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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

Thursday, April 17, 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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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).

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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)

   

Joe Whiting
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

What kind of guy fronts a seminal rock band on RCA called "Jukin' Bone" in the 70s, then plays the rock & roll revival circuit with Bobby Comstock, replaces Ronnie James Dio in Elf, tours with Van Halen, records two classic blues albums and "Backbone Slip", plays sax, tours the world for three years with Savoy Brown, gets a Grammy nomination, a Syracuse Music Hall of Fame award and has a successful solo career to boot? You guessed it, it's Jumpin' Joe Whiting!

Tickets

   

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.

   

Friday, April 18, 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).

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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)

   

Setnor Ensemble Series: Jazz Combo
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

   

Setnor Ensemble Series: Morton Schiff Jazz Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

   

Simplelife & Corey Paige
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

The 443 is excited to present our favorite dynamic doubleheader — The Simplelife Duo (aka Mike Frisina and Ben Sumner) and Corey Paige.

Tickets

   

Saturday, April 19, 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.

   

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).

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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 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)

   

Nurse John: The Short Staffed Tour
The Oncenter

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

John Dela Cruz's (a.k.a Nurse John's) comedy is like talking to your work bestie; you trauma dump, cry, scream, and laugh together. It's the feeling of relatability and instant relief that you are not crazy from experiencing all the roller coaster of emotions working short staffed while being underpaid, undervalued, and under-appreciated. An actual nurse by profession and an accidental comedian at heart his ability to combine reality, truth, and entertainment continues to inspire millions around the world that with enough caffeine, medication, and hydration ... you too can make it to your next short staffed shift.

Tickets

   

The Lunch Ladies
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

The Lunch Ladies are a dual guitar quartet, slinging a hash of originals, rare covers, and their own special take on familiar tunes. Rock, Country, Blues, and Soul are on the menu, plus a healthy dose of humor, too!

Tickets

   

Sunday, April 20, 2025

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

Monday, April 21, 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.

   

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.

   

Mystery Double Feature
Syracuse Cinephile Society

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

Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
Cast: Sidney Toler, Victor Jory, Mary Beth Hughes, Cobina Wright Jr., Victor Sen Yung, Kay Linaker, Harold Huber
Director: Harry Lachman
There's been a double homicide in Brazil and Charlie joins the local police to solve the crimes. A fun mystery with an interesting group of suspects.

Murder on the Blackboard (1934)
Cast: Edna May Oliver, James Gleason, Bruce Cabot, Edgar Kennedy, Gertrude Michael, Regis Toomey, Tully Marshall
Director: George Archainbaud
Schoolteacher and amateur detective Hildegarde Withers (Oliver) works with Inspector Oscar Piper (Gleason) in trying to solve the murder of a young female teacher in this skillful combination of mystery and humor.

   

Author Steven Schwankert
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Steven Schwankert is an award-winning writer and editor. He is the co-creator of The Six, a book and documentary project about the Chinese passengers aboard RMS Titanic. He is the author of Poseidon: China's Secret Salvage of Britain's Lost Submarine and Beijing & Shanghai, a guidebook now in its third edition. Steven is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a fellow and East and South Asia Chapter Chair of The Explorers Club, and founded SinoScuba. His writing has appeared in The Asian Wall Street Journal, The South China Morning Post, Billboard, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. He divides his time between New York City and the People's Republic of China.

This event will take place in person and online.

Zoom registration

   

Tuesday, April 22, 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."

   

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.

   

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.

   

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

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

   

Wednesday, April 23, 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."

   

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).

   

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.

   

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.

   

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.

   

Setnor Ensemble Series: Concert Choir
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

   

Claire Messud
Raymond Carver Reading Series

Price: Free
Watson Theater, Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave. (Syracuse University), Syracuse

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, MA, with her family.

The reading will be preceded by a question-and-answer session beginning at 4:00 pm.

   

Preview: Sense and Sensibility
Syracuse Stage
Jason O’Connell, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The world of the Dashwood sisters, Jane Austen's destitute but determined heroines, comes playfully to life in Kate Hamill's warm and inventive adaptation. Romance, heartbreak, twists of fate and never-ending gossip follow Elinor and Marianne, the eldest Dashwood daughters, as they navigate 18th-century English society in search of stability after the death of their father. Filled with memorable characters, delicious wit, and timeless comedy, this whirlwind Sense and Sensibility is a joyous love letter to one of literature's most treasured stories.

Tickets