Jervis McEntee: Painter-Poet of the Hudson River School

Curated by Lee A. Vedder

August 26 — December 13, 2015
Morgan Anderson and Howard Greenberg Family Galleries

Jervis McEntee: Painter-Poet of the Hudson River School is the first museum retrospective of McEntee's 40-year career and seeks to redefine his place in the history of 19th-century American landscape painting. While most of the Hudson River School painters came from far beyond its riverbanks, Jervis McEntee (1828–1891) was born and died in Rondout (later Kingston), on the Hudson's west bank. Moreover, he devoted the major part of his energies to painting the nuances of the local Hudson Valley and nearby Catskills, following his own unique artistic compass. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue present McEntee's art in the context of his aesthetic and poetic temperament, and the inspiration and encouragement he derived from his close circle of artist friends, which included architect Calvert Vaux and fellow landscape painters Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, John F. Weir, and Worthington Whittredge. The exhibition contained approximately 80 paintings and works on paper from private and public collections.

BFA/MFA Fall 2015

Curated by art faculty and students

December 4–15, 2015
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

Thomas Benjamin Pope: Landscapes of Newburgh and Beyond

Curated by Chloe DeRocker

August 26 — December 13, 2015
Seminar Room

Thomas Benjamin Pope: Landscapes of Newburgh and Beyond showcases eight paintings by Hudson River School artist Thomas Benjamin Pope from the collection of Richard and Marguerite Lease. Scenes from the Hudson River Valley, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and possibly Europe tell the story of Pope's life and travels. Pope's landscapes display his distinct approach to representing the atmosphere, particularly the sky. To this day Pope remains a notable figure in the history and culture of his beloved Newburgh.

Reading Objects 2015

Curated by Wayne Lempka

August 26 — December 13, 2015
Sara Bedrick Gallery

Reading Objects 2015 is part of an ongoing, interdisciplinary series featuring works from the permanent collection of The Dorsky Museum. The works on display are accompanied by texts or other responses to the work prepared by SUNY New Paltz faculty and staff. Responses take the form of poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction, as well as collaborative texts.

The Stories We Tell: Hudson Valley Artists 2015

Curated by Mary-Kay Lombino

June 20 — November 8, 2015
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery/North Gallery

The Stories We Tell focuses on the narrative form of contemporary art and examines how stories shape our experience and our understanding of the world. Instinctively, we are all storytellers merging fiction with non-fiction and conflating the real with the imagined.

Sean Bayliss | Allen Bryan | Dina Bursztyn | Maureen Cummins | Tasha Depp | Marcia Due | Richard Edelman | Ben Fishman | Kevin Frank | Derek James | Tana Kellner | Virginia Lavado | Deb Lucke | Kathleen MacKenzie | Nestor Madalengoitia | Norman Magnusson | Matthew Maley | Perry Meigs | Phyllis Gay Palmer | Michael Rose | Phil Sigunick | Ken Tannenbaum | Jean Tansey | Jerry Thompson | Karen Whitman | Tona Wilson

This year's edition of the Museum's annual juried exhibition of work by Hudson Valley is being juried by Mary-Kay Lombino, an award-winning curator of contemporary art and The Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Director for Strategic Planning of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College.

BFA/MFA Spring 2015

Curated by art faculty and students

April 24 – May 19, 2015
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

The Maverick Festival at 100

Curated by Daniel Belasco

February 7 – July 12, 2015
Corridor Gallery

Marking the centennial of Woodstock's legendary Maverick Festival founded by Hervey White in 1915, this exhibition of vintage photographs celebrates the outdoor carnival's effusion of creative expression. Photos and documents in the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Jean Gaede and Fritzi Striebel Archive, on long-term loan to The Dorsky Museum, capture the radical whimsy and spirit of theater, music, costume, and painting at the Maverick from 1915 to 1931. Highlights include images of well-known Woodstock artists at play, including Charles Rosen, George Bellows, Eugenie Gershoy, Konrad Cramer, and Wilna Hervey.

Grace Hartigan: Myths and Malls

Curated by Daniel Belasco

February 7 – July 12, 2015
Sara Bedrick Gallery

Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) was prominent in the Abstract Expressionist group of New York artists in the 1950s. Myths and Malls is the first museum show of her work since 2001, focusing on a dozen vigorously painted oils and works on paper that chart her shift from abstraction to Pop in the early 1960s, when she moved from New York to Baltimore. Hartigan devised a new painterly language to address popular culture, the urban environment, and her identity as a woman artist. Many of the paintings, collected by Hartigan's friend Beatrice Perry of Germantown, NY, have not been exhibited in decades.

Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television

Curated by Andrew Ingall

February 7 – July 12, 2015
Morgan Anderson and Howard Greenberg Family Galleries

This exhibition surveys the history and mythology of the Videofreex, a collective of artists, storytellers, and activists who produced and disseminated alternative media across New York and other U.S. communities during the 1970s. The Videofreex exploited the new technology of portable video as an emerging medium for creative expression and as a democratic tool for disseminating independent points of view in a pre-digital age. By establishing the first pirate television station in the United States, the Videofreex created a base for media education and training, and an informal media art center hosting local and international visitors. The core members of the Videofreex, many of whom are active today as artists and media makers, include Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, David Cort, Bart Friedman, Davidson Gigliotti, Chuck Kennedy, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Parry Teasdale, Carol Vontobel, and Ann Woodward.

Edward Sheriff Curtis and Native Americans: Works from The Dorsky Permanent Collection

Curated by Wayne Lempka

February 7 – March 13, 2015
Seminar Room

Edward Sheriff Curtis (American, 1868–1952) was an ethnologist and photographer of the Native American peoples whose goal was to not just photograph this group of people but to document a way of life that was quickly disappearing. From 1906 until 1929, when Curtis ended this project, he had produced over 40,000 images from approximately 80 different tribes. Curtis' goal of producing a 20-volume edition of these images , under the title of The North American Indian, was realized through the funding of financier, banker and philanthropist J.P. Morgan. The images included in this exhibition are photogravures, an intaglio printmaking process, which were used as illustrations in the original volumes of The North American Indian. 

Geometries of Difference: New Approaches to Ornament and Abstraction

Curated by Murtaza Vali

January 21 – April 12, 2015
Alice and Horace Chandler and North Galleries

In 1910, Austrian architect Adolf Loos famously called ornament a crime, the very antithesis of modernist aesthetics. Curated by Murtaza Vali, Geometries of Difference: New Approaches to Ornament and Abstraction brings together the work of seven contemporary artists—Derrick Adams, Kamrooz Aram, Rana Begum, Jeffrey Gibson, Jason Middlebrook, Kanishka Raja, and Seher Shah—who subtly subvert modernist abstraction through strategies of difference, pushing geometry and pattern to the verge of ornament. Drawing from and referring to Western abstraction and other aesthetic traditions more accepting of ornament, the artworks in the exhibition will present a terrain upon which a dialogue between the two visual discourses can unfold, revealing unexpected juxtapositions and intersections that challenge traditional art histories. 

BFA/MFA Fall 2014

Curated by art faculty and students

December 5–16, 2014
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

Dick Polich: Transforming Metal into Art

Curated by Daniel Belasco

August 27 – December 14, 2014
Morgan Anderson Gallery, Howard Greenberg Family Gallery, and Corridor

Dick Polich: Transforming Metal into Art was the first museum exhibition to survey the career of Polich, one of the world's principal art fabricators who, like others in his profession, remains behind the scenes. This exhibition reveals how Polich has impacted the development of contemporary art by opening up the industrial process of metal casting and fabrication to accommodate the creative choices of artists.

Race, Love, and Labor: New Work from The Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-in-Residency Program

Curated by Sarah Lewis

August 27 – December 14, 2014
Sara Bedrick Gallery

It is impossible to separate the history of photography from the history of labor, love, and race in America. This exhibition, culled from the collection of the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Artist-in-Residency program, displays images by artists who understand the needs of labor in the fullest sense of the word: a means through which we birth ourselves anew. These artists are participants in a 15-year-old tradition at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW), which offers artists of color one of the requirements for a sterling creative practice—embryonic time to probe deeply, unfettered by distractions. At the 20th anniversary of CPW's partnership with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, it is a moment to honor this residency and examine the themes that have emerged from the resulting, irreplaceable pictures.

Endia Beal | William Cordova | Isaac Diggs | Caleb Ferguson | Latoya Ruby Frazier | Nikita Gale | Gerard Gaskin | Eyakem Gulilat | Tommy Kha | Kathya Maria Landeros | Deana Lawson | Alma Leiva | Yijun Pixy Liao | Gina Osterloh | Dawit L. Petros | Tim Portlock | Paul Mpagi Sepuya | Xaviera Simmons | Joanna Tam | Preston Wadley

Worlds of Wonder, Hudson Valley Artists 2014

Curated by Ian Berry

June 21 – November 9, 2014
Alice and Horace Chandler and North Galleries

Worlds of Wonder, the 2014 edition of the annual Hudson Valley Artists exhibition, is curated by Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. To what extent do science and nature, architecture, design, and history weave in and out of contemporary art making? How do artists bring together disparate elements into a singular work, or a cluster of related images or objects? Focusing on the laboratory-like 
environment of the artist studio and the exploration and curiosity that is at the heart of many artistic practices, this exhibition will create its own space for discovery in unexpected places while highlighting new art from the region, paying homage to the cabinets of wonder that were precursors to museum collections.

