly advisor to the project. Because the project's website is such a valuable resource, here are links to the works we discussed on the program. Non-Johnson works are included below.

• Woodcutter, ~1868;
• Measurement and Contemplation in the Camp, ~1861-65;
• On Their Way to the Camp, 1873;
• The Party in the Maple Sugar Camp, ~1861-65;
• The Truants, ~1861-65;
• Barn Swallows, 1878;
• Barn Interior at Corn Husking Time, 1860;
• Shelling Corn, 1864; and
• Winnowing Grain, ~1860-66.

Instagram: Jeremy Frey, Sarah Humphreville, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 662 features artists Sarah Sze and Zoë Charlton.

The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Sarah Sze," a presentation of new works that explore how memory marks time and space, and how art negotiates image and object. The ex\xhibition is on view through August 18.

Sze represented the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Other -ennials at which her work has been featured include the Whitney (2000), Carnegie (1999), Berlin (1998), Guangzhou (2015), Liverpool (2008), and Lyon (2009). She has made public artworks for sites such as LaGuardia Airport in New York, and Storm King Art Center.

Charlton is included in "A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration" at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition presents impressions of the Great Migration as considered by a dozen contemporary artists. The exhibition, which was co-curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Jessica Bell Brown, was organized for Berkeley by Anthony Graham with Matthew Villar Miranda. It's on view through September 22.

Charlton's work often addresses culturally loaded landscapes and histories. It has been included in exhibitions at museums such as the Studio Museum in Harlem and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark. Her work is in the collection of museums such as The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Instagram: Zoe Charlton, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 661 is a holiday clips episode featuring curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner. 

Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner was the co-curator of “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle.” The exhibition, which debuted at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts in 2020, presented Lawrence’s 1954-56 “Struggle: From the History of the American People.” The series presents a revisionist and pictorial history of the first five decades of the US republic, or what Lawrence called “the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy.” The exhibition marked the first time in more than 60 years that the paintings had been together. The excellent catalogue was published by University of Washington Press. Amazon offers it for $45.

For images, see Episode No. 435.

Episode No. 660 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday clips program with artist Kiyan Williams.

Williams' work is on view in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York through August 11. On July 6, Art Omi in Ghent, NY will present "Kiyan Williams: Vertigo." It features large-scale works including Vertigo and 2022's Ruins of Empire, a reimagining of Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom, which was installed atop the US Capitol dome in 1863. Ruins of Empire debuted at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York as part of the Public Art Fund's "Black Atlantic" exhibition.

The Whitney exhibition was curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes; the Art Omi show was curated by by Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, with Guy Weltchek.

This program was recorded on the occasion of the aforementioned Public Art Fund exhibition and the Hammer Museum's 2022 presentation of “Hammer Projects: Kiyan Williams”, the artist’s first solo museum show.

Instagram: Kiyan Williams, Tyler Green. 

Episode No. 659 features artists Barbara Bosworth and the Haas Brothers.

Two art museums are showing exhibitions of Bosworth's work: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is presenting "Barbara Bosworth: The Meadow" through December 1. The show features photographs of a meadow in Carlisle, Massachusetts and near the Concord River that Bosworth made over 15 years, pictures that investigate time, human presence, and nature. The exhibition was curated by Karen Haas. In 2015 Radius Books published a book of Bosworth's "The Meadow" pictures accompanied by texts by poet Margot Anne Kelley.

"Barbara Bosworth: Sun Light Moon Shadow" is at the Cleveland Museum of Art through June 30. The exhibition offers Bosworth's photographs of light, including eclipses, sunrises, and sunsets, many of which were made near Bosworth's childhood home in eastern Ohio. It was curated by Barbara Tannenbaum.

The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Haas Brothers: Moonlight" through August 25. The exhibition, which highlights the fusion of art, design, and technology in the brothers' practice, shows work made by twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas both inside and outside the museum. The Haas Brothers have previously had solo exhibitions at the Katonah (NY) Museum of Art, the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Ga., and at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Fla.

