Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Under Open Sky
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Nikolay Mikushkin: recent plein air paintings
Peter Valenti: nature based series of ceramics
Bead Society of CNY: bead works in nature themes

   

Weird Barrio / Por mi barrio
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Exhibit features the art of Manuel Matías.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Joiri Minaya and Miryam Charles: Lines of Flight
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Light Work's Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition Lines of Flight featuring short films by multimedia artist Joiri Minaya and filmmaker Miryam Charles exploring the tangled trajectories of displacement, immigration, invasion, exploration and escape.

The exhibition will run as an architectural projection on the Everson Museum facade. Screening begins at dusk.

Labadee, by Joiri Minaya, is a short video documenting parts of a Royal Caribbean cruise trip in Labadee, Haiti, and the dynamics that unfold in this privately-managed space, which is fenced off and leased to Royal Caribbean cruises until 2050. The subtitles in the video begin with text from the diary of Christopher Columbus when they first saw land, moving into a contemporary recount of the trip we're seeing. It meditates on the exploitation, self-exploitation, performance, and access control created by the system of tourism in the Caribbean, and, in linking it to Columbus' Invasion through the first sentences in the subtitles, it traces the lineage of these contemporary spaces to colonization. (2017, 7:06 minutes)

In Fly, Fly Sadness, by Miryam Charles, a nuclear explosion mysteriously transforms the voices of all the inhabitants of an island. A journalist travels to the island to learn more and finds herself transformed. (2015, 5:23 minutes)

   

The Cher Show
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force has flat-out dominated popular culture-breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The Cher Show is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!

Tickets

   

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Under Open Sky
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Nikolay Mikushkin: recent plein air paintings
Peter Valenti: nature based series of ceramics
Bead Society of CNY: bead works in nature themes

   

Weird Barrio / Por mi barrio
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Exhibit features the art of Manuel Matías.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

Joiri Minaya and Miryam Charles: Lines of Flight
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Light Work's Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition Lines of Flight featuring short films by multimedia artist Joiri Minaya and filmmaker Miryam Charles exploring the tangled trajectories of displacement, immigration, invasion, exploration and escape.

The exhibition will run as an architectural projection on the Everson Museum facade. Screening begins at dusk.

Labadee, by Joiri Minaya, is a short video documenting parts of a Royal Caribbean cruise trip in Labadee, Haiti, and the dynamics that unfold in this privately-managed space, which is fenced off and leased to Royal Caribbean cruises until 2050. The subtitles in the video begin with text from the diary of Christopher Columbus when they first saw land, moving into a contemporary recount of the trip we're seeing. It meditates on the exploitation, self-exploitation, performance, and access control created by the system of tourism in the Caribbean, and, in linking it to Columbus' Invasion through the first sentences in the subtitles, it traces the lineage of these contemporary spaces to colonization. (2017, 7:06 minutes)

In Fly, Fly Sadness, by Miryam Charles, a nuclear explosion mysteriously transforms the voices of all the inhabitants of an island. A journalist travels to the island to learn more and finds herself transformed. (2015, 5:23 minutes)

   

Writers Voice Benefit Reading with poet Patrick Meeds
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: $25 minimum donation
YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Join us to celebrate Patrick Meeds' brand new collection of poems, The Invisible Man's Tailor, and support the important work of the DWC and Writers Voice Online! This event will be live at the DWC's Shinder Theater, but if you cannot join us in person, a Zoom link will be made available to you.

Register

   

Dead Silent: Florence of Moravia
Acme Mystery Company

Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

It's 1927 and local radio personality Nevelle Haspin invites you to the broadcast of a gala reception for silent film diva Lorraine Bowes who is making a film portraying hometown hero and notorious WWI spy Florence Goode a.k.a. Hata Mahma. Joining Lorraine will be her leading man, if he's sober, Roland DeHay, and Lorraine's agent, Harold "Hawk" Toohey. Arriving without an invitation is nationally syndicated gossip columnist Helena Handbasquet. Be careful. These celebrities autograph with poisoned pens.

   

The Flick
Redhouse
Katherine McGerr, director

Price: $40
Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three young minimum-wage workers mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. A hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama, by Annie Baker.

Tickets

   

The Cher Show
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force has flat-out dominated popular culture-breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The Cher Show is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!

Tickets

   

Friday, April 11, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Under Open Sky
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Nikolay Mikushkin: recent plein air paintings
Peter Valenti: nature based series of ceramics
Bead Society of CNY: bead works in nature themes

   

Weird Barrio / Por mi barrio
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Exhibit features the art of Manuel Matías.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Tone and Textures: Associated Artists of CNY
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Tone and Textures is an interdisciplinary group show by the Associated Artists of CNY, with over 20 artists participating.

