Urgent Matter: Cold Take

About 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.

Publisher

Urgent Matter

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Apr 2026

Latest episode

22 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

17 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Oct 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 17: Dino Mommy, Titanic Artifacts and the Pope on A.I. Art

   Adam is sick, the kids are sick, and Colton is sure he’s seen Michelangelo’s handwriting before. Welcome to Episode 17. Adam Schrader and Colton Crews open in Philadelphia, where Drexel University is closing the public museum at the Academy of Natural Sciences, home to more than 19 million specimens. Adam interviewed Dino Mommy, a working paleontologist who funds her own research through social media and adult content and who filmed at the museum before it shut to rally her followers. The William Penn Foundation offered bridge funding. The museum has not taken it, raising questions about what happens to the collection. Microsoft releases a free font inspired by Michelangelo’s handwriting, and Colton insists he knows it from the opening credits of “Family Matters.” Then it’s to federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. R.M.S. Titanic Inc. says it could run out of money within six months unless it can sell about 100 artifacts, including a bronze cherub from the Grand Staircase. A judge blocked the sale. Adam walks through the French and American collections, and asks why a 1912 shipwreck is still being turned into ticketed exhibitions. In Ireland, Adam talks with Tara Murphy of Solomon Fine Art about Dublin Gallery Weekend, Nov. 5–8, and why visual art is treated as the poor cousin of Irish writing, music and theater. The hosts detour through British calls to bring the original Winnie the Pooh home from the New York Public Library, Irish rebel music and the Choctaw Nation’s 1847 gift during the Great Famine. To close, Pope Leo XIV tells artists at the Vatican that A.I. images are different in kind from art and calls for A.I.-generated content to be labeled. Colton describes an A.I.-generated Christian band whose fans say they don’t care, and the hosts argue over whether A.I. ends up worshiped or forgotten. Cold Take is Urgent Matter’s weekly art news podcast: two outsiders on the art world’s biggest stories, without the artspeak. Read the reporting behind every story at urgentmatter.press. Colton’s band Burning Slow releases a new track October 30.

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 16: R.C. Horsch’s Archive, a Stolen Bronze Faun and Fair Week

   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 whose former home police have linked to seven missing women. Colton and Adam dig through Horsch’s self-published books and debate whether talking about his art only gives it a bigger audience. From there, Colton brings up another podcast’s roast of Sergio Furnari’s Charlie Kirk statue in Times Square, which leads to a sculpture the guys actually like: a 300-pound bronze faun by Alfred Lepère. It was stolen from a French zoo in 1993 and returned to the Musée de Picardie after an auction house’s provenance check turned it up. A detour through Colton’s handmade drums raises questions about how anyone proves they own anything. In a rapid-fire round, Adam walks through the Nasher Museum’s “Turn the volume up!,” a protest-art show inspired by New York’s 2025 mayoral turnout. He also covers a quiet Armory Show where Canadian dealers faced a new 50% U.S. tariff, and Alice Herbert’s redacted arrest report and house-arrest self-portraits at Spring/Break. Cold Take is the podcast arm of Urgent Matter, an independent arts-accountability publication. Read the reporting behind these stories at urgentmatter.press, where Insider subscribers can read the full episode transcript, and check out Colton’s music with Burning Slow (@burningslowmusic on Instagram), American Sycamore and Bum Lucky.

3. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 15: The NSA’s Bin Laden Exhibit, Leon Black in Contempt and a Denied Visa

   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,” a dance adaptation of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” staged in a suite at the Ace Hotel. From there the guys take on Hyperallergic’s new paywall and sign-in requirement, six years after it told readers membership wouldn’t mean a paywall, and argue on the record about how an independent outlet like Urgent Matter is supposed to pay for itself. Then it’s out to Maryland, where the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum has opened an exhibit on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Adam digs into the exhibit’s claim that a 1998 press leak cost the agency bin Laden’s satellite phone, a story The Washington Post called an “urban myth” back in 2005, raising questions about what a spy agency’s museum chooses to repeat. The show also covers the House vote holding billionaire collector and former MoMA chairman Leon Black in contempt of Congress over subpoenas in its Epstein investigation, and why MoMA still keeps him on its board. Black has denied any role in Epstein’s crimes. Next up is Iza Mendoza, a Mexican printmaker whose first New York solo show opened at cia gallery in Ridgewood, Queens, without her after the U.S. denied her visa. That turns into a real disagreement over whether America is losing its talent under Trump. The episode closes with Adam’s FOIA reporting on NASA’s shuttered Goddard library and his interview with Kirsten Dickerson of Artist & Nomad, whose craft tours try to cut middlemen out of what tourists spend on artisans’ work, raising questions about what ethical cultural travel looks like. Cold Take is the podcast arm of Urgent Matter, an independent arts-accountability publication. Read the reporting behind these stories at urgentmatter.press, where Insider subscribers can now read the full episode transcript, and check out Colton’s music with Burning Slow (@burningslowmusic on Instagram), American Sycamore and Bum Lucky.

4. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 14: Missile Makers at the Smithsonian, Bush's 9/11 Paintings, a Bicycle Art Heist

   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 Dallas, where George W. Bush has painted 16 new works for the 9/11 anniversary, on view at his presidential center at SMU through September 30. The guys walk through the firefighter portraits and Bush's bullhorn self-portrait — and whether painting straight from a famous news photo raises any copyright questions. The big one this week: Adam's reporting that defense contractors are buying naming rights at the Smithsonian. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing have put tens of millions into the National Air and Space Museum's renovation — enough to hang a missile maker's name on the planetarium — raising questions about who gets to write the historical record of the weapons on the walls. For a break, a trip to New Zealand, where a thief unbolted a wooden sculpture from its base at the Hundertwasser Art Centre in Whangārei, tucked it under one arm and pedaled off on a bicycle. Karin de Beer's Tiori Toru is still missing, and the hosts have questions — starting with how you carry a four-and-a-half-foot sculpture on a bike. Back home, the Brooklyn Cyclones throw a Bob Ross night — bobbleheads, a paint-along, drunk baseball fans — and Urgent Matter runs its first story written by someone other than Adam. They close in the south of France, where thieves walked four Renoirs out of the museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer and dropped two on the way out. A real heist, to set against the one on the bicycle. Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art-news podcast, where Adam Schrader and Colton Crews talk through the biggest stories in the art world — the legalities, the opinions, and everything that doesn't fit in a news article. Read the reporting behind these stories at urgentmatter.press. Colton Crews plays in Burning Slow, American Sycamore, and Bum Lucky — go listen.

5. 

   7 Sept 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 13: WNDR Goes Dark, the Art Institute Outsources Its Janitors, Paint on a Picasso

   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 "experience museum" model — Meow Wolf, the Museum of Ice Cream, Mercer Labs — from the ticket prices and the personal-injury lawsuits to the near-total lack of financial transparency, raising questions about whether any of it was built to last. From there it's the Art Institute of Chicago cutting its in-house custodians for a third-party cleaning contractor. That turns into the episode's real argument: what a museum becomes once you start outsourcing it, whose labor gets valued, and a genuinely heated exchange over what a curator's job is actually worth. The episode closes in London, where two Youth Demand activists have been convicted of criminal damage for taping an image of a Gazan mother and child over Picasso's Motherhood and pouring paint on the gallery floor. The case turns out to be less about the art, which was untouched, than about the bill for the floor — and who decides a protest is worth prosecuting. Cold Take is the podcast arm of Urgent Matter, an independent arts-accountability publication. Read the reporting behind these stories at urgentmatter.press (https://www.urgentmatter.press/), and check out Colton's music with Burning Slow, American Sycamore and Bum Lucky.

6. 

   27 Aug 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 12: Music in a Time of War, Lilith at The Tank, and the "Worst Aquarium" in America

   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 play that reworks the biblical Adam's mythological first wife. In the back half, Adam (Schrader) breaks down Syria's Damascus Citadel controversy, where food stalls inside a World Heritage site sparked backlash and a government disavowal. Then the Interlochen Center for the Arts investigation — a 97-page external report documenting decades of sexual abuse, including a former donor named Jeffrey Epstein — and what real institutional transparency should look like. Adam also covers Karoline Leavitt's exit as White House press secretary through the arts angle, from the Kennedy Center to a shuttered EPA museum, and the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's closure after curator Andrew Farago's arrest. The episode closes on a light note, with the New Bedford whaling museum that turned a one-star "worst aquarium" review into merch. Cold Take is the weekly podcast from Urgent Matter, the hard-news publication for the art world. New episodes every week. Read the reporting behind these stories at urgentmatter.press. Read the stories: Experiential Orchestra / "Music in a Time of War" (https://www.urgentmatter.press/experiential-orchestra-asks-audiences-to-share-how-war-has-touched-their-lives/) Lilith at The Tank (https://www.urgentmatter.press/new-play-turns-liliths-eden-into-art-at-the-tank/) Damascus Citadel food stalls (https://www.urgentmatter.press/syria-defends-damascus-citadel-food-stalls-and-disavows-baathist-heritage-policy/) Interlochen abuse investigation (https://urgentmatter.press/interlochen-abuse-report) Karoline Leavitt steps down (https://www.urgentmatter.press/karoline-leavitt-steps-down-after-defending-trumps-arts-overhaul-from-the-podium/) Cartoon Art Museum closure (https://www.urgentmatter.press/san-franciscos-cartoon-art-museum-closes-after-curators-arrest/) Follow Colton's bands: Burning Slow (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5D37BPUb3aRdMsXS3ldlbK?si=c3_eCJDMSNuAi12aoe0V9g) · American Sycamore (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tRIwM4S0DULTshFlpR9qz?si=rEnC_wPUQC24HIN7pQk4Eg) · Bum Lucky (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5thzSzRgW5TgKujD296AQy?si=n8Pbr86URW6teAOM1slXHg) — new Bum Lucky album out Aug 18.

