Top Hudson Valley Art Exhibitions to See in January 2026

The exhibitions featured this month share a preoccupation with how artists locate themselves in time and place—geographically, materially, and emotionally. Across painting, photography, abstraction, and archival practice, landscape becomes both subject and metaphor, whether rendered as Hudson Valley terrain, domestic interior, social fabric, or mental space. Several shows foreground intimacy and scale: small works, handwritten marks, typewritten impressions, or close observation standing in for grand narratives. Others look to history—modernist lineages, performance art’s radical past, or long-standing community memory—as a way of understanding the present. What links them is a sense of attentiveness: to the environment, to systems under strain, to the persistence of making meaning amid change.

“Earth Endures, Stars Abide” at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson

Through January 18

This show of Hudson Valley landscapes at Carrie Haddad brings together five contemporary painters whose varied visions reflect the enduring spirit and mutable moods of the region. On view through January 18, the group show features new and recent works by James Bleecker, Sue Bryan, Tracy Helgeson, Robert Moylan, and Thomas Sarrantonio, each interpreting regional terrain through distinct approaches to color, form, and atmosphere. From pastoral stillness to layered skies and terrain that feels both familiar and freshly seen, the exhibition underscores landscape’s capacity to anchor memory and imagination in equal measure.

“Notes from Here” at O+ Exchange in Kingston

Through January 24

Bringing together small works by O+ artists rooted in the Hudson Valley, “Notes from Here” considers how artists register place and time through modest, often intimate gestures. Spanning media from oil-on-linen landscapes to sculptural vessels that physically engage the elements, the exhibition frames these works as provisional records rather than grand statements. Pieces by Bill Brovold, Joe Concra, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Erika DeVries, Sophie Eisner, Lara Giordano, Casey Inch, Don Johnson, Grace Lang, Reyna Martinez, Adam Mastropaolo, Thomas Sarrantonio, Saidee Sonnenberg, Thorneater, and Lindsey A. Wolkowicz read like visual postcards—ephemeral impressions that capture the texture, uncertainty, and immediacy of life in this moment and place.

“Wish You Were Here” at the Tremaine Art Gallery at the Hotchkiss School

Through January 25

Bringing together two painters attuned to intimacy and observation, the exhibition pairs works by Fern Apfel and Colleen McGuire that explore how place is remembered, recorded, and felt. Apfel’s meticulously rendered paintings of letters, lists, and paper objects hover between still life and abstraction, treating memory as a continuous loop rather than a fixed past. McGuire, working in oil on board, turns everyday views around her home into studies of light, weather, and fleeting perception. Curated by Joan Baldwin, the show frames painting as a quiet correspondence between inner life and the world outside.

“Connecting Emergence” at Lace Mill Galleries in Kingston

January 3-31
Opening reception on January 3 from 5-9pm.

Known for his richly layered oil paintings that blend close observation with imaginative leaps, Paul Keskey explores our connection to the natural world with lyrical intensity. Sun-dappled forest glades, rippling streams, and delicate figures emerge from compositions built through many thin layers of paint, inviting viewers into a realm where landscape and inner narrative intertwine. Keskey’s work balances realism and reverie in a mythological realm of his own imagining. Man’s Folly, featured on the cover of Chronogram in February 1997, exemplifies his ability to infuse everyday scenes with poetic depth in this Lace Mill show.

Grey Zeien: “The Last Round-up” at Buster Levi Gallery in Cold Spring

January 10-31.
Opening reception on January 10 from 6-8pm.

Spanning more than a decade of work, this exhibition at Buster Levi brings together large-scale paintings and small ceramic objects that reveal Grey Zeien’s sustained interest in tension and play. His paintings merge hard-edge abstraction with an improvisational surface, where scraped, sanded passages and floating geometric forms create a sense of movement and depth. Occasional passages of gold leaf catch and release light, activating the picture plane. In contrast, Zeien’s ceramic works take on whimsical, sea-life-inspired forms, their fluid contours and inventive color recalling modernist cutouts. Together, the paintings and ceramics show an artist comfortable balancing rigor and experimentation, structure and surprise.

“Boundaries” at Gallery at Yellow Studio, Cross River

Through January 10–February 8
Opening reception on January 10 from 4-6pm

Bringing together four women artists with conceptually driven abstract practices, “Boundaries” at Gallery at Yellow Studio examines moments when familiar systems blur, fracture, or give way to new forms. Working across photography, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media, Beth Dary, Amy Kupferberg, Rita Maas, and Mary Negro each use abstraction to process complexity, from environmental change and material transformation to information overload and political uncertainty. While their approaches differ, the works share a focus on instability and emergence, suggesting abstraction as a means of understanding a world in flux, where order and disorder coexist and meaning is continually renegotiated.

“Vito Acconci: Scenes from This Side of the Camp” at Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie

January 10-March 29

This installation brings archival materials from Vito Acconci’s 1973 performance to the Loeb, offering a rare window into the work of one of late 20th-century art’s most influential pioneers. Acconci—whose boundary-breaking performances, videos, and installations helped define conceptual and performance art by collapsing distinctions between artist, audience, and space—used his own body and language to confront viewers’ expectations and probe the personal and political. “Scenes from This Side of the Camp” assembles handwritten notes, photographs, sound, and instructions from a seminal live action in Rome, revealing his process and its enduring impact on contemporary art.

“Picture Us” at Desmond-Fish Public Library in Garrison

Through March 29

Curated by the artist ransome, “Picture Us” at the Desmond-Fish Public Library assembles a diverse array of contemporary portraiture that reflects a broad spectrum of identity and experience. The exhibition includes work by Alia Ali, Esperanza Cortes, John Ebbert, Patty Horing, Jordin Isip, G. Brian Karas, JaFang Lu, Beverly McIver, Michael Pribich, ransome, Dylan Rose Rheingold, Nadine Robbins, and photobooth portraits from Oliver Wasow’s collection. Together, these artists employ varied styles and media to explore how faces and figures can embody personal and cultural narratives, inviting viewers to consider the many ways we see ourselves and each other.

“Raffaella della Olga: Typescripts” at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Through May 31

Marking her first solo museum presentation, the exhibition situates Raffaella della Olga within a lineage of artists who have transformed the typewriter into an expressive tool while firmly establishing her singular approach. Working with modified typewriters, multicolor ink ribbons, and materials ranging from tracing paper to fabric and sandpaper, della Olga produces artists’ books and wall works that merge mechanical repetition with physical gesture. On view at the Clark Art Institute, the exhibition pairs her books, typed paintings, and textiles with historical examples from the Clark’s library, underscoring how her practice reinvents language, surface, and the book itself.

“Blanche Lazelle: Becoming an American Modernist” at the Albany Institute of History & Art

January 31-August 2

A long-overdue survey comes to the Albany Institute of History & Art of one of America’s early Modernist innovators. Best known for her white-line woodblock prints, Lazzell (1878–1956) synthesized European avant-garde influences from Paris and Provincetown into a distinctly American idiom, embracing Cubist geometry, Fauvist color, and abstraction across prints, paintings, and works on paper. Drawing largely on the Art Museum of West Virginia University’s holdings, the exhibition traces her career from Provincetown’s vibrant artist colony to her role in advancing abstraction in US art history.