Episode No. 447 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast is a post-holiday weekend clips episode featuring artist Mark Dion.

This week, Amazon Prime Video debuted “The Perilous Texas Adventures of Mark Dion,” an hour-long documentary showing how Dion re-traced the steps of four nineteenth-century Texas explorers: Sarah Ann Lillie Hardinge, Charles Wright, John James Audubon and Frederick Law Olmsted. The film, which premiered on Texas PBS stations, was directed by Erik Clapp and produced by Maggie Adler.

The Amon Carter Museum exhibition chronicled by the documentary is also titled “The Perilous Texas Adventures of Mark Dion.” Curated by Adler, it features both Dion’s discoveries and related works from its collection. The exhibition’s closing date is TBD. The Amon Carter has published an extraordinary book in association with the project, in some ways an adaptation of and Dion & Co. updating of Olmsted’s Texas travel diary, that is distributed by Yale University Press. Amazon offers it for $40.

Dion works at the intersection of art, natural history, history and anthropology. His work examines and often critiques humanity’s approach to nature, landscape and science through witty address of scientific methodologies and installations that often have roots in Victorian-era presentation.

Dion has fulfilled commissions and had exhibitions at museums all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Natural History Museum, London. He is also a co-director of Mildred’s Lane, a visual art education and residency program in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania.

Dion was previously a guest on Episode No. 309. Olmsted’s books on his travels through Texas and the South are available for free and in multiple formats from the Internet Archive’s Open Library.

Air date: May 28, 2020.