CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Using portraiture as her point of departure, Lacey McKinney examines themes of identity and embodiment through the human face and figure. Painting with acrylic and oil, she merges multiple faces into one composition—blurring together moments in time. Calling attention to our shifting identities and challenging the history of genre portraiture, McKinney questions how much information can be gleaned from a single portrait.

On view through May 9, 2021

On view through February 28, 2021
Empty openings or panes of glass in houses, vehicles, skyscrapers, or storefronts, windows are portals to and from other worlds. Drawn from the Everson’s collection, this exhibition examines the formal and symbolic potential of a simple aperture.

On view through February 7, 2021

The ancient Andean civilizations of South America were strikingly diverse in their religious beliefs and material cultures, but each developed complex ceramics for both domestic and ritual use. This exhibition features key pieces from the Museum’s collection, including several recent acquisitions from the Nazca, Paracas, Moche, Chimú, and Chavin cultures.

In 1911, the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts (known today as the Everson) made history as the first museum in the country to declare that it would focus on collecting works made by American artists. This decision, implemented by Museum Director Fernando Carter, was the first of many made by directors that ultimately defined the Everson’s collection as it exists today. This exhibition examines over one hundred years of the Museum’s collecting priorities, from the Museum’s earliest acquisitions in 1911 to work acquired in 2019.

In celebration of the Everson’s 50th anniversary, the museum commissioned Thomas Spoerndle to create a site-specific wall drawing. Spoerndle was selected because of his interest in scale, geometric abstraction, and the ways his work creates a dialogue with artworks in the Museum’s Collection as well as architect I.M. Pei’s museum design.

In celebration of the Everson’s 50th anniversary, the Museum commissioned Elliott Katz to create site-specific installations for the spaces that architect I.M. Pei designed as planters. Katz was selected for the commission because of how his work engages with the significance of materials and questions how we form relationships to those materials, as well as his interest in contrasting the Modernist belief in controlling nature against the Wabi sabi belief in the fundamental uncontrollability of nature. Using natural and synthetic materials, photography, scale, and illusion, Katz’s serious and playful installations transform familiar objects into curious mysteries that defy simple categorization and ignite our imagination.