Afleveringen
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Adam and Colton open Episode 9 by playing the NPR segment that credits Urgent Matter's public records reporting on the University of North Texas censorship scandal â a first national radio pickup for the site.
From there, the UNT fallout keeps growing. New records show art faculty delayed publicizing a campus visit by MacArthur fellow Wendy Red Star out of fear she'd cancel over the censorship, after a lecture by media theorist Lev Manovich was already called off. Adam and Colton debate whether pulling out of a speaking gig is protest or self-censorship.
Then it's on to Texas Tech, where a faculty lawsuit alleges the university stripped race and queer themes from courses â including four songs about gay relationships cut from a French pop-music class â raising questions about academic freedom across Texas universities.
The hosts mark the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham with a look at his arts record, from voting against restoring $98 million in NEA funding in 1998 to backing the 2025 rescissions that killed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Then the show heads to Pyongyang, where North Korea opened an anti-U.S. art exhibition timed to the anniversary of the Korean War's outbreak. Adam and Colton scroll state media photos, question whether the paintings are A.I.-generated, and detour through the regime's attempt to claim sledding as intangible cultural heritage.
Back in New York, the George Eastman Museum still hasn't scheduled the listening sessions it promised photographers over its $400 hourly photography fee, and Adam explains where his criticism actually lands.
Finally, the East Hampton Town Board votes 4-1 to authorize legal action against The Ranch gallery in Montauk over its 60-foot shipping container sculpture â and Colton proposes a bat-box defense strategy.
Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art-news podcast, hosted by Adam Schrader and Colton Crews.
Read the reporting behind every story in this episode at â urgentmatter.pressâ .
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
â â American Sycamoreâ â
â â Burning Slowâ
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Adam is fighting a mold problem, Colton is fighting the Smithsonian, and the White House has 162 pages of grievances. Welcome to Episode 8.
Adam Schrader and Colton Crews open with a look at Urgent Matter's first print edition â a paid-subscriber benefit built around artist interviews, an art fair calendar, news briefs, the NASA Goddard library investigation, obituaries, job listings, and a crossword that took four hours to build.
Then it's on to the Smithsonian. A report released on the night of July 4 by the Domestic Policy Council accuses the National Museum of American History of ideological capture and concludes the institution cannot be trusted to tell America's story honestly. The report is unsigned. Adam walks through its five findings and the reaction online, while Colton advances a competing theory involving giant bones in the basement. The conversation turns to what the Smithsonian actually keeps out of sight â less than one percent of its 157.6 million objects are on display â and to the fact that it isn't subject to the Freedom of Information Act, raising questions about who gets to decide what counts as improper ideology in a collection nobody can fully see.
Next, a Brooklyn gallery accused of ripping off a photograph of a young Jay-Z to sell figurines it called Jaybois loses its separate eviction case by default after failing to show up in court.
From there, Getty Images agrees to license its photographs inside ChatGPT under a multi-year partnership, a turn for a company that spent three years positioning itself as an A.I. critic. Colton, a working musician, reveals he is not angry that A.I. companies are scraping music. He is angry they didn't scrape his.
Then a painter sues the Artists Association of Nantucket, alleging she was put on probation and fired in 2023 after allowing an autistic 15-year-old with a signed parental permission slip into an adult figure drawing class.
And finally, Beanie Babies billionaire Ty Warner's appeal against the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History heads back to the courtroom after four months of court-ordered settlement talks collapse. The museum stripped his name from its Sea Center after his federal tax evasion conviction, kept the donation, and â when he asked about restoring it years later â floated a new eight-figure gift. Urgent Matter is the only outlet covering it.
Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art news podcast. Urgent Matter is an independent, document-driven arts accountability publication founded by Adam Schrader.
Read the reporting behind every story in this episode at urgentmatter.press.
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
â American Sycamoreâ
â Burning Slowâ
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Happy Father's Day. Colton surprises Adam with a relic from a past life â the faded Brainbat skull shirt from back when Adam went by "Brainbat" and made art instead of reporting on it.
They open in China, where a court delays the verdict for jailed artist Gao Zhen by three more months. Adam breaks down how the 70-year-old, a U.S. permanent resident, was detained on a visit home and charged under a 2021 law for art critical of Mao â work he made, sold, and kept in the United States â raising questions about reach, retroactivity, and whether he ever comes home.