   

Joiri Minaya and Miryam Charles: Lines of Flight
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Light Work's Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition Lines of Flight featuring short films by multimedia artist Joiri Minaya and filmmaker Miryam Charles exploring the tangled trajectories of displacement, immigration, invasion, exploration and escape.

The exhibition will run as an architectural projection on the Everson Museum facade. Screening begins at dusk.

Labadee, by Joiri Minaya, is a short video documenting parts of a Royal Caribbean cruise trip in Labadee, Haiti, and the dynamics that unfold in this privately-managed space, which is fenced off and leased to Royal Caribbean cruises until 2050. The subtitles in the video begin with text from the diary of Christopher Columbus when they first saw land, moving into a contemporary recount of the trip we're seeing. It meditates on the exploitation, self-exploitation, performance, and access control created by the system of tourism in the Caribbean, and, in linking it to Columbus' Invasion through the first sentences in the subtitles, it traces the lineage of these contemporary spaces to colonization. (2017, 7:06 minutes)

In Fly, Fly Sadness, by Miryam Charles, a nuclear explosion mysteriously transforms the voices of all the inhabitants of an island. A journalist travels to the island to learn more and finds herself transformed. (2015, 5:23 minutes)

   

Pat McGee
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Pat McGee has a passion for bringing wildly talented people together. Since the formation of the Pat McGee Band in 1995, McGee has sought out uniquely skilled musicians to compliment his songwriting. After relocating to Rhode Island from Virginia in the early 2000's Pat McGee added Patrick McAloon (backing vocals, guitar and mandolin) to his lineup. The two Pat's have performed together all over the world and have a natural synergy that shines bright on and off stage.

Tickets

   

The Flick
Redhouse
Katherine McGerr, director

Price: $40
Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three young minimum-wage workers mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. A hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama, by Annie Baker.

Tickets

   

The Cher Show
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force has flat-out dominated popular culture-breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The Cher Show is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!

Tickets

   

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Tone and Textures: Associated Artists of CNY
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Tone and Textures is an interdisciplinary group show by the Associated Artists of CNY, with over 20 artists participating.

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

Opening: In the Center of the Crossroads: Fiber Art by Vanessa Johnson
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-8:00 pm.

In some traditional and legendary African and African-American belief systems, a Center of the Crossroads represents the rising and setting of the sun, and the human life cycle of death and rebirth. The center of a crossroads is where communications with spirits takes place.

"In The Center of The Crossroads" speaks from the center of the crossroads where our African and African American community reaches through time and space, confronts memory and future, communes with the Ancestors and future generations in this race for survival on a dying planet. The exhibition tells the story of the African American historical relationship with Mother Earth and the challenges we face addressing Environmental Racism and Climate Justice.

Vanessa Johnson is a Griot, a storyteller in the West African tradition. She is a quilter, mixed media fiber artist, community educator, museum consultant, activist, writer, playwright, actor, and vocalist.

   

Joiri Minaya and Miryam Charles: Lines of Flight
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Light Work's Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition Lines of Flight featuring short films by multimedia artist Joiri Minaya and filmmaker Miryam Charles exploring the tangled trajectories of displacement, immigration, invasion, exploration and escape.

The exhibition will run as an architectural projection on the Everson Museum facade. Screening begins at dusk.

Labadee, by Joiri Minaya, is a short video documenting parts of a Royal Caribbean cruise trip in Labadee, Haiti, and the dynamics that unfold in this privately-managed space, which is fenced off and leased to Royal Caribbean cruises until 2050. The subtitles in the video begin with text from the diary of Christopher Columbus when they first saw land, moving into a contemporary recount of the trip we're seeing. It meditates on the exploitation, self-exploitation, performance, and access control created by the system of tourism in the Caribbean, and, in linking it to Columbus' Invasion through the first sentences in the subtitles, it traces the lineage of these contemporary spaces to colonization. (2017, 7:06 minutes)

In Fly, Fly Sadness, by Miryam Charles, a nuclear explosion mysteriously transforms the voices of all the inhabitants of an island. A journalist travels to the island to learn more and finds herself transformed. (2015, 5:23 minutes)

   

Our Voices
Syracuse City Ballet

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

"Our Voices," Syracuse City Ballet's new program, features all female choreographers. This season celebrates fresh perspectives and amplifies voices that deserve to be heard. Don't miss this exciting and inspiring event.

Tickets

   

Our Voices
Syracuse City Ballet

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

"Our Voices," Syracuse City Ballet's new program, features all female choreographers. This season celebrates fresh perspectives and amplifies voices that deserve to be heard. Don't miss this exciting and inspiring event.

Tickets

   

Vignettes and Parables
Civic Morning Musicals
Doubles Duo: Jillian Honn, oboe; Zack Merkovsky, double bass

Price: $10
St. David's Episcopal Church
13 Jamar Dr., Dewitt

Glière Selections from 8 Pieces, Op. 39 (1909)
Lila Meretzky New Commission for Doubles Duo
Shin'ichiro Ikebe Strata IV
Valerie Coleman American Vein

   

Robinson Treacher
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

At the crossroads of Blues, Folk, Americana, and Country, you'll find the music of Robinson Treacher. He has shared the stage with notable artists from Vince Gill, Arlo Guthrie, and Tedeschi Trucks Band to Los Lobos, Iris Dement, G.E. Smith, Jorma Kaukonen, and Willie Nile. Robinson has been featured on Sirius/XM's series, "The Loft: Live from The Living Room," and has been a frequent guest of legendary DJ John Platt on New York's famed WFUV Radio. Hall of Fame songwriter Don Schlitz has even touted Robinson as being, "...impossible to follow in concert."

Tickets

   

JT Hall Jazz Consort
Steeple Coffee House

Price: $15-$20 suggested donation covers entertainment, dessert, coffee/tea
United Church of Fayetteville
310 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville

If it's jazz, it's the JT Hall Jazz Consort. And if you're a jazz enthusiast, you don't want to miss the performance by this extraordinary group of musicians.

The Consort features the beautiful voice of Cookie Coogan along with Jason Jeffers on drums and Tom Witkowski on keyboards. John Magnante plays the guitar and John Dancks joins in on bass with JT Hall on trumpet and flugelhorn.

   

Gatherings
Syracuse Vocal Ensemble
Julie Pretzat, conductor

Price: $15 adults, students free
Park Central Presbyterian Church
504 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Why do people gather? They gather for weddings, funerals, coronations, birthdays, protest, and for singing! This concert will present music written specifically for these events, including one of Handel's Coronation Anthems and Daniel Pinkham's Wedding Cantata, among others.

   

The Cher Show
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force has flat-out dominated popular culture-breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The Cher Show is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!

Tickets

   

The Flick
Redhouse
Katherine McGerr, director

Price: $40
Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three young minimum-wage workers mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. A hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama, by Annie Baker.

Tickets

   

The Cher Show
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Superstars come and go. Cher is forever. For six straight decades, only one unstoppable force has flat-out dominated popular culture-breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries and letting nothing and no one stand in her way. The Cher Show is the Tony Award-winning musical of her story, and it's packed with so much Cher that it takes three women to play her: the kid starting out, the glam pop star, and the icon. The Cher Show is 35 smash hits, six decades of stardom, two rock-star husbands, a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, and enough Tony Award-winning Bob Mackie gowns to cause a sequin shortage in New York City, all in one unabashedly fabulous new musical that will have audiences dancing in the aisles!

Tickets

   

The Flick
Redhouse
Katherine McGerr, director

Price: $40
Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three young minimum-wage workers mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. A hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama, by Annie Baker.

Tickets

   

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Tone and Textures: Associated Artists of CNY
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Tone and Textures is an interdisciplinary group show by the Associated Artists of CNY, with over 20 artists participating.

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

*SOLD OUT* Nachos & Blancos
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Join us for our once-a-month rockin' rhythm and roots par-tay at The 443!

It's the best hang in town and we can't think of a better way to spend Sunday afternoon than grooving to the tasty tunes of the mighty Los Blancos.

Join the waitlist

   

Malmgren Series: Denmark's Rudersdal Chamber Players
Hendricks Chapel

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Immerse yourself in lush sounds of classical and contemporary music of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden under the skilled hands of the Rudersdal Chamber Players. Led by violinist and founder Christine Pryn, this group specializes in premiering new works and shedding light on lesser known composers.

Poul Ruders Piano Quartet
Carl Nielsen Helios Ouverture, arranged for piano quartet
Amanda Maier-Röntgen Piano Quartet

   

SNM Prizewinners Concert
Society for New Music

Price: $20 regular, $15 students/seniors, kids 18 and under free
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

The concert will feature music by the 2024 Israel Pellman Prize winners, Sami Seif and Maxim Dybal-Denysenko.

   

The Flick
Redhouse
Katherine McGerr, director

Price: $40
Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three young minimum-wage workers mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35mm film projectors in the state. A hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama, by Annie Baker.

