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PODCAST

Urgent Matter: Cold Take

Urgent Matter: Cold Take is a weekly breakdown of the biggest art-world headlines—minus the artspeak. Journalist Adam Schrader, founder of Urgent Matter, reports from the front seat of his car to Colton Crews, a Texas-based outside observer with zero ties to the art world. Recorded over Zoom and minimally edited, each episode digs into the law, crime, labor, and general absurdities of the industry. For the document-driven reporting behind the talk, visit www.urgentmatter.press.

arts visual arts

All Episodes

00:58:14

Cold Take Ep. 14: Missile Makers at the Smithsonian,...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/09/29

It's the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and Adam's recording from the bathroom again.Adam and Colton open in Vancouver, where the Vancouver Art Gallery is taking heat over a Charlie Kirk memorial it had nothing to do with — a Turning Point Canada vigil staged in the public plaza next door. Adam explains why he covered a story that got him yelled at on Reddit, raising questions about what a museum owes the public when a demonstration lands on the sidewalk outside its doors.Then to

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00:48:09

Cold Take Ep. 13: WNDR Goes Dark, the Art Institute...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/09/07

Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader and longtime friend Colton Crews — a Texas-based everyman and musician with the bands Burning Slow, American Sycamore and Bum Lucky — return after a few weeks off for a loose, lightly edited run through the week's art news, trading artspeak for direct, skeptical takes.Once they get past a doorbell and an ADT salesman, the show opens on WNDR Museum closing both its Chicago and Boston locations. The guys use it to pull apart the whole for-profit

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00:47:54

Cold Take Ep. 12: Music in a Time of War, Lilith at...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/08/27

Adam Schrader and Colton Crews are back after a week off, and a week late to post. The episode opens with the Experiential Orchestra, the Grammy-winning classical group planning a "Music in a Time of War" concert that asks the audience to write down how war has touched their lives — and traces the group back to its early days of Barolo-soaked Rite of Spring dance parties with mosh pits and mock sacrifices. From there it's downtown to The Tank for Lilith, Adina Aaron's new 90-minute

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00:35:19

Cold Take Ep. 11: Rebuilding Gaza, Iran's Imprisoned...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/08/04

A leaner episode from a slow news week — Urgent Matter spent most of it building the August print edition — but the stories run deep.Adam and Colton open on the Second Circuit's ruling that set designer Michael Hayden waited too long to sue Jeff Koons over the snake sculpture at the center of his "Made in Heaven" series — the one built for Italian porn star turned politician Ilona Staller, better known as Cicciolina. The court never reached whether Koons actually infringed, which

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00:57:20

Cold Take Ep. 10: Forbidden Bus Ads, Fifty Buffalo...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/07/27

Adam Schrader and Colton Crews open at the MTA's June board meeting in lower Manhattan, where Orthodox Jewish leaders and a transit union officer asked the authority to pull Museum of Sex ads off the fronts of city buses. Chair and chief executive Janno Lieber told them the agency has First Amendment obligations that prevent it from becoming the censor of all the ads. Adam pulls the ads up on screen — most are the museum's name in block type — and revisits his own 2024 reporting on artist

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00:38:59

Cold Take Ep. 9: NPR Picks Up UNT, North Korea's...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/07/20

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 — 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

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00:58:22

Cold Take Ep. 8: Giant Bones, Jay-Z Figurines and a...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/07/13

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 — 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

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00:55:28

Cold Take Ep. 7: A Jailed Artist, a Nude Portrait,...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/06/28

Happy Father's Day. Colton surprises Adam with a relic from a past life — 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 — work he made, sold, and kept in the United States —

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00:33:03

Cold Take Ep. 6: The World's Worst Photographer, the...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/06/22

Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader and longtime friend Colton Crews — a Texas-based everyman and musician with the bands Burning Slow and American Sycamore — 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

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00:36:09

Cold Take Ep. 5: The MILF Magnet, the Whale Mural and...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/06/11

Adam Schrader and Colton Crews run through a strange week in art-world news, starting with the Vagina Museum’s repeatedly stolen MILF magnet and what museums can do when visitors turn an exhibit into an accidental gift-shop opportunity. They then discuss artist Wyland’s lawsuit over the destruction of his longtime Dallas whale mural, weighing public art, property rights and FIFA’s role in the World Cup-related repainting.The episode also looks at a dropped Miami Beach case involving an artist

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00:33:46

Cold Take Ep. 4: Art Crime, War Photography and A.I....

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/06/03

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 Matter’s recent FOIA work, an NPR interview tied to his reporting on a censored UNT show, Giles Duley’s 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

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00:42:57

Cold Take: Epstein Files, Space Art and Censorship...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/05/16

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 — a project Adam and Colton discuss as part archive, part political provocation and part art installation. From there, they turn to Tim Makepeace’s NASA-inspired museum show in Washington,

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00:52:07

Cold Take: A Demolition, an Epstein Resignation and a...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/05/07

In the second episode of Cold Take, Urent 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 week’s art news.The episode opens at the Venice Biennale, where geopolitical tensions and cultural backlash continue to collide. After Iran’s withdrawal from this year’s exhibition and ongoing criticism surrounding the participation of Russia and Israel, Adam and Colton

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00:44:57

Cold Take: A Freaky Tourist, a Fake Museum, and Other...

Urgent Matter: Cold Take ·

2026/04/30

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 week’s art news.Framed as an “everyman” perspective, Texas-based Colton—an outsider to the New York art world—reacts 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

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14 results

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