Momus: The Podcast

Niela Orr – Season 7, Episode 6 Nov 20, 2024

Niela Orr is a culture writer and editor who has published in The Baffler, The Believer, and The Organist, among others. Since 2022 she has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine. In conversation with Sky Goodden, Orr discusses her editing as being rooted in service, and her abiding sense of responsibility to the writers that she works with. Orr foregrounds this conversation with a reading from Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007; Wave Books, 2024), by Tisa Bryant, a former mentor of hers. She also talks about the profound pleasure and significance of reading fiction and poetry. “If I'm not reading poetry, I feel like I'm losing access to possibility,” she says. And in turn, Orr says, “I write for patient readers.”

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation (feat. The Rabkin Interviews), the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and Waddington's.

Joshua Schwebel – Season 7, Episode 5 Oct 22, 2024

Joshua Schwebel speaks to long-time collaborator Lauren Wetmore about their shared interest in closing the gap between how art is discursively framed and what it actually does. Schwebel’s artistic practice stems from a deep need to understand the world, coupled with an allergy to authority. “Art is rhetorically positioned as radical,” notes Schwebel, “but what we're doing is advancing capitalism for people who benefit from it and this is not in our interest as artists or workers.” With Nizan Shaked’s Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections (Bloomsbury, 2022) as a prompt, Schwebel and Wetmore talk about their upcoming book project, The Employee (forthcoming from Art Metropole in 2025). They also discuss The Paydirt Seminars, a series of talks dedicated to examining the intersections between art, finance, and resource extraction that Schwebel has organized as part of his current exhibition One Hand Washes the Other at Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors, NSCAD University, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, and Esker Foundation.

Carolina A. Miranda – Season 7, Episode 4 Sep 20, 2024

Carolina A. Miranda, a longtime L.A. Times staff culture writer who has recently returned to the wilds of freelance, speaks to Sky Goodden about looking at things from both sides now. In working on a book proposal about the year she spent in Chile following the fall of Pinochet’s dictatorship, and in exploring new genres of writing for different publications, Miranda is changing the focus of her attention. After so many years of writing-as-response, she reflects on the value of sustained research into one subject. “I'd been wanting to explore new directions I could take my writing, and at the L.A. Times, there are certain limitations to the form.” Taking a more personal approach with her book, she’s thinking about “how do artists survive an autocracy? Culture can teach us about the moment, but also point a way forward.”

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors, The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation and The Gund.

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi – Season 7, Episode 3 Aug 20, 2024

Palestinian-American artist and writer Fargo Nissim Tbakhi speaks with Lauren Wetmore about the political implication of form through two texts: Tbakhi’s own piece "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide" (Protean Magazine, 2023), and Iranian-American poet Solmaz Sharif’s “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure” (The Volta, 2013). “In times of extreme crisis we end up bumping against particular limitations of art,” reflects Tbakhi, while also reminding us that “the idea of artistic engagement with moments of crisis has been curtailed and limited by state powers and oppressive ideologies in many different forms.” This episode continues the Podcast’s platforming of Palestinian voices in line with Momus’s ongoing commitment to PACBI.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Daniel Faria Gallery.

All episodes are available on momus.ca, and through Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

An Inflection Point in Art Publishing – Season 7, Episode 2 Jul 18, 2024

Earlier this year, the Momus editorial team gathered for a talk at Plural Art Fair in Montreal. It marked the first time Sky Goodden, Catherine G. Wagley, Jessica Lynne, and Merray Gerges were all together IRL. The lively conversation touched on how we’ve shifted from a discourse of “crisis” in art criticism to its material reality; the ethics of editorial care; and how to address the need for mentorship across all stages of a writer’s career.

Thank you to the Momus editorial team for their contribution to this season. Thank you to Artspeaks for sponsoring the panel.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: Night Gallery and Art Toronto.

Elvia Wilk – Season 7, Episode 1 Jun 18, 2024

Launching Season 7, Elvia Wilk, an essayist, critic, and novelist, talks to Sky Goodden about the decision to quit writing—if only to be able to start again. In discussing rejection, the changing conditions of the field, and the denuding of successful female writers, Wilk also touches on the authors who have modeled quitting ("the authors of the no"), or who have mitigated against their own exposure, including Olivia Sudjic, Enrique Vila-Matas, Rachel Cusk, and Elena Ferrante.

Thank you to Elvia Wilk for her contribution to this season.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: Night Gallery and the AGYU.

Lara Khaldi – Season 6, Episode 8 Mar 18, 2024

Lara Khaldi is our final guest on Season 6 of Momus: The Podcast. A curator, artist, writer, and educator, Khaldi was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, and currently lives in Amsterdam, where she has been newly appointed as director of de Appel. In this episode, Khaldi speaks to Lauren Wetmore about the Palestinian American artist, activist, and scholar Samia A. Halaby's book “Liberation Art of Palestine: Palestinian Painting and Sculpture in the Second Half of the 20th Century” (H. T. T. B. Publications, 2001). Both Khaldi and Halaby assert that art is a critical part of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Although representation may feel impossible in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, Khaldi urges that "the least we can do is talk about it, because the more we speak, the truth is said."

Thank you to Lara Khaldi for her contribution to the season.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: the Sobey Art Awards at the National Gallery of Canada (nominations close March 20th) and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.

Nasrin Himada – Season 6, Episode 7 Feb 15, 2024

For the 50th (!) episode of Momus: The Podcast, Lauren Wetmore speaks to Nasrin Himada, a Palestinian curator and writer who is currently associate curator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. "I write for my people. I write for Palestinians, and I write for the liberation of our lands," Himada says of their practice, which foregrounds "embodiment as method, desire as transformation, and liberation through many forms." Wetmore and Himada discuss esteemed Caribbean-Canadian poet and writer M. NourbeSe Philip's text, “Interview with an Empire'' (2003), thinking through how Philip teaches us to decontaminate language from imperialism so that it can "truly speak our truths." Himada touches on strategies, including artistic experimentation, collective action, and love.

Thank you to Nasrin Himada for their contribution to the season.

Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery’s In/Tension podcast, and the Sobey Art Awards at the National Gallery of Canada.

Jessica Lynne and Catherine G. Wagley – Season 6, Episode 6 Dec 16, 2023

In this episode, Jessica Lynne speaks with Catherine G. Wagley about their shared love for Barbara Christian’s iconically confrontational essay, “The Race for Theory” (1987, Cultural Critique). Christian, a ground-laying literary academic who introduced writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to the academe, goes toe to toe with her peers in this essay, rebuking the constraints and monolith of French theory and championing the approach of learning from the language of creative writers "as a way to discover what language I might use." In it, Christian both names and demonstrates the power of critique from within the institution, and its effective complement to calls for empowerment. And as Lynne and Wagley reflect on how criticism functions through a sense of curiosity and openness in both their practices, Lynne says, “it’s an intervening hand, right? Like, look at all these other planes that we could be living in. And, why not go there? Like, let's go there. In fact, we know writers who are already there. We know artists who are already there.”