Instagram: Barbara Bosworth, Barbara Bosworth (weather), Haas Brothers, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 658 features artists Jes Fan and Emilio Rojas.

Fan's work is included in two ongoing -ennials: the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York through August 11; and Greater Toronto Art 2024 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto through July 28. The Whitney exhibition was curated by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes; GTA 2024 was organized by Ebony L. Haynes, Toleen Touq, and Kate Wong.

Fan's sculptures consider the constructs of race and gender and their relationship to the intersection of biology and identity. As part of his explorations, Fan often incorporates living matter, such hormones, and fluids, such as glass, into his work. Fan's work has been exhibited at the 2022 Venice Biennale, the 2021 New Museum Triennial at the New Museum, New York, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and more.

As mentioned on the program:

• Stills from Fan's 2023 video Palimpsest.
• Byung-Chul Han's book Saving Beauty.

Rojas is included in "Descending the Staircase" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, presented across two floors of the MCA, presents ways in which artist have represented the human body. Curated by Jadine Collingwood and Jack Schneider, it is on view through August 25.

Rojas works across disciplines to investigate and reveal sites of knowledge that are rich with historical narrative. His work often specifically addresses colonial histories, and the relationships between those histories and the present. Rojas' work has been exhibited at museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, and he has participated in festivals and biennials in the US, Europe, and in Asia.

As mentioned on the program: 

• Rojas' GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM (Santa Maria);
• The Columbian half dollar coined for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. 

Instagram: Jes Fan, Emilio Rojas, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 657 features curator Natalie Dupêcher.

Dupêcher is the curator of "Janet Sobel: All-Over" at The Menil Collection, Houston. Across 30 paintings and drawings, the exhibition explores Sobel's short, meteoric, hugely influential career as one of the first New York artists associated with abstract expressionism as it began to coalesce in the early 1940s. Among other works, the Menil exhibition brings together six of Sobel's famed "all-over" paintings for the first time in 60 years.

Sobel was an emigrant from Ukraine who began to make art around 1940. She used non-traditional supports such as glass and cardboard, and unusual paints, including oil and enamel borrowed from her family's costume jewelery-making business. Contemporary critics credited her with developing the action-driven, dripping technique that would become core to the legends created around other, male artists. The exhibition is on view through August 11.

This episode was taped before a live audience at the Menil.

Episode No. 656 features artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons and curator Lauren Applebaum.

"María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold", now at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, is the first multimedia survey of Campos-Pons' work in 17 years. The exhibition spotlights Campos-Pons' photography, installation, and performance-based practices, which typically address global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration -- how their impacts continue into the present. The exhibition is on view at Duke through June 9. It was curated by Carmen earmo Hermo and Mazie Harris with Jenée-Daria Strand. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Getty and the Brooklyn Museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-42.

On the program host Tyler Green mentions this excellent website published by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. on the occasion of its 2016 Campos-Pons exhibition.

With Daniel Ackermann, Lea Lane, and Jenny Garwood, Applebaum is a co-curator of "Layered Legacies: Quilts from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem" at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. The exhibition includes more than 30 quilts and related objects from the MESDA collection (as well as some from private collections) and presents new, revised investigations into their making. It is on view through July 21. NCMA published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition; it is only available at the museum.

Episode No. 655 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Teresita Fernández.

Fernández is included in "Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-today" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. It is the first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora, foregrounding forms that reveal new modes of thinking about identity and place. Over 20 artists are featured in this exhibition, many of whom live in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean heritage. "Forecast Form originated at the MCA Chicago. It was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, with Iris Colburn, Isabel Casso and Nolan Jimbo.

This segment with Fernández was recorded in 2014 when Fernández  created a major new series of installations for MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. Titled “As Above So Below.” That show included three large-scale installations that are informed by Fernández’s interest in landscape, art about landscape, and our perception of landscape, including Black Sun, Sfumato (Epic) and Lunar (Theatre). 

In 2005 Fernández received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MOCA North Miami, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Artpace, the ICA Philadelphia, Castello di Rivoli outside Turin, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and more.

Episode No. 654 features curator Karen Hellman and artist Myra Greene.

