The Modern Art Notes Podcast

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Ann Hamilton. Her installation the event of a thread is on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York through Jan. 6, 2013.

Hamilton is one of America’s most-honored artists. She is the recipient of a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, a United States Artists fellowship and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. In 1999 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Today she also sits on the board of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Images and video of many of her installations and objects are available at her website.

On the second segment, we initiate a series of interviews about Richard Serra’s Shift, one of the most important earthworks. Shift is in King City, Ontario, where the province’s failure to grant it landmark status has left the work endangered by encroaching exurban development. (An Ontario preservation board ruled that Shift has no heritage value to the community.) Shift is the contemporary masterpiece under the greatest threat.

Our series of segments on Shift kicks off with Serra himself. Serra has spoken sparingly about Shift (1971-72) in recent years, but when he was a guest on Episode No. 18 of The MAN Podcast he talked about it at length, particularly in terms of its close relationship to his concurrent Pulitzer Piece and how the work emerged out of conversations with Joan Jonas and Philip Glass. This week’s show features a re-air of the part of our conversation during which Serra discusses Shift, its history and its future.

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes, SoundCloud or RSS. See images of artworks discussed on the show.