From there, Adam recaps the Work in Progress fair, a participatory anti-Basel where the art gets made in front of you, and where he stripped down for a staged nude portrait. He reads the opening lines, Colton offers his review, and the two argue about auctions, dealers, and whether the whole secondary market is just Pokémon cards for rich people.
Next, workers at the Denver Art Museum ratify what's believed to be Colorado's first museum union contract while Seattle Art Museum staff vote to organize â the occasion for Urgent Matter to launch its new U.S. museum labor tracker.
In politics, artist and assembly member Claire Valdez wins her NY-7 primary, all but guaranteeing a seat in Congress. The guys debate whether more artists in government is actually a good idea, and kick off Urgent Matter's first-ever contest along the way.
Jupiter Contemporary settles a New York eviction and faces default in an artist's federal suit â a way into the bigger problem of galleries collapsing with artists' work still inside, with detours through stolen Legos, the Louvre heist, and a not-at-all-serious guide to committing art theft.
Finally, an Urgent Matter original: five years after the Surfside condo collapse, NIST pins down the cause â and Urgent Matter traces the late developer's widow to a quiet collection that includes a work by Louise Bourgeois, raising questions about accountability, money, and why the art press is so obsessed with unmasking who's buying.
Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art-news podcast â Adam Schrader and musician Colton Crews (Burning Slow, American Sycamore) trading artspeak for direct, skeptical, outsider takes on the stories actually moving the art world.
Read more at urgentmatter.press.
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Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader and longtime friend Colton Crews â a Texas-based everyman and musician with the bands Burning Slow and American Sycamore â return for a loose, lightly edited run through the week's art news, trading artspeak for direct, skeptical takes.
The episode opens with Icelandair's "Really Bad Photographer" contest, an open call built on the premise that even a hopeless shooter can't make Iceland look bad. Adam walks through the winning entries â blurry, grainy, thumb-in-the-frame disasters â and the prize behind them: $50,000 and a 10-day trip to shoot the country for the airline.
From there, they turn to the first official dual portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama, Njideka Akunyili Crosby's "The Obamas: Springing Forth," unveiled at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. The conversation circles a thornier question about the gap between an "official" portrait and an authorized one, and how a former president's legacy gets curated. A brief detour lands on A.I. artist Refik Anadol and his new museum.
The episode also digs into a call for vinyl on the Lower East Side, where artist Pablo Helguera and the Clemente Soto VĂ©lez Cultural & Educational Center are gathering donated and loaned record collections for Fonoteca, a public listening archive of Latin American and Latinx music tied to the exhibition Historias Reveladas. Adam and Colton weigh what a pile of donated records reveals about a community â and Adam shares how a past Helguera project surfaced a letter linked to SimĂłn BolĂvar.
Cold Take is a weekly podcast from Urgent Matter built around direct, lightly edited conversations about the art world's biggest stories, stripped of artspeak and institutional PR language.
Read Urgent Matter: https://www.urgentmatter.press
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
American Sycamore
Burning Slow
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Adam Schrader and Colton Crews run through a strange week in art-world news, starting with the Vagina Museumâs repeatedly stolen MILF magnet and what museums can do when visitors turn an exhibit into an accidental gift-shop opportunity.
They then discuss artist Wylandâs lawsuit over the destruction of his longtime Dallas whale mural, weighing public art, property rights and FIFAâs role in the World Cup-related repainting.
The episode also looks at a dropped Miami Beach case involving an artist arrested after using washable chalk paint outside Art Basel Miami Beach with his young daughter.
Finally, Adam explains how website-tracking software revealed unexplained changes to MoMAâs trustee list, including the removal and reappearance of Sharon Percy Rockefellerâs name, Daniel S. Och remaining off the list, and Leon Black still appearing as a trustee.
Read Urgent Matter: â https://www.urgentmatter.pressâ
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
American Sycamore
Burning Slow
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Adam Schrader and Colton Crews return for another loose, mildly prepared episode of Cold Take, the Urgent Matter podcast about art-world news, lawsuits, crime, culture and whatever else.