With Carolyn Peter, Hellman is the curator of "Nineteenth-Century Photography Now" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition examines how many of the conventions and processes established in photography's early years remain of interest to artists working today. Historical artists within the exhibition include Anna Atkins, Gustave Le Gray, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, and Carleton Watkins. The exhibition is on view through July 7. Claire L’Heureux and Antares Wells assisted the co-curators.

Greene is among the 21 contemporary artists on view. Her work uses photography and textiles to explore representations of the body and race. Core to her practice is an understanding that color is materially and culturally dependent on context, and historically has been. She has had solo exhibitions at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Atlanta, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, and has been included in group exhibitions at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and more.

Ten artists in the exhibition previously have been guests on The Modern Art Notes Podcast:

• Andrea Chung;
• Liz Deschenes;
• Ken Gonzales-Day;
• An-My Lê;
• Lisa Oppenheim;
• Wendy Red Star;
• Mark Ruwedel;
• Paul Mpagi Sepuya (second visit);
• Stephanie Syjuco (second visit); and
• Carrie Mae Weems.

Instagram: Myra Greene, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 653 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features critic and author Deborah Solomon and host Tyler Green's 2016 conversation with Frank Stella. 

Frank Stella died on May 4 at the age of 87. For two decades, from the late 1950s until the late 1970s or early 1980s, Stella was one of the United States' most important painters. The Museum of Modern Art, New York famously devoted two mid-career retrospectives to Stella's work, in 1970 and again in 1987.

Solomon is a critic whose work can often be found in the New York Times, and the author of biographies of Jackson Pollock, Joseph Cornell, Norman Rockwell. Her biography of Jasper Johns is forthcoming. She wrote this critical obit of Stella for the NYT.

The next segment is Stella's 2016 visit to the Modern Art Notes Podcast on the occasion of a Stella retrospective at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. The exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco. 

Episode No. 652 features curators Denise Murrell and Larisa Grollemond.

Murrell is the curator of "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition, which is on view through July 28, explores the ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday life and impacted art on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. An outstanding exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-60.

Grollemond curated "Blood: Medieval/Modern," which is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles through May 19. The exhibition looks at how and why blood has been represented in medieval manuscripts and in some contemporary art too.

Instagram: Denise Murrell, Larisa Grollemond, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 651 features art historian Richard Shiff, curator and art historian Michelle White, and a clip from Kirk Varnedoe's 2003 National Gallery of Art Mellon Lectures. 

Serra died last month at age 85. He may be the most honored sculptor of the post-war era. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which holds the most important institutional collection of his art, has produced Serra retrospectives in 1986 and 2007. The Menil Collection organized a drawings retrospective in 2011; it traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Serra's hometown museum. The most extensive survey of Serra's films and videotapes was presented by the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2017. Serra was a guest on Episode No. 18 of this program.

Shiff is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the director of the Center for the Study of Modernism. He has written or contributed to books on Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Donald Judd, and Serra, including "Forged Steel," which was published by Steidl and David Zwirner Books in 2016.

White is a curator at the Menil Collection. With Bernice Rose and Gary Garrels she curated the 2011 Serra drawings retrospective. 

Kirk Varnedoe was the chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1988 to 2001. He delivered the 2003 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art on the subject "Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock." 

Episode No. 650 features curator Anne-Lise Desmas and author Jim Moske.

With Emerson Bowyer, Desmas is the co-curator of "Camille Claudel," a retrospective of the French modernist sculptor's career, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Until now, Claudel's work has often been under-considered as scholars have focused on her professional and personal relationship with Auguste Rodin; "Claudel" foregrounds the artist's work through a presentation of about 60 sculptures. The exhibition is on view through July 21. Getty Publications has published a excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $65-75.

Moske is the author of "Deaths of Artists." The book uses two fragile scrapbooks in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York both to look at how newspapers in the early twentieth century covered the deaths of artists, and to jump off from that often sensational coverage to learn more about how artists were considered and remembered. The Met has recently digitized the scrapbooks that instigated Moske's examination. Amazon and Bookshop offer the book for about $37.

