The Modern Art Notes Podcast - Robert Adams

Robert Adams

06/23/22 • 71 min

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The Modern Art Notes Podcast

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.

Episode No. 555 features artist Robert Adams.

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.

Previous Episode

Andrea Bowers, Suzanne Lacy

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.