Articulated: Dispatches from the Archives of American Art

Pat Steir (b. 1938) is synonymous with bold painting, and she has been shaping the arts in the United States and beyond since the 1970s. Through exhilarating material experimentation in paint and cutting-edge work in print, Steir continues to cultivate new expression and generations of art. Hear about the paths she has taken and forged in her own words. Show Notes and Transcript available at http://www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Hear from Lenore Chinn (b. 1949), a painter, photographer, activist, and legacy steward who has preserved the memories of multiple San Francisco communities for decades. Through her work, Chinn records the triumphs and challenges facing Asian and LGBTQ Americans and more based on the principle that we are all implicated in each other's lives and that we should enjoy our journeys together. Show Notes and Transcript available at http://www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Leo Tanguma (b. 1941) is a Chicano muralist and activist whose work in Texas and Colorado have spurred new generations of making. Hear his story, the history he makes shareable, and about the importance of art that belongs to everyone. Show Notes and Transcript available at http://www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Anita Fields (Osage | b. 1951) is an artist who makes history palpable through ceramics, textiles, and more. Hear her journey in her own words and how she continues to innovate after decades of work in clay and cloth. Show Notes and Transcript available at http://www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Hear about the lives and work of ceramicist and textile artist Anita Fields (Osage), muralist Leo Tanguma, painter and photographer Lenore Chinn, and painter Pat Steir as they've navigated their careers over the decades. This trailer was narrated by Susan Cary, our registrar and collections manager. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Through many modes and for many aims, feminists have sought to improve equity in and through the visual arts. In this episode, hear from a variety of women as they describe the trajectory of feminism they’ve seen in their lives and careers, including stories from Faith Ringgold, Linda Nochlin, Judy Baca, and Joan Semmel among others. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence profoundly shaped the depiction of American history in art through their ambitious and insightful oeuvres. From generating new national traditions through the Harlem Community Art Center to capturing communal experience through paint and collage, they paved the way for subsequent generations of storytellers. In this episode, hear from the artists as they recount the social, political, and artistic currents that guided their paths. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

For more than 50 years, Joe Feddersen (Colville) and G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron Clan) have been creating works that extend Native heritage and enrich the stories told by American art. Through an ambidextrous approach to craft and figuration, Feddersen finds consonance between contemporary life and traditional forms and iconographies, while Jemison highlights the continuities and ruptures of Native experiences in our shared spaces. With wide-ranging community education, preservation, and advocacy projects, Feddersen and Jemison show that new paths emerge from the old. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Throughout decades of protecting workers and their rights, the United Farm Workers union has been a significant nexus for artists and activists. In this episode, listen to three artists who have been instrumental in illustrating and activating the labor advocacy of the UFW, as Barbara Carrasco, Carlos Almaraz, and Ester Hernandez recount the importance of collective action and working alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Artistic education takes many shapes, as artists pass down skills and traditions to see them transformed by new hands. In this episode, hear how the classroom shaped artists, both as learners and teachers. Stories include Anni Albers’s descriptions of lessons with Paul Klee at the Bauhaus and her own teaching at Black Mountain College, Carmen Lomas Garza on the activism that shaped her time as a student teacher, and Lee Krasner’s memorable training moments along her artistic journey among others. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

As mass media exploded and the American art scene bloomed in the 1950s and 60s, Rosalyn Drexler and Sturtevant pushed back on corrosive cultural assumptions. Drexler’s collage paintings dissect popular attitudes towards fame, violence, and women, and Sturtevant’s replicas spur questions around originality, reception, and perception. Hear how each artist made her own way in her own words. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The fourth in a series on healing and belonging, this episode reflects on art as community care work. In her 2020 pandemic oral history interview, photographer Cinthya Santos-Briones describes tending for her Brooklyn neighbors during a harrowing time. She mentions the care and connection she experienced during sound baths performed by the artist Guadalupe Maravilla. Maravilla, also based in Brooklyn, spoke to us more recently about his sound baths and installations that aim to effect communal healing. This is a bilingual episode in English and Spanish; a full transcript and translations are available at aaa.si.edu/articulated. This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities. Show Notes, Transcript, and Translations available at…

