This September, Poughkeepsie makes a case for itself as the Hudson Valley’s art crawl. On September 12–13, Poughkeepsie Open Studios opens doors, PK Art Mile turns U-Haul trucks into pop-up galleries, and the Pollinator Festival mixes artmaking with horticulture, food, and performance. At Convey/er/or Gallery, Nestor Madalengoitia brings pre-Columbian imagery into conversation with tai chi, dancing, drumming, and sports in 90 works inspired by the “Paracas Textile.” At Vassar, Joyce Polance reverses the therapeutic gaze in “The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist.” Elsewhere, fire becomes subject and biography for Jim Denney and Dennis Gordon in Hudson, while Rhea Marmentini begins carving a sculpture park in Newburgh. From astronaut tears to Icelandic waterfalls, September covers ground—but Poughkeepsie supplies the center of gravity.
“Reginald Madison: New Slant Old Story” at September, Kinderhook
Through September 27
Completed with Reginald Madison’s involvement before his death in May, “New Slant Old Story” traces the Hudson artist’s fraught memories of Catholic school. The exhibition—the third solo presentation of Madison’s work at September—gathers paintings on canvas, panel, and paper spanning decades, most never previously shown. Crosses, nuns, devils, and images of Jesus recur alongside staring faces, open mouths, and tightly clustered figures, suggesting confinement, conflict, and splintered identities without settling into straightforward narratives. Works including the monumental title painting and the triptych The Dance Lesson mingle menace, absurdity, and dark humor. Madison, who emerged from Chicago’s Black Arts Movement, maintained that he did not narrate stories but followed where painting led him. Here, it repeatedly returned him to childhood experiences that both distressed and bemused him.
“Displace: Tears in the Fabric of the Universe” at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston
Through September 27
For decades, Ellen K. Levy has used the space program to explore the wonder and terror of progress. “Displaced: Tears in the Fabric of the Universe” at 68 Prince Street Gallery draws on that fascination, imagining how humans live, work, and find pleasure under the conditions of zero gravity. Circles, glass spheres, and nets recur throughout Levy’s mixed-media works, where astronaut tears resemble stars and planets and inventions signal the intersection of commerce and survival. Older pieces contemplate a diminished Earth viewed from the International Space Station, while an interactive video activated by a stationary bicycle evokes astronauts’ exercise routines. Blurring science fiction and reality, Levy considers whether art might help cultivate the psychological resilience required for life beyond Earth.
“Dahliamania” at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring
Through October 31
Photographer Dirk Westphal turns dahlias into kaleidoscopic studies of color, symmetry, and form at this exhibit at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring. Combining analog and digital processes, he isolates more than 50 varieties against vivid backgrounds. On September 26 and 27, visitors to Stonecrop’s Dahlia Weekend can watch him photograph clipped blooms on site.
“Dirty Joke” at Utopia in Kingston
September 5-26
Opening reception September 5, 4-7pm
“Dirty Joke” at Utopia isn’t exactly funny, but its eight artists raid comedy’s toolbox for absurdity, repulsion, awkwardness, self-deprecation, concealment, and surprise. Curated by Matt Moment, the group exhibition features Tim Davis, Alanna Floreck, Daniel Giordano, Shaun Pierson, Anam Rani, Zander Raymond, John Bell Rush, and Luke Whittaker working across photography, sculpture, collage, and trompe l’oeil painting. Shared symbols create conversations among the works: undone zippers, obscure masks, bare feet, piles of filth, balloons, and houseflies appear. Freed from the setup-and-payoff rhythm of a joke, these visual provocations produce a mixture of menace, discomfort, and revelation. The punchline may be slow in coming, but the detour offers plenty of poetry.
“On Fire” at Time and Space Limited in Hudson
September 5-October 4
Opening reception September 5, 5-7pm
“On Fire” at Time and Space Limited pairs paintings by Jim Denney with sculptures by Dennis Gordon, two artists whose work is shaped by careers fighting fires. Denney spent 20 seasons as a wildland firefighter in Oregon; his forests and industrial landscapes are recollections, memorials, and warnings about the Anthropocene. Gordon joined the FDNY in 1978, entering abandoned buildings across the South Bronx. His sculptures recreate the wreckage left by real estate development and capitalism while memorializing displaced people. Together, the artists examine fire as experience, instrument of destruction, and emblem of social and environmental crisis.
“Iceland by 4” at the Arts Society of Kingston
August 1-30
Opening reception August 1, 4-7pm.
Four Hudson Valley photographers explore the Land of Fire and Ice in “Iceland by 4” at the Arts Society of Kingston. Chris Acosta, Lee Courtney, Mark Howenstein, and John Verner traveled the island together, seeking out vistas and hidden corners shaped by volcanic force, glacial ice, mercurial weather, and centuries of folklore. Their photographs offer four interpretations of the terrain, moving from sweeping mountains and waterfalls to intimate encounters with Iceland’s shifting light and atmosphere. Several members of the group have returned repeatedly, drawn by a landscape that never appears the same twice. The exhibition invites viewers to experience Iceland’s grandeur, severity, and moments of stillness.
