The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 529 is a holiday clips episode with art historian Debra Bricker Balken. Balken is the author of "Arthur Dove: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings and Things," a thorough presentation that includes Dove's assemblages. Jessie Sentivan contributed to the book. It contains 537 illustrations, almost all of them in color, of each work Balken was able to identify, find, photograph and document. "Dove" includes a an essay on Dove's work and its critical reception, as well as mini-essays on major works. Many of the materials and images in the book are published for the first time here. It lists for $125 via Indiebound or Amazon. Dove is among the most prominent American modernists of the early twentieth century, a key link between the American nature tradition and abstraction.

Episode No. 312 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Martine Syms and art historian Petra Giloy-Hirtz. Martine Syms is included in "Speech/Acts," a six-artist exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia that examines experimental black poetry and how language has shaped black American experiences. (Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Steffani Jemison, Tony Lewis, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed are the other artists.) The exhibition, which was curated by Meg Onli, will be on view through December 23. The museum's website includes a reading group syllabus, gallery guide, exhibition poster, installation views and more. Syms is an artist and the founder of Dominica Publishing, a press dedicated to exploring blackness in contemporary art and culture. Her work most often uses video, installation and performance to investigate representations of blackness, especially in popular culture. She's been the subject of solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, White Flag Projects in St. Louis, the Camden Arts Centre and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Locust Projects in Miami and more. On the second segment, Petra Giloy-Hirtz discusses her recent monograph of Hassel Smith, a major figure in the development of post-war painting in San Francisco. (Amazon offers it for just $20!) As Crocker Art Museum curator discussed with host Tyler Green last week, Smith was a major influence on Richard Diebenkorn. This segment originally aired in 2013. For Smith images, see Episode No. 65, and the Hassel Smith Estate's website. New York's Washburn Gallery will open an exhibition of Smith's work from 1959-62 on November 2.

Episode No. 299 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Glenn Ligon and curator Stephen Brown. Ligon is the curator of "Blue Black" at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. Informed by the Pulitzer's Ellsworth Kelly wall sculpture Blue Black, the exhibition features more than 50 artworks that use color to address questions related to language, identity and more. The exhibition is on view through October 7. The catalogue of the exhibition is complimentary save the cost of shipping ($7 in the US, $14 abroad).  Ligon is an artist whose 2011 mid-career survey was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and traveled to LACMA and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Power Plant in Toronto, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.  On the second segment, curator Stephen Brown discusses his exhibition "Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry," which is at The Jewish Museum in New York through September 24. He co-curated  the show with Georgiana Uhlyarik at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The exhibition's catalogue was published by Yale University Press.  

Episode No. 727 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Andrea Carlson. The Denver Art Museum just opened "Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky," a mid-career survey. The exhibition spotlights how Carlson, who is Ojibwe and of European settler descent, creates works that challenge the colonial narratives presented by modern artists, museum collections, and cannibal genre horror films, all in ways that challenge and depart from the US landscape tradition. The exhibition was curated by Dakota Hoska, and will remain on view through February 16, 2026. The exhibition catalogue was published by Scala, Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $30-35. Museums that have featured solo exhibitions of Carlson's 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. This program was taped on the occasion of Carlson's 2024 solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago. For images, please see Episode No. 677. Instagram: Andrea Carlson, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 726 features artist Danielle Joy Mckinney. The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is presenting "Danille Mckinney: Tell Me More" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition, Mckinney's first solo presentation in a US museum, spotlights Mckinney's introspective explorations of Black womanhood. It was curated by Gannit Ankori. Concurrently, Galerie Max Hetzler is presenting Mckinney's work in "Second Wind" in London through November 1. Mckinney has been featured in exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and many more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Instagram: Danielle Joy Mckinney, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 725 features curators Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis (and a cameo, of sorts, from artist Anthony Barboza). Brookman and Willis are the co-curators of "Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-85" at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition considers photography's engagement with the post-war cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty, and which often influenced the broader civil rights movement of which it was a part. The exhibition features 150 works from photographers and other artists who used photography in their work, such as in collage or assemblage. It is on view through January 11, 2026. An excellent catalogue was published by the NGA In association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60. Instagram: Philip Brookman, Anthony Barboza, Deborah Willis, Tyler Green. Air date: September 25, 2025.

