The Modern Art Notes Podcast

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.

Episode No. 641 is a President's Day weekend clips show featuring artist Stanley Whitney.

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum (née the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) is presenting "Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon," a retrospective of Whitney's fifty-year career. The exhibition features the square-format, semi-gridded abstract canvases Whitney has been making since 2002, as well as works preceding them as far back as the 1970s. The exhibition was curated by Cathleen Chaffee and will be on view through May 26. From Buffalo, the exhibition will travel to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. A catalogue was published by DelMonico Books and the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75.

This program was taped on the occasion of an exhibition of Whitney's then-recent work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2017. For images, see Episode No. 272.

Episode No. 640 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Ledgerwood and curator Lisa Volpe. 

Ledgerwood is included within "50 Paintings" at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition features paintings made in the last five years by 50 artists from around the world.  It was curated by Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner and is on view through June 23. Ledgerwood is also on view in "Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations" at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington through June 1.

Ever since the 1980s, Ledgerwood's paintings have engaged transatlantic histories related to abstraction and decoration from a distinctive feminist point-of-view. Her work is in the collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the MCA Chicago.  

Volpe is the curator of “Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955”, which opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31. The exhibition presents work the famed Frank and the less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.

Frank and Webb images are at Episode No. 630.

Instagram: Judy Ledgerwood, Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 639 features artists Sin Wai Kin and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork.

The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley is presenting "MATRIX 284/Sin Wai Kin: The Story Changing," the artist's first US exhibition. BAMPFA's exhibition includes Sin's two most recent video works: The Breaking Story (2022) and Dreaming the End (2023). "The Story Changing" was curated by Victoria Sung and is on view through March 10. BAMPFA's eight-page exhibition brochure features a conversation between Sung and Sin.

Sin often uses speculative fiction and narrative in performance and in filmic works. Informed by their experience in London's drag scene, Sin's work asks questions about history, the present, and the construction of reality and factuality. Sin was shortlisted for the UK's Turner Prize in 2022. Their work has been shown at museums such as Fondazione Memmo, Rome, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Somerset House, London, The British Museum, London, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the 2019 Venice Biennale, and more.

On the second segment, a re-air of a 2017 segment with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork. The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University is presenting "Poems of Electronic Air," Gork's East Coast institutional debut, through April 7. The exhibition combines recent sculpture with a commissioned, site-specific installation made for the CCVA's Le Corbusier-designed building. Gork has previously exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, SFMOMA, SculptureCenter, New York, BAMPFA, and in the Hammer Museum's 2019 Made in L.A. biennial. For images, see Episode No. 302.

Instagram: Sin Wai Kin, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Tyler Green.