7. 

   4 Aug 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 11: Rebuilding Gaza, Iran's Imprisoned Women in Paint, and a Dealer Takes On Art Basel

   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 raises the question of how artists protect work they sell outright. From there it's into federal spending records, where the State Department turns out to be quietly funding the arts abroad: a $32,000 drone show for a Freedom 250 event over Bangkok, a $92,000 ice sculpture of the White House in Sapporo, and millions more in embassy commissions and world's-fair pavilions. That leads to a conspiracy theory that happens to be true — the CIA's Cold War funding of Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism to beat the Soviets. The heavier story is Oxfam's new report pricing Gaza's reconstruction at $71.4 billion and warning it will fail unless Palestinians lead it. Adam walks through his interview with researcher Asmaa Abu Mezied — including children in an art-therapy session who drew only in gray — and he and Colton disagree over how to read the report's warning against a "Riviera in Gaza." Then to Collective Z in Lower Manhattan, where Haleh Atabeigi's paintings hang the bodiless clothing of Iranian women imprisoned in Tehran's Evin Prison, and a video of a woman arrested for singing in public — a return to the show's running argument about art and politics. They close on the market, where LA dealer Chris Sharp is opening his Post-Fair in Paris and taking aim at the Art Basel–Frieze duopoly. Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art-news podcast, hosted by founder Adam Schrader and musician Colton Crews. Read the reporting behind every story at urgentmatter.press.

8. 

   27 Jul 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 10: Forbidden Bus Ads, Fifty Buffalo and One Man's $150,000 Statue

   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 Julia Sinelnikova, who sued the museum over a photograph used in an earlier campaign. The two work through who actually decides what a public transit system is allowed to carry, and what it costs an agency that took in an estimated $183 million in advertising revenue last year. Then a theology paper. Matthew Hale, writing in Horizons, the journal of the College Theology Society, pairs Bernard Lonergan's idea of conceptualism with Max Horkheimer's instrumental reason and argues the two habits reinforce each other until institutions go rigid. Adam puts it in plain English and applies it to Indiana, where more than 400 degree programs were cut or suspended after lawmakers set graduate-earnings thresholds. Colton pushes back — higher education is shrinking, and cutting low-return programs may just be self-defense. The conversation ends up on prison arts programs, recidivism, and why Adam started Urgent Matter in the first place. Next, the pair discuss 50 life-size buffalo puppets are coming to downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan on September 19 and 20 for Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi, created by Amir Nizar Zuabi in partnership with elders from the Lenape and Lakota tribes and presented by St. Ann's Warehouse and The Walk Productions, the team behind Little Amal. Colton finds a way to get dragons back into the show. The market segment goes to London Invitational, Dallas dealer James Cope's hotel-room fair, opening during Frieze week inside the former U.S. embassy on Grosvenor Square, now The Chancery Rosewood. Adam explains the boutique model — dealers sleep in the rooms they sell out of — and the two argue about admission fees, booth fees, and who exactly a $5,000 painting is accessible to. Colton reports from an art festival where one of the booths belonged to a parking-lot line-striping company. The episode closes on Sergio Furnari, the Italian-born sculptor who says he sold his apartment to fund a Charlie Kirk monument he plans to unveil in Times Square on September 10, the first anniversary of Kirk's assassination. He has raised a fraction of his $150,000 goal. Cold Take is Urgent Matter's weekly art-news podcast — a loose, lightly edited run through the week's headlines that trades artspeak for direct, skeptical takes. Read Urgent Matter: https://www.urgentmatter.press (https://www.urgentmatter.press)

9. 

