The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 621 features artist Carmen Winant and curator Negar Azimi.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is exhibiting 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.

Azimi discusses her exhibition "Becoming Van Leo," the first international survey of the photography of the late Armenian artist known as Van Leo. It's on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through November 5. Born Levon Boyadjian in Turkey, Leo became a leading studio photographer in Cairo between the 1940s and the 1960s. Azimi's exhibition includes some of Leo's earliest pictures from the 1930s, his extensive experiments with self-portraiture, and his challenging of East-West binaries.

Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwentyOne.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:26am EDT

Episode No. 620 features artists Stacy Kranitz and Kristine Potter.

Kranitz and Potter are included in "A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845" at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 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, and will be on view through January 14, 2024 before traveling to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. 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.

Aperture has just published Potter's second monograph, Dark Waters. The book extends Potter's interest in using the US landscape as an ideological site by exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century 'murder ballads' marry site to misogynistic violence. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $43-61.

Instagram: Stacy Kranitz, Kristine Potter, Tyler Green.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwenty.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:00pm EDT

Episode No. 619 features artists Edra Soto and José Lerma.

Soto and Lerma are among the 18 artists featured in "entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago, which is home to third-largest mainland population of Puerto Ricans. "entre horizontes" was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 5, 2024. 

Edra Soto's sculpture and installations prompt viewers to reconsider cross-cultural dynamics, the legacy of colonialism, and personal responsibility. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in the 2020-21 El Museo del Barrio, New York, triennial, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more. In 2023 Soto was awarded a US LatinX Art Forum fellowship. Soto also is the co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin. 

Lerma is a painter whose work blends the historical, autobiographical, art historical and mythological, often through portraits that suggest (or name) specific individuals while pointing to how much of their public personae are manufactured. Simultaneously riffing on European portraiture traditions and popular representation, his work is smart, funny, and always painterly. The Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the MCA Chicago have all presented solo exhibitions of his work. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredNineteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:28pm EDT

Episode No. 618 is a holiday clips episode that remembers Steve Roden. He died yesterday after fighting Alzheimer's disease. Roden was 59. 

The program features:

  • a 2012 segment with Roden and Stephen Vitiello on the occasion of their inclusion in the Menil Collection, Houston exhibition "Silence," and a related improvised performance at the Rothko Chapel;
  • an excerpt from that performance;
  • the full sound Roden created for The Modern Art Notes Podcast; and
  • a 2013 segment with Roden pegged to concurrent exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and at CRG Gallery in New York.
Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredEighteen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 2:18pm EDT

Episode No. 617 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist vanessa german.  

german is one of six artists featured in "Beyond Granite," a series of installations on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The exhibition, which was curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab, is on view through September 18, 2024. german's Of Thee We Sing (2023) considers Marian Anderson's 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (near which german's work is installed).

Two other artists included in the exhibition have been featured on The MAN Podcast: Tiffany Chung and Wendy Red Star. 

Instagram: vanessa german, Tyler Green.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredSeventeen.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:01am EDT

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