Past Exhibitions

Dating back to the Ceramic National exhibitions, which began in 1932, the Everson has a rich history of supporting artists who explore the figure. Artists like Viktor Schreckengost, Edris Eckhardt, and Waylande Gregory routinely received awards and critical acclaim for their work. Key Figures examines the larger-than-life artists who shaped an art movement, and features select works from a new generation of artists who are building on this legacy by using the figure to explore identity, narrative, and allegory.

The Photography and Literacy Project is an innovative program positioned under Syracuse University’s Coalition of Museums and Art Centers (CMAC) that brings SU students into Syracuse City Schools to develop projects involving photography, video, audio recording, and writing. The objective is to improve students’ writing and reading skills by linking these studies with photography, video, and poetry.

Artist and theorist Suzanne Anker positions her work at the intersection of art and biology using a wide range of media, from genetically modified plants, digital sculpture, and installation to large-scale photography and projected video. 1.5° Celsius references the projected increase in temperature between 2030 and 2052 if global warming continues at its current pace and the world fails to take significant action to reverse the increase, according to a United Nations report published on October 7, 2018. This subtle yet substantial change in temperature will have seismic implications for climate change, species extinction, and toxic degradation. Anker’s investigations into these issues encourage critical and enlightened thinking about the ways humans have altered nature in the past and will be required to alter nature in the twenty-first century.

The work of pioneering video artist Frank Gillette focuses on humans’ experience of natural phenomena. Using multi-channel video installations with image feedback, time delay, and closed-circuit systems, Gillette is of a generation of artists who defined the way video technologies would be used as an art form. Gillette has become increasingly fascinated with the potential of digital media to subvert our obsession with speed, and creates work that embraces a Zen-inspired experience of slow time. Creating multi-channel installations that are always shifting, contain no beginning or end, and juxtapose traditional modes of art making (such as still life, landscape, and symbolic interaction,) Gillette continues to deepen a career-long investigation into the intersections of technology, ecology, and cognition.

Art Within Art: The Everson at 50 commemorates the 50th anniversary of architect I.M. Pei’s landmark Everson Museum of Art. The exhibition and associated programming explore Pei’s radical notion that the structure of a museum is as important as the art it contains, a belief that directly impacts curatorial choices in both art and programs. Including never before seen plans, photographs, models, ephemera, and archival materials alongside selected artworks from the Everson’s collection, Art Within Art examines the aesthetic and conceptual similarities between Pei’s building and the art it houses, revealing the lasting impact of great architecture.

The Dorsky Museum, in partnership with the Everson, is organizing the first retrospective and catalog of American painter Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-1953) since 1975. This exhibition, including over 40 paintings, works on paper, and printed materials, charts Tomlin’s development from art nouveau illustrations of the 1920s to large-scale Abstract Expressionist paintings of the 1950s. The exhibition explores his formative years in Syracuse, early patronage by Condé Nast, and the important role played by the Woodstock art colony. The exhibition originated at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz.

Salt City Abstraction features modern and contemporary abstract artists from the Everson’s collection that have lived and worked in Central New York, including Juan Cruz, Robert De Niro Sr., Darryl Hughto, Margie Hughto, James Ridlon, Susan Roth, and many others.

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December 23, 2016 – May 7, 2017

Vanessa German uses paint, mixed media, sculpture, and performance to directly confront racism and violence in today’s society. Based in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, a neighborhood devastated by drugs and crime on a daily basis, German creates work in response to her life experiences.

Forty-three years after his debut exhibition at the Everson, Darryl Hughto returns for a career-spanning show to kick off the Everson’s 50th anniversary celebration.