The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 701 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Scott Allan, and curators Will Hansen and River Ian Kerstetter. With Gloria Groom and Paul Perrin, Allan is the co-curator of "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through May 25, looks at how Caillebotte's interest in male subjects significantly distinguishes him from his impressionist colleagues. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Getty. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $50-58. Hansen and Kerstetter are the curators of "Native Pop!" at the Newberry Library, Chicago. "Native Pop" examines how Indigenous people, and art by and of them, are central to the story of our popular culture. The exhibition is on view through July 19. Instagram: Scott Allan, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 700 (!) features artist Tarrah Krajnak and curator Claire Howard. Krajnak is featured in two exhibitions on opposite sides of the United States. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Krajnak is featured in "Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography" through July 13. The exhibition was curated by Shana Lopes, Erin O’Toole, and Delphine Sims, with Sally Katz and Alex Landry. At the International Center of Photography, New York, Kraynak's work is included in "To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography." Organized by Sara Ickow, Keisha Scarville, and Elisabeth Sherman, the exhibition presents the ways in which seven photographers are reimagining what an archive can be, or might look like. A third US exhibition of Krajnak's work opens April 16 at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. It will be curated by Georgia Erger. Krajnak works between photography, performance, and poetry. Krajnak, who was born in Peru to an Indigenous mother and who was raised by a transracial US family, often interrogates photography standards and finds that they have limited women, and furthered the violent loss of Native land, lives, and rights. She has won most major photography prizes; her work is in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Raab is the author of "Relics of War: The History of a Photograph" from Princeton University Press. It examines a photograph made by Clara Barton and published by Matthew Brady that features relics from the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. "Relics of War" traces how the photograph was a central part of Barton's work of addressing mass death and related grief. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $42-59. Instagram: Tarrah Krajnak, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 699 features two conversations with artist Jack Whitten. The Museum of Modern Art, New York is presenting "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the third major US survey of Whitten's work since 2014. (Previous exhibitions include a paintings retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in 2014-15, and a sculpture retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017-18.) "The Messenger," which is on view through August 2, was curated by Michelle Kuo with assistance from Helena Klevorn, Dana Liljegren, and David Sledge. Next month MoMA will publish a catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75. This episode features Whitten's two visits to The MAN Podcast. The first was recorded in 2013 on the occasion of "Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73" at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum. The second was recorded before a live audience at the opening of "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting" at MCASD in 2014. For images, please see Episode No. 98 and Episode No. 151.

Episode No. 698 features artist Alex Da Corte and curator Mark Castro. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "Alex Da Corte: The Whale," a survey of Da Corte's relationship with painting. Featuring more than 40 works, the exhibition examines Da Corte's interest in consumerism, persona, sex, invisible labor, taste, power, and desire. Curated by Alison Hearst, "Da Corte" will be on view through Sept. 7. A catalogue from MAMFW and DelMonico Books is forthcoming. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55. Da Corte's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MOCA Toronto, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, MASS MoCA, North Adams, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Castro is the curator of "Oaxaca Central: Contemporary Mexican Printmaking" at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va. Across 100 works, the exhibition surveys recent printmaking practice in Oaxaca, home to a vibrant, activist printmaking community. Artists in the exhibition include Ricardo Pinto, Mercedes López, Dr. Lakra, Colectivo Subterráneos, and Emi Winter. "Oaxaca Central is on view through May 11.

