CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

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.

September 5, 2020 - 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.

Appositions features work by recent graduates of Syracuse University’s Studio Arts MFA program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including Franco Andres, Brandy Boden, Darcie Brown, Stephen Farrell, Devon Gelhar, Charles Hickey, Eric Mowen, and Katie Shulman.

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.