The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 643 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator and art historian John P. Bowlesand 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 curatorSimon 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 artistStanley 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 artistsSin 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 curatorsFurio 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. BookshopandAmazon 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 artistAmalia 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. AmazonandIndieboundoffer 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 onEpisode No. 532.
• “New World Wunderkammer”at the Fowler Museum.

For more images, see Episode No. 592.