This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth chief curator Michael Auping.

Smee joined the Globe after working as the art critic for The Australian, in Sydney, and before that at the Daily Telegraph in London. The Globe has just published an e-book of Smee’s regular “Frame by Frame” pieces, which spotlight artworks in New England Museum collections. Smee has also written several books about the British painter Lucian Freud, whom he came to know quite well when he was living in London.

Among the topics Smee and I discuss are:

• The particular characteristics of the New England art scene;
• His recent criticisms of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
• His friendship with Freud and the reminiscence he wrote about him for the Globe after Freud’s death; and
• Freud’s place in art history.

Auping helped organize the exhibition “Lucian Freud: Portraits” which debuted at the National Portrait Gallery in London and which is now on view at MAMFW through October 28. The excellent exhibition catalogue includes an essay by Auping as well as an Auping-conducted Q&A with the artist. Auping’s interviews with Freud turned out to be the last of his life.

To download the program directly, click here. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. Stream the program at MANPodcast.com.

The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. It is released under this Creative Commons license. The program was edited by Wilson Butterworth. For images and video of the works discussed on this week’s show, click through to the jump.

Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, 1952. Collection of the Tate, London.

Lucian Freud, Rose, 1978-79.

Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-Portrait), 1985.

Lucian Freud, Nude with Leg Up, 1992. Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington.