"In the Room" at Center for Photography at Woodstock
June 10-August 12"In the Room," organized by Kingston-based writer and curator Frances Cathryn, features the work of three contemporary photographers—Kelly Kristin Jones, Jonathan Mark Jackson, and Ashley M. Freeby—whose work explores the relationships between personal and collective memories, and in particular how public histories are made, challenged, and remade. Freeby's "Many Thousands Gone" series is especially haunting. In it, she takes crime scene photographs where a person of color was murdered by the state and digitally erases any evidence of brutality, such as blood, bullet casings, or caution tape.
"Counting the Seconds Between Lightning and Thunder" at Wassaic Project
Through September 16Wassaic Project only mounts a few exhibitions a year, but they're always blockbusters, filling the multiple spaces of Maxon Mills with work by dozens of artists. "Counting the Seconds Between Lightning and Thunder," curated by Eve Biddle, Bowie Zunino, Jeff Barrett-Winsby, and Will Hutnick, showcases 40 artists, from the surreal landscapes and interiors of Azadeh Nia to Danielle Klebe's darkly humorous paintings of Millennial social life to Jeff Slomba's five-gallon bucket dioramas based on Renaissance tondos to the videos of Adinah Dancyger.
"Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth" at Clark Art Institute
June 10-October 15Mention Edvard Munch and you probably think of The Scream, in which the Norwegian artist captured the torment and existential dilemma of being human. But in the exhibition "Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth," approximately 75 works (many from the Munchmuseet in Oslo) focus on our relationship to the earth and landscape, revealing new facets of the body of work by this famed artist. Curator Jay A. Clarke explores how Munch used nature to plumb the topics of human psychology, garden and farm cultivation, and the mythology of the forest, all during a time of industrialization. It might resonate with current times in surprising ways.
"Erika Verzutti: New Moons" at CCS Bard's Hessel Museum
June 24-October 15Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti's sculptures and wall pieces (60 works from the last 15 years) display Verzutti's inquisitiveness about nature, the cosmos, and influences from art history, including Brancusi and Koons. Abstract forms combine with flora, fauna, and snippets of news headlines and online ephemera in witty, dimensional pieces with traces of the artist's actual hand. Curated by Lauren Cornell, the Hessel Museum show follows several prominent exhibitions of Verzutti's oeuvre at Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo and Paris's Centre Pompidou.
July 21–24
Founded during the first summer of the pandemic by art world veteran Helen Toomer to bring exposure to Hudson Valley art and artists and escape to quarantine-fatigued city dwellers, the first year featured 23 arts venues. In 2021, the number of participating sites numbered over 60. This year's Upstate Art Weekend has over 130 participants, from galleries and museums (Catskill Art Space, David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, Foreland) to lesser known art destinations (White Feather Farm), and artists' open studios. Our must-see this year: "Appearances" at Strange Untried Project Space in Lomontville, which will feature the work of Hudson Valley-based artists Natalie Beall, Amy Talluto, Adie Russell, Judy Glantzman, Mandolyn Wilson Rosen, and Jesse Bransford.
"Roz Chast: Buildings, Bananas, and Beyond" at Carol Corey Fine Art
August 26-October 1
Who hasn't chuckled at a Roz Chast cartoon and stuck it to the fridge? No one else captures the foibles of being human and the tenderness of contemporary life better than Chast, whose cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker for four decades. Relatives, friends, and domestic and city life are among the countless subjects she appraises. The renowned cartoonist and artist will show new gouache works on paper, embroidery pieces, and recent drawings. Chast, whose latest graphic narrative, I Must Be Dreaming, drops on October 24, will give a talk at Corey Fine Art on Saturday, September 9 at 4pm.
"Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle/Contemporary Practices" at Thomas Cole National Historic Site
Through October 29Despite being highly acclaimed during her lifetime, "Women Reframe" is the first retrospective of American landscape painter Susie Barstow (1836-1923). This exhibition reinserts the accomplished 19th-century American artist into the story of the Hudson River School of landscape painting alongside work by contemporary artists who expand the conception of "land" and "landscape." The internationally acclaimed contemporary artists include: Teresita Fernandez, Guerrilla Girls, Marie Lorenz, Tanya Marcuse, Mary Mattingly, Ebony G. Patterson, Anna Plesset, Jean Shin, Wendy Red Star, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Cecilia Vicuna, Kay WalkingStick, and Saya Woolfalk.
Through November 13.
A summer without a visit to this sprawling, 500-acre sculpture park in Mountainville is frankly time misspent. In addition to the dozens of monumental sculptures permanently installed at Storm King—by the likes of Alexander Calder, Andy Goldsworthy, Maya Lin, and Louise Bourgeois—each year the center installs new work by established and emerging artists. This season will feature three artists: Ugo Rondinone, Beatriz Cortez, and RA Walden. Our pick: Rondinone's the sun and the moon, comprising two 16-foot tall circles made from cast-bronze tree branches, installed parallel to each other in the center's South Fields, set against Schunnemunk and Storm King Mountains like two celestial bodies that floated down from space.
"Pippa Garner: $ell Your $elf" at Art Omi
June 24-October 28The West Coast produced many memorable conceptual artists in the `70s and `80s. Pippa Garner was among them, but is lesser known than contemporaries like Chris Burden and Ed Ruscha. More than 100 of Garner's varied works will be on display at Art Omi, which commissioned a custom pickup with its exterior reversed, marking the 50th anniversary of her Backwards Car. The new truck will be in performances in Ghent and Manhattan during the exhibition. Garner, trained in car design, has explored commodification of things and humans. She began gender hacking using hormones and her own body as media. She also transformed banal items with wit and absurdity, and made a line of T-shirts with powerful punchlines. Sara O'Keeffe curated the show with Guy Weltchek.
"In What Way Wham? (White Noise and other works, 1996-2023)" at MASS MoCA
Through March 2024Joseph Grigely, who has been deaf since the age of 10, has amassed over 30,000 notes given to him by those who don't know sign language. In White Noise, he will paper two huge rooms at MASS MoCA with these missives, creating an epic visual installation of what hearing-abled people would take for granted as spoken messages. In the exhibition's other works, he further explores issues of language, archives, and the foibles of communication.