Episode No. 484 features historian Deborah Willis and artist Leidy Churchman. Willis is the author of "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship," which was just published by New York University Press. The book joins 99 photographs of Black Civil War soldiers and Black men and women who served within military regiments with primary source materials such as letters in an effort to provide a fuller picture of how Black men and women fought the war. Indiebound and Amazon offer the book for about $35. Willis is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and Department of Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. She has written or contributed to at least 28 books, has won two NAACP Image Awards and a MacArthur 'genius' fellowship. Just this week the College Art Association awarded her its 2021 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art.  On the second segment, Leidy Churchman discusses their work on the occasion of "FOCUS: Leidy Churchman" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The show was curated by Alison Hearst and will be on view through March 21. Churchman's paintings address a seemingly endless array of subjects, and in so doing take on the infinite abundance of images in modern society. The Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College has hosted a survey of Churchman's work; they have been included in group shows at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York.

Deborah Willis, Leidy Churchman

The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a weekly, hour-long interview program featuring artists, historians, authors, curators and conservators. Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee called The MAN Podcast “one of the great archives of the art of our time.” When the US chapter of the International Association of Art Critics gave host Tyler Green one of its inaugural awards for criticism in 2014, it included a special citation for The MAN Podcast.

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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." 

Remembering Richard Serra

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.

Camille Claudel, Jim Moske

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.

Patrick Martinez, Nell Irvin Painter

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.

Matisse & Derain, Isabelle Frances McGuire

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.

Deborah Willis, Leidy Churchman

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