Episode No. 293 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features Museum of Modern Art, New York curator Leah Dickerman and artist Ken Ashton.
Along with the Tate Modern’s Achim Borchardt-Hume, Leah Dickerman is the co-curator of “Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends,” a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art through September 17. The exhibition features Rauschenberg’s early photography, body prints, combines, performances, prints and more. The exhibition catalogue was published by MoMA. Amazon offers it for $34 in paperback and $51 in cloth.
Leah Dickerman is a curator at MoMA. Her previous exhibitions include Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925,” and a 2005-06 dada survey that Dickerman curated while working at the National Gallery of Art.
On the second segment, Ken Ashton discusses his new book “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” which is new from Daylight. The book features Ashton’s documentation of the deindustrialization and emptying out of Portsmouth, Ohio, a small town on the Ohio River at the southern end of Appalachia. Amazon offers it for $30. Ashton’s work is in the collection of institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the National Gallery of Art.
Air date: June 15, 2017.

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Black Painting with Asheville Citizen), c. 1952.

Robert Rauschenberg, Pilgrim, 1960.

Robert Rauschenberg, Painting with Grey Wing, 1959.

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959.

Robert Rauschenberg, First Time Painting, 1961.

Robert Rauschenberg with John Cage, Automobile Tire Print (detail), 1953.

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-59.

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Venetian), 1973.

Robert Rauschenberg, Gull (Jammer), 1976.

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Man with White Shoes), 1954.

Peter Moore, Performance view of Robert Rauschenberg’s Pelican (1963), 1965.

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Gold Painting), ca. 1953.

Robert Rauschenberg, Pink Clay Painting (To Pete), 1953.

Robert Rauschenberg, Mud Muse, 1968-71.

Ken Ashton, two-page spread from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.

Ken Ashton, from “Portsmouth: Collected Saturdays,” 2017.