Ann Burroughs, the museum director who stood up to Trump, Giambologna
Release Date: 09/04/2025
Rauschenberg Fabrics, Nanette Carter
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 723 features curator Michelle White and artist Nanette Carter. White is the curator of at The Menil Collection, Houston. The exhibition considers Rauschenberg's conceptual, expressive use of fabric as a medium through a focus on three groups of works from the 1970s: Venetians (1972-73), Jammers (1975-76), and Hoarfrosts (1974-76). It is on view through March 1, 2026. "Fabric" is accompanied by an excellent catalogue published by the Menil. and offer it for $60-65. The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is presenting through January 11, 2026. The...
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Ann Burroughs, the museum director who stood up to Trump, Giambologna
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 722 features museum director and human rights activist Ann Burroughs, and curator Cory Korkow. Burroughs is the director of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, which has led the museum sector in resisting Trumpism and the rise of fascism in the United States. Even as many US institutions capitulated when the Trump administration demanded a return to racist and white supremacist policies and practices, JANM stood by its diversity and equity foci and programs. Over the summer, armed and often masked Border Patrol agents conducted what appeared to be an...
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Summer clips: Saif Azzuz
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 721 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Saif Azzuz. The Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, is presenting which interrogates the privatization of land, water, and natural resources within settler-colonial systems. Across the exhibition, Azzuz and family members Lulu Thrower, Elizabeth Azzuz, Viola Azzuz, Moya Azzuz, and Colleen Colegrove reference the myths, origin stories, and fabricated tales animating the land now known as Houston. The artists in the exhibition draw upon ecological knowledge to visualize histories of land...
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Summer clips: Tidawhitney Lek
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 720 is a summer clips episode featuring artist Tidawhitney Lek. Lek is among the 30+ artists featured in "Spirit House" at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. The exhibition considers how 33 contemporary artists of Asian descent challenge the boundary between life and death through art, including how the spiritual relates to diaspora, connections to ancestral homelands, and the experience of feeling present within multiple cultures and multiple geographies. The show’s curatorial framework was inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures...
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Ben Shahn
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 719 features curator Laura Katzman. Katzman is the curator of at the Jewish Museum, New York. Shahn's first US retrospective in nearly 50 years. The exhibition examines Shahn's progressive commitment to the major issues between the Great Depression and the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. The exhibition features 175 paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs and more, spotlighting Shahn's skill and vision across media. The exhibition debuted at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and was adapted by the Jewish...
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Masako Miki, Katherine Simóne Reynolds
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 718 features artist Masako Miki and artist/curator Katherine Simóne Reynolds. The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco is presenting a far-ranging presentation of two-dimensional and three-dimensional practice. The Japanese-born Miki's paintings, sculptures, and installations live between the sacred and the secular. Her often exuberant sculptures are rooted in the blending of Japanese and US cultures. Her previous solo shows have been at museums such as the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California,...
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Erin Shirreff, Artemisia Gentileschi
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 717 features artist Erin Shirreff, curator Davide Gasparotto, and conservator Ulrich Birkmaier. The Milwaukee Art Museum is presenting through September 1. Across 40 recent collages, photographs, sculptures, and videos, the exhibition reveals interest in the space between images and the objects they picture. The exhibition was curated by Kristen Gaylord. Among the museums that have presented solo exhibitions of Shirreff's work are SITE Santa Fe, the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., SFMOMA, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. is at the J. Paul Getty...
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Noah Davis, Francesca Fuchs
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 716 features curator Eleanor Nairne and artist Francesca Fuchs. With Wells Fray-Smith, Nairne is the co-curator of an eponymous retrospective at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. Davis, who passed away from a rare cancer in 2015 at age 32, was a painter whose work addressed current affairs, every day life, family histories, and architecture. Davis often addressed the subjects that interested him by fusing his interest in art history to his interest in vernacular sources, such as flea market photographs or personal archives. The exhibition is on view...
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Kandis Williams
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 715 features artist Kandis Williams. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis is presenting the first survey of Williams' career. The exhibition spotlights how Williams has used collage as a tool of Black feminist resistance, to dismantle entrenched histories and power structures, and to rebuild dominant narratives. The exhibition, which was curated by Taylor Jasper with Laurel Rand-Lewis, is on view through August 24. The exhibition catalogue was published by the Walker. and offer it for around $45. Williams is also included in at the Hammer Museum, University of California,...
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"The First Homosexuals," June Leaf
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
Episode No. 714 features curator and art historian Jonathan D. Katz and curators Allison Kemmerer and Gordon Wilkins. With Johnny Willis, Katz is the co-curator of at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. The exhibition details the emergence of a significant change in how societies around the world regarded homosexuality in the wake of the coining of the term 'homosexual' in 1869, and the ways in which images have represented a range of identities ever since. It is on view through July 26. The fascinating exhibition catalogue was published by Monacelli. and offer it for $70-75. Kemmerer and Wilkins...
info_outlineEpisode No. 722 features museum director and human rights activist Ann Burroughs, and curator Cory Korkow.
Burroughs is the director of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, which has led the museum sector in resisting Trumpism and the rise of fascism in the United States. Even as many US institutions capitulated when the Trump administration demanded a return to racist and white supremacist policies and practices, JANM stood by its diversity and equity foci and programs. Over the summer, armed and often masked Border Patrol agents conducted what appeared to be an operation aimed at intimidating speakers at a program at the museum's Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, including at a press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The museum aggressively resisted the federal show of force, drawing lines between illegal federal actions in 1942 and the present.
JANM's mission is "to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience." Its collections and programs feature art and art's history. The museum holds work by and the archives of artists such as Hisako Hibi, George Hoshida, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugimoto, Chikashi Tanaka, Kango Takamura, and Jack Iwata.
In addition to leading JANM, Burroughs is the two-time former chairperson of the board of Amnesty International USA, the chair of the Amnesty International Global Assembly, and presently sits on the board of Amnesty International.
As mentioned on the program:
- Burroughs' op-ed for the American Alliance of Museums; and
- JANM's "History Unpacked" program.
Korkow helped lead the Cleveland Museum of Art's acquisition and initial installation of Giambologna's Fata Morgana (ca. 1572), which had been the last of the roughly dozen marble sculptures made by the artist remaining in private hands. Giambologna made the sculpture for installation in a fountain at Bernardo Vecchietti's Villa il Reposo in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy.
Instagram: Cory Korkow, Tyler Green.
Air date: September 4, 2025.