Instagram: Jim Moske, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 649 features artist Patrick Martinez and author Nell Irvin Painter.

Dallas Contemporary is showing "Patrick Martinez: Histories" through September 1. The exhibition surveys work Martinez has made since 2016, including his Pee Chee folder-referencing paintings, cake paintings, neons, and his recent multi-media paintings which often feature stucco, paint, and neon. It was curated by Rafael Barrientos Martínez.

Martinez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work investigates socio-economic position, immigration, police violence, and civic and cultural loss. He's had solo shows at museums and kunsthalles such as the ICA San Francisco, the Tucson (Ariz.) Museum of Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Vincent Price Art Museums. He's been in recent group shows at the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum, The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., and El Museo del Barrio, New York.

Painter's new book is "I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays." The book features essays on Painter's experience of art school, the construction of whiteness, and a sub-collection of essays on visual culture that addresses topics such as Alma Thomas' life and career, and the exhibition "Soul of a Nation." "I Just Keep Talking" is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $30-35.

Painter's previous books include "The History of White People," "Standing at Armageddon," "Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol," and "Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over." The “starting over” of the title refers to Painter’s retirement after a career as a top 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.

Instagram: Patrick Martinez, Nell Irvin Painter, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 648 features curator Dita Amory and artist Isabelle Frances McGuire.

Along with Ann Dumas, Amory is the curator of "Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain and the Origins of Fauvism," which is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through May 27. The exhibition presents works Henri Matisse and André Derain made in Collioure, a fishing village in the south of France, in the summer of 1905. The work the two men made that summer was crucial to the development of fauvism, the first significant movement of twentieth-century art. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42-47.

McGuire's work is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in "Descending the Staircase." The exhibition, which considers artists' approaches to the human body, was curated by Jadine Collingwood and Jack Schneider. It is on view through August 25. McGuire is a Chicago-based artist whose work considers the body and how our understanding of it can be filtered by video games, film, animatronics, and other technologies. This is their first inclusion in a museum exhibition; they will also be on view at Artist's Space, New York, next month.

Episode No. 647 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Kahlil Robert Irving.

The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis is presenting "Kahlil Robert Irving: Archaeology of the Present" through July 29. "Archaeology of the Present" is a presentation of new Irving sculptures, video, and found objects. Irving has situated his sculptures and other items within a large plywood platform, resembling a stage. Viewers can move onto the structure to encounter both artworks and manufactured objects alike.

The episode was taped in 2023 when Irving was included in “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen” at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition was an examination of the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. It was curated by Alison Hearst. Concurrently, the exhibition now at the Kemper had just opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was curated by William Hernández Luege. At the Kemper, the show was curated by Meredith Malone.

Irving’s assemblages of images and replicas of every day objects challenge constructions of Western identity and culture. His ceramic sculptures incorporate neglected objects that represent a historical moment, as do his room-sized, image-driven installations. Irving has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis; he’s been featured in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and more.

Episode No. 646 features curators Edouard Kopp and Shelley Langdale.

With Kim Conaty, Kopp is the co-curator of "Ruth Asawa: Through Line," a survey of Asawa's lifelong drawing practice. (Kirsten Marples and Scout Hutchinson assisted Kopp and Conaty.) The exhibition, which is at Houston's Menil Collection through July 21, presents drawings, collages, watercolors, sketchbooks, paper-folds and other work. The show is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $36-$46. 

Langdale is the curator of "The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy," an exhibition of German expressionist works on paper from the rich collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The show features a wide range of rarely exhibited (and little-known) drawings, as well as prints. It is on view through May 27.

Episode No. 645 features curator María Elena Ortiz and artist Kenny Rivero.

Ortiz is the curator of "Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition investigates the history of surrealism in the Caribbean and posits that Caribbean intellectuals were key to the development of surrealism in other sites, such as Europe. The exhibition also examines the relationship between Caribbean surrealism and the Afrosurreal in the United States. The exhibition is at MAMFW through July 28. An excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50.

