No: 735: Sixties Surreal, Filippino Lippi

Episode No. 735 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curators Dan Nadel and Laura Phipps, and curator Alexander J. Noelle.

With Elizabeth Sussman and Scott Rothkopf, Nadel and Phipps are the co-curators of “Sixties Surreal” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition works to complicate the march of -isms which, outside the academy and too few art museums, has too often ossified into the the era’s US art history. “Sixties Surreal” offers some of the ways in which artists working around the US (and not only in New York or for its market) mined surrealist thought and theory to help them reckon with the era’s sociopolitical extremes. The exhibition is on view through January 19, 2026. The thought-provoking exhibition catalogue was published by the Whitney. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $40-45. Also, Nadel and Phipps have made a 113-song Spotify playlist to accompany the show.

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s remarkable autumn of major Italian Renaissance presentations continues with Noelle’s “Filippino Lippi and Rome,” a look at the Florentine’s painter’s work in and informed by travel to Rome. The impetus for the exhibition was Cleveland’s own tondo The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret (ca. 1488-93), a masterpiece and the only known independent work that Filippino produced in Rome. Filippino is the son of the famed Fra Filippo Lippi, and apprenticed and collaborated with Sandro Botticelli before working on his own. “Lippi and Rome” is on view through February 22, 2026. A superb catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $40. Several months ago the Cleveland Museum of Art debuted Giambologna’s Fata Morgana, a high-profile acquisition of a rare Giambologna marble sculpture.

Instagram: Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Alexander J. Noelle, and Tyler Green.

Air date: Dec. 4, 2025.

TC Cannon, “Andrew Myrick — Let ‘Em Eat Grass,” 1970.

Bruce Conner, RAT PURSE, 1959.

Ed Ruscha, Noise, Pencil, Broken Pencil, and Cheap Western, 1963.

Oscar Howe, Retreat, 1968.

Fritz Scholder, Indian and Rhinoceros, 1968.

James Rosenquist, The Light That Won’t Fail I, 1961.

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Comb), 1970.

Peter Saul, Saigon, 1967.

Ralph Arnold, Unfinished Collage, 1968.

Filippino Lippi, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret, ca. 1488–93.

Filippino Lippi, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret (detail), ca. 1488–93.

Filippino Lippi, Study for the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Carafa Chapel, Rome, ca. 1488–93.

Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with an Angel and Two Figures, One Playing the Lute, ca.1490–95.

Filippino Lippi, The Muse Erato, ca. 1500.

Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, ca. 1490.

Filippino Lippi, Saint Francis Giving the Rule of the Tertiary Order to Saint Louis as Represented by King Louis IX of France and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, ca. 1488–93.