Art emerges through communities within their environments, and in this episode, installation artists Carolina Caycedo and Lita Albuquerque reflect on creating in dialogue with the earth and its inhabitants. From ecological and cultural preservation to the transformation of our relationship with nature, Caycedo and Albuquerque discuss the potential for connection they hope to enable through their work. This is the third of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa. This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities. In this episode, two New York-based artists, Firelei Báez Julia Santos Solomon, explore what it means to create for themselves and for their communities, and how empathy grounds their work while spurring new modes of creativity. Both artists have roots on Hispaniola, and their relationship to tropical landscape and family have profoundly shaped their practices. This is the second of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing, and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

New York-based artist Koyoltzintli describes her journey from photojournalism to healing through ritual and reclamation. From finding threads with her ancestral roots to linking medium with memory, Koyoltzintli discusses the importance of experimentation and listening in her practice, especially for thinking across time and lineage. New Mexico-based artist Erica Lord also describes creative expression during fraught times as a key to connecting across history. This is the first of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

From 1942–1946, more than 125,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at camps throughout the country. This episode traces the lasting consequences of incarceration through the familial and artistic lines of Wendy Maruyama, Mira Nakashima, Frank Okada, and Patti Warashina, while considering how we understand the incarceration within the American experience. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

From 1942–1946, more than 125,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at camps throughout the country. Artists including Ruth Asawa, Miyoko Ito, Isamu Noguchi, and Kay Sekimachi were among them, and this episode tracks their experience in the camps and how their lives and work were transformed by a painful chapter of American history. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Willie Herrón’s murals enrich his East Los Angeles community by preserving history and planting seeds for the future. In this episode, New Mexico-based muralist Nanibah Chacon (Diné) celebrates Herrón’s precedent of recording and amplifying local culture through his work, and she reflects on the power of public art more broadly. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Artists often help us to break out of the paradigms to which we are knowingly and unknowingly accustomed. In this episode, New York- and Philadelphia-based artist Carolyn Lazard considers Emma Amos’s resistances to white supremacy in the 1960s and Bruce Conner’s disintegration of media’s spectacular thrall in the 1970s as well as the legacies each artist left in their wake. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

How do we understand our bodies in relation to the earth? In this episode, Columbus, Ohio-based artist Dionne Lee meditates on the wonder and danger of landscape through the work of Jerome Caja and Michelle Stuart, and their understandings of fragility, proneness, and seismic potential. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

In this episode, San Antonio-based photographer Mari Hernandez considers the social, political, and formal trails blazed by Kathy Vargas, another San Antonio resident. From her encounters with institutional racism and misogyny, to her radical experimentation with photography as a medium, Vargas’s vibrant career and activism have emboldened new generations of artists to expand and serve their communities. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

In this episode, Brooklyn-based painter Maia Cruz Palileo navigates Cherokee painter Kay WalkingStick’s journey with family, art, and history. From grappling with heritage to creating art that transcends boundaries of all kinds, follow the evolution of WalkingStick’s practice along the path she has painted all her own. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Native Hawaiian lauhala weaver Katherine Kalehuapuakeaula “Lehua” Domingo (1935-) and Hopi ceramicist Al Qöyawayma (1938-) are two elder Indigenous artists and practitioners that each embody lifetimes of experiences through their creative practices. In this episode, guest curator Lehuauakea, a Native Hawaiian artist, draws connections between their work through their shared challenges and celebrations, and how these elements might define the artists’ work as contemporary, traditional, or something else entirely. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

