The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 624 features curatorLeigh Arnold and artist Sarah Crowner.

Arnold is the curator of "Groundswell: Women of Land Art," a survey of artists who have worked in the land that revises ossified male-centric histories at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. The exhibition provides a broad overview of themes, interests, and artworks that women created beginning in the 'usual' land art era, the 1960s and 1970s, and updates our understanding of land art to include not only work made in the most rural reaches of North America, but also work made and installed in and around urban and suburban centers. The exhibition is on view through January 7, 2024. An excellent catalogue was published by the Nasher and DelMonico Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $55.

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is presenting "Sarah Crowner: Around Orange," a presentation of site-specific artworks that engage with the Pulitzer's Tadao Ando building and Ellsworth Kelly, whose monumental sculpture Blue Black is on permanent view at the Pulitzer. The exhibition, which was curated by Stephanie Weissberg, is on view through February 4, 2024. Concurrently, The Hill Art Foundation, New York, is showing "The Sea, the Sky, a Window," an exhibition of site-specific works Crowner is presenting with sculptures and paintings from several private collections. The exhibition is on view through February 17, 2024.

Instagram: Leigh Arnold, Sarah Crowner, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 623 features artistsMelissa Cody and Roksana Pirouzmand.

Cody and Pirouzmand 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 first of two MAN Podcast episodes that will feature artists from the program.

Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver, creates tapestries from traditional techniques that engage both ancestral and contemporary ideas and forms. Her work is partly informed by the Germantown style, developed in the nineteenth century by weavers who used industrially dyed yarns produced in Germantown, Pennsylvania and shipped west to be used by Diné weavers. Cody's work has been included in exhibitions at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark., the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, SITE Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and more.

Pirouzmand is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist whose work reference and use the human body to address diaspora and memory. She has exhibited across southern California at venues such as the California Institute of the Arts' REDCAT.

Instagram: Melissa Cody, Roksana Pirouzmand, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 622 is a holiday clips episode that features artists Otobong Nkanga and Griselda Rosas.

Nkanga was just awarded the 2025 Nasher Prize, for "weaving together powerful works that delve into the complex, often fragile relationships between humans, the land, and its resources, touching on issues of consumption, global circulation, connectivity, and care."

This segment was taped in 2018 on the occasion of “Otobong Nkanga: To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition, a survey of her work, was curated by Omar Kholeif. For images, see Episode No. 340.

Rosas' work is on view at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in "Matrix 282/Griselda Rosas: Yo te cuido." The exhibition presents Rosas’ textile drawings and sculptural installations that explore themes of inheritance, colonialism, and intergenerational knowledge. The exhibition, which debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and which is on view in Berkeley through November 19, was curated by Anthony Graham with assistance from Jill Dawsey. This segment was taped in the spring when the MCASD presentation was on view. For images, see Episode No. 607.

Instagram: Otobong Nkanga, Griselda Rosas, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 621 features artistCarmen Winant and curator Negar Azimi.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is exhibiting 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.

Azimi discusses her exhibition "Becoming Van Leo," the first international survey of the photography of the late Armenian artist known as Van Leo. It's on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through November 5. Born Levon Boyadjian in Turkey, Leo became a leading studio photographer in Cairo between the 1940s and the 1960s. Azimi's exhibition includes some of Leo's earliest pictures from the 1930s, his extensive experiments with self-portraiture, and his challenging of East-West binaries.

Instagram: Carmen Winant, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 620 features artistsStacy Kranitz and Kristine Potter.

Kranitz and Potter are included in "A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845" at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 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, and will be on view through January 14, 2024 before traveling to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. 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 Mewas published by Twin Palms and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photobook Award. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $75-80.

Aperture has just published Potter's second monograph, Dark Waters. The book extends Potter's interest in using the US landscape as an ideological site by exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century 'murder ballads' marry site to misogynistic violence. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $43-61.

Instagram: Stacy Kranitz, Kristine Potter, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 619 features artistsEdra Soto and José Lerma.

Soto and Lerma are among the 18 artists featured in "entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago, which is home to third-largest mainland population of Puerto Ricans. "entre horizontes" was curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 5, 2024.

Edra Soto's sculpture and installations prompt viewers to reconsider cross-cultural dynamics, the legacy of colonialism, and personal responsibility. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in the 2020-21 El Museo del Barrio, New York, triennial, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and more. In 2023 Soto was awarded a US LatinX Art Forum fellowship. Soto also is the co-director of the outdoor project space The Franklin.

Lerma is a painter whose work blends the historical, autobiographical, art historical and mythological, often through portraits that suggest (or name) specific individuals while pointing to how much of their public personae are manufactured. Simultaneously riffing on European portraiture traditions and popular representation, his work is smart, funny, and always painterly. The Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the MCA Chicago have all presented solo exhibitions of his work.

Episode No. 618 is a holiday clips episode that remembers Steve Roden. He died yesterday after fighting Alzheimer's disease. Roden was 59.

The program features:

• a 2012 segment with Roden and Stephen Vitiello on the occasion of their inclusion in the Menil Collection, Houston exhibition "Silence," and a related improvised performance at the Rothko Chapel;
• an excerpt from that performance;
• the full sound Roden created for The Modern Art Notes Podcast; and
• a 2013 segment with Roden pegged to concurrent exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and at CRG Gallery in New York.

Episode No. 617 is a holiday clips episode featuring artistvanessa german.

german is one of six artists featured in "Beyond Granite," a series of installations on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The exhibition, which was curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab, is on view through September 18, 2024. german's Of Thee We Sing (2023) considers Marian Anderson's 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (near which german's work is installed).

Two other artists included in the exhibition have been featured on The MAN Podcast: Tiffany Chung and Wendy Red Star.

Instagram: vanessa german, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 616 features artistGary Simmons and curator Sarah L. Eckhardt.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 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. After closing on October 1, the exhibition will be on view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from December 5 through April 24, 2024. The MCA Chicago and DelMonico Books have published an outstanding catalogue. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for $56-60.

Along with Drew Thompson, Eckhardt is the co-curator of "Benjamin Wigfall & Communications Village." It's at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through September 10. The exhibition is a survey of Richmond-native Wigfall's work, and a historicization of Communications Village, the interdisciplinary artist-run project that Wigfall instigated while teaching at the State University of New York, New Paltz in the early 1970s, as the instigator of what we now call social practice. The excellent catalogue was published by the VMFA, which offers it for $40.

Instagram: Gary Simmons, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 615 features historian and authorDavid Bindman, and artist Nicki Green.

Bindman's new book is 'Race Is Everything': Art and Human Difference. It examines nineteenth and early twentieth-century racializing science (sometimes referred to as pseudoscience) and how European art both influenced it, and was itself influenced by it. The book pays special attention to the racialization of people of African and Jewish descent. It considers the skull as a racializing marker, Darwin and Darwinism, the construction of the Mediterranean 'race,' Anglo-Saxonism, the racializing debate over Egyptians, and plenty more. 'Race is Everything' was just published by Reaktion Books. Bookshop and Amazon offer it for about $37.

Bindman is an emeritus professor at University College London, and a fellow of the Hutchings Center, Harvard University. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century.

Green's work is included in "What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection" which runs through July 7, 2024 at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. The exhibition was curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm with Anthony Graham. Green is a transdisciplinary artist who works primarily in clay. Her work explores topics such as history preservation, conceptual ornamentation, and aesthetics of otherness. She has exhibited at the biennial in Lyon, France, at the New Museum, New York, and at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. Next spring she'll be included in "New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.