Episode No. 393 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Suzanne Lacy and Thomas Nozkowski.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are jointly presenting 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.

As one JPEG or still doesn’t always convey Lacy’s work, here are links to some of the works host Tyler Green and Lacy discuss on this week’s show:

• Ablutions (1972);
• Chickens Coming Home to Roost (1975-76);
• Learn Where the Meat Comes From (1976);
• Three Weeks in May (1977);
• Travels with Mona (1977-78);
• Mona by Numbers (1978);
• Freeze Frame (1982);
• Whisper, the Waves and the Wind (1983-84);

On the second segment, a clip from Green’s 2013 conversation with painter Thomas Nozkowski, who died last week. He was 75. Nozkowski was a painter’s painter. He had over seventy solo shows around the world and his work is in almost every major museum collection you can think of, all to little fanfare. His last retrospective was a decade ago, at the National Gallery of Canada.

Air date: May 16, 2019.

Suzanne Lacy, Three Weeks in May (detail), 1977.

Suzanne Lacy, The Crystal Quilt, 1985–87; original quilt from the project; installation view at the Tanks, Tate Modern, London, July 18–October 28, 2012.

Suzanne Lacy, Annice Jacoby, and Chris Johnson, The Roof Is on Fire, 1993–94, from The Oakland Projects, 1991–2001; performance, June 4, 1994, City Center West Garage, Oakland.

Suzanne Lacy, The Circle and the Square, 2017 (production still).