The Modern Art Notes Podcast

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.

Episode No. 638 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Saif Azzuz and Maryam Taghavi.

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting "Saif Azzuz: Cost of Living," an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and installation that considers settler colonialism and gentrification as related processes. The exhibition is on view through May 19.

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. He was a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist.

Taghavi's work is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Chicago in "Chicago Works: Maryam Taghavi مریم تقوی." Taghavi's work explores perception, often by wielding or adapting Persian calligraphy. The exhibition was curated by Bana Kattan with Kamala GhaneaBassiri.

Taghavi has previously exhibited at museums such as LAXART, Los Angeles and the Queens Museum. Chicago's O'Hare Airport has recently installed a commissioned work by Taghavi in its Terminal Five.

Instagram: Saif Azzuz, Maryam Taghavi.

Episode No. 637 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Jamillah James and author Brent Martin. 

James has organized "Faith Ringgold: American People," a retrospective of Ringgold's career as an artist and activist, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, which presents Ringgold as a key bridge between the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary practice, originated at the New Museum, New York, where it was curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari. "Ringgold" is on view in Chicago through February 25. The outstanding catalogue was published by the New Museum and Phaidon. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55-75.

On the occasion of photographer and scholar Angelyn Whitmeyer's launching of the George Masa Photo Database -- an important new website that makes images of Masa's pictures available via a single point-of-access for the first time, this week's show re-airs a 2022 segment with author Brent Martin. Masa was an Asheville, North Carolina-based photographer who had a significant impact on the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and on determining the Southern route of the Appalachian Trail, the two crown jewels of the eastern United States' natural infrastructure. His work was almost lost and forgotten, in part because the region in which he worked was remote, but also due to his status as a Japanese-American immigrant at a time of intense anti-Japanese bigotry.

Martin came onto the program to discuss his 2022 book "George Masa's Wild Vision," which was published by Hub City Press.  Amazon and Indiebound offer the book for around $25. For images, see Episode No. 567.

Episode No. 636 features curators Furio Rinaldi and Jonathan Stuhlman.

Rinaldi is the curator of "Botticelli Drawings" at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's Legion of Honor, the first exhibition dedicated to the drawings of Sandro Botticelli. The show follows Botticelli from his time with Fra Filippo Lippi to the establishment of his own workshop in Florence. The exhibition is on view through February 11. The exhibition catalogue was published by FAMSF in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $55-70.

Stuhlman is the curator of “Southern/Modern,” a survey of modernism from artists who were from, worked in, or visited the American South. The exhibition opens arrives at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville on January 26, and will remain on view through April 28. The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by University of North Carolina Press. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $30-75. For images, see Episode No. 606.

Episode No. 635 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Leslie Martinez and curator Anthony Graham.

MoMA PS1 in Queens is presenting "Leslie Martinez: The Fault of Formation," through April 8. The exhibition features paintings built with paint, folds, pools, and collaged materials such as rags and dried acrylics. Martinez's way of making paintings both mines the history of abstraction, but also a no-waste approach informed by methodologies of rasquachismo, a term coined by scholar Tomás Ybarra-Fausto to describe a Chicano "attitude rooted in resourcefulness yet mindful of stance and style." The show was curated by Elena Ketelsen González.

Martinez was previously featured in a solo show at 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.

The Speed Art Museum in Louisville is showing Martinez's work in "Current Speed: Angel Otero/Leslie Martinez" through March 24. The exhibition features works by the two artists that are new to the Speed's collection. The presentation was organized by Tyler Blackwell.

On the second segment, a re-presentation of curator Anthony Graham on the Alexis Smith retrospective he organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2022. Smith died earlier this week. She was 74. For images, see Episode No. 568.

Episode No. 634 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Amalia Mesa-Bains. 

The Phoenix Art Museum is presenting “Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory,” the first retrospective of the pioneering Chicana artist. The exhibition includes nearly 60 works including fourteen of Mesa-Bains’ major installations. It was curated by María Esther Fernández and Laura E. Pérez and is on view in Phoenix through February 25, 2024. The exhibition originated at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. The outstanding catalogue was published by BAMPFA in association with University of California Press. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $50.

Across a half-century, Mesa-Bains has foregrounded Chicana forms such as altares (home altars), ofrendas (offerings to the dead), descansos (roadside resting places), and capillas (home yard shrines) within contemporary art. Her work often spotlights domestic spaces and the construction of landscape in ways that highlight colonial erasure. Among the museums which have presented solo exhibitions of Mesa-Bains’ work are the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

As promised on the program:

• Sandy Rodriguez on Episode No. 532.
• “New World Wunderkammer” at the Fowler Museum.

For more images, see Episode No. 592.

Episode No. 633 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Gary Simmons.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,” a survey of Simmons’ 35-year career. The exhibition reveals how Simmons has addressed race, class and US history in ways that have remained persistently au courant. It was curated by René Morales and Jadine Collingwood, with Jack Schneider. It's on view in Miami through April 28, 2024. The exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The MCA and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $56-60.

For images of artworks discussed on the program, see Episode No. 613. 

Episode No. 632 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Philip Brookman and Julian Brooks.

Brookman is the curator of "Dorothea Lange: Seeing People," at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition presents Lange's decades-long portraiture practice in over 100 photographs, pictures that range from the Great Depression through the 1960s. "Seeing People" is on view through March 31, 2024. The exhibition catalogue was published by the NGA in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $43-51.

With Edina Adam, Brooks is the co-curator of "William Blake: Visionary," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Blake was a printmaker and painter who built an unconventional, fantastical, often narrative world view that he presented across both poetry and art. The presentation includes a colored copy of Blake's illuminated book America a Prophecy, a mindfully careful telling of the story of the American Revolution. "Blake" is at the Getty through January 14, 2024. The Getty-published exhibition catalogue is available from Bookshop and Amazon for $29-33.

Episode No. 631 features curators Anne Umland and Kelly Montana. 

Umland is the curator of "Picasso in Fontainebleau" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition examines work Pablo Picasso made during the summer of 1921 in Fontainebleau, an exurb of Paris. It reunites four major works on canvas, both versions of Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring. The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2024. Umland was assisted by Alexandra Morrison and Francesca Ferrari. The excellent catalogue was published by MoMA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $55-60.

Montana is the curator of "Hanne Darboven -- Writing Time" at the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition explores three kinds of work Darboven produced -- abstract drawings, date calculations, and monumental installations -- and explains how they were informed by Darboven's involvement in New York's embrace of conceptualism in the 1960s. The exhibition is on view through February 11, 2024. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.