Kate Wolf - Season 6, Episode 5 Oct 30, 2023

This episode features Kate Wolf, one of the founding editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books and a critic whose work has appeared in publications including The Nation, n+1, Art in America, and Frieze. Wolf is currently an Editor at Large of the LARB and a co-host and producer of its weekly radio show and podcast, The LARB Radio Hour. In conversation with Sky Goodden, Wolf discusses Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) and what she took from it for her own writing practice: “There are many pleasures, as there are pains, but I think the pleasure of writing is unwinding an opinion, a point of view that’s latent inside of you and can become fully expressed. Especially in criticism,” Wolf adds, “the kind of closing mechanism that your brain sometimes furnishes for you where something becomes a story, both by grammar and by very minute plotting … this turn of the key in the door is immensely satisfying.”

Thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and to Chris Andrews for assistant production.

Many thanks to the National Gallery of Canada and the Sobey Art Foundation for their support.

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick - Season 6, Episode 4 Oct 02, 2023

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi) joins Lauren Wetmore in conversation about Māhealani Dudoit’s fundamental text, “Carving a Hawaiian Aesthetic,” published in the first issue of ‘Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal – He ‘oia mau nō kākou’, which Dudoit co-founded in 1998. Broderick, an artist, curator, and educator from Mōkapu, Oʻahu, champions the text, saying “Kānaka ‘Ōiwi don’t have a lot of writing about our recent stories of art, so the few texts that do exist become more significant with time because they function as rare points of reference that we can all share when we’re reconstructing our own histories.” Broderick discusses challenges faced by Native Hawaiians around stories of their art within institutional settings and the role of writing in his own practice: “I’m an artist, but I have to write now because the work that I make, no matter how understood it is by the communities that I’m a part of, if it’s not written about it doesn’t really exist for a certain audience … Writing for me is a way to no longer have to waste time explaining what I already know.”

On the occasion of this episode and especially following the fires in Hawaiʻi, we encourage listeners to visit the Puʻuhonua Society and consider making a donation.

This episode has been generously supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Sháńdíín Brown - Season 6, Episode 3 Aug 24, 2023

This episode features an interview with Sháńdíín Brown (Diné), continuing our series talking to participants in the Momus residency "Estuaries: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency" co-hosted with Forge Project. Lauren Wetmore talks to Sháńdíín Brown, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and the first Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, about two very different texts written almost a century apart: Laura Tohe's "There is No Word for Feminism in My Language" (2000) and Uriah S. Hollister's "The Navajo and His Blanket" (1903). Brown speaks about these two texts in the context of the exhibition she has curated Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh (They Are Beautifully Dressed), which opens in early September at the RISD Museum. In highlighting the important role of women in Navajo culture, and Brown's own work as a facilitator of that culture, she speaks against racist writing about Indigenous art: "When someone so boldly says 'the Navajos are going to go extinct,'" Brown says of Hollister's text, "you're like, me being here, having Native people in museums, having Native people invited to be collaborators, and working in art history is a big deal."

Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh (They Are Beautifully Dressed) curated by Sháńdíín Brown, will be on view from September 2nd, 2023 to September 29th, 2024.

Thanks to our Editor, Jacob Irish; Assistant Producer, Chris Andrews; and many thanks to Gulf Coast Magazine's Toni Beauchamp Critical Art Writing Prize for their support.

This episode has been generously supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Megan Tamati-Quennell - Season 6, Episode 2 Jul 20, 2023

Throughout the season, Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden will speak with participants of the Momus residency, “Estuaries: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency,” created with Forge Project and led by Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoa) and Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish).

To launch this series, Wetmore speaks with writer and curator Megan Tamati-Quennell, who is of Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu, KātiMāmoe, and Waitaha Māori descent and is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Māori and Indigenous Art at Museum of New Zealand | Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand. Wetmore and Tamati-Quennell discuss a 2006 text on artist Michael Riley by Australian historian Nikos Papastergiadis, as well as Tamati-Quennell’s own writing and research, where she makes use of "Whakapapa," a knowledge system that binds all Māori people.

"The joy is being able to put something into the world, and honor some people, and maybe shift some ground,” says Tamati-Quennell about her ongoing work.

Our deepest appreciation to this episode's advertiser, SFU Galleries, whose special project, Witnessing Tsēmā Igharas: Hughadēsłēł — give it all away, is available for listening now.

This episode has been generously supported by the Mellon Foundation.

Sky Goodden – Season 6, Episode 1 Apr 08, 2023

To launch our sixth season, Lauren Wetmore interviews Sky Goodden on a book that has recently got her all "twirled up." They discuss Art Writing in Crisis (Sternberg Press, 2021) which sits adjacent to an exhausting list of books on art criticism in crisis and points instead to the emancipatory potential of criticism, and, as Goodden and Lauren term it, the "present imperfect" of a field actively redefining itself. "I think it's important to understand what art writing and criticism has recently been in order to have a sense of its future," reflects Goodden. "However, I find that, for decades now, we can get so stuck in what it's been, we never get to the second part."

All thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer).

Our deepest appreciation to this episode's advertisers: Plural Contemporary Art Fair and Maleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations at the Art Gallery of York University.

Look for us on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.

Jessica Lynne and Kemi Adeyemi - Season 5, Episode 10 Dec 27, 2022

The season finale for Momus: The Podcast’s fifth season features a conversation between writer, art critic, and co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, Jessica Lynne, and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi, an “art-adjacent academic” and Director of The Black Embodiment Studio at the University of Washington. Adeyemi talks about her new book, Feels Right: Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago(Duke University Press, 2022), an ethnography of how Black queer women in Chicago use dance to assert their physical and affective rights to the city. Her conversation with Lynne looks at the pleasures (and challenges) of working between the classroom and the dance floor in an effort to pay a different kind of attention to Black queer women’s lives. “What pleasures are sweeter than talking with your friends about the brilliant things they write, create, and offer to us?” asks Lynne.

Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Jessica Lynne and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi for their contribution to our fifth season finale.

Many thanks, as well, to Cui Jinzhe for her support.

Look for us on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.

