The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 633 is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artistGary Simmons.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,” a survey of Simmons’ 35-year career. The exhibition reveals how Simmons has addressed race, class and US history in ways that have remained persistently au courant. It was curated by René Morales and Jadine Collingwood, with Jack Schneider. It's on view in Miami through April 28, 2024. The exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The MCA and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. BookshopandAmazonoffer it for $56-60.

For images of artworks discussed on the program, see Episode No. 613.

Episode No. 632 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Philip Brookman and Julian Brooks.

Brookman is the curator of "Dorothea Lange: Seeing People," at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition presents Lange's decades-long portraiture practice in over 100 photographs, pictures that range from the Great Depression through the 1960s. "Seeing People" is on view through March 31, 2024. The exhibition catalogue was published by the NGA in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $43-51.

With Edina Adam, Brooks is the co-curator of "William Blake: Visionary," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Blake was a printmaker and painter who built an unconventional, fantastical, often narrative world view that he presented across both poetry and art. The presentation includes a colored copy of Blake's illuminated book America a Prophecy, a mindfully careful telling of the story of the American Revolution. "Blake" is at the Getty through January 14, 2024. The Getty-published exhibition catalogue is available from Bookshop and Amazon for $29-33.

Episode No. 631 features curatorsAnne Umland and Kelly Montana.

Umland is the curator of "Picasso in Fontainebleau" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition examines work Pablo Picasso made during the summer of 1921 in Fontainebleau, an exurb of Paris. It reunites four major works on canvas, both versions ofThree Musicians andThree Women at the Spring. The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2024. Umland was assisted by Alexandra Morrison and Francesca Ferrari. The excellent catalogue was published by MoMA. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $55-60.

Montana is the curator of "Hanne Darboven -- Writing Time" at the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition explores three kinds of work Darboven produced -- abstract drawings, date calculations, and monumental installations -- and explains how they were informed by Darboven's involvement in New York's embrace of conceptualism in the 1960s. The exhibition is on view through February 11, 2024. A fine exhibition catalogue was published by the Menil. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $35.

Episode No. 630 features curatorsStephan Wolohojian and Lisa Volpe.

With Ashley Dunn and in collaboration with Laurence des Cars, Isolde Pludermacher, and Stéphane Guégan, Wolohojian is the co-curator of "Manet/Degas" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition explores the artistic dialogue between Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas and considers their work in the context of their shared family relationships, friendships, and intellectual circles. It is on view through January 7, 2024. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Met. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $32-60.

Volpe is the curator of "Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition presents the work the famed Frank and the enormously less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. It is on view through January 7, 2024. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.

Episode No. 629 features artistAlexandro Segade of My Barbarian, and a re-air of a 2013 conversation with artist Eleanor Antin.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is presenting "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian," a fiftieth anniversary celebration of Antin's landmark 100 Boots (1973). The exhibition also includes work featuring Antin's alter ego, the King of Solana Beach, and My Barbarian's Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse (2013), a feminist performance work that centers matrilineal creative inheritance. The work's title references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was co-authored by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, and Melanie Klein's 1929 essay "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and the Creative Impulse." Performers include Segade and his My Barbarian mates Malik Gaines and Jade Gordon, as well as artists Mary Kelly and Antin. "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian is on view through February 18, 2024.

My Barbarian's work has been presented at museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in a 2021-22 survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This Bomb magazine interview between My Barbarian and Andrea Fraser was referenced on the program.

For Antin images, see Episode No. 104.

Episode No. 628 features artistLyle Ashton Harris and curator Scott Allan.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love," a survey of Harris' career featuring photographs, collage, archival material, and more. It's on view through January 7. 2024. Harris' work engages transatlantic social and political dialogues even has he foregrounds personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. The exhibition was co-curated by Caitlin Julia Rubin and Lauren Haynes. A catalogue is forthcoming.

Harris' work is also included in "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility," at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition, which was curated by Ashley James with Faith Hunter, presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, works that conceal the body to explore a key tension in contemporary society: the desire to be seen, and the desire to be hidden from sight. It's on view through April 7, 2004. A catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $60-65.

With Nii Obodai, Harris is the co-editor of the latest issue of Aperture magazine, which considers the Ghanaian capital of Accra as a site of dynamic photographic voices and histories that connect visual culture in West Africa to the world. It's available from Aperture for $25.

