Frida, the Making of an Icon, Isabelle Frances McGuire

Episode No. 749 features curator Mari Carmen Ramírez and Isabelle Frances McGuire. Ramírez is the curator of "Frida: The Making of an Icon" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition reveals how Frida Kahlo went from virtually unknown to mainstream audiences at the time of her death in 1954 to becoming famed as both an artist and as a kind of celebrity icon. Among the factors it identifies are North American geopolitics, the role of culture in the promotion of nationhood, tourism, and international trade, and more. "Frida" features more than 30 works by Kahlo and 120 more by five generations of artists she inspired. It is on view at the MFAH through May 17. A fascinating catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60. McGuire is included in the 2026 biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The show was curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer with Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez. It's on view through August 23. This segment was taped when McGuire was included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's "Descending the Staircase" exhibition in 2024. McGuire is a Chicago-based artist whose work considers the body and how our understanding of it can be filtered by video games, film, animatronics, and other technologies. The 2024 MCA Chicago exhibition marked her first inclusion in a museum exhibition; since then McGuire has shown at Artist's Space, New York, and at the Renaissance Society, Chicago. For images see Episode No. 648. Instagram: Isabelle Frances McGuire, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 748 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Shawnya L. Harris and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll. Harris and Richmond-Moll are the curators of "Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The exhibition presents the life and work of nineteenth-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis in the context of her contemporaries and artists she may have influenced. The exhibition is on view through June 7. A valuable catalogue was published by the Peabody Essex Museum and Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55. Episode No. 748 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Shawnya L. Harris and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll. Harris and Richmond-Moll are the curators of "Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The exhibition presents the life and work of nineteenth-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis in the context of her contemporaries and artists she may have influenced. The exhibition is on view through June 7. A valuable catalogue was published by the Peabody Essex Museum and Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55. As discussed on the program: Gisela Torres, Reverie and Slumber, 2020. Instagram: Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Tyler Green. Air date: March 5, 2026.

Episode No. 747 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Bethany Collins and curator Edouard Kopp. Collins is included in "Monuments," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition juxtaposes decommissioned Lost Cause monuments with commissioned artworks that address the histories the Lost Cause aimed to whitewash. Collins' contribution to the project is Love is dangerous (2024-25), a sculptural installation that remakes the base of the Stonewall Jackson monument that was installed in Charlottesville, Virginia. The exhibition, which is on view through May 3, was curated by Hamza Walker, Kara Walker, and Bennett Simpson with Hannah Burstein and Paula Kroll. The museum says that a catalogue is forthcoming. On March 5 the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver opens "Bethany Collins: The Deluge," a presentation of Collins works that each address -- and navigate -- an existential storm. Across several media, Collins addresses major literary works such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and Sophocles' Antigone -- and the US songbook too. The exhibition was curated by Leilani Lynch and is on view through July 5. Among the many museums presenting solo exhibitions of Collins' work are the Seattle Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Van Every and Smith Galleries at Davidson College, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Edouard Kopp is the curator of "Wall Drawing Series: Gladys Nilsson" at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston. The site-specific exhibition features an enormous Nilsson drawing that features fantastical, hybrid beings surrounding one monumental figure engaged in the act of drawing. It's on view through August 9. Nilsson's work has been the subject of dozens of exhibitions, including a 1973 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is in the collection of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Instagram: Bethany Collins, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 746 features artist Brian Rochefort and curator Catherine Craft. Rochefort is among the artists included in "Made in L.A. 2025," the biennial at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles. The exhibition was curated by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow and is on view through March 1. Rochefort's ceramic sculptures are informed by abstract painting, the earth's geology, and more. Over the last decade he has shown at commercial galleries in the US, Greece, Italy, Belgium, France, and more. His work is in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Craft is the curator of "Rauschenberg Sculpture" at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The exhibition presents highlights from Rauschenberg's three-dimensional practice and is on view through April 26. Instagram: Brian Rochefort, Catherine Craft, Tyler Green.

Episode No. 745 is a holiday weekend clips show featuring artist Christina Fernandez. Fernandez is included in "Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966-2026" at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside (Calif.) Art Museum. The exhibition explores the evolution of Chicana/o/x lens-based practices through over 150 pictures made across six decades. The exhibition is on view at both RAM locations, and will remain at The Cheech through September 6, and at RAM's Julia Morgan-designed building through July 5. through It was curated by Elizabeth Ferrer. Concurrently, Fernandez's 2002 Lavanderia #2 is on view in the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection galleries. The NGA holds at least six pictures from the series. This episode was taped in 2023 on the occasion of the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles' post-renovation-and-expansion debut exhibition "Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer's Contemporary Collection," and as the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth was showing "Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures," a survey of Fernandez's career. For images, see Episode No. 602. Air date: February 12, 2026.