Cecilia Alemani - Season 5, Episode 9 Dec 02, 2022

For the penultimate episode of Season 5, Sky Goodden interviews Cecilia Alemani, the Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale. After three years of research and commissioning (an extended period of preparation, due to the pandemic) and 7 months of The Milk of Dreams being open to an immense public, Alemani takes a rearview look onto a show that responded to—and endured—several seismic shocks over the course of its run, and was, in so many respects, unprecedented. She touches on "history knocking on the door of the biennial" with regards to both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and the ways in which she embedded history in the exhibition, in turn. She also speaks to the impact of art writing, both its influence on a longer-researched edition of the biennial—one "curated from a desk"—but also in terms of the reviews, too, some of which underscored the need for more female-driven programming. Perhaps most poignantly, Alemani remembers the slow time of this show's creation, and her drawing on sensorial and somatic influences, however unconsciously, as she worked at a remove from artists' studios. "I think [the biennial] was a reaction to what I missed the most."

Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Cecilia Alemani for her contribution to our fifth season.

This conversation is presented in collaboration with Art Toronto; our deepest thanks to them for in part making this possible.

Many thanks to Gallery 44 for their support.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.

Meeka Walsh and Jarrett Earnest - Season 5, Episode 8 Oct 14, 2022

On the occasion of her first book of collected art writings, Malleable Forms (ARP Books), Meeka Walsh, editor of Border Crossings magazine, speaks to guest-host Jarrett Earnest about geographic isolation, the eroticism of art writing, her connection with an emerging spiritual lineage, and about a set of relationships driving her engagement with art. In this far-ranging and generous conversation around publishing, editing, looking, and listening, Walsh reflects, "I'm happiest when I'm writing."

Meeka Walsh is a writer, art critic, editor and curator who has had a major influence on the arts in Canada. She is the editor of Border Crossings, an internationally renowned and award-winning quarterly magazine that investigates contemporary culture.

Jarrett Earnest is the author of What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (David Zwirner Books, 2018); editor of Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2017 by Peter Schjeldahl (Abrams, 2019), The Young and Evil: Queer Modernism in New York, 1930-1955 (David Zwirner 2020), and Devotion: today's future becomes tomorrow archive (PUBLIC books, 2022), among others. His criticism and long-form interviews have appeared in New York Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, Vulture, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Review of Books, Art in America, New York Magazine, and many exhibition catalogues and other publications. In 2021 Earnest was awarded a Dorothea and Leo Rabkin prize for visual arts journalism.

Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Jarrett Earnest and Meeka Walsh for their contribution to our fifth season.

Many thanks to SFU Galleries for their support; you can listen to their ten-part radio program Listening to Pictures: Artists on the Art Collection, featuring artist voices with lived experience on the West Coast.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

Ben Davis - Season 5, Episode 7 Aug 15, 2022

In the introduction to Ben Davis’s new book, a bracing and perspectival collection of essays titled Art in the After-Culture (Haymarket Books), he reflects that “the only thing that has grown faster than the demands on art has been doubt that art can respond adequately to those demands.” In a generous and thoughtful conversation with Sky Goodden, Davis expands on those cultural tensions that exacerbate an already fraught cultural dialogue, and touches on other central themes to this collection of writing, including the economic structures that inform contemporary art and its technologies, the roots of cultural appropriation, the context collapse of our critical reception, and the ambient shifts in contemporary art's 'connoisseurship'.

Of course, this is also a conversation about writing. In discussing a book that has taken the better part of a decade to come out, and has required significant rewriting as Davis responded to a shape-shifting present, he reflects, “It’s a process that resembles depression in the psychoanalytic sense. You feel, for a long period of time, that you have this giant object, a presence in your life that can’t be expressed, that hangs over you like a dark cloud. I don't have a life hack around that except to say that I think it really helps to believe in what you're doing.”

Ben Davis is the National Art Critic at artnet News, where he’s also a senior editor. His first book, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, came out in 2013 (Haymarket Books) and, as one artist put it, delivered "a truth-bomb of a book.”

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

Arushi Vats - Season 5, Episode 6 Jun 07, 2022

"We are post-purity," observes Arushi Vats, a Delhi-based writer and inaugural fellow of the Momus/Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship. Rooted in field research and expanded through poetics, Vat's text Exit the Rehearsal: A Body in Delhi, published by Runway Journal, is a precise yet capacious meditation on our "epoch of waste"— ecocide, legacy waste, and the Anthropocene in which Vats suggests that what we waste is "highly proximate, right under your skin, in your gut, and there is something radical in accepting that this is a part of your lifecycle." In this interview with Lauren Wetmore, Vats discusses building a text from both a bodily and civic curiosity, and why sometimes, when writing about culture, it is important to leave the artworks out.

Rahel Aima – Season 5, Episode 5 Apr 16, 2022

This month, Sky Goodden speaks with Rahel Aima, a prolific critic, art writer, and Associate Editor at Momus. We focus on a text Aima published in Momus, “Depleting Felix Gonzales-Torres” (July 2020), that takes aim at “a mammoth exhibition” of the late Gonzalez-Torres’s 1990 work Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner). Aima writes “In a move taken right out of the influencer marketing playbook,” Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner, who co-represent his estate, shipped the piece around the world to collectors who would then display and “document them for the ‘gram.” While Gonzales-Torres’s work conjures a body through accumulation and depletion, “we can understand the exhibition as an extension of overwhelmingly white, moneyed arts professionals and their tendency to trivialize Black and Indigenous death by trying to relate it to the art world.” Aima engages us in a gripping conversation about writing, including the discomfort of penning a polemic that goes viral.

Raimundas Malašauskas – Season 5, Episode 4 Mar 18, 2022

Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Lithuanian curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas resigned as curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 59^th Venice Bienniale, along with participating artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, citing the war as “politically and emotionally unbearable.”

Using his letter of resignation, which Malašauskas posted to Instagram on February 27^th, Lauren Wetmore interviews him about what led to this decision—“I started from my experience of being in the Empire and not wanting to go back”—and the complexities of its reception within different networks of impact across the international art world, the Russian political and cultural regime, and Malašauskas’s Lithuanian community.

With this episode Momus both condemns the Russian war on Ukraine, and echoes Malašauskas’s assertion of the existence of many “different Russias” by extending solidarity to its artists and creative communities.

All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Raimundas Malašauskas for his contribution to this season.

Thanks to the Sobey Art Award for its support.

Look for us on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.

Dana Kopel – Season 5, Episode 3 Jan 28, 2022

In this episode Lauren Wetmore speaks with writer and organizer Dana Kopel about her widely-read article “Against Artspolitation: Unionizing the New Museum,” published in September 2021 by The Baffler. In conversation, Kopel expands on “the personal and messy dimensions” of unionizing work, and reflects on the challenges of calling out the exploitation, abuses, and hypocrisies of an art industry that, at the time, she was actively working in. She doesn’t hold back on the sacrifices made or the consequences suffered as a result of this successful union drive, but she also stresses that there is never a sole author. Kopel offers emotional and practical resources for organizing work but also acknowledges that “the fight really doesn’t end … the end point is the end of capitalism, the end of institutions, and abolition. And until we get there, this is just what we keep doing every fucking day.”