Allan curated "Reckoning with Millet's Man with a Hoe," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition is an intensive look at arguably the most historically significant painting in the JPGM's collection of nineteenth-century European art.Man with a Hoe debuted in Paris in 1863, where it was attacked for its depiction and glorification of peasant labor. The exhibition is on view through December 10. The Getty-published catalogue is available from Amazon and Indiebound for about $27-30.

Instagram: Lyle Ashton Harris, Scott Allan, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 627 features artistsErica Mahinay and Teresa Baker.

Mahinay and Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) are both included in "Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living," the sixth iteration of the Hammer Museum's biennial. The exhibition, which is on view through December 31, was curated by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, with Ashton Cooper. This is the second of two MAN Podcast episodes that will feature artists from the program. The first featured artists Melissa Cody and Roksana Pirouzmand.

Mahinay is a painter and sculptor whose work references and updates modernism in address of the body. She has had solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Rome.

Baker's mixed-media works combine artificial and natural materials to make abstracted landscapes that explore space and movement. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, and in group exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kan., and Marin MOCA, Novato, Calif.

Instagram: Erica Mahinay, Teresa Baker, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 626 features curator Michelle White and artist Kenneth Tam.

With Megan Holly Witko, White is the co-curator of "Chryssa & New York," a survey of work the Greek-born Chryssa made while living in New York from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It's at the Menil Collection in Houston through March 10, 2024. During the years featured in the exhibition, Chryssa used neon and elements of commercial signage to bridge ideas rooted in the pop, conceptual, and minimalist movements. It is the first major survey of the artist’s work in the United States in more than fifty years. The excellent exhibition catalogue was co-published by the Menil and the Dia Art Foundation, with which the Menil co-organized the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $49.

The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive is exhibiting "MATRIX 281 / Kenneth Tam: The Founding of the World" through November 26. The exhibition presents The Founding of the World, a video and sculptural installation in which Tam explores the history and practices of fraternities as a way of probing the dynamics of male intimacy and ritualized violence. The presentation was curated by Victoria Sung.

Tam's work is also included in:

• "Cowboy," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through February 18, 2024. "Cowboy" features the work of 27 artists who are shifting cowboy mythology. It was curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash.
• "Kenneth Tam: All of M" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. All of M is Tam's re-staging of the high school prom as a way of exploring how men perform their identities in spaces of social ritual. It is on view through November 11.

Instagram: Michelle White, Kenneth Tam, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 625B features artistsTammy Nguyen and Jammie Holmes.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston is presenting "Tammy Nguyen," an exhibition of Nguyen's new paintings, works on paper, and unique artist books. The interconnected body of work, informed by East Asian landscape painting, addresses the relationship between man and nature and landscape as presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1836 book Nature. The exhibition, which is on view through January 28, 2024, was organized by Jeffrey De Blois.

Nguyen was a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship, and has exhibited at museums such as MoMA PS1, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Factory Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and more. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and the Dallas Museum of Art. This is her first museum solo exhibition.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting "Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible," a survey of approximately 15 paintings Holmes has made since 2019. The exhibition reveals Holmes' interest in Black domestic spaces, particularly as they relate to his hometown of Thibodaux, Louisiana, and the continuing impacts of the Black Panther Party. The exhibition, which was curated by María Elena Ortiz, is on view through November 26. The MAMFW-published catalogue is available from the museum for $65.

Instagram: Tammy Nguyen, Jammie Holmes, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 625A remembers artistRobert Irwin.

Nota bene: Episode No. 625B, which will post here on the evening of Friday, October 27, will feature artists Tammy Nguyen and Jammie Holmes.

Irwin, a painter and anti-sculptor who substantially invented the Light and Space movement (and responses to it as a teacher), died on October 25, 2023. He was 95. This program remembers Irwin with two curators who worked with him, and by re-playing Irwin's two appearances on The Modern Art Notes Podcast.

Michael Auping retired from the chief curatorship of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2017 after curatorial stints at the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Fla., and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. He organized "Robert Irwin / Matrix 15" for what is now the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in 1978.

Evelyn Hankins is head curator at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC. She organized "Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change," a survey of Irwin's transition from painting to installation, in 2016.

The two Irwin interview segments on the program are from 2012's Episode No. 26; and 2016's Episode No. 231.