Rivero is among the artists whose work is included in "Surrealism and Us." Rivero's work deconstructs histories and explores the construction of identity through paintings, collage, drawings, and sculpture. His work is in the collections of museums such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Instagram: María Elena Ortiz, Kenny Rivero, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 644 features artists Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Trey Burns.

The Hammer Museum is presenting "Hammer Projects: Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi" through August 11. The exhibition features ARENA V (2024), Nkosi's latest investigation of the social and psychological experiences of Black gymnasts. "Nkosi" is curated by Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi with Connie Butler.

Nkosi is a South Africa-based artist whose work often uses the world of sport, and especially athletes, to consider imperial histories and their impacts on the present, fellowship, competition, and performance.

She has been featured in group exhibitions at the 15th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, and more. In collaboration with East Side Projects, Nkosi presented the multimedia work Equations for a Body at Rest across many spaces in Birmingham, UK as part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Nkosi's short film The Same Track, referenced on the program, may be viewed here.

The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Nasher Public: Trey Burns" through April 21. The exhibition features Burns' Prairie Piece which examines north Texas' ecology through seemingly incongruent subjects such as Robert Smithson's unrealized proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, and the George W. Bush administration and Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

Burns has exhibited at the Pavilion Vendôme and the Ecole Nationale d'Architecture in Paris, at Wassaic Projects, and more. He is also the co-director of Dallas' Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, a non-profit that provides space and support for outdoor sculpture.

Episode No. 643 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator and art historian John P. Bowles and artist Stacy Kranitz.

Along with Dennis Carr and Jacqueline Francis, Bowles is the co-curator of "Sargent Claude Johnson," a survey of the artist's career at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. through May 20. The exhibition features over 40 works Johnson, a major Harlem Renaissance-era sculptor who lived in Oakland, Calif., made between the Great Depression and the civil rights era. It is the first Johnson exhibition in over 25 years. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the Huntington. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40.

The second segment features photographer Stacy Kranitz. Earlier this month Pro Publica published "The year after a denied abortion," an extraordinary story and photo essay by Kranitz and Kavitha Surama. The piece follows Mayron Michelle Hollis as the state of Tennessee simultaneously questioned Hollis' fitness to care for her four children and forced her to continue a life-threatening pregnancy.

Kranitz was featured on the program in September 2023 when “A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845” debuted at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass., this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31.

The exhibition considers the South as a forger of American identity and examines how Southern photographers have contributed to both the advance of their medium, and the US project. “A Long Arc” was curated by Gregory J. Harris and Sarah Kennel. The catalogue was published by Aperture. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $70.

Kranitz’s work, primarily made in the southern Appalachian Mountains, presents the complexity and instability of a rugged region on which industry has preyed. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her 2022 book As it Was Give(n) to Me was published by Twin Palms and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $75-80.

For images of Kranitz's work discussed on the program presented by series or project, please see Episode No. 620 and:

• As it Was Give(n) to Me;
• From the Study on Post Pubescent Manhood;
• Fulcrum of Malice; and
• Target Unknown.

Episode No. 642 features curator Simon Kelly and artist Marc Bauer.

Kelly is the curator of "Matisse and the Sea," at the Saint Louis Art Museum through May 12. The exhibition examines the significance of the sea across Matisse's oeuvre. It especially examines SLAM's own 1907-08 Bathers with a Turtle, long considered one of Matisse's most challenging, enigmatic paintings. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the museum and Hirmer. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $45.

Bauer is showing a 36-foot-wide charcoal and pastel mural titled RESILIENCE, Drawing the Line, 2023 in the latest installment of The Menil Collection's wall drawing series. The work adapts imagery from art history with cultural references specific to global and Houston-specific events. For this work Bauer is trying something new: he's repeatedly modifying the work over the course of its year-long display. It will be on view through this summer.

Bauer was the 2020 recipient of the Prix Meret Oppenheim, Switzerland's most prestigious art award. His work is in the collections of museums such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and he was included in the 2022 Congo Biennial in Kinshasa.

Instagram: Simon Kelly, Marc Bauer, Tyler Green.