What does art make happen, and what can art make happen? Artists have adapted a variety of forms to encourage equity and advancement, creating art that serves as a forum for shared experience and growth as they spur new dynamics between creator and audience.This episode explores what feminist social practice has meant for Suzanne Lacy, particularly in her early performance work, and for Juana Alicia in her murals and paintings. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Consuelo Jiménez Underwood has blazed her own trail in fiber art, weaving with heritage and healing. Across borders, identities, and time, she creates works that celebrate the natural world and human connection. Learn more about her prolific practice and vivacious activism in this episode. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Images shape our sense of self, both as we receive and as we express them. Artists have interrogated the power of images for an array of feminist aims, and this episode tracks the work of Sarah Edwards Charlesworth and Celia Alvarez Muñoz as they examine, exploit, and explode the image. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Catherine Opie’s photographs examine the markers of human experience, how they individuate and connect us. Throughout her career she has foregrounded communities and spaces on the periphery, providing a forum to reformulate our relationships with places, materials, and bodies. Learn about her work and its reverberations in this episode. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Art reflects and shapes communities, and Jesse Treviño has made a career of enriching his lived environment in San Antonio, Texas. His work cherishes Chicano histories and futures by focusing on everyday life and heritage. This episode follows his journey from Texas to New York, Vietnam, and back to San Antonio, where he has made his home and legacy. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Artist, poet, activist, menswear designer, and renowned hugger Frederick Weston (1946–2020) found community wherever he went. Through collected ephemera, drawing, collage, and installations in the streets of New York City, he made Black and queer experience visible in a manner all his own. In this episode, learn about his work and the legacy of love he left behind. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Oral history provides a medium by which we can share our voices and stories. The Archives of American Art has one of the oldest collections of oral histories in the United States, and the largest related to the visual arts. In this episode, we reflect on how oral history enriches our understanding of art and the people who create it. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

What does it mean to conserve and sustain culture? How to we care for art, artifacts, and legacies? At the Archives of American Art, these questions also relate to accessibility, sustainability, and inclusivity; this episode examines preservation and maintenance in cultural institutions and beyond. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Digital art has surged in recent years, but its current flash builds on decades of innovation in computing, video, and other technologies in which women played a central role. In this episode, we focus on the overlooked history of women who pioneered the new media art genre and discuss issues of visibility and representation surrounding technology. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Listen to the members of fierce pussy describe their approach to direct action, lesbian visibility, and allyship along the arc of their careers and collaborations. This episode delves into questions of queer community and representation, particularly the ways in which art can knit people together across time. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

What makes an activist group, how do they come together, and how are they most effective? This episode traces the rise and impact of ACT UP, or the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, how it grew from other queer activist groups while engendering more, and how its influence remains with us today. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Art in America was forever altered by the New Deal, and its sweeping significance is palpable throughout infrastructure, public art, photography, and cultural institutions. In recent years, new initiatives to preserve and study the New Deal have emerged, as have new conversations as to how the United States should nurture the arts. This episode considers the longevity and exemplariness of the New Deal in its cultural and social influence. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The WPA (Works Progress Administration) was designed as an open relief roll, operating without discrimination based on sex or race and only mandating that participants fall below a specific income threshold. While advancing equity, however, the WPA still faced hurdles from systemic sexism and racism, and it also ran into issues of support for laborers. Beyond the projects’ inner workings, FSA (Farm Securities Administration) Information Division photographers grappled with documenting poverty and social unrest across the nation, which the artists themselves faced in their travels and in presenting their work. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The diversity, breadth, and ubiquity of New Deal arts projects reveal both the country’s sense of what art was and how it should shape the American people. This episode examines cultural democracy, or the role of the arts in civic life and what art means for a nation. While the momentum and volume of New Deal production laid the foundation for a distinct artistic culture in the United States, questions remain as to the distinctiveness of a national arts tradition and Americanness Itself. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The Archives’ debut podcast episode focuses on the New Deal arts initiatives, providing an overview of their major features and a wide perspective on their histories and legacies. Drawing from the Archives’ first and most ambitious oral history collecting drive, the words and experiences of the artists and administrators who made the New Deal happen convey the stakes of these enormous national undertakings, while insight from contemporary experts provides context for the ongoing importance of those initiatives. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Get a sneak peek of what’s in store on Season 1 of Articulated: Dispatches from the Archives of American Art. Set to launch on August 26th (the day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent his letter on the allocation of work relief funds in 1935), the first four episodes examine the New Deal Arts programs which shifted the focus of economic recovery towards employment and national improvement, transforming the New Deal into a lifeline for millions and forever reshaping American culture through direct investment in people. Subsequent episodes will feature the voices and stories of artists who participated in queer activist art groups Fierce Pussy and ACT UP in the late 20th century as they made visible the struggles of the LGBTQ community during the peak of the AIDS crisis. Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated