For one weekend each summer, Upstate Art Weekend (June 25-29) turns the Hudson Valley and Catskills into a sprawling, decentralized art crawl, with museums, galleries, artist studios, farms, storefronts, and improbably beautiful old buildings all pulled into orbit around contemporary art. The sheer scale of the event can be overwhelming, which is why this roundup leans toward the fleeting, the site-specific, and the novel: pop-up fairs in the woods, guided tours through reimagined industrial spaces, experimental installations, temporary activations, and exhibitions that feel inseparable from the places hosting them. Taken together, they reflect one of the defining qualities of Upstate Art Weekend itself—not just the density of cultural activity in the region, but the willingness of artists and organizers to transform barns, libraries, mills, gardens, and domestic interiors into spaces for improvisation and collective experience.
“Louche Company” at the Octagon House
“Louche Company” gathers the work of Sita Gomez, Baker Overstreet, and Claudia Renfro into a delirious menagerie of queens, demons, dolls, and androgynous mischief-makers. Curated by Hannah Barrett and installed in artist and occult scholar Jesse Bransford’s eccentric 19th-century Octagon House in Catskill, the exhibition revels in folk-art weirdness, cabaret theatricality, and gender nonconformity. Gomez’s sensual assemblages, Overstreet’s stuffed-canvas figures, and Renfro’s wiry embroideries and bronzes transform the domestic interior into a stage for rebellion, fantasy, and beautifully louche disorder.
“Putting it Together: Transforming Collage” at 68 Prince Street Gallery
This show in Kingston at 68 Prince Street surveys the endlessly elastic possibilities of collage through the work of more than 20 artists. Curated by Alan Goolman, the exhibition spans formal experimentation, layered histories, and contemporary approaches while serving as a companion to Vassar College’s “Making Meaning” symposium in July.
“Enlighten Peekskill” at locations across the city
“Enlighten Peekskill” turns the city into an open-air gallery, unveiling a years-in-the-making network of murals, illuminated sculptures, and public art installations stretching from the waterfront to downtown. Organized through partnerships with Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art and local arts groups, the project celebrates Peekskill’s growing identity as a creative hub while highlighting the city’s history, architecture, and evolving streetscape.
Glogg Glogg Art Faire in Woodstock
Glogg Glogg brings together more than 30 Upstate artists for a pop-up art fair staged in a woodland setting in Woodstock. Hosted at Melissa Dadourian’s studio, the event mixes indoor and outdoor installations with affordable small works priced under $300. Part salon-style gathering, part treasure hunt, it foregrounds emerging regional artists and DIY creative energy.
“Cagecircle: Composition for an Exhibition” at Bard College’s Stevenson Library
This exhibition at Stevenson Library uses John Cage’s famed chance procedures to curate a wonderfully strange cabinet of curiosities drawn from 22 collections. The resulting exhibition pairs archival oddities, artworks, and ephemera in unpredictable combinations, accompanied by live performances of Cage’s famously indeterminate compositions.
“Tracing Paths” at Farm & Field
“Tracing Paths” at Farm & Field centers on the work of Jill Duffy, whose paintings are made with hand-crafted pigments derived from natural materials. The exhibition expands beyond the gallery with pigment-making demonstrations, guided foraging walks, open studios, and self-guided trails across the property’s 210-acre landscape in Chatham, connecting artistic practice directly to the surrounding environment.
“Ghost Dance for America, 1890”
At Hudson Hall, filmmaker and projection artist Karl Nussbaum unveils “Ghost Dance for America, 1890,” an immersive installation exploring Indigenous dispossession and spiritual resistance. Projected onto a 25-foot circular scrim that surrounds viewers, the work uses shadow, movement, and pre-cinema illusion techniques to place audiences inside a spectral meditation on American history.
Loom in Philmont
Loom offers a first look inside the 1876 Summit Knitting Mill in Philmont, where a massive historic factory is being reimagined as a future hub for artist residencies, exhibitions, and public programs. During guided tours and open-access hours, visitors can explore the restored industrial space and its next chapter in progress.
“Distant Lands” at Ligenza Moore Gallery
“Distant Lands” at Ligenza Moore Gallery gathers work by more than 20 artists, including Katherine Bradford, Judy Pfaff, and Stephen Westfall, exploring imagined geographies shaped by memory, experience, and interior life. Set amid sculpture gardens and wooded grounds in Cold Spring, the exhibition treats landscape less as place than as a psychological and emotional terrain.
Villa Isis
Villa Isis transforms a wooded New Paltz retreat into a live-in gallery where contemporary art, wellness, and immersive installation converge. “Villa Isis: A Nordic–New York Immersive Art Experience” unfolds across the house and grounds with sculpture, film, workshops, and rotating exhibitions, blurring the line between domestic space, exhibition venue, and creative sanctuary.
This article appears in June 2026.
