The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 445 features curator Eleanor Jones Harvey. Harvey is the curator of "Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. The exhibition examines the impacts of Humboldt's six-week visit to the United States in 1804, and how his influence extended into American art, science, literature, diplomacy, and more. SAAM is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it is unclear when the exhibition will re-open and close.

Episode No. 444 features curator and historian Adrienne L. Childs. Childs is the curator of "Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition" at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. The museum has extended the show through January 3, 2021. Nota bene: This program was recorded before the death of artist, historian and collector David C. Driskell.

Episode No. 443 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features author Blake Gopnik. Gopnik is the author of "Warhol," a new biography of artist Andy Warhol. The book was published by Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint. Amazon offers it for $34. Gopnik was formerly the art critic at the Washington Post and Toronto's Globe and Mail.

In a special pandemic bonus episode, art museum directors Sabine Eckmann (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in Saint Louis) and Rebecca Rabinow (Menil Collection, Houston) discuss operating art museums in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Episode No. 442 features curators Nathaniel Silver and Alison de Lima Greene. Silver curated "Boston's Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It examines Sargent works for which McKeller, an elevator attendant at Boston's Hotel Vendome, modeled. de Lima Greene discusses "Francis Bacon: Late Paintings" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It features paintings Bacon made between 1971 and his death in 1992. 

Episode No. 441 features curator Sarah Eckhardt and author and art historian Anne Monahan. Eckhardt is the curator of "Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop" at the VMFA. The museum is closed due to the pandemic; the show is scheduled to be on view through June 14. The Kamoinge Workshop was a collective of Black artists dedicated to photography during the 1960s and 1970s. On the second segment, art historian Anne Monahan discusses her new book "Horace Pippin, American Modern."

In a special pandemic bonus episode, artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Kate Shepherd discuss the extraordinary experience of having an exhibition of new work open and close at just about the same time. 

Episode No. 440 is a holiday clips edition featuring author and artist Nell Painter. Painter is the author of Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. “Starting over” refers to Painter’s retirement after a career as a top historian to return to college as a 60-something student — first to take undergraduate studio art courses at Rutgers, then to pursue an MFA at RISD. Old in Art School came out in paperback late last year; Amazon offers the Kindle edition for just $4.

COVAD-19 pandemic bonus episode No. 2. Critics on looking (or not) during a pandemic.  Christopher Knight is the longtime art critic at the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this year he won the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award in Art Journalism from the Rabkin Foundation, just the second time that's been awarded. Antwaun Sargent's most recent book is titled "The New Black Vanguard." His writing regularly pops up in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books Daily, and a whole bunch of other places.

Episode No. 439 features author and art historian William E. Wallace and curator Julian Brooks. Wallace is the author of "Michelangelo, God's Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece." It was published by Princeton University Press. Along with Emily J. Peters, Julian Brooks is the co-curator of "Michelangelo: Mind of the Master" at the J. Paul Getty Museum. (The Getty is temporarily closed due to the COVAD-19 pandemic.)

In a special bonus episode, artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, and Ursula von Rydingsvard discuss being artists in the midst of a global pandemic.

Episode No. 438 features curator Ann Temkin and editor Caitlin Murray. The Museum of Modern Art, New York has organized "Judd," the first posthumous retrospective of Donald Judd's work in the United States. "Judd" was curated by our guest, Ann Temkin, with Yasmil Raymond, Tamar Margalit and Erica Cooke. Caitlin Murray discusses "Donald Judd Interviews." Murray co-edited the volume with Flavin Judd. 'Interviews' was published by Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books.

Episode No. 437 features artist Renée Stout and curator Mary Morton. Stout is in "Person of Interest," at the Sheldon Museum of Art. The exhibition examines portraiture from the late 19th century to the present, with an emphasis on questions around self-fashioning, cultural memory, gender identity, and performance. It is scheduled to be on view through July 3. Mary Morton discusses "True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870," scheduled to be at the National Gallery of Art through May 3

Episode No. 436 features artist Ebony G. Patterson and art historian Shaina Larrivee. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is showing "Ebony G. Patterson... while the dew is still on the roses...", a survey of work Patterson has made over the last decade. It is on view at the Nasher through July 12. On the second segment, Hedda Sterne Foundation director Shaina Larrivee discusses "Hedda Sterne: Imagination & Machine" at the Des Moines Art Center. It is on view through April 15.

Episode No. 435 features curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner and artist Bethany Collins. Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner is the co-curator of "Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle." The exhibition, which is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts through April 26, presents Lawrence's 1954-56 series "Struggle: From the History of the American People." On the second segment, Bethany Collins discusses the work she installed at the PEM in conversation with Lawrence's series.