This week, Adam talks through Urgent Matterâs recent FOIA work, an NPR interview tied to his reporting on a censored UNT show, Giles Duleyâs thoughts on war photography, and an artist in Gaza making work amid devastation.
Then the episode turns toward the stranger corners of the art world: the Brent Sikkema murder case, A.I. colorization of an Ansel Adams photograph, and the Robert Indiana dispute involving a so-called ghost-signature machine.
Read Urgent Matter: â â https://www.urgentmatter.pressâ â
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
â American Sycamoreâ
â Burning Slowâ
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In the third episode of Cold Take, Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader is joined again by longtime friend Colton Crews for a loose, skeptical conversation about art, public records, censorship and propaganda.
The episode opens with a New York reading room filled with printed copies of the Epstein files â a project Adam and Colton discuss as part archive, part political provocation and part art installation.
From there, they turn to Tim Makepeaceâs NASA-inspired museum show in Washington, D.C., and the question of what happens when artists are given access to federal science programs.
The conversation then moves to a Long Island student who reached a $125,000 settlement after her pro-Palestinian parking-space artwork was painted over by school officials. Adam and Colton use the case to talk about how small acts of censorship can become much larger stories once institutions try to make them disappear.
They also revisit Urgent Matterâs reporting on the canceled Marka27 exhibition at the University of North Texas, where public records showed administrators worried about political âbarking from Austinâ before the show was called off.
The episode closes with the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Artâs âArt and Warâ exhibition, which features American anti-war works by artists including Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist as Iranian cultural institutions use art in wartime messaging.
Cold Take is a weekly podcast from Urgent Matter built around direct, lightly edited conversations about the art worldâs biggest stories, stripped of artspeak and institutional PR language.
Read Urgent Matter: â â https://www.urgentmatter.pressâ â
Follow Urgent Matter:
Instagram: @urgent.matter
X: @TheUrgentMatter
Colton Crews:
â American Sycamoreâ
â Burning Slowâ
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In the second episode of Cold Take, Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader once again records from the front seat of his car while his kids sleep, joined by longtime friend Colton Crews for a loose, skeptical breakdown of the weekâs art news.
The episode opens at the Venice Biennale, where geopolitical tensions and cultural backlash continue to collide. After Iranâs withdrawal from this yearâs exhibition and ongoing criticism surrounding the participation of Russia and Israel, Adam and Colton discuss the broader question of whether anyone outside the art world actually understandsâor even cares aboutâthe biennale system at all.
From there, they turn to Detroit, where an artist is suing the city after officials demolished part of his museum complex, allegedly destroying 33 murals in the process.
The episode also digs into the resignation of longtime Bard College president Leon Botstein following the release of an independent report examining his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Other topics include bizarre language used in a Justice Department filing tied to the White House East Wing lawsuit, and new developments in the alleged murder-for-hire plot surrounding the killing of dealer Brent Sikkema. The episode closes with a story from Las Vegas about sculptures allegedly stolen from a community arts studio serving children.
Cold Take is a weekly podcast from Urgent Matter built around direct, lightly edited conversations about the art worldâs biggest stories, stripped of artspeak and institutional PR language.
For more document-driven reporting behind these headlines, visit urgentmatter.press.
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In the debut episode of Cold Take, Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader records from the front seat of his car while his kids are asleep, joined by his longtime friend Colton Crews for a raw, lightly edited breakdown of the weekâs art news.
Framed as an âeverymanâ perspective, Texas-based Coltonâan outsider to the New York art worldâreacts in real time as Adam walks through the headlines.
The conversation starts in Italy, where a tourist was arrested after climbing a 500-year-old statue on a pre-wedding dare, sparking questions about cultural heritage, enforcement, and what actually counts as âdamage.â
From there, they turn to Taiwan, where a prominent artistâs rape conviction has led to the rescinding of a national arts awardâraising questions about merit, punishment, and whether institutions can separate the work from the person.
The episode also takes on a âmuseum that doesnât existâ opening an exhibition in Tribeca, a razor-thin museum union vote in Connecticut, and the ongoing wave of protest actions inside cultural institutions.
This episode launches a weekly series that trades artspeak for direct, sometimes skeptical, takes on the art worldâs biggest stories.
For the full, document-driven reporting behind these headlines, visit www.urgentmatter.press.