“Paintings Inspired by Pre-Columbian Paracas Tapestry” at Convey/er/or Gallery in Poughkeepsie
September 5-26
Opening reception September 5, 4-6pm
Nestor Madalengoitia brings ancient imagery into the present in 90 acrylic-and-watercolor paintings on paper to Convey/er/or Gallery. Inspired by the pre-Columbian Paracas Textile in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, each work responds to one of the figures woven around its perimeter. Madalengoitia overlays priests, shamans, warriors, animals, and mythical beings with silhouettes drawn from contemporary life, including tai chi, drumming, dancing, and sports, creating a lively dialogue between an ancient visual language and the rhythms of everyday life today.
“Jean-Marc Superville Sovak: Open for Unfinished Business” at the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz
September 9-December 6
Jean-Marc Superville Sovak reconsiders the Hudson Valley’s early Black communities and the uneven freedoms they negotiated during the 19th century at the Dorsky Museum. Working as artist, researcher, and curator, he brings newly commissioned installations and site-specific works into conversation with archival materials and rarely exhibited historical objects, some appearing publicly for the first time.
The exhibition grows from more than two decades of Superville Sovak’s place-based research and collaboration with historians, archivists, organizers, and descendants of New Paltz’s founding families. Drawing on oral histories and holdings from the Margaret Wade Lewis Center, Historic Huguenot Street, and Ann Street Gallery, he restores names, livelihoods, and acts of community-building omitted from familiar accounts of the region.
Across video, sound, sculpture, prints, drawings, and research interventions, Superville Sovak challenges the myth of an uncomplicated progressive North and the museum’s authority as keeper of a single historical narrative. His layered approach collapses periods, images, and media, using humor and speculation to address archival gaps without pretending to fill them conclusively. Guest-curated by Sofia Thieu D’Amico, the show asks how art might help refashion the past—and what responsibility artists and museums bear toward the living present in New Paltz and beyond.
Poughkeepsie Art Mile/Poughkeepsie Pollinator Fest/Poughkeepsie Open Studios
September 12-13
Poughkeepsie becomes one arts campus September 12–13 as three free events unfold across the city. Poughkeepsie Open Studios invites visitors into studios, galleries, and community spaces to meet painters, sculptors, photographers, and multimedia artists. Downtown, PK Art Mile transforms U-Haul trucks into immersive pop-up galleries along Cannon Street, accompanied by music, food, drinks, games, and hands-on children’s workshops. At Scenic Hudson’s Northside Hub, the Pollinator Festival connects art with horticulture, food, wellness, and the natural world through demonstrations, performances, and activities inspired by “The Journey of the Seed.” Open Studios runs Saturday 10am–5pm and Sunday noon–4pm; PK Art Mile runs 1–6pm both days; Pollinator runs Saturday 1–5pm and Sunday 1–4pm. Together, they reveal the breadth of Poughkeepsie’s creative ecosystem.
“The Patient Looks Back” at Palmer Gallery in Poughkeepsie
September 17-October 10
Opening September 24 at 5-7pm
In “The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist,” Catskill painter Joyce Polance reverses therapy’s direction of scrutiny at Palmer Gallery at Vassar College. Created over three years, each portrait derives from a photograph taken during one of her sessions, placing the opaque therapist under observation. Polance applies oil paint with her fingers, pressing, building, and removing layers so that features hover between likeness and dissolution. The works probe intimacy, power, and the limits of what looking can disclose about a person.
Art Walk Kingston
September 19-20
Kingston’s studios and galleries open their doors September 19–20 for the 11th annual Art Walk Kingston, one of the Hudson Valley’s largest open-studio tours. Visitors can chart their own course through three neighborhoods, meeting artists and exploring paintings, photography, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, stained glass, furniture, and book arts. This year’s participants range from photographers Andrew Moore and Jeffrey Milstein to painter-poet Julie Hedrick, ceramicist Demetria Chappo, textile artist Aurelie Hug, and others. The self-guided event runs noon–5pm both days. Admission is free; printed maps will be available beginning September 12 at several locations, with a digital map online.
Marmentini Living Museum
September 26-27
More than 24 tons of Vermont marble have landed on Newburgh’s waterfront, where sculptor Rhea Marmentini is transforming raw stone into monumental forms. Launching during Newburgh Open Studios, the Marmentini Living Museum invites visitors into a working environment of sculptures, drawings, sketches, and works carved on site. Its first sculpture, Palale-eye, introduces Marmentini’s mythology of beings shaped by the Hudson River, ecology, memory, and planetary time. The museum marks the phase of the Hudson River Sculpture Walk. September 26–27 at 150 Front Street, Newburgh. Saturday 11am–7pm; reception, drinks and paella at 3pm.
