I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the esteemed curator, Megan Fontanella.
A specialist in Modern Art and Provenance at the Guggenheim New York, Fontanella’s research interests focus on late 19th and early 20th European art and the avant-garde in the USA. She has organised a plethora of exhibitions for the Guggenheim across the globe, from Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim (2017); Kandinsky (2020–21); Kandinsky: Around the Circle (2021–22; 2023–24); Young Picasso in Paris (2023), as well as travelling collection exhibitions in Australia, Canada, and Europe.
But the reason why we are speaking to Fontanella today is because she is very excitingly curating a monumental exhibition by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Münter. Titled Contours of a World, the show – opening 7 November through to April 2026 – will feature 60 of the artist’s luminous, bold, sometimes rapidly-made paintings – from her portraits of friends to landscapes of the German alpine town of Murnau – that chart the changing face of modernism in art. Focusing on 1908 to 1920, it will deep-dive into her involvement with “The Blue Rider” – a group of visionary artists and writers who explored how colour and form could evoke emotion and spiritualist ideas – to the works she made during the First World War.
Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is on view at Guggenheim New York, 7 Nov – 26 Apr 2026:
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/gabriele-munter
Artists mentioned:
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938)
Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) group
Artworks mentioned:
Gabriele Münter - Still Life on the Tram After Shopping (1909–1912)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Marianne Werefkin (1909)
Gabriele Münter - Boating (1910)
Gabriele Münter - Meditation (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Future (Woman in Stockholm) (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Anna Roslund (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Lady in an Armchair, Writing (1929)
Gabriele Munter - Breakfast of the Birds (1934)
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I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the esteemed curator, Megan Fontanella.
A specialist in Modern Art and Provenance at the Guggenheim New York, Fontanella’s research interests focus on late 19th and early 20th European art and the avant-garde in the USA. She has organised a plethora of exhibitions for the Guggenheim across the globe, from Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim (2017); Kandinsky (2020–21); Kandinsky: Around the Circle (2021–22; 2023–24); Young Picasso in Paris (2023), as well as travelling collection exhibitions in Australia, Canada, and Europe.
But the reason why we are speaking to Fontanella today is because she is very excitingly curating a monumental exhibition by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Münter. Titled Contours of a World, the show – opening 7 November through to April 2026 – will feature 60 of the artist’s luminous, bold, sometimes rapidly-made paintings – from her portraits of friends to landscapes of the German alpine town of Murnau – that chart the changing face of modernism in art. Focusing on 1908 to 1920, it will deep-dive into her involvement with “The Blue Rider” – a group of visionary artists and writers who explored how colour and form could evoke emotion and spiritualist ideas – to the works she made during the First World War.
Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is on view at Guggenheim New York, 7 Nov – 26 Apr 2026:
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/gabriele-munter
Artists mentioned:
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938)
Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) group
Artworks mentioned:
Gabriele Münter - Still Life on the Tram After Shopping (1909–1912)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Marianne Werefkin (1909)
Gabriele Münter - Boating (1910)
Gabriele Münter - Meditation (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Future (Woman in Stockholm) (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Anna Roslund (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Lady in an Armchair, Writing (1929)
Gabriele Munter - Breakfast of the Birds (1934)
I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the brilliant New York based painter, Katherine Bradford.
Hailed for her luminous paintings of swimming pools and cosmic skies, ballet dancers and bicycle riders, Bradford takes us to imaginary worlds full of freedom, togetherness and wonder. Not usually specifying the figures in her work, instead she offers us a universal depiction of humanity – that any of us can apply ourselves or relate to – playing with scale and perspective, and getting us to think hard about our place on this earth.
Born in 1942, and raised in Connecticut, Bradford didn’t always start off as an artist. A woman of stifling 1960s America, she was married with twins in her 20s, but aged 37, swapped this life, bringing her kids along, to become an artist in New York City, and never looked back.
Making her way by teaching from the 1980s to the 2010s, becoming the senior critic on the faculty of Yale School of Art and being awarded Pollock Krasner grants and Guggenheim Fellowships, Bradford – although painting for decades – has received major recognition in the past decade, such as her recent survey show at the Portland Museum of Art.
And thank goodness she carried on painting, because especially at a time like this, of despair and uncertainty, we can look to Bradford’s paintings for hope, visualisations of freedom that prioritise inclusiveness and community – as she has said: “It’s important to me to make upbeat paintings. If anything, I’m making paintings about enchantment.”
Looking at Bradford’s painting is like being transported into another world, whether it be outer space or in cosmic waters, it’s like they are lit with a glow akin to a blanket of stars. There is nothing artificial about them: they are spellbinding, and her canvases become a springboard for the most magical scenes, an “intentional place for imagination” as she says “as they convey a personal universe of my own making, populated with characters who explore who we are, how we fit together visually, and how we all stand next to each other.”
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The Great Women Artists
I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the esteemed curator, Megan Fontanella.
A specialist in Modern Art and Provenance at the Guggenheim New York, Fontanella’s research interests focus on late 19th and early 20th European art and the avant-garde in the USA. She has organised a plethora of exhibitions for the Guggenheim across the globe, from Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim (2017); Kandinsky (2020–21); Kandinsky: Around the Circle (2021–22; 2023–24); Young Picasso in Paris (2023), as well as travelling collection exhibitions in Australia, Canada, and Europe.
But the reason why we are speaking to Fontanella today is because she is very excitingly curating a monumental exhibition by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Münter. Titled Contours of a World, the show – opening 7 November through to April 2026 – will feature 60 of the artist’s luminous, bold, sometimes rapidly-made paintings – from her portraits of friends to landscapes of the German alpine town of Murnau – that chart the changing face of modernism in art. Focusing on 1908 to 1920, it will deep-dive into her involvement with “The Blue Rider” – a group of visionary artists and writers who explored how colour and form could evoke emotion and spiritualist ideas – to the works she made during the First World War.
Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World is on view at Guggenheim New York, 7 Nov – 26 Apr 2026:
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/gabriele-munter
Artists mentioned:
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938)
Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”) group
Artworks mentioned:
Gabriele Münter - Still Life on the Tram After Shopping (1909–1912)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Marianne Werefkin (1909)
Gabriele Münter - Boating (1910)
Gabriele Münter - Meditation (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Future (Woman in Stockholm) (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Portrait of Anna Roslund (1917)
Gabriele Münter - Lady in an Armchair, Writing (1929)
Gabriele Munter - Breakfast of the Birds (1934)