Episode No. 697 features curator Sarah Humphreville and author Marisa Anne Bass. With Eric Crosby, Humphreville is the co-curator of "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery." The exhibition survey's Abercrombie's synthesis of surrealism, landscape, portraiture and still-life, and is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date. It is at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh through June 1 before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55. Bass is the author of The Monument's End: Public Art and the Modern Republic, which was recently released by Princeton University Press. The book finds the origin of many of today's questions around monuments and memory within the early modern Netherlands. Among the artists Bass discusses are Rembrandt, Dirck van Delen, Hendrick de Keyser, Spencer Finch, Thomas Hirschhorn, and more. Bass is a professor at Yale University. Her previous books include Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt and Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity. Amazon and Bookshop offer "The Monument's End" for $20-42. Instagram: Sarah Humphreville, Marisa Bass, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 696 features curators Natalie Dupêcher and Leigh Arnold. Dupêcher is the curator of "Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight" at the Menil Collection, Houston. "Taking Flight" offers work from three of Overstreet's abstract painting series: Flight Pattern (early 1970s), and related bodies of work from the 1960s and 1990s. While recent exhibitions such as "Now Dig This!" (Hammer Museum, 2011) and "Soul of a Nation" (Tate Modern, 2017) have included Overstreets, this is the first solo museum exhibition of his work in 30 years. The Menil's exhbition guide is available here. An exhibition catalogue will be available in the late spring. "Taking Flight" is on view through July 13. Arnold is the curator of "Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. Across two floors, the exhibition reveals Yang's critique of the modernist project and its tendency toward singular Western domination. It is on view through April 27. Works discussed on the program include: Spring Sailors – Six Synecologies Aloft Instagram: Natalie Dupêcher, Leigh Arnold, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 695 features artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and curator Ken Myers. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless," an examination of the complications of colonial histories from an Indigenous perspective. "Speechless" particularly focuses on how narratives, myths, and histories are constructed through the concept of the cargo cult, which developed as a result of Western military campaigns that delivered supplies to foreign lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. These cults formed around the provisions that were delivered by the imperial forces (such as radios), the very groups that were colonizing Indigenous lands. The exhibition was curated by Apsara DiQuinzio and remains on view through July 6. Concurrently, Luger's work may be seen in the 16th Sharjah Biennial, "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" at the Moody Center, Rice University, and in "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always" at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University. Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. His work, across a wide range of media, extends cultural awareness and enables action. His work has been presented in solo or two-person shows by the Public Art Fund, New York; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., and more. Works discussed on the program include: Future Ancestral Technologies: New Myth, 2021 Mirror Shield project;Uŋziwoslal Wašičutainstallation series,Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI) Myers is the curator of "Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery" at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "Painted with Silk" looks at how US schoolgirl embroideries made from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries helped build and extend ideas around nation, gender, class, and religion. It also includes contemporary embroideries by Elaine Reichek that repurpose the form of earlier embroideries and investigate their constructions of gender, class, and race. The exhibition is on view through June 15. Instagram: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 694 features artists Tacita Dean and Ilana Harris-Babou. The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "Tacita Dean: Blind Folly," the first major museum survey of Dean's work in the United States. The exhibition examines a range of Dean's production, with a special emphasis on her drawing practice. "Blind Folly" includes new works informed by Dean's time in Houston, including her residency at (and in!) the Menil's Cy Twombly Gallery. It is on view through April 19. The Menil, MACK, and Dean have produced several books related to the Menil exhibition: Why Cy,Tacita Dean: Blind Folly Why Cy is available from Amazon for about $95; White's Blind Folly is available from Amazon for about $28 - or just $10 on Kindle. Dean is one of Britain's most celebrated artists. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums such as the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. In 2011 Dean's work FILM was shown in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Harris-Babou's 2018 Reparation Hardware is included within "Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica" at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition, which was curated by Antawan I. Byrd, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky, survey's Pan-Africanism's cultural manifestations across 350 objects made over the last 100 or so years. It is on view through March 30. Reparation Hardware, which was made for DIS.ART, is streamed below. Harris-Babou has been included in group shows at the Wellcome Collection, London, Apex Art, New York, and at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. Her work is in the collections of museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Episode No. 693 is a Presidents' Day weekend clips episode featuring artist John Edmonds. