Andy Warhol's 1985 screenprint, "Reigning Queens (Queen Ntombi)," will be featured at the "Recent Acquisitions" show at The Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam. The piece is a gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation.
The Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam will unveil two new exhibitions next week, including a display of new additions to the collection, and a show featuring works by a collective of female artists.
The two exhibitions, “Recent Acquisitions” and “Across the Divide,” will both open in the Roland Gibson Gallery on Thursday, Feb. 15, with a reception to be held from 5 to 7 p.m. in the lobby. Both shows will run from Feb. 15 to March 24. Admission to the museum is free, and the public is invited to attend.
Director April Vasher-Dean said that the “Recent Acquisitions” show will highlight the newest works added to the museum’s permanent collection over the past eight years, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures. The new works include pieces by Robert Beauchamp, Andy Warhol, Sam Gilliam and Darren Waterston, to name a few.
“Across the Divide” features works of 10 artists who are represented by the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., demonstrating an array of media, from sculpture, painting and printmaking, to video and installations. Currently celebrating its 45th anniversary, A.I.R. Gallery is the oldest women’s cooperative gallery in the United States. All exhibiting artists are current members of the gallery. The artists exhibiting are Katherine Mann, Hend Al Mansour, Negin Sharifzadeh, d’Ann de Simone, Susan Stainman, Ann Stoddard, Erica Stoller, Amy Swartelé, Alice Pixley Young and Ellyn Weis.
Swartelé, who is a professor of art studio and painting at SUNY Potsdam, curated the show. She said that the show is inspired by the idea of reaching out across boundaries.
“The world seems increasingly split into various groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’. We inhabit different realities; we are separated by borders, walls and varying definitions of ‘truth’ and ‘facts.’ The human brain easily slips into facile categories and definitions. Online algorithms make it easy to inhabit virtual spaces that only reflect our own ideas back to us, thus creating increasingly parochial bubbles,” she said.
The artists all created works inspired by the idea of divisions, both visible and invisible, with some pieces focused on cultural or personal divides and others centered on geographic or technical boundaries, Swartelé said.
“‘Across the Divide’ is an exhibition of works by a group of women who come together to investigate, critique and play with the idea of ‘the divide’. The divide is the space between us, the line of separation,” the curator said. “We reach across the divide to each other and to our audience. We reach to anyone willing to reach back.”
For more information about the latest shows at the Gibson Gallery, visit http://www.potsdam.edu/museum/exhibits/gibson/upcoming.
The Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam serves as the center for visual arts at the College, and encompasses all of the collections found throughout campus, including in the Gibson Gallery. The Museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation of quality works of art, and its collection includes significant artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as earlier pieces. The mission of The Art Museum at The State University of New York at Potsdam is to make direct experience of the visual arts accessible to students, faculty, staff and alumni of the College, as well as to residents of Northern New York.
Admission to the Gibson Gallery, located at Brainerd Hall, is free, and the exhibition space is wheelchair-accessible. The Art Museum is open to the public from 1 to 7 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Additional hours are also available by appointment.
For more information, call (315) 267-3290 or visit www.potsdam.edu/museum.
Founded in 1816, The State University of New York at Potsdam is one of only three arts campuses in the entire SUNY system. SUNY Potsdam’s arts curriculum offers the full palette: music, theatre, dance, fine arts and creative writing. No matter the discipline, people from all backgrounds can find their creative compass at Potsdam, with myriad arts immersion experiences available for both campus and community.
Arts & Culture