Episode No. 724 features artist Antony Gormley. It was taped before a live audience at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The Nasher is showing "SURVEY: Antony Gormley" through January 4, 2026. The exhibition is the first major museum survey of Gormley's work in the United States. Across sculptures, models, and notebooks, "SURVEY" spans Gormley's career from the 1980s to today. The exhibition extends beyond the Nasher's galleries to include sculptures installed on the rooftops of both the Nasher and skyscrapers in and around downtown Dallas. It was curated by Jed Morse. Gormley is the UK's most honored living sculptor. His works often use the body to address fundamental questions of where humans stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Major exhibitions of his work have been held at museums and in biennials all over the world. Air date: September 18, 2025.

Episode No. 723 features curator Michelle White and artist Nanette Carter. White is the curator of "Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s" at The Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition considers Rauschenberg's conceptual, expressive use of fabric as a medium through a focus on three groups of works from the 1970s: Venetians (1972-73), Jammers (1975-76), and Hoarfrosts (1974-76). It is on view through March 1, 2026. "Fabric" is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $60-65. The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is presenting "Nanette Carter: Afro Sentinels" through January 11, 2026. The exhibition features works Carter has made over the last decade, including work from her Cantilevered, Destabilizing, and Shifting Perspectives series, plus new sculptural works commissioned by the Wexner. It was curated by Rebecca Lowery. Carter's abstract collages, produced in Mylar, often engage with contemporary social issues. The Montclair Art Museum presented a retrospective of Carter's career last year. As discussed on the program: Carter's 2021 oral history for the Archives of American Art. Instagram: Michelle White, Nanette Carter, Tyler Green. Air date: September 11, 2025.

Episode No. 722 features museum director and human rights activist Ann Burroughs, and curator Cory Korkow. Burroughs is the director of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, which has led the museum sector in resisting Trumpism and the rise of fascism in the United States. Even as many US institutions capitulated when the Trump administration demanded a return to racist and white supremacist policies and practices, JANM stood by its diversity and equity foci and programs. Over the summer, armed and often masked  Border Patrol agents conducted what appeared to be an operation aimed at intimidating speakers at a program at the museum's Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, including at a press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The museum aggressively resisted the federal show of force, drawing lines between illegal federal actions in 1942 and the present. JANM's mission is "to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience." Its collections and programs feature art and art's history. The museum holds work by and the archives of artists such as Hisako Hibi, George Hoshida, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugimoto, Chikashi Tanaka, Kango Takamura, and Jack Iwata. In addition to leading JANM, Burroughs is the two-time former chairperson of the board of Amnesty International USA, the chair of the Amnesty International Global Assembly, and presently sits on the board of Amnesty International. As mentioned on the program: Burroughs' op-ed for the American Alliance of Museums; and JANM's "History Unpacked" program. Korkow helped lead the Cleveland Museum of Art's acquisition and initial installation of Giambologna's Fata Morgana (ca. 1572), which had been the last of the roughly dozen marble sculptures made by the artist remaining in private hands. Giambologna made the sculpture for installation in a fountain at Bernardo Vecchietti's Villa il Reposo in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy. Instagram: Cory Korkow, Tyler Green. Air date: September 4, 2025.