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York recently announced the acquisition of Edmonds’s complete 2018 Untitled (Hood) series. The work was included in last year's Guggenheim exhibition "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility." Edmonds discussed his Untitled (Hood) series in detail when he came onto the program in 2020 on the occasion of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Among the institutions that have collected Edmonds' work are the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and SFMOMA. For images, see Episode No. 446. Instagram: John Edmonds, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 692 features curators Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, and Danielle Canter. Hokanson and Seidenstein are the co-curators of "Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature," which opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend and is on view through May 11. It is the first retrospective of the German Romantic artist's work in the United States. Friedrich was a leader in German Romanticism, which offered new understandings of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Last year was the 250th anniversary of Friedrich's birth. The Met has published an excellent catalogue of the exhibition. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50. Canter is the curator of "A Brush with Nature: Romantic Landscape Drawings," which opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum on Feb. 18. The exhibition features dozens of drawings in which artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Théodore Géricault, and Friedrich respond to the natural world around them. "A Brush with Nature" will be on view through May 25. Instagram: Alison Hokanson, Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 691 features artists Kota Ezawa and Amy Pleasant. The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture is presenting "Kota Ezawa: Here and There - Now and Then," an investigation into the creation of memory in the Bay Area and nationally, through March 9. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, features Ezawa and Julian Brave NoiseCat's Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), and Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021), and Ursonate (2022), which were among 11 Ezawas recently acquired by SFMOMA. "Ezawa" was curated by Frank Smigiel. Fort Mason will publish a catalogue on the closing weekend. SFMOMA is showing Ezawa's National Anthem (2018) in "Count Me In" through April 27. Ezawa's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at many museums, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. His work is in the collection most major US art museums, and in museums in seven other countries. Pleasant is included in "Synchronicities: Intersecting Figuration with Abstraction" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha. The exhibition examines some of the ways in which nine artists have recently navigated the space between abstraction and figuration. "Synchronicities" was curated by Rachel Adams, and is on view through May 4. Pleasant's work is also on view at The Carnegie, Covington, KY in "Southern Democratic" through February 15, and in "Vivid: A Fresh Take" at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN through June 1. Pleasant has been included in exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and more. Instagram: Amy Pleasant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 690 features curators Vivien Greene and Michael Hartman. With Tracey Bashkoff, Greene is the co-curator of "Harmony & Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The exhibition surveys a transnational art movement that joined abstraction to dance, music, and poetry and that engaged with ideas of simultaneity across kaleidoscopic pictures and sculpture. Among the artists included in "Harmony & Dissonance" are Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. The exhibition is on view through March 9. The Guggenheim published an excellent catalogue for the exhibition. It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for about $60. Hartman is the curator of "Beyond the Bouquet: Arranging Flowers in American Art" at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. The exhibition looks at how North American artists have made use of floral beauty. Instagram: Michael Hartman, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 689 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist B. Ingrid Olson. Olson's work is included in "Descending the Staircase" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition considers novel artistic approaches to representing the human body. The exhibition is curated by Jadine Collingwood, Associate Curator, and Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator and is on view through July 6. This episode was recorded in 2022 on the occasion of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University's presentation of two concurrent B. Ingrid Olson exhibitions, “History Mother,” and “Little Sister.” Each exhibition was on a separate floor of CCVA’s building. Olson’s exhibitions feature site-specific presentations that engage with doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, the interplay between photography and sculpture, and between the body and the built environment. The exhibitions were curated by Dan Byers. The week this show originally aired, the Secession in Vienna had just closed an exhibition of Olson’s work titled “Elastic X.” In addition, Olson’s work has previously been featured in solo presentations at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY and at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. For images please see Episode No. 566. Instagram: B. Ingrid Olson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 688 features artist Sayre Gomez and curator Anna Katz. Gomez is included in two of the season's major contemporary group shows: "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2000," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Gomez is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work uses hyperrealism to address current events and representation and visuality in US society. Katz is the curator of "Ordinary People," which is at MOCA through May 4. The exhibition's fine catalogue was published by the museum and DelMonico Books. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $65. "The Living End" was curated by Jamillah James, who discussed her exhibition on Episode No. 683. It is on view through March 16. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20. Instagram: Sayre Gomez, Anna Katz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 687 features artist Laurie Simmons. Simmons is included in "Diaries of Home" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features works by women and nonbinary photographers who explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home. The exhibition, which is on view through February 2, is co-curated by Andrea Karnes and Clare Milliken. This conversation was taped in 2018, on the occasion of "Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera," a retrospective of Simmons' work (also at MAMFW). For images, see Episode No. 362.