We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer).

Thanks especially to Dana Kopel for her contribution to this season.

Look for us on Google Podcasts, iTunes, and other podcast apps.

Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign.

To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.

Harry Dodge – Season 5, Episode 2 Dec 17, 2021

In this episode, artist and writer Harry Dodge reads from My Meteorite, or Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin Press, 2020). Perhaps best known as a sculptor, Dodge writes from inside the artist’s life and the sometimes inchoate density of a studio practice. Tracking us through cosmic patterns and material grapplings as they intersect with family, work, and grief, this first book gives us a genre-defying memoir that succeeds, as well, as art writing.

Harry Dodge is an American visual artist and writer. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, and his sculpture, drawing, and video work has been exhibited at many venues nationally and internationally, including JOAN (LA, 2018), Tufts University Art Gallery (2019), Grand Army Collective (Brookyn, 2017), and the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2016). His first book, My Meteorite, was published by Penguin Press in 2020.

We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design).

Thanks especially to Harry Dodge for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery for their support.

Emmanuel Iduma – Season 5, Episode 1 Nov 11, 2021

In the first episode of Season 5, Lauren Wetmore speaks with Nigerian art writer Emmanuel Iduma, who reads from “Mileage from Here: Nine Narratives.” Known for his travel and photography writing, and for establishing what he calls “a third, or shared, space between images and text,” the selection Iduma reads from (published in an exceptional presentation of Todd Webb’s previously lost photographic work, Todd Webb in Africa, by Thames & Hudson, 2021) sees Iduma choose a selection of photographs and imaginatively write to, as well as of them.

Emmanuel Iduma is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a travel memoir. His essays and art criticism have been published in The New York Review of Books, Aperture, Best American Travel Writing 2020, Artforum, and Art in America. His honors include a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation grant for arts writing, the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism from AICA-USA, the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory, and a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. I Am Still with You, his memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, is forthcoming from Algonquin (US), and William Collins (UK).

We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design).

Thanks especially to Emmanuel Iduma for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Sobey Award for their support.

Kristian Vistrup Madsen - Season 4, Episode 9 Jul 18, 2021

In the penultimate episode of Season 4 – across which Momus: The Podcast has been engaging writers on the genesis and reception of a particular piece of criticism – Sky Goodden speaks with Kristian Vistrup Madsen about writing Artforum Diary through the pandemic, and bringing the historic column to a more isolated, romantic, existential, and sometimes fictional space. The conversation also touches on Madsen's first book, Doing Time: Essays on Using People(Floating Opera Press), which has just been released and features a series of "reflections about the politics of solidarity and appropriation, but also about writing itself and what happens when life is turned into art." Madsen says, "There’s such an overemphasis on representation as though representation is the sphere in which the violence takes place and not the sphere in which the violence is portrayed."

Muna Mire & Tourmaline – Season 4, Episode 8 Jun 14, 2021

This episode gets a jump on summer with artist and filmmaker Tourmaline and writer and producer Muna Mire. In conversation, they discuss Mire’s profile of Toumaline in Frieze (October 2020) and elaborate on Tourmaline's celebration of trans histories, queer joy, community organizing, Black freedom, communing with her chosen ancestries, and what she describes as her “works of care, of lineage holding, of remembering who we really are and what we deserve.” They also delight in the everyday beauty and mysticism that holds their friendship, and the significance, for Mire, of establishing that textured sensuousness and intimacy in this text. The experience of writing and publishing in the past year is also touched on, as Mire observes, “The reason this article exists is that people set cars on fire, people burned down police precincts, and the ripple effect of that is really powerful.”

Nora N. Khan on “Within, Below, and Alongside” – Season 4, Episode 7 May 06, 2021

“A school will change you, and it teaches you as much about how people will interpret you, misunderstand and dismiss you, as it will teach you about a creative life.” Critic, curator, and educator Nora N. Khan reads from "Dark Study: Within, Below, and Alongside," a feature text published in the inaugural issue of March, which starts with the question: "how to go on?" In discussion with Sky Goodden, Khan describes this question's implications for a text about the “life and death” of study, especially for first-generation immigrants studying in the US; and the effects of writing this piece in the midst of a crisis for both art education and bodies of color. "This is an effect of trauma," she says, of writing the piece. A text that operates on several levels and interweaves the personal and the proclamatory, "Dark Study" reads as both a repudiation of professionalism as we've come to know it, and a manifesto for the future potential of "mastery" in the arts.

Alexandra Stock on “The Privileged, Violent Stunt” – Season 4, Episode 6 Apr 12, 2021

Lauren Wetmore interviews Swiss American curator and writer Alexandra Stock about her scathing critique of Christophe Büchel’s 2019 Venice Biennale project Barca Nostra. Published that same year by the independent Egyptian online newspaper Mada Masr, Stock’s "The Privileged, Violent Stunt That is the Venice Biennale Boat Project" decries an “artworld that repels all criticism of it,” and describes the repercussion of being one of the first voices to publicly denouncing this high-profile artwork.

Rianna Jade Parker on “Letter from London” – Season 4, Episode 5 Mar 04, 2021

Rianna Jade Parker reads "Letter from London: What is the Status of Black Artists in England Today?" published in ARTnews (June 2020), and engages Sky Goodden on issues of artworld access, stature, masculinity, precariousness, deference to sovereignty, and duty to one another, for Black British artists working in the UK. From Steve McQueen's accepting the Knighthood to a broader conversation around meritocracy and the sudden rush of Black British art (after decades of deletion), Parker discusses her feeling of responsibility to her peers through criticism, and the long unmarked history that she's beginning to write.

Léuli Eshrāghi on tagatavāsā – Season 4, Episode 4 Feb 01, 2021

In episode 4, Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi discusses "tagatavāsā," a text centered on Eshrāghi's grandmother's art practice that interweaves Indigenous language with the vernacular of contemporary art. Eshrāghi works across visual arts, curatorial practice, and university research, "intervening in display territories to centre Indigenous kin constellations, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices." In this intimate conversation with Lauren Wetmore, Eshrāghi says, “I wonder how you can bring texts to be haunted by the absence of knowledge, or by the violence of the borders of today.” "tagatavāsā" was published in C Magazine in Winter 2019.

