Episode 44 : What is art? What gives an image meaning? Exalted Position, which will run at the Peter Blum Gallery in Manhattan until August 31, 2016, suggests that an object can rise above its material status into the realm of the spiritual or the symbolic. The exhibition features new works by artists Graham Durward, Irina Rozovsky, and Roger White. Through their works these three artists offer entry points into the possibility of gleaning transcendent meaning out of mundane and ordinary moments.

Brooke has a casual, free-form conversation with curator Vlad Smolkin about Exalted Position, his career, and the Peter Blum Gallery. The interview ends with Brooke describing her current writing project about early 20th century Irish art dealer Hugh Lane.

The Peter Blum Gallery is located at 20 West 57th Street, NYC, and the Exalted Position exhibition will run until the end of August, 2016.

Episode 43: Canvases that manifest an art tradition going back tens of thousands of years. Brooke talks with Henry Skerritt, the curator of No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, which will be at the Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York until August 14, 2016. Skerritt explains how the paintings in this exhibition reflect a genre that has traditionally been ceremonial and impermanent. Although the artists that are featured in No Boundaries have created works that are hung in museums and private collections all over the world, the art is more about the process than the product. All nine showcased artists paint in full awareness that each viewer's experience with a work of art will be unique from that of the artist.

Henry Skerritt, in addition to being a curator, is also an art historian and songwriter, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He originally hails from Perth in Western Australia and his knowledge of and passion for Aboriginal Australian art provide insight into a genre that is in many ways different from other world art traditions.

Episode 41: Who are you? Who am I? Who is that? Identity in American culture is often as much about how an individual presents himself or herself as it about how that person's identity is externally determined. Brooke talks with associate curator Maggie Adler of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas about Identity, an exhibition which explores community, celebrity and individual identity through portraiture from the Amon Carter's permanent collection. The exhibition highlights the exciting new acquisitions of Sedrick Huckaby's The 99% and Glenn Ligon's print series Runaways. Their works - in combination with prints and photographs of and by public figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King, Jr., and and Georgia O'Keeffe - show the various personas individuals adopt. Together, these portraits represent the fluid and constantly shifting role of identity in society from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. Identity runs until October 9, 2016.

Episode 42: The current state of abstraction of the female artist working in New York. The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville presents Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction, an exhibition that features over thirty works by six contemporary artists and that will run until September 4, 2016. Brooke talked with Assistant Curator Jaime DeSimone about how Confronting the Canvas not only showcases women at the forefront of today's New York art scene, but also provides insight into the work of women from previous periods, whose art was often overshadowed by that of their male counterparts.

Episode 40: Second careers and bringing fine art to new audiences. Brooke goes to the Elder Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, to talk with founder Larry Elder. After launching three successful dot-coms, Elder took a leap of faith in order to pursue his passion for fine art. The Elder Gallery is celebrating 15 years of serving experienced art buyers, art novices, and artists at all stages of their careers.

Episode 41 : Taking visual art beyond the visual experience. For over three decades the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has been committed to giving the blind and the visually impaired access to the museum's full collection through audio tours, tactile art cards, audio-tactile books, and self-contained tours. In addition the MFA Boston offers its guests A Feeling for Form, a program in which trained volunteers lead blind and visually impaired guests through tactile exploration of selected sculpture and furniture, and use audio descriptions and tactile materials for other works of art. Brooke talks with Manager of Accessibility, Hannah Goodwin, and Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Jen Mergel, about the program and how experiencing visual art in this way not only grants the blind access but also gives the sighted guest, curator and artist a new perspective on the work.

Episode 39: Barry Till, a curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Canada), gives Brooke a history lesson on the Meiji period in Japan. During this tumultuous forty-five year span the island nation was transformed from a nineteenth-century insular feudal society into a twentieth-century global industrial and military power.

The Art Gallery is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese art in Canada. It is currently hosting Modernization in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) Changing Images of Architecture, Transportation and War. The exhibition features contemporaneous wood block prints which illustrate Japanese life during this period. The prints not only serve as works of accessible popular art, but also provide historical insight into those fascinating and influential times. The exhibition will continue until August 28, 2016.

Episode 36: Fine art is more often than not the product of a singular vision. American artist John C Gonzalez turns this paradigm on its head by producing works that showcase the vision and talents of others.

Brooke talks with Ian Alden Russell of Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery about the Works Well With Others exhibition that ran from May 7 to June 12, 2016. Russell explained how the gallery was able to feature Gonzalez, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, as part of the gallery's regional focus.

Episode 34: One of the most significant artists of the 20th Century, Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was devoted to creating imagery that expressed what she called "the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, offers insights not only into the artist's paintings, but also her creative process and the light and landscape that inspired her.

Brooke talks to Dr. Cody Hartley, Director of Curatorial Affairs, about Georgia O'Keeffe's Far Wide Texas, a collection of watercolors the artist created during the time she lived in Canyon, Texas (1916-1918). This was a period of radical innovation and marks O'Keeffe's commitment to abstraction. Dr. Hartley explains how these paintings exemplify O'Keeffe's refusal to be restrained by convention or to be defined by others.

In the words of O'Keeffe herself, "Take time to look..." And to listen.

Episode 35 : On this episode I talk with Hormoz Hematian of the Dastan Gallery….all the way in Iran! (He was visiting his family in Canada when we chatted.) I first read about Hormoz in an article describing some Iranian artists and curators’ efforts to bring the art scene back to its former glory.   All images used […]