Episode No. 686 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold. An untitled 1966 Plimack Mangold painting is on view in the current permanent collection installation at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The NGA has one of the finest institutional collections of Plimack Mangold's work: eight paintings and at least a dozen works on paper. New York's Craig Starr Gallery is showing "Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975-84" through January 25, 2025. Plimack Mangold's paintings, seemingly rooted in realism but often undermining it, play with perspective, flatness, engage the centuries-long tradition of painters making paintings about painting. In 1994 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo organized a retrospective of her paintings; two years earlier the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized a works on paper survey. For images, see 2018's Episode No. 349.

Episode No. 685 features artist Vincent Valdez and curators Theresa Harlan and Drew Johnson. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is presenting "Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..." the first major survey of Valdez's career. The exhibition, which features Valdez's work across media, reveals Valdez's construction of US national memory. It was co-curated by Patricia Restrepo and Denise Markonish. It's on view at CAMH through March 23, 2025, when it will travel to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue is forthcoming. Also, Valdez is included in "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition surveys post-war photorealism up to the present. It was curated by Anna Katz with Paula Kroll and is on view through May 4, 2025. MOCA and DelMonico Books published an excellent catalogue. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $65. Harlan and Johnson are the curators of "Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar's Photographs of Native California" at the Oakland Museum of California. It's on view through June 22, 2025. The exhibition surveys Aguilar's presentation of Native life and land, mostly between 1982 and 2018. The exhibition is OMCA's first presentation of Aguilar's work after the Aguilar's family gift of his archive to the museum in 2022. The show does not have a catalogue, but many of the works in the show are featured within Harlan's 2015 Aguilar monograph for Heyday Books, "She Sang Me a Good Luck Song."

Episode No. 684 features curators Akili Tommasino and Mark Mitchell. Tommasino is the curator of "Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-now" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition examines how Black artists and other cultural figures have engaged with ancient Egypt from the American centennial, through the Harlem Renaissance, to the present. "Flight into Egypt" is on view through February 17, 2025. The fascinating catalogue was published by the Met. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $45-50. Artists in the exhibition who are previous MAN Podcast guests include: Lauren HalseyNo. 82No. 255 No. 417 Robert PruittBetye SaarLorna SimpsonFred Wilson. Mitchell curated "The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876-1917," which is at the Yale University Art Gallery through January 5, 2025. The exhibition looks at how two generations of post-Civil War artists adopted the human figure as their focus (partly in response to the mass death of the Civil War era). "The Dance of Life" particularly focuses on studies related to artistic commissions for major US public sites such as the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, Washington, and the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. YUAG published a valuable catalogue It's available from Amazon and Bookshop for $50-60. Instagram: Akili Tommasino, Tyler Green. Air date: December 12, 2024.

Episode No. 683 features artist Tala Madani and curator Jamillah James. James is the curator of "The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Madani is among the 60-plus artists included in the exhibition. "The Living End" surveys the arc of painting over the last half-century with a particular focus on artists who have redefined painting by using new technologies, imaging techniques, and their own bodies. The exhibition will be on view through March 16, 2025. Jack Schneider assisted James with the show. The exhibition catalogue is available from the MCA for under $20. The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington is presenting "Tala Madani: Be flat," a solo exhibition featuring recent and newly commissioned work that explores the influence of symbols, language, and mark-making on power dynamics and individual agency. It was curated by Shamim M. Momin and is on view through August 17, 2025. Madani makes paintings and painting-informed animations that consider gender, political authority, and representation. Her work typically includes bald, middle-aged men in bizarre, often hilarious circumstances. She has had solo shows at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Secession, Vienna; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

Episode No. 682 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Leslie Martinez. Martinez is included within "Shifting Landscapes," which is at the the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York until January 2026. The exhibition considers how evolving political, ecological, and social issues motivate artists as they address the world around them (which is to say US artists are addressing land and landscape as they have since the days of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Cole.) The show was curated by Jennie Goldstein, Marcela Guerrero, and Roxanne Smith, with Angelica Arbelaez. Seven previous MAN Podcast guests are in the exhibition, including Robert Adams (Episode No. 41, 227, 555), Teresita Fernández, LaToya Ruby Frazier, An-My Lê, Patrick Martinez, Amalia Mesa-Bains, and Alison Saar. Martinez was previously featured in solo shows at MoMA PS1 in Queens, and the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston. Their work is in the collection of museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. For images, see Episode No. 635. Instagram: Leslie Martinez, Tyler Green.