Tausif Noor on “Hand in Glove” – Season 4, Episode 3 Jan 08, 2021

“Like writing, fisting is both a replicable skill and a rarefied art form.” This brachioproctic line begins writer Tausif Noor’s “Hand In Glove” (Artforum, 12 April 2019), a joyfully loaded review of William E. Jones’s novel I’m Open to Anything, released in 2019 by Los Angeles independent publisher We Heard You Like Books. In this searching conversation, Lauren and Tausif discuss Jones’s oeuvre, the importance of independent publishing, and celebrate sexual transgression while lamenting that writing can often feel, like Jones’s description of fisting, “a cork popping in reverse.”

Nikki Columbus on “Guston Can Wait” – Season 4, Episode 2 Dec 20, 2020

"Let’s stop talking about Philip Guston and start talking about structural racism." This has been critic Nikki Columbus's refrain through the past season, issuing what many considered the final word of a furious debate surrounding the postponement of a Guston retrospective. Titled "Guston Can Wait" and published October 27, 2020 in N+1, the text (which Columbus reads for the podcast) deftly summarizes the controversy's main thrust - the vehemently-shared opinion that postponing the exhibition was a move based in institutional cowardice - before zooming out for the larger context in which museums are actively undermining and purging their own labor forces; that the Guston furor is distracting from these more pressing issues. "I did have fun writing this," she admits, before stressing, "We have to let go of this myth that we’re more progressive than any other sector or business."

Nikki Columbus on "Guston Can Wait" - Season 4, Episode 2 Dec 19, 2020

"Let’s stop talking about Philip Guston and start talking about structural racism."

This has been critic Nikki Columbus's refrain through the past season, issuing what many considered the final word of a furious debate surrounding the postponement of a Guston retrospective. Titled "Guston Can Wait" and published October 27, 2020 in N+1, the text (which Columbus reads for the podcast) deftly summarizes the controversy's main thrust - the vehemently-shared opinion that postponing the exhibition was a move based in institutional cowardice - before zooming out for the larger context in which museums are actively undermining and purging their own labor forces; that the Guston furor is distracting from these more pressing issues. "I did have fun writing this," she admits, before stressing, "We have to let go of this myth that we’re more progressive than any other sector or business."

What Artists and Curators Do for Money - Season 4 Episode 1 Nov 21, 2020

Season 4 of Momus: The Podcast invites art critics and journalists to talk about an important piece of their writing – texts that carry stories, that ran in prestigious publications to great acclaim, or that were killed under tense circumstances. Every two weeks, co-hosts Sky Goodden and Lauren Wetmore will ask a different writer to read their text to us, and then discuss how it came into being – its inspiration, construction, and impact.

To launch the season, Goodden interviews her co-host Wetmore about a piece that was published in Momus and was shortlisted for a 2016 International Award for Art Criticism, a sharp and farcical review of Manifesta 11: What Artist and Curators Do for Money, which demonstrates a rare example of curatorial criticism. Their conversation ranges from sharpening the perfect retort to writing in bed, with Wetmore reflecting on the driving impulse to write this, her only published review to date: "Like, who's making this? How much are they getting paid? What process are they using to get this done? How are you, the curator, and your artist, and your intellectual conceit, tied to the making of this work? Because isn't that the essentially interesting part of the commissioning process? We're there to be able to touch in some oblique way how this came to be. And if we want to pretend that it came to be out of thin air - as I find a lot of curators want to pretend - then I'm simply not interested. Because it's not true."

The White Pube on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” - Ep. 24 Aug 13, 2020

In the final episode of Season 3, which has been devoted to the question of "what's changed, and what should?", Sky Goodden speaks to The White Pube, a UK-based art-criticism collective comprised of Zarina Muhammad and Gabriella de la Puente. Across five years of publishing, The White Pube has been celebrated for its insistence on "embodied criticism" and "sticky subjectivity," its resistance to the star-review system of popular art criticism, and its practice of DIY art-publishing as institutional critique. "We cannot ever write in a way that denies ourselves," concludes Muhammed. Their recent feature "FUCK THE POLICE, FUCK THE STATE, FUCK THE TATE: RIOTS AND REFORM" demonstrates an increasingly unrelenting politic, as well. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Thanks to Art Gallery of Guelph for their support of this episode, and to Gabriella and Zarina for their contribution. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Sophia Al Maria on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” – Ep. 23 Jul 22, 2020

For episode 23, Lauren Wetmore spoke with Sophia al Maria, a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker based in London. Author of publications including Sad Sack, Virgin With A Memory, and her autobiography The Girl Who Fell To Earth, Al Maria has also written for Triple Canopy, Bidoun, and Harper’s Magazine. Her work as an artist has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Tate Britain, Gwangju Biennale, and the New Museum in New York. She has written Litte Birds, a television series based on Anais Nin’s erotic writings, which will premiere on Sky Atlantic in August 2020. This wide-ranging conversation takes on a speculative tone, coming from the pivotal point of three months into corona lockdown Al Maria says, “It’s really important to hold steady. To kindle and keep alive those first moments of shock.” Touching on central interests in Al Maria’s practice such as science fiction and popular culture, Wetmore and Al Maria also consider the implications of intimacy in our new touchless world, “remembering how important it is to keep that flame of erotic power alive, especially when it feels difficult and hard to fantasize.” In a difficult moment between the inaction of confinement and the ramping up of social unrest, Al Maria points towards strategies of hope. “I think linking social justice with environmental action or non-movement and non-consumption will make thinking about the future less harrowing.” Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Thanks to InterAcess for their support in this episode and to Sophia Al Maria for her contribution. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Ebony L. Haynes on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” – Ep. 22 Jun 21, 2020

For episode 22, Lauren Wetmore spoke with Ebony L. Haynes, a gallerist, curator, and writer. Haynes is the Director of Martos Gallery in New York, and Shoot the Lobster in New York and LA. Active for the past ten years, Haynes has insisted on the meaningful inclusion of Black artists and professionals in the contemporary artworld. In this potent conversation, she discusses her experiences as a Black female art dealer in a sexist and racist industry, where her significant contributions continue to do the powerful work of redressing injustice while elevating talent. She says, “I’m here because I’m supposed to be here.” Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Thanks to Waddington's for their support in this episode and to Ebony L. Haynes for her vital contribution. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Coco Fusco on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” - Ep. 21 Jun 02, 2020

For episode 21, Sky Goodden spoke with Coco Fusco, the legendary Cuban-American critic, artist, educator, and art historian. Speaking from the center of a pandemic, and on the brink of a significant wave of civil unrest and anti-racist protest, Fusco circled themes relevant to each crisis, looping them through the lens of Cuban history and the seismic shifts it is currently undergoing, in relation to protest, artistic freedom, and criticism against the government. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Thanks to Zalucky Contemporary for their support in this episode, and to Coco Fusco for her vital contribution. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Daniel Blanga Gubbay on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” – Ep. 20 May 16, 2020