The participating artists were: Fern T. Apfel, Gabe Brown, Loren Eiferman, Adriana Farmiga, Holly Hughes, Kay Kenny, Mison Kim, Mike McGregor, Reuben Moore, Douglas Navarra, Stephen Niccolls, Caitlin Parker, Sean Sullivan, Judy Thomas, Linda Stillman, and Angela Voulgarelis.

BFA/MFA Spring 2014

Curated by art faculty and students

April 25 – May 20, 2014
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher

Curated by Valerie Ann Leeds

February 5 – July 13, 2014
Morgan Anderson, Howard Greenberg Family, and Corridor Galleries

The exhibition catalogue is available online here.

New York painter Eugene Speicher (1883-1962) was one of the foremost American realists of his generation, closely associated with George Bellows, Robert Henri, Leon Kroll, and Rockwell Kent. Born in Buffalo, NY, Speicher first garnered national recognition in the 1910s for his incisive portraits of actors, artists, and friends, which were collected by many prominent American museums. Splitting his professional time between New York City and Woodstock, NY, Speicher expanded his repertoire to include still life, nudes, and landscape. Along His Own Lines is the first Speicher museum survey since 1963. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue explore Speicher's role in the Woodstock art colony and the New York art world and reevaluate his place in the canon of early twentieth-century American art.

1980s Style: Image and Design in The Dorsky Museum Collection

Curated by Daniel Belasco

February 5 – July 13, 2014
Sara Bedrick Gallery

The 1980s had a look all its own. 1980s Style includes prints, photographs, and jewelry from the collection of The Dorsky Museum that exemplify the stark geometries and vibrant colors of the decade. The exhibition asks to what extent are bold shapes, bright colors, asymmetry, and cartoonish figuration the visual and formal manifestations of emotional turmoil and artistic activism? Featuring work by Tina Barney, Richard Bosman, Frank Gillette, Lisa Gralnick, Barbara Kasten, George McNeil, Judy Pfaff, Andy Warhol, and others.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and "The Decisive Moment" Works from The Dorsky Museum's Permanent Collection

Curated by Wayne Lempka

February 5 – July 13, 2014
Dorsky Museum Seminar Room

"The Decisive Moment" was a term coined by the pioneer of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908–2004). During much of Cartier-Bresson's early life, photography was still a relatively new medium that was not taken as seriously as other art forms. Photographers were often criticized for not having the same discipline and creativity as traditional artists since they had the ability to create their images in a matter of seconds, not hours or days.

Cartier-Bresson believed "The Decisive Moment"—that split second of genius and inspiration—differentiated the photographer from artists working in mediums such as drawing and painting.

The photographs in this exhibition, with the exception of Boys Playing Amidst Ruins—Spanish Civil War, were donated to The Dorsky by Howard Greenberg.

Mary Reid Kelley: Working Objects and Videos

Curated by Daniel Belasco

January 22 – April 13, 2014
Alice and Horace Chandler and North Galleries

Mary Reid Kelley's visually rich and intellectually stimulating video art converses with history. Fusing techniques of live performance and animation, Reid Kelley creates poignant characters who declaim in droll verse, blending Homer and Cindy Sherman. Mary Reid Kelley: Working Objects and Videos is the first museum exhibition devoted to the finely crafted and researched costumes, objects, and drawings that Mary Reid Kelley creates for her videos, in collaboration with Patrick Kelley. These working objects reveal Reid Kelley as a master of the contemporary impulse to work across and synthesize art media.

BFA/MFA Fall 2013

Curated by art faculty and students

December 6–17, 2013
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

Anonymous: Contemporary Tibetan Art

Curated by Rachel Perera Weingeist

July 20 – December 15, 2013
Morgan Anderson Gallery, Howard Greenberg Family Gallery, Sara Bedrick Gallery, and Corridor

Anonymous seeks to explore the tension between an ancient culture's unbroken artistic tradition and the personality-driven world of contemporary art. Anonymity and self-expression are commonly polarized values and artistic goals within the global art market. In traditional Tibetan art, artistic craft was used to support the transmission of Buddhist culture. In the present atmosphere however, art is becoming a vital medium of self-expression for Tibetans and artists are increasingly creating work focused on the individual. A cautious 21st century visual language steeped in irony, metaphor, and allusion has fully emerged.