Tickets

   

Monday, April 14, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

Price: $4 non-members, $3.50 members
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Cast: W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Mary Brian, Grady Sutton, Vera Lewis, Lucien Littlefield, Walter Brennan, Carlotta Monti
Directors: Clyde Bruckman, W.C. Fields
Despite its title, this great comedy has nothing to do with the circus, but it has Fields starring as a henpecked husband who must deal with unusual problems both at home and at work. Fields co-directed and co-wrote this Paramount favorite which is considered to be one of his best films.

Plus, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in a beautiful restoration of their 1932 Academy Award-winning comedy short The Music Box.

   

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Weird Barrio / Por mi barrio
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Exhibit features the art of Manuel Matías.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

Ellen Pieroni & The Encyclopedia of Soul
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Ellen Pieroni is a soul jazz saxophone player and multi-instrumentalist from Buffalo. She has been playing the saxophone since she was 8 years old, and has been a sidewoman in a multitude of bands (including Folkfaces and Buffalo Afrobeat Orchestra) for over a decade.

Tickets

   

One Night of Queen
The Oncenter

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

One Night of Queen is a touring 2-hour stage show, paying tribute to the stage theatrics and music of Queen.

It is performed by Gary Mullen & The Works, a band headed by Freddie Mercury imitator Gary Mullen, who had previously won the talent show Stars in Their Eyes with his vocal and visual imitation of Mercury.

The other members of the band are David Brockett on guitar, Jon Halliwell on drums, and Malcolm Gentles on keyboards.

Tickets

   

Setnor Ensemble Series: Saxophone Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

   

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Two Artists: Two Visions: Works by MaryBeth Sorber and Peter Valenti
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

An exhibit comprised of the work of two Central New York artists who look to nature for inspiration and yet interpret it in very different ways.

   

Weird Barrio / Por mi barrio
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Exhibit features the art of Manuel Matías.

   

Peppy Downer
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Peppy Downer" draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

The exhibit contains a selection of photographs by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter De Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling.

   

Nabil Harb: Mater si, magistra no
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nabil Harb's project "Mater si, magistra no" (a macaronic phrase that translates as "Mother yes, teacher no") presents photographs that describe and depict moments and scenes within his hometown of Lakeland in Polk County, FL. This Central Florida location is both the backdrop and main character of Harb's visual narrative: a story that emits surreal qualities which twist ideas of the region through photography's formal language into a conceptual idea — an idea of how to describe the atmosphere of a place without words. Harb writes, "The landscape is the perfect reflection of our society, our ultimate index — it holds our histories, our secrets, our failures, and our hopes for the future."

   

Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Joiri Minaya: Unseeing the Tropics at the Museum" brings together artwork by the acclaimed New York City-based Dominican artist and objects from the collection to examine how Minaya critiques Western ideas of tropicality, which are rooted in otherness and exoticism. Through these comparisons, the exhibition explores how nature, landscape, culture, and race have been historically constructed and deployed as tropes in visual culture.

   

The Earth Laughs in Flowers: Plants in the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing upon Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous line "the earth laughs in flowers" from his poem, "Hamatreya" (1846), this exhibition explores images of plants, as well as plant-based objects, in the collections of the Syracuse University Art Museum. This exhibition is co-curated by senior art history majors under the supervision of Professor Romita Ray (Art and Music Histories), in collaboration with Melissa Yuen, PhD, and Kate Holohan, PhD. It is the outcome of the annual art history Senior Seminar taught in the College of Arts and Sciences.

   

Faculty Fellows Curate
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

In Summer 2022, the Syracuse University Art Museum launched a Faculty Fellows program to support innovative curriculum development, experiential learning, and the fuller integration of the museum's collection into academic life at the University. The program focuses on object-based teaching and research, which is active and student-centered. This exhibition features artworks that the 2024-2025 Faculty Fellows, Lyndsay Gratch (Communication and Rhetorical Studies) and Elizabeth Wimer (Management), will teach with during the Spring 2025 semester.

   

Surrealism and Photography: "Where I Dream, It is Awake"
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition examines the role of Surrealism in modern photography, tracking the movement's love of chance, fragmentation, and uncanny dream imagery from its origins in Paris to Britain, Mexico, and Japan over the course of the 20th century. Curated by graduate students in the Department of Art & Music Histories under the direction of Sam Johnson (associate professor and director of graduate studies in Art History), the exhibition features photographs from collections of the SU Art Museum alongside Surrealist books and periodicals from the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries.