For this episode, still circling the question "what's changed, and what should?", Lauren Wetmore spoke with Brussels-based curator Daniel Blanga Gubbay, the artistic co-director of the historic Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Gubbay has worked as an educator and an independent curator for public programs including Manifesta, Palermo (2018); and was head of the Department of Arts and Choreography (ISAC) of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Palermo and Berlin. Reflecting on the material consequences of halting a massive festival like his, and fighting to keep artists paid and visa applications underway, Gubbay warns that “when you reduce the whole artistic process to the event, if the event disappears, you risk making that process invisible." Momus: The Podcast – recently named one of The New York Times‘ top-ten art podcasts – is issuing new podcast episodes every two weeks. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Johanna Fateman on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” – Ep. 19 May 01, 2020

For this episode, Sky Goodden spoke with art writer and musician Johanna Fateman, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, a contributing editor at Artforum, and a frequent critic for 4Columns.org. Fateman co-owns the historic Seagull Salon in New York City, and is, as Lauren notes, "riot grrrl queer royalty" for her involvement in bands like Le Tigre. As Fateman spoke from New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, there were ambulances blazing in the background; her son was home from school, her partner was recovering from the COVID virus, her salon was holding on by a thread, and through it all, Fateman was fittingly working on her first book of dystopic fiction. However, with a measure of surprising calm, she said, "I just think now is not the time to pressure yourself to be original; I really don't think there's something original to say right now. I think this is the time to drill down on what's common to us, and be honestly reflective." Momus: The Podcast – recently named one of The New York Times‘ top-ten art podcasts – is doubling down and scaling up in Season 3, issuing new podcasts every two weeks and staring directly at our present crisis, with an eye to both history and potential. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other popular podcast apps. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Alessandro Bava on “What’s Changed, and What Should?”- Ep. 18 Apr 18, 2020

Momus: The Podcast launched Season 3 with the question “what’s changed – and what should?”, which we continue with Alessandro Bava, an architect and writer based in Naples, Italy. Bava makes exhibitions, installations, interiors, and architecture projects, and writes on the poetics, politics, and technologies that produce contemporary space. In conversation with Lauren Wetmore, Bava reflects, "If your house becomes a place of labor, this radically changes the status of the home and its place in the market as a commodity. [...] Three months ago the machine was running and there was nothing stopping it. In a way, now there is a chance to imagine an alternative." Momus: The Podcast – recently named one of The New York Times‘ top-ten art podcasts – is doubling down and scaling up in Season 3, issuing new podcasts every two weeks and staring directly at our present crisis, with an eye to both history and potential. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other popular podcast apps. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

Eleanor Nairne on “What’s Changed, and What Should?” – Ep. 17 Apr 03, 2020

Momus: The Podcast launches Season 3 with the question “what's changed – and what should?” with curator and art historian Eleanor Nairne. This prompt was already set, but with the emerging pandemic and its irreversible effects on our economy, cultural metabolism, relationship to art, sense of agency, and connection to one other, there has never been a better time to ask it. This conversation also allows us an opportunity to reflect on past seismic shifts in history, and the equally loud cracks that can occur within an artist's practice. How do we seize this historical moment, and what do we wish to see change? Eleanor Nairne is Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, where her exhibitions include Lee Krasner: Living Colour (2019-20) and Basquiat: Boom for Real (2017-18). She is a regular catalogue writer, a contributor to publications including The London Review of Books and frieze and is a former Jerwood Writer in Residence. Prior to the Barbican she was curator of the Artangel Collection at the Tate. In speaking with Lauren Wetmore for the season's inaugural episode, she reflects, "Has this been a time of reflection? No. It’s been a time of faulty connections and stumbling video calls. [But] I don’t want to go back to business as usual. I want to go back with a memory of this time imprinted in a valuable way." Momus: The Podcast - recently named one of The New York Times' top-ten art podcasts - is doubling down and scaling up in Season 3, issuing new podcasts every two weeks and staring directly at our present crisis, with an eye to both history and potential. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other popular podcast apps. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Margaux Williamson – Ep. 16 Feb 20, 2020

As we continue to circle the question “what makes great art?”, Sky Goodden spoke with Margaux Williamson, a slow painter who gives the greatest primacy to the work of her work, and to the thinking-through that the work requires. Based in Toronto, and known for both her intense focus in the studio and her community-building in Toronto's art scene, Williamson speaks with humor and heart about where her friends show up in her art, and the soft focus that painting requires. 'People can be easily impressed by skill, and I know that’s not what art is.' Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Our many thanks to Williamson for her reflective contribution to this episode. Our thanks as well to the Banff Centre for their support. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Isabel Lewis – Ep. 15 Nov 29, 2019

For this month’s episode circling the question “what makes great art?”, Lauren Wetmore spoke with Berlin-based artist Isabel Lewis. Lewis was trained in classical ballet and carries its impression through a practice that marries philosophy, choreography, storytelling, and sensory aesthetics. She insists, “There is nothing neutral about the body." Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Our many thanks to Lewis for her eloquent contribution to this episode. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Jarrett Earnest – Ep. 14 Oct 22, 2019

For this month’s episode, towards our season's question, “what makes great art?”, Sky Goodden spoke with artist, curator, and writer Jarrett Earnest. He’s the editor behind the recent compilation of New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl's writing, titled Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light (Abrams, 2019), which highlights Schjeldahl's more risk-taking and experimental art writing from venues like The Village Voice, in addition to his most enduring criticism from The New Yorker. In 2018, Earnest published What it Means to Write About Art (David Zwirner Books), a master compendium of fresh, vulnerable and reflective interviews with the legends of American art criticism. In the spring of 2019, he curated Young and Evil at David Zwirner, which re-centered the gay artists who pivoted away from the prevailing trend toward abstraction in the early 20th-century. His conversation with Goodden circles his approach to reading and writing, the ways in which storytelling is central to his practice, and the question that should precede "what makes great art?" Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Our many thanks to Jarrett for his probing contribution to this episode! And our many thanks to Art Toronto for their support. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Francis McKee – Ep. 13 Sep 22, 2019

For this month’s episode, circling the question “what makes great art?” Lauren Wetmore entered into a searching conversation with Irish curator and writer Francis McKee. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Our many thanks to Francis for his meditative contribution to this episode.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Katerina Gregos – Ep. 12 Aug 06, 2019