Largely drawn from The Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection, the exhibition will feature over 50 works of painting, sculpture, installation, and video art by 27 artists living in Tibet and around the world, including Dharamsala, Katmandu, New York City, Oakland, Thimphu, Zurich, and the Australian Outback. Many works were made exclusively for the exhibition and will be on view to the public for the first time.

Screen Play: Hudson Valley Artists 2013

Curated by Daniel Belasco

June 22 – November 10, 2013
Alice and Horace Chandler and North Galleries

Screens, whether in hands, vehicles, or rooms, have become a nearly ubiquitous interface. InScreen Play, the Dorsky Museum's annual exhibition of Hudson Valley Artists, fifteen artists responded to or used screens as a material, process, or metaphor. Screens as varied as textiles, painted canvases, projected images, and digital monitors serve as poetic and practical means to translate pictures from one realm to another. The screen "assembles experience, processes it, and disseminates it," design philosopher Villem Flusser wrote. Collapsing the differences of hard and soft and digital and analog, the screen becomes a unifying surface upon which we project and receive memories and desires.

Diann Bauer, Amy Brenner, Vernon M. Byron III, Adriana Farmiga, Shanti Grumbine, Patrick Kelley, Linda Kuehne, Abshalom Jac Lahav, LoVid, Rachel Rampleman, Steve Rossi, Adie Russell, K. Velis Turan, Jonathan Wang, Harvey Weiss

BFA/MFA Spring 2013

Curated by art faculty and students

April 26 – May 21, 2013
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery & North Gallery

At the end of each semester, students graduating with Bachelor of Fine Arts or Master of Fine Arts degrees exhibit art work created as part of their thesis projects in the museum's west wing. Exhibitions are designed and installed by the students, under the supervision of the Curator of Exhibitions and the museum Preparator.

Fields of Vision: Work by SUNY New Paltz Faculty

Curated by Carl Van Brunt

April 13 – June 23, 2013
Morgan Anderson Gallery, Howard Greenberg Family Gallery, and Corridor

In our post-modern society, the art world is both more connected and more fragmented than ever before. New York City, once the capital of that world, is now just one of a network of regional centers spanning the globe. And close-up, contemporary practices appear to be a mash-up of disparate concepts, political agendas, media, and styles. Fields of Vision explores how art and design being made by full-time Department of Art faculty at the State University of New York at New Paltz fits into this local/global picture.

The Dorsky Collects: Recent Acquisitions 2008-2012

Curated by Wayne Lempka

January 23 – June 23, 2013
Sara Bedrick Gallery

Like all museums, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art depends on the generosity of others when it comes to expanding its permanent collection. This exhibition focuses on a representative selection of both two- and three-dimensional artworks created by artists from around the world that have come into the museum's collection from 2008 through the present year.

Includes works by artists Dorothy Dehner, Richard Hunt, Harold Edgerton, Utagawa Hiroshige, Jervis McEntee, Robert Morris, W. Eugene Smith, and Andy Warhol, as well as significant but under-recognized artists from the region. The selected works represent the range and quality of giving and span the 19th to the 21st centuries. More importantly, these works, as well as those not selected for display, define the mission of the Dorsky Museum and pay homage to the generosity of the patrons who continue to shape it.

Malian Portrait Photography and Photo-Rapide: François Deschamps

Curated by Daniel M. Leers

January 23 – April 14, 2013
Alice and Horace Chandler Gallery and North Gallery

These two exhibitions provide a nuanced glimpse of the people and culture of the West African nation of Mali. Photo-Rapide features photographs by François Deschamps made in collaboration with his Malian sitters as well as instant portraits of visitors to the show produced by Deschamps in an on-site West African-style photo studio. Malian Portrait Photography showcases historic portraits by some of the best-known Malian photographers including Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta. Together, these complementary exhibitions bring to light the rich photographic tradition in one of the most fascinating nations on the African continent.

Russel Wright: The Nature of Design

Curated by Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce

August 29 – December 16, 2012, January 23 - March 10, 2013
Morgan Anderson, Howard Greenberg Family, and Corridor Galleries

Russel Wright: The Nature of Design explores the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright, whose former home in the Hudson Valley—Manitoga—is now a national historic landmark. The exhibition focuses on one of Wright's most pervasive preoccupations, which also has much relevance today: the relationship of humankind with the natural world. While examining Wright's entire career from the 1920s through the 1970s, this exhibition will focus on his work between 1945 and 1968, when Wright increasingly designed in experimental and innovative ways.