   20 Jul 2026

   Cold Take Ep. 9: NPR Picks Up UNT, North Korea's Anti-US Art Show and a $400 Photo Fee

   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 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 — including four songs about gay relationships cut from a French pop-music class — 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 — 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 ⁠urgentmatter.press⁠ (https://www.urgentmatter.press). Follow Urgent Matter: Instagram: @urgent.matter X: @TheUrgentMatter Colton Crews: ⁠⁠American Sycamore⁠⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tRIwM4S0DULTshFlpR9qz?si=NFWFVyDLQUGLFP-_KELztA) ⁠⁠Burning Slow⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5D37BPUb3aRdMsXS3ldlbK?si=ZgiPgw8ER-yj9ZD61j9dBw)

10. 

    13 Jul 2026

    Cold Take Ep. 8: Giant Bones, Jay-Z Figurines and a Beanie Babies Grudge Match

    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 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 — less than one percent of its 157.6 million objects are on display — 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 — when he asked about restoring it years later — 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 (https://www.urgentmatter.press). Follow Urgent Matter: Instagram: @urgent.matter X: @TheUrgentMatter Colton Crews: ⁠American Sycamore⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tRIwM4S0DULTshFlpR9qz?si=NFWFVyDLQUGLFP-_KELztA) ⁠Burning Slow⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5D37BPUb3aRdMsXS3ldlbK?si=ZgiPgw8ER-yj9ZD61j9dBw)

11. 

    28 Jun 2026

    Cold Take Ep. 7: A Jailed Artist, a Nude Portrait, and a Guide to Art Theft

    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 — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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 (https://www.urgentmatter.press/).

12. 

    22 Jun 2026

    Cold Take Ep. 6: The World's Worst Photographer, the Obamas' Double Portrait and a Vinyl Archive

    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 entries — blurry, grainy, thumb-in-the-frame disasters — 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 Vélez 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 — and Adam shares how a past Helguera project surfaced a letter linked to Simón Bolívar. 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 (https://www.urgentmatter.press) Follow Urgent Matter: Instagram: @urgent.matter X: @TheUrgentMatter Colton Crews: American Sycamore Burning Slow

13. 

    11 Jun 2026

    Cold Take Ep. 5: The MILF Magnet, the Whale Mural and MoMA’s Mystery List

    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 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 MoMA’s trustee list, including the removal and reappearance of Sharon Percy Rockefeller’s name, Daniel S. Och remaining off the list, and Leon Black still appearing as a trustee. Read Urgent Matter: ⁠https://www.urgentmatter.press⁠ (https://www.urgentmatter.press) Follow Urgent Matter: Instagram: @urgent.matter X: @TheUrgentMatter Colton Crews: American Sycamore (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tRIwM4S0DULTshFlpR9qz?si=NFWFVyDLQUGLFP-_KELztA) Burning Slow (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5D37BPUb3aRdMsXS3ldlbK?si=ZgiPgw8ER-yj9ZD61j9dBw)

14. 

    3 Jun 2026

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

    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 case, A.I. colorization of an Ansel Adams photograph, and the Robert Indiana dispute involving a so-called ghost-signature machine. Read Urgent Matter: https://www.urgentmatter.press (https://www.urgentmatter.press) Follow Urgent Matter: Instagram: @urgent.matter X: @TheUrgentMatter Colton Crews: American Sycamore Burning Slow

15. 

    16 May 2026

    Cold Take: Epstein Files, Space Art and Censorship Fights

    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, 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 Matter’s reporting on the canceled Marka27 exhibition at the University of North Texas, where public records showed administrators worried about political “barking from Austin” before the show was called off. The episode closes with the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Art and War” 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 world’s biggest stories, stripped of artspeak and institutional PR language. For more document-driven reporting behind these headlines, visit urgentmatter.press (https://www.urgentmatter.press/).

16. 

    7 May 2026

    Cold Take: A Demolition, an Epstein Resignation and a Murder Trial

    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 discuss the broader question of whether anyone outside the art world actually understands—or even cares about—the 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 world’s biggest stories, stripped of artspeak and institutional PR language. For more document-driven reporting behind these headlines, visit urgentmatter.press (https://urgentmatter.press).

17. 

    30 Apr 2026

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

    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 a pre-wedding dare, sparking questions about cultural heritage, enforcement, and what actually counts as “damage.” From there, they turn to Taiwan, where a prominent artist’s rape conviction has led to the rescinding of a national arts award—raising questions about merit, punishment, and whether institutions can separate the work from the person. The episode also takes on a “museum that doesn’t exist” 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 world’s biggest stories. For the full, document-driven reporting behind these headlines, visit www.urgentmatter.press (www.urgentmatter.press).

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Contact Urgent Matter: Cold Take

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.