The Modern Art Notes Podcast

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.