This is the Everson
A Museum
of Firsts.

Exh: March 18-April 30, 2023 Alison Altafi is a self-taught fiber artist based in Syracuse, New York. She explores fibers in unexpected ways, creating weavings-in-the-round that appear to be portals to other worlds. Their magical, otherworldly, textured, and fantastical abstract surfaces could be microcosms for the universe. I enjoy “melting” colors together, especially colors that may not seem complimentary at first glance. I achieve this by blending different colors of wool in my drum carder and using that blend to create new yarn or a “fiber bomb.”...

A multibillion-dollar global industry that began as a recreational activity more than a century ago, the game of basketball is deeply rooted in our society and culture. Playing or watching the sport invokes intangible ideas and feelings—beauty, excitement, hope, triumph, joy, pain, defeat—experiences that define what it means to be human....

Color is an essential therapy for those cold and gray Central New York winters. The Everson embraces this with Chromania, a riot of kaleidoscopic color guaranteed to chase the winter grays away. In the wake of Impressionism, twentieth century artists developed a range of strategies to explore and employ color. Painter and educator Josef Albers taught that all color is relative, meaning that the appearance of a color can change based on other colors it is surrounded by....

In 2012, Light Work began the Urban Video Project (UVP) commission program, supporting emerging and mid-career artists in experimental media in the creation of new work for projection on the Everson Museum’s north facade. ...

To celebrate the new millennium — in 2000 — artist Neil Tetkowski undertook a Herculean project: gathering clay from all 188 member countries from the United Nations. With these clay samples, Tetkowski created a suitably monumental work that debuted at UN headquarters in New York City—the Common Ground World Mandala. Seven feet in diameter and more than nine feet high, Tetkowski’s sculpture is a testament to the artist’s ability to think beyond boundaries — of scale, of geography, and politics. Common Ground uses Tetkowski’s World Mandala as the centerpiece of an exhibition that showcases the Everson’s vast collection of world ceramics....

Remarkable in its breadth and depth, Light Work’s 50th Anniversary exhibition is a thoughtful composition of photographic works that have come into Light Work’s permanent collection over the past fifty years through the generosity of former artist-in-residence participants, Grant Awardees, and individual donations. The works on view are a reflective curation from over 4,000 objects and photographic prints from an extensive and diverse archive that maps the trends and developments in contemporary photography. The semi-centennial presents a unique opportunity to share the legacy of support the organization has extended to emerging and under-represented artists working in photography and digital image-making. Highlights in the show include early works from acclaimed photographers Dawoud Bey, Carrie Mae Weems, James Welling, and more....

The Everson is thrilled to have a brilliant installation by Derek Porter titled Faceted Wrap transform our Kilburg Family Staircase into a brilliant, light-filled space. Thousands of individually-oriented mirrored reflectors capture isolated moments of the surrounding scene and fragment them into abstracted pixels of color and light, collapsing recognizable relationships of the interior and human movement into a provocative kaleidoscope of dynamic pattern. The familiar is recontextualized for the viewer to provoke curiosity and new awareness of place....