Episode No. 739 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Dara Birnbaum.

Birnbaum, a pioneering titan of video art, passed away this year at 78. "Her work is now displayed in museum collections around the world as the example of feminist video art," wrote curator and critic Karen Archey in an Artforum obituary.

Birnbaum's work often included pointedly feminist critiques of mass media, including of entertainment and journalism. Retrospectives of her work include "The Dark Matter of Media Light" at SMAK, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, and "Dara Birnbaum Retrospective exhibition" at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria and at the Norrtalje Konsthall in Sweden.

Several of the Birnbaums discussed on this program are available online, including:

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79);
Kiss The Girls: Make Them Cry (1979) (clip);
Canon: Taking to the Street (1990) (clip); and
Walkthrough of Psalm 29(30) (2016) at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris.

This program was recorded in 2017 when Dara Birnbaum's Local TV News Analysis (1980), which Birnbaum made with Dan Graham, was included in "Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition examined how artists have used newspapers, magazines and televised news programs to consider media, news and the messages included therein. The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs.

Air date: January 1, 2026.

Holiday clips: Dara Birnbaum

The Modern Art Notes Podcast