No. 481: Michael Rakowitz, Frank Duveneck

Episode No. 481 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Michael Rakowitz and curator Julie Aronson.

Rakowitz, an Iraqi-American sculptor, is the winner of the 2020 Nasher Prize, given by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. The Nasher is showing an exhibition of Rakowitz’s work through April 18. It includes work from Rakowitz’s series The invisible enemy should not exist, a 2007-and-after engagement with the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in the wake of the United States-led invasion. The series includes placeholders for many of the 15,000 artifacts that were stolen or lost in the museum’s partial dissolution. The Nasher exhibition also includes Rakowitz’s stop-motion film The Ballad of Special Ops Cody.

The Wellin Museum at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY is presenting “Michael Rakowitz: Nimrud” through June 18. As of the publishing of this episode, the exhibition is open only to members of the Hamilton College community.

Projects and artworks that Rakowitz and host Tyler Green discuss on this week’s episode are represented below as well as on Rakowitz’s thorough website:

On the second segment, Cincinnati Art Museum curator Julie Aronson discusses “Frank Duveneck: American Master,” a retrospective of the Gilded Age, Cincinnati-based painter whose teaching and work was also influential in the American northeast and in Europe. The exhibition is on view through March 28. The thorough, richly illustrated exhibition catalogue was published by Giles. Indiebound and Amazon offer it for $39-55.

Air date: January 21, 2021.

Michael Rakowitz, The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, panel 15, Northwest Palace of Nimrud), 2019.

Michael Rakowitz, The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, panel 10, Northwest Palace of Nimrud), 2019.

Michael Rakowitz, The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, Northwest Palace of Nimrud), 2020, Installation View at Jane Lombard Gallery, photo by Arturo Sanchez.