Urgent Matter: Cold Take

Recorded September 30, days after New York’s fall art fairs wrapped, Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader and longtime friend Colton Crews, a Texas-based musician with the bands Burning Slow, American Sycamore and Bum Lucky, run through a short, loose week of art news as Urgent Matter nears its first anniversary. The episode opens with R.C. Horsch, a late Philadelphia erotic photographer...

Recorded September 23, in the middle of New York Art Week, Urgent Matter founder and editor Adam Schrader and longtime friend Colton Crews — a Texas-based musician with the bands Burning Slow, American Sycamore and Bum Lucky — run through a loose, lightly edited week of art news, trading artspeak for direct, skeptical takes. The episode opens in a hotel room, where Adam caught Mamie Green’s “fools...

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...

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 Museu...

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 a...

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 S...

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...

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 censor...

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 cr...

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 c...

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 p...

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 Worl...

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 deva...

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...

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 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 ye...

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...