The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 554 features artists Andrea Bowers and Suzanne Lacy.

The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles is presenting a retrospective of Bowers' work. The exhibition reveals how Bowers has combined her artistic practice with activism. Both focus on structural inequities, elevating and celebrating the work of activists trying to create a more just nation and world, and tying present day struggles to historical movements such as the global labor movement. The show features about 60 works reflecting Bowers's use of many media, including drawing, installation, video and sculpture. "Andrea Bowers" was curated by Connie Butler and Michael Darling. After debuting at the MCA Chicago, it's on view at the Hammer through September 4. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by DelMonico Books in association with the two museums. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40-60.

On the second segment, our 2019 conversation with Bowers' sometime-collaborator, Suzanne Lacy. The program was recorded when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts jointly presented the retrospective “Suzanne Lacy: We are Here.” The exhibition explores Lacy’s roots in early conceptualism and her emergence as a pioneer of what has become known as social practice, the use of community organizing and media-focused strategies to prompt events and discussions. The exhibitions are on view in San Francisco through August 4.

Suzanne Lacy is best known for her ambitious Three Weeks in May (1977), a project that exposed the extent of reported rapes in Los Angeles. It was the first of Lacy’s large-scale works that addressed violence against women and that revealed Lacy’s strategies for melding art and organizing practices.

Links and images to artworks Lacy discusses are at Episode No. 393.

Episode No. 557 features artist Meghann Riepenhoff and curator Michelle White.

Meghann Riepenhoff is included in "Watershed," an exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art that considers the interconnected histories, present lives, and imagined futures of the Great Lakes region. "Watershed" features work by 15 artists, six of whom were commissioned to make new work for the show. Riepenhoff's 2022 Waters of the Americas: EPA ID NYD980592497, Eastman Kodak’s Emissions B (Confluence of the Genesee River and Lake Ontario, Rochester, NY, 03.12.2022) is among those commissions. The exhibition was curated by Jennifer M. Friess, and is on view through October 23.

Riepenhoff's work foregrounds the chemical processes from which pictures are and have been made since the nineteenth century, and brings those processes into contact with nature, including rivers, lakes and oceans. Her work has been included in exhibitions at SFMOMA, the High Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and more. This September, Radius and Yossi Milo Gallery will publish Riepenhoff's new book Ice; and Yossi Milo will present related work in its New York space. Indiebound and Amazon offer the book for about $60.

White discusses "Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s," which is at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through July 17. The exhibition examines two of Saint Phalle's most important bodies of work: the Tirs, or “shooting paintings,” and exuberant sculptures of women Saint Phalle called Nanas. White co-curated the show with Jill Dawsey. The excellent exhibition catalogue was co-published by MCASD and The Menil Collection, which originated the exhibition, and distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for about $50.

Episode No. 550 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features historian and author Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and curator Edith Devaney.

Gilmore is the author of "Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination," which was just published by the University of North Carolina Press. The book examines how Bearden's address of his native South -- he was born and was initially raised in the Charlotte, NC area before his family was effectively forced to leave the South -- was informed by the vagaries of memory and even imagination. Gilmore is the Peter V. & C. Vann Woodward Professor Emerita of History at Yale University. Her previous books include "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920," and "Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950." Indiebound and Amazon offer "Bearden" for $26-40.

Devaney discusses “Milton Avery,” a survey of the artist’s career now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. The exhibition debuted at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and is in Hartford through June 5. The exhibition features about 70 paintings Avery made between the 1910s and the mid-1960s and emphasizes Avery’s interest in color. It’s on view at the Wadsworth through June 5. “Avery” was co-organized by the Royal Academy, London, the Wadsworth and MAMFW. Its catalogue was published by the Royal Academy. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for about $45.

Episode No. 553 features artist Hayv Kahraman and conservator and author Susan Lake.

Hayv Kahraman is included in "Women Painting Women" at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The exhibition features 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works. It was curated by Andrea Karnes and is on view through September 25. The exhibition catalogue was published by Delmonico Books. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $39-50.

Kahraman is a Baghdad-born, Los Angeles-based painter whose work explores the non-fixity of diasporic culture. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Joslyn Museum of Art, Omaha and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.

On the second segment, Lake discusses "Clyfford Still," a new book in the Getty Conservation Institute's "The Artists Materials" series. Lake co-authored the book with Barbara A. Ramsay. Built from unprecedented access to art in the Clyfford Still estate and later in the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, the book offers a detailed account of Still's materials, working methods and techniques. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $40.

Episode No. 555 features artist Robert Adams.

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, is presenting "American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams" through October 2. The exhibition, a career survey, includes about 175 pictures Adams made between 1965 and 2015. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by the NGA and Aperture. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $44-65.

Adams is among the world's greatest living photographers. His work has taken a critical eye to the United States, and especially to its stewardship of the West and the people who live there.

This is Adams' third visit to the program. He was previously the guest on Episodes No. 41 and 227.