Episode No. 721 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Saif Azzuz. The Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, is presenting "Saif Azzuz: Keet Hegehlpa' (the water is rising)," which interrogates the privatization of land, water, and natural resources within settler-colonial systems. Across the exhibition, Azzuz and family members Lulu Thrower, Elizabeth Azzuz, Viola Azzuz, Moya Azzuz, and Colleen Colegrove reference the myths, origin stories, and fabricated tales animating the land now known as Houston. The artists in the exhibition draw upon ecological knowledge to visualize histories of land stewardship and rematriation practices that gesture to Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor’s notion of survivance, the fusion of resistance and survival. The exhibition was curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum and will be on view through December 20. 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. This episode was taped on the occasion of ICA San Francisco's presentation of Azzuz' work in 2024. For images, see Episode No. 638. Instagram: Saif Azzuz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 720 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tidawhitney Lek. Lek is among the 30+ artists featured in "Spirit House" at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. 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. "Spirit House" originated at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, and was curated by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander with Kathryn Cua. It is on view in Seattle through January 11, 2026. 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. 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 and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and she's been featured in the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Her first museum solo show was at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 2023. 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. Instagram: Tidawhitney Lek, Tyler Green. Air date: August 21, 2025.

Episode No. 719 features curator Laura Katzman. Katzman is the curator of "Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity" at the Jewish Museum, New York. Shahn's first US retrospective in nearly 50 years. The exhibition examines Shahn's progressive commitment to the major issues between the Great Depression and the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. The exhibition features 175 paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs and more, spotlighting Shahn's skill and vision across media. The exhibition debuted at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and was adapted by the Jewish Museum. It's on view through October 26. A catalogue was published by Princeton University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $32-42.

Episode No. 718 features artist Masako Miki and artist/curator Katherine Simóne Reynolds. The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting "Midnight March," a far-ranging presentation of Miki's two-dimensional and three-dimensional practice. The Japanese-born Miki's paintings, sculptures, and installations live between the sacred and the secular. Her often exuberant sculptures are rooted in the blending of Japanese and US cultures. Her previous solo shows have been at museums such as the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, and the ICA San José. Her work is in the permanent collections of BAMPFA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and more. Reynolds is the curator of "Held Impermanence (Artists Select: Katherine Simóne Reynolds)" at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. The exhibition uses the museum's art collection and archive to consider multiple competing desires, including Still's and the desires of art institutions, such as the unknown future museum to which he directed his art and archive be entrusted. Reynolds is an artist and curator who investigates emotional dialects and psychogeographies of Blackness. Her previous exhibitions have been at venues such as SculptureCenter, New York, Counterpublic 2023, St. Louis, and the Stanley Museum of Art, University of Iowa. As mentioned on the program: The CSM's gallery booklet. Instagram: Masako Miki, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 717 features artist Erin Shirreff, curator Davide Gasparotto, and conservator Ulrich Birkmaier. The Milwaukee Art Museum is presenting "Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts" through September 1. Across 40 recent collages, photographs, sculptures, and videos, the exhibition reveals Shirreff's interest in the space between images and the objects they picture. The exhibition was curated by Kristen Gaylord. Among the museums that have presented solo exhibitions of Shirreff's work are SITE Santa Fe, the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., SFMOMA, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. "Artemisia's Strong Women: Rescuing a Masterpiece" is at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles through September 14. The exhibition reveals conservation work done on Gentileschi's ~1635-37 Hercules and Omphale, a significant painting damaged in a massive explosion in Beirut in 2020. Birkmaier led the conservation of the work, which Gasparotto joined to four other Gentileschis in this exhibition, which particularly highlights Gentileschi's focus on strong women from the classical and Biblical traditions. Instagram: Davide Gasparotto, Tyler Green. Air date: July 31, 2025.