Episode No. 744 features artist Blas Isasi and curators Larissa Grollemond and Elizabeth Morrison, and artist Harmonia Rosales. Tomorrow, February 6, the Saint Louis Art Museum opens "Currents 125: Blas Isasi." The exhibition presents sculptures informed by ancient Andean cosmology and the Peruvian desert landscape, as well as the violent collision between Indigenous Andeans and colonizing Europeans. The exhibition was curated by Simon Kelly, and is on view through August 9. SLAM's exhibition brochure is available here. Isasi is a Peruvian sculptor who lives in the United States. He has previously shown in Prospect 6 in New Orleans (parts of that exhibition traveled to the MCA Denver), at SHED Projects, Cleveland, and at The Front, New Orleans. Grollemond and Morrison are the curators of "Beginnings: The Story of Creation in the Middle Ages" at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition, which is on view through April 19, looks at how creation stories have been advanced in manuscript painting. The exhibition also includes works by Harmonia Rosales, whose work often engages Christian creation stories, how they were presented in the middle ages, and how they might be offered today. Rosales, whose work centers Black women in reconsiderations of Western art, has been included in group shows at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Museum. Instagram: Blas Isasi, Larissa Grollemond, Harmonia Rosales, Tyler Green. Air date: February 5, 2026.

Episode No. 743 features author and art historian William E. Wallace. Wallace is the author of Michelangelo & Titian, which will be published by Princeton University Press on February 3. The book examines what Michelangelo and Titian saw in each other's work, how they spoke to each other in paintings and sculptures, and details their two meetings. Wallace's narrative animates the many relationships with church officials, collectors, and intellectuals that the two men had in common, providing insight into their world and the many ways in which the two artists may have addressed each other in their art. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $19-33. Wallace was previously on Episode No. 439 to discuss Michelangelo, God's Architect. Air date: January 29, 2026.

Episode No. 742 features artist Woody De Othello, and artists Jason Garcia, Michael Namingha, and curator Bess Murphy. The Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting "Woody De Othello: coming forth by day," a presentation of new ceramic and wood sculptures, tiled wall works, and a large-scale bronze, all of which explore the primordial relationship between body, earth, and spirit. The exhibition was organized by Jennifer Inacio with the support of Fabiana A. Sotillo. It is on view in Miami through June 28 after which it will travel to the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis. Othello's sculpture, painting, and drawing often investigate the still life genre. His previous institutional solo exhibition was at The Bowes Museum in the UK. Museums that have featured his work in group shows include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Seattle Art Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Whitney Museum of American Art included him in its 2022 biennial. Later this year, his work will be featured in a Public Art Fund solo presentation in Brooklyn's Brooklyn Bridge Park. He is an artist trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Garcia and Murphy are the co-curators of "Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country" at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Namingha is among the 13 artists in the exhibition, 12 of whom are from the six Tewa Pueblos of northern New Mexico (Nambé, Ohkay Owingeh, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and Tesuque).  "Tewa Nangeh" presents the work of Tewa artists while highlighting O'Keeffe's erasure of Tewa people. It is on view through September 7. Garcia's work is in the collection of museums such as the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Namingha's work is also on view through April 5 at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe in "Essential Elements: Art, Environment, and Indigenous Futures." The El Paso Museum of Art and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe have featured solo exhibitions of his work; he's been in group shows at museums such as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Instagram: Woody De Othello, Jason Garcia, Michael Namingha, Tyler Green. Air date: January 22, 2026.

Episode No. 741 features curator Ed Schad and critic Gabriella Nugent. Schad is the curator of "Robert Therrien: This is a Story" at The Broad in Los Angeles. The retrospective presents Therrien's meditations on scale and material, while revealing Therrien's repeatedly mined vocabulary of forms and symbols. The exhibition is on view through April 5. The Broad published a fine catalogue to accompany the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $50-55. Nugent is a London-based art historian and curator who routinely publishes essays in Burlington Contemporary and Art Monthly. She particularly discusses her recent essay "On the problem of artists' biographies in exhibitions," which was published in Burlington Contemporary in December 2025. Instagram: Ed Schad, Gabriella Nugent, Tyler Green. Air date: January 15, 2026. 

Episode No. 740 features artist Firelei Báez and curators Charlene Foggie-Barnett and Dan Leers. The MCA Chicago is presenting "Firelei Báez," the first North American mid-career survey of the artist's paintings and installations. Báez's work often explores the legacies of colonialism across the American and the African diaspora, in the Caribbean, and beyond. Her works are often explosively colorful and use complex and layered materials, including archival material and paint, to unsettle fixed categories and historical events. The exhibition was curated by Eva Respini with Tessa Bachi Haas; the MCA Chicago presentation was organized by Carla Acevedo-Yates with Cecelia González Godino and Iris Colburn. It is on view through May 31. A catalogue was published by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in association with DelMonico Books. It is available from Amazon and Bookshop for $36-56. Institutions that have previously presented major Báez exhibitions include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, The Momentary in Bentonville, Ark., the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Foggie-Barnett and Leers are the co-curators of "Black Photojournalism" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The exhibition presents work by nearly 60 photographers chronicling historic events and daily life in the United States between 1945 and 1984. The exhibition was designed by David Hartt. It is on view through January 19, before traveling to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. An excellent catalogue was published by the Carnegie. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $60. In addition to the video below, the CMOA has produced an outstanding podcast series to accompany the show. Instagram: Firelei Báez, Charlene Foggie-Barnett, Tyler Green.