Continuing with our pursuit of the question “What makes great art?”, Lauren Wetmore sits down with Greek art historian, curator, and writer Katerina Gregos, in Brussels. Their conversation builds on a quote from Gregos's recent exhibition The Anatomy of Political Melancholy, hosted by the Schwartz Foundation at the Athens Conservatory: “We are increasingly witnesses to the debasement of political language, the infantilization and polarization of political debate; the growth of a simplified discourse that panders to collective fears rather than addressing the real, pressing questions; the lack of accountability from politicians, and of course, 'fake truth' and 'alternative facts'. Clearly there is something profoundly wrong with contemporary politics.” What follows is a discussion that exchanges this quote's “politics” for “art,” and interrogates the conditions by which we frame political comment in exhibition-making. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Our many thanks to Katerina Gregos for her stirring contribution to this episode. You can stream the episode above, or subscribe/download it on Google Play, iTunes, and Stitcher. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Jinn Bronwen Lee – Ep. 11 Jun 27, 2019

As we continue our season-long exploration of “What makes great art?”, Sky Goodden sat down with Jinn Bronwen Lee, an artist based in Chicago. They discuss old master painting, the effect of our viewing environments on art, and the power of long looking. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. We would like to thank the School of the Art Institute of Chicagofor their support. And, of course, our many thanks to Dushko Petrovich for his considered contribution to this episode. You can stream the episode above, or subscribe/download it on Google Play, iTunes, and Stitcher. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Dushko Petrovich – Ep. 10 May 22, 2019

In our 10th episode, we continue our season-long exploration of the question, “What makes great art,” speaking to essential voices of our time about their experiences of seeking it. What follows is an interview between Momus Publisher Sky Goodden and Dushko Petrovich. Born in Ecuador and based in Chicago, Dushko is the chair of the New Arts Journalism program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and works in several critical and creative capacities, including as publisher and artist. He is the co-founder of the beloved Paper Monument, among others, and by all indications, the heart of his publishing activity is activist. In a searching conversation, Petrovich and Goodden land on their mutual desire and responsibility to foster a space for criticism and change. What makes great art? Petrovich argues that the metrics by which we know it are being actively altered. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. We would like to thank the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for their support. And, of course, our many thanks to Dushko Petrovich for his considered contribution to this episode. You can stream the episode above, or subscribe/download it on Google Play, iTunes, and Stitcher. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Osei Bonsu - Ep. 09 Apr 10, 2019

In continuing our season-long exploration of the question “What makes great art?” co-hosts Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden speak to essential voices about what are we seeking – and so often missing – in our experience of art. What follows is an interview with the British-Ghanaian curator, critic, and art historian Osei Bonsu. Based in Paris and London, Bonsu focuses on transnational histories of art. In conversation with Lauren Wetmore, he contemplates how we have exchanged a generosity of thought for a culture of transaction, and how the experience of meeting great art can be ahistorical – out of place and out of time.

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. We would like to thank Esker Foundation for their support. And, of course, our many thanks to Osei Bonsu for his deeply meaningful contribution to this episode.

If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“What Makes Great Art?” with Jeanne Randolph and Sheila Heti – Ep. 08 Mar 07, 2019

What makes “great art”? How do we account for what Gertrude Stein called the “itness” of art, and what are we seeking - and so often missing - in our experience of art? In brief, bright 30-minute episodes, Momus: The Podcast’s second season will follow co-hosts Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden as they speak with writers, curators, filmmakers, novelists, and artists about this searching. They ask, "What are their experiences with the 'itness', and with tracing it or trying to replicate it in their own work and in their lives?" In the first episode of Season 2, Goodden and Wetmore speak to performance artist, ficto-critic, and psychoanalyst Jeanne Randolph, as well as celebrated novelist Sheila Heti, who memorably says of art, “The person that loves it is the one that is right.” Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. We would like to thank Tellwell Books and Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival for their support. And of course our deepest thanks to Jeanne Randolph and Sheila Heti for their memorable contributions to this episode. If you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact Sky Goodden at skygoodden@momus.ca.

“Over, Again and Again” Renewing Canada’s Artist-Run Culture – Ep. 07 Oct 30, 2018

In Momus: The Podcast's 7th episode, we have brought together a group of artists, curators, and scholars to update the conversation around Artist-Run Culture in Canada. It’s a well-known history, one approaching legend, in this country: the emergence of artist-run centers seeking to address a lack of options for artist representation while forming a network across a vast geography; and then their professionalization, one approaching an institutionalization that mirrors the very thing they were made to contravene. Now, in a moment of large shifts across the arts sector, with a recent change to our country’s funding models, and a refocusing of our social values on historically underrepresented groups, our relationship to a Canadian cultural legacy is up for renewal. Momus: The Podcast is Co-Produced and Co-Hosted by Sky Goodden and Lauren Wetmore. We would like to thank all our contributors to this episode: Caitlin Jones, Peter Morin, Peggy Gale, Sylvie Gilbert and Francois Dion; with thanks to Lorna Brown for her text. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and assistant production from Mitra Shreeram. Season 1 of Momus: The Podcast is brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant.”

An Ethics of Abundance with Jacob Wren and Dayna Danger – Ep. 06 Sep 29, 2018

For this episode of our Criticism in Conversation series, a writer and collaborative performer, Jacob Wren, speaks with artist Dayna Danger, about the line between empowerment and objectification and the meaning of community in both their work. Danger is a 2Spirit/Queer, Metis/Saulteaux/Polish artist whose images highlight and queer power dynamics, kinship, representation, and sexuality. Wren makes collaborative performances, exhibitions and literature, including 2014’s Polyamorous Love Song and this year’s Authenticity is a Feeling, a hybrid of history, performance theory, and memoir. Together they cover a lot of ground, from personal narratives and community relationships to speaking against silence and apathy. We also receive a set of strategies for working and living in capitalist and colonial society, including creating your own rituals and adopting an ethics of abundance. This episode is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea and production assistance by Mitra Shreeram. It’s brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant, and is syndicated by NTS Radio.

Conflict of Interest with Tyler Green and Catherine G. Wagley – Ep. 05 Sep 17, 2018

In this episode of “Criticism in Conversation”, two art critics and historians discuss “conflict of interest” in contemporary art criticism. Tyler Green, the host of the popular Modern Art Notes Podcast and Catherine G. Wagley, a critic who regularly publishes with artnet News, the LA Review of Books, and Momus, frame the stakes and risks of a critic writing on contemporary - and even historical - figures in art, especially in light of the market’s increasingly firm grip on our discourse. We can hear them debate the most ethical approach to navigating nepotism, allyship, and critical distance in contemporary art writing. And as a centerpiece to this discussion, they cite the recent example of an art historian outing two leading art publications for acquiescing to the control exercised by a leading gallery over the material published on its artists. In an artworld where conflict-of-interest is endemic and normalized, our attention should be heightened, especially regarding the powers that dictate the terms by which we critique, historicize, and debate. Momus: The Podcast is co-produced and co-hosted by Sky Goodden and Lauren Wetmore. This episode is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea and production assistance by Mitra Shreeram. It’s brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant, and is syndicated by NTS Radio.