   

Fruits of Their Labor: Work and Leisure at the Syracuse University Art Museum
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Fruits of Their Labor" seeks to reexamine depictions of labor and leisure in the Syracuse University Art Museum's permanent collection. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the workplace, mirroring the societal shifts in the labor industry during the Great Depression. Through thematic groupings such as those that depict women's work in and out of the home or behind the scenes views into the entertainment industry, this exhibition challenges conventional depictions of labor.

   

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976" presents more than 70 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art, which have played a demonstrable role in shaping conversations about the nation's history and identity. The exhibition explores new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color within a visual and thematic structure that also features iconic works traditionally associated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Making American Artists" presents PAFA's formidable collection of well-known historic works alongside pieces by traditionally underrepresented artists to pose questions about what it meant to be an American artist from when the institution was founded to the late 20th century.

"Making American Artists" features works from PAFA's esteemed collection that helped define new chapters in the history of American art, including works by Mary Cassatt, Barkley L. Hendricks, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gilbert Stuart, Henry O. Tanner, and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition also features icons of PAFA's history and collection, such as Stuart's "George Washington" (Lansdowne Portrait) (1796) and Charles Wilson Peale's "The Artist in His Museum" (1822).

   

Simply Simon: Pottery from the Collection of Michael Simon and Susan Roberts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Over the course of five decades, Georgia-based potter Michael Simon's name became synonymous with American functional pottery. Simon was born in Minnesota and studied with legendary pottery Warren MacKenzie. After building his own kiln near Athens, Georgia in 1980, Simon began setting one exemplary piece from each kiln firing aside for posterity. These "pick of the kiln" pieces are a testimony to Simon's enduring influence on the field of ceramics.

In 2018, Simon donated one of his favorite "pick of the kiln" vases to the Everson's permanent collection. With the vase came a donation of more than 30 functional pots by other artists that Simon and his wife Susan Roberts had collected over the years. Simon passed away in August of 2021, but left an immense legacy through his work, which now graces the collections of more than 20 museums across the United States. The works exhibited in "Simply Simon" reflect the qualities that Simon valued as a potter, while also illuminating his enduring relationships with his friends and colleagues.

   

At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal's completion. The Canal transformed New York State in the 19th century. Today, 80% of the upstate population lives within 25 miles of the waterway, yet in much of the public's imagination, the canal remains confined to the past. The 2024 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence — Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger — each embarked on a year-long photographic exploration contemplating the Canal's current condition, activating the landscape, and considering the waterway's lasting impacts on present-day American culture. "At Water's Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal" highlights the culmination of these artists' projects.

"At Water's Edge" is organized by the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. The Artist-in-Residence program was created through a partnership between the New York State Canal Corporation and the Erie Canal Museum.

   

CNY Artist Initiative: Catherine Spencer
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Catherine Spencer creates sculptures and alternative environments inspired by her childhood surroundings, exploring the interplay of human experience and nature. Using found objects and human-made materials, her work bridges emotional and physical landscapes. Spencer earned her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in venues like the Muskegon Museum, Axis Gallery, and Governors Island, and she has participated in residencies such as the Cleveland West Art League, Turner Residency, and Chautauqua School of Art.

   

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

   

Scholastic Art Awards of Central New York 2025
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Founded in 1923, the Scholastic Art Awards are the nation's longest-running and most prestigious educational initiative supporting student achievement in the arts. Every year, students across the country in grades 7-12 are invited to enter original works of art in regional competitions. This year, thousands of students representing 14 counties in Central New York submitted 4,555 works of art, which were then judged by professional artists and educators. The judges awarded first place (Gold Key), second place (Silver Key), and honorable mentions to nearly 1,300 works in 17 different categories. Gold Key winners move on to compete at the national level, and a small selection of the Silver Key winners and honorable mentions are displayed at the Everson.

   

In the Center of the Crossroads: Fiber Art by Vanessa Johnson
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

In some traditional and legendary African and African-American belief systems, a Center of the Crossroads represents the rising and setting of the sun, and the human life cycle of death and rebirth. The center of a crossroads is where communications with spirits takes place.

"In The Center of The Crossroads" speaks from the center of the crossroads where our African and African American community reaches through time and space, confronts memory and future, communes with the Ancestors and future generations in this race for survival on a dying planet. The exhibition tells the story of the African American historical relationship with Mother Earth and the challenges we face addressing Environmental Racism and Climate Justice.

Vanessa Johnson is a Griot, a storyteller in the West African tradition. She is a quilter, mixed media fiber artist, community educator, museum consultant, activist, writer, playwright, actor, and vocalist.