Episode No. 716 features curator Eleanor Nairne and artist Francesca Fuchs. With Wells Fray-Smith, Nairne is the co-curator of "Noah Davis," an eponymous retrospective at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Davis, who passed away from a rare cancer in 2015 at age 32, was a painter whose work addressed current affairs, every day life, family histories, and architecture. Davis often addressed the subjects that interested him by fusing his interest in art history to his interest in vernacular sources, such as flea market photographs or personal archives. The exhibition is on view through August 31. A catalogue is available from Prestel. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $33-46. The Menil Collection, Houston is presenting "The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House" through November 2. The exhibition starts, as it were, in 1970, when John de Menil wrote to German classical archeologist Dr. Werner Fuchs (1927–2016) seeking to identify the subject of a Roman male torso in his collection. Forty-nine years later, Francesca Fuchs’s discovery of the black-and-white photographs John de Menil sent to her father that depict the marble torso led Fuchs to find the original letter in the museum archives. "The Space Between" presents Fuchs's response to the unanswered letter and familial collection through Fuchs' own paintings, selections from the Menil's collection and archives, and more. The exhibition was curated by Paul R. Davis. As mentioned on the program: See Francesca Fuchs' letter to John de Menil (also below); and Fuchs' 2013 exhibition at Texas Gallery. Instagram: Francesca Fuchs, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 715 features artist Kandis Williams. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis is presenting "Kandis Williams: A Surface," the first survey of Williams' career. The exhibition spotlights how Williams has used collage as a tool of Black feminist resistance, to dismantle entrenched histories and power structures, and to rebuild dominant narratives. The exhibition, which was curated by Taylor Jasper with Laurel Rand-Lewis, is on view through August 24. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Walker. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for around $45. Williams is also included in "Performance on Paper" at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. It features prints and drawings created at the intersection of music and dance by about twenty artists active from the 1960s to the present. It was curated by Naoko Takahatake with Jennie Waldow, and is on view through August 10. Williams' previous museum solo exhibition was at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University. They have been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in the Hammer Museum's Made in LA biennial. Instagram: Kandis Williams, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 714 features curator and art historian Jonathan D. Katz and curators Allison Kemmerer and Gordon Wilkins. With Johnny Willis, Katz is the co-curator of "The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939" at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. The exhibition details the emergence of a significant change in how societies around the world regarded homosexuality in the wake of the coining of the term 'homosexual' in 1869, and the ways in which images have represented a range of identities ever since. It is on view through July 26. The fascinating exhibition catalogue was published by Monacelli. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $70-75. Kemmerer and Wilkins are the curators of "June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart" at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass. The exhibition surveys a 75-year career during which Leaf explored the human experience in works that are layered, whimsical, playful, and sometimes dark. It is on view through July 31. The Addison, the Grey Art Museum, New York University, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College co-published the exhibition catalogue with Rizzoli. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $42-60.

Episode No. 713 is a Fourth of July weekend clips episode featuring artist Carmen Winant. This episode was taped in 2023 on the occasion of the Minneapolis Institute of Art's presentation of Winant’s “The last safe abortion” through December 31. It features Winant’s assemblages of historical photographs gathered from across the Midwest that detail the work of providing health care to women. That work includes answering phones, presenting training sessions, scheduling appointments, and more. “The last safe abortion” was curated by Casey Riley. Winant’s work typically explores representations of women through strategies such as collage and installation. Her exhibition credits include the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Sculpture Center, Queens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and many venues in Europe. For images, see Episode No. 621. Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 712 features artist Julian Hoeber and curator María Elena Ortiz. Hoeber is included in "Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture" at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The exhibition offers a new selection of works from the Nasher collection that offers conversations between works from the past and present. Hoeber's practice centers perception and searches for ways to exceed and reconcile limits set by binary ideas such as interior and exterior, or psychic and somatic. Paradoxically, he often uses binary systems, such as stereoscopic vision, in his work. His exhibition credits include Desert X 2019, a Hammer Projects show in 2010, and gallery shows in San Francisco, New York, Milan, Los Angeles, London, and more. His work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.  Ortiz is the curator of "Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. "Feeling Color" pairs the work of two Guyanese artists and considers their roles in the history of late-twentieth-century abstract painting. "Feeling Color" is on view through July 27. Instagram: Julian Hoeber, María Elena Ortiz, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 711 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Patrick Martinez. Martinez is among the artists showing in the Boston Public Art Triennial, which was developed by Pedro Alonzo, Tess Lukey, and a(n unspecified) curatorial advisory group. Martinez's 2025 Cost of Living may be seen at Boston's Downtown Crossing. 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. Martinez also operates Mixed Media Editions. This program was taped in 2024 on the occasion of “Patrick Martinez: Histories” at the Dallas Contemporary. For images, see Episode No. 649. Instagram: Patrick Martinez, Tyler Green.