Episode 4 Aug 31, 2018

Two art and technology critics, Nora Khan and Mike Pepi, discuss pushing for a rigorous critical discourse in a creative field that can flatten evaluative distinctions in favor of zealotry for invention. “Criticism of a tool that’s presented as neutral when it really is a piece of social engineering is incredibly hard to do, and there really isn’t a model for criticism in this space,” says Khan. In this far-ranging discussion that touches on the critical distance and yet humanism required of writing on the internet, surveillance, and AI, Khan and Pepi assert that tools aren’t divorced from their makers, and artwork is never post-human - nor post-critique.

“Criticism in Conversation” is a series by Momus: The Podcast, and is co-produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden. This episode of Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and production assistance by Mitra Shreeram. It’s brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant, and is syndicated by NTS Radio.

You can stream the episode above, or download it on Google Play or iTunes.

Momus is also thrilled to thank NTS radio for syndicating and hosting Momus: The Podcast.

Art and Technology Criticism with Nora Khan – Ep. 04 Aug 29, 2018

Two art and technology critics, Nora Khan and Mike Pepi, discuss pushing for a rigorous critical discourse in a creative field that can flatten evaluative distinctions in favor of zealotry for invention. “Criticism of a tool that’s presented as neutral when it really is a piece of social engineering is incredibly hard to do, and there really isn’t a model for criticism in this space,” says Khan. In this far-ranging discussion that touches on the critical distance and yet humanism required of writing on the internet, surveillance, and AI, Khan and Pepi assert that tools aren’t divorced from their makers, and artwork is never post-human - nor post-critique. “Criticism in Conversation” is a series by Momus: The Podcast, and is co-produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden. This episode of Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, features original music by Kyle McCrea, and production assistance by Mitra Shreeram. It’s brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant, and is syndicated by NTS Radio.

Art Criticism vs. Journalism with Catherine G. Wagley and Julia Halperin – Ep. 03 Aug 13, 2018

In the first episode of Momus’s new “Criticism in Conversation” podcast series, an art critic and an art journalist parse the differing responsibilities and approaches of their craft. Catherine G. Wagley (a Momus contributing editor, and a critic for ARTNews and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others) and Julia Halperin (Executive Editor of artnet News, and former Museums Editor for The Art Newspaper) compare notes and find common ground as they consider, in particular, the example of a potent piece of journalism published by Halperin concerning the influence of five commercial galleries on worldwide institutional programming. Wagley wonders if this kind of reporting isn’t also the province of criticism, as these politics affect what we see – and how. “Criticism in Conversation” is a new series by Momus: The Podcast, and is co-produced and co-hosted by Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Angela Shackel, and features original music by Kyle McCrea. It’s brought to you with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grant, and is syndicated by NTS Radio.

Episode 2 Aug 12, 2018

The artist residency has risen to the top of the artworld’s global economy and increasing professionalization, becoming one of the key features of contemporary art practice. Momus publisher and podcast host Sky Goodden leads an overdue critical conversation on this phenomenon and its consequences for art practice in the 21st century. Featuring international voices close to the subject, Goodden – joined by co-host Lauren Wetmore, a Brussels-based curator and writer – discusses the risks and rewards of an actively-commercializing enterprise, and where it came out of.

Momus: The Podcast episode 2 features guests Daniel Baumann (director of Kunsthalle Zürich), Kristy Trinier (artist, curator, and former Banff Centre director), Aaron Cezar (founding director of Delfina Foundation), Michelle Grabner (artist, educator, and artistic director of Front International), and the co-directors of Beirut residency marra.tein, Jared McCormick and George Awde.

We’d like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts’s New Chapter grant for its support in making this podcast’s first season possible.Momus: The Podcast is co-produced by Angela Shackel and Sky Goodden; and edited by Angela Shackel, with assistance from Braden Labonte. We would like to thank our assistant producer, Mitra Shreeram; our composer and music editor Kyle McCrea; and this episode’s co-host, Lauren Wetmore.

Momus is also thrilled to thank NTS radio for syndicating and hosting Momus: The Podcast.

The Venice Biennale – Ep. 01 Jan 30, 2018

Welcome to the pilot episode of Momus: The Podcast. For our first broadcast, we focus on the historic Venice Biennale as the 57th edition opens to the public. We air a conversation on its history, institution, relevance, and potential, with insight arriving from a group of critics, curators, artists, and gallerists speaking to us from around the world. In this vibrant and myriad discussion, we question this event’s potential for political comment; its profile amid a “festivalist” biennial culture; its emphasis on nationalism; and the latest edition’s success. Our pilot contributors include Morgan Quaintance, Andrew Berardini, Kimberlee Córdova, Saelan Twerdy, Sandra Paikowsky, Catherine G. Wagley, Alison Hugill, Mitch Speed, and your host, Sky Goodden. We’d like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for its support in making this podcast’s first episode possible. Momus: The Podcast is co-produced by Angela Shackel and Sky Goodden; and edited by Angela Shackel. We would like to thank our assistant producer, Mitra Shreeram; and our music composer, Kyle McCrea. We are thrilled to announce that NTS radio hosts Momus: The Podcast.

Episode 1 Jan 24, 2018

Welcome to the pilot episode of Momus: The Podcast. For our first broadcast, we focus on the historic Venice Biennale as the 57th edition opens to the public. We air a conversation on its history, institution, relevance, and potential, with insight arriving from a group of critics, curators, artists, and gallerists speaking to us from around the world. In this vibrant and myriad discussion, we question this event’s potential for political comment; its profile amid a “festivalist” biennial culture; its emphasis on nationalism; and the latest edition’s success.

Our pilot contributors include Morgan Quaintance, Andrew Berardini, Kimberlee Córdova, Saelan Twerdy, Sandra Paikowsky, Catherine G. Wagley, Alison Hugill, Mitch Speed, and your host, Sky Goodden.

We’d like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for its support in making this podcast’s first episode possible. Momus: The Podcast is co-produced by Angela Shackel and Sky Goodden; and edited by Angela Shackel. We would like to thank our assistant producer, Mitra Shreeram; and our music composer, Kyle McCrea.

We are thrilled to announce that NTS radio hosts Momus: The Podcast.

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