Embark on a captivating journey through the vibrant art scene of the Hudson Valley with this curated roundup of summer art exhibits. From immersive multimedia installations to thought-provoking explorations of photography as data, the region’s galleries offer a diverse array of experiences for art enthusiasts. Delve into the cultural tapestry of Southeast Asia with “Time and the Tiger” at the Hessel Museum of Art, or uncover the intersections of art and humor at the Norman Rockwell Museum’s showcase of MAD magazine’s iconic satire. Dive into medieval numerology at the Williams College Museum of Art or contemplate the power of language in contemporary art at the Dorsky Museum. Plus, don’t miss the opportunity to engage with nature and sculpture at Storm King Art Center’s permanent display of Martin Puryear’s Lookout. Whether you’re a seasoned art aficionado or a curious newcomer, the Hudson Valley’s summer exhibits promise to inspire, provoke, and delight.
“Time and the Tiger”
Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College
June 22–December 1
The exhibition—the first in-depth examination of Ho Tzu Nyen in the United States—features five immersive film and multimedia installations spanning two decades that draw from historical events, documentary footage, art history, music videos, and mythical stories to investigate the construction of history, the narrative of myths, and the plurality of identities. Widely considered one of the most innovative artists to emerge internationally in the past 20 years, Ho works across a variety of media. Through vibrant narratives and visually stunning animations, Ho creates complex and compelling video/sound installations that probe reality, history, and fiction rooted in the culture of Southeast Asia.
“Photography as Data”
Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College
Through September 15
While digital photography employs the building blocks of data—zeroes and ones—to form its images, the fields of data and photography share a long history that goes back to the dawn of the photographic medium. According to Jessica D. Brier and Anna Mayer, curators of “Photography as Data: Augmentation, Extraction, and Objectification,” photography has always served as a technology for the augmentation of reality, allowing the human eye to overcome the limitations of vision, and for the extraction of information about people, places, and cultures that are rendered objects of study and consumption. Using images drawn from the extensive photography collection at the Lehman Loeb Art Center, including early collotypes by Eadweard Muybridge, the exhibition explores the ideological agendas embedded as data in photography.
“Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art”
Though December 24 at Williams College Museum of Art
“Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art” explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d’Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere.
“Meg Webster: Sculptures”
Long-Term Exhibition at Dia Beacon
Meg Webster is a sculptor who makes minimal art with natural materials to be directly perceived by the body. Some works are to be entered, some works are planted. This expansive exhibition that opened in February features rarely displayed works which recently entered Dia’s permanent collection, including Webster’s signature concave and convex earthworks complemented by sculptures constructed in beeswax, moss, salt, and sticks. Webster’s body of work spans ambitious geometric sculptures, monochrome paintings made with organic substances which lend them their colors and scents, and hydraulic and grow-light installations that may be sited within or outside the gallery.
Lookout
On Permanent Display at Storm King Art Center
It stands 19 feet tall, on a wooded hilltop at overlooking Storm King’s rolling meadows below and Schunnemunk Mountain in the distance. Lookout, the latest creation of acclaimed Hudson Valley sculptor Martin Puryear, is a beguilingly curved synthesis of tunnel and dome that first invites the viewer to step inside, and then to—look out. Ninety portholes in the walls and ceiling peek out from a singular focal point creating a constellation of images of sky and tree. It is constructed almost entirely of bricks. After nine years of thinking and planning, a mountain of structural engineering drawings, and two summers of labor by an elite construction crew, Puryear’s long-awaited piece went on display at Storm King last fall. The sculpture, made using the ancient Nubian vault technique, consists of 18,000 bricks.
“Mis/Communication”
Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz
Curated by Amy Kahng, “Mis/Communication: Language and Power in Contemporary Art” features video, sculpture, drawing, and interactive media artworks by 15 contemporary artists who explore the power of language in a cultural context, dissecting the ways in which language connects us and isolates us. Concluding a five-campus SUNY tour, the closing iteration of the exhibition is presented in an expanded list of works at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art that includes pieces by Jesse Chun, Dahn Gim, Angelina Joshua and Jake Duczynski, Dulce Soledad Ibarra, and Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sanche.
“What Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD”
June 8–October 27 at Norman Rockwell Museum
This exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, explores the unforgettable art and satire of MAD, from its beginnings in 1952 as a popular humor comic book to its emergence as a beloved magazine that spoke truth to power and attracted generations of devoted readers through the decades. MAD’s influence and cultural impact will be explored in this landmark installation, which features iconic original illustrations and cartoons created by the magazine’s “Usual Gang of Idiots”—the many artists and writers who have been the publication’s mainstays for decades.
This article appears in Spring/Summer 2024.
