CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

The culmination of the Everson Museum of Art’s 50^th anniversary year, YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE situates the groundbreaking conceptual artist’s landmark 1971 exhibition at the Everson (her first solo museum show) within her enduring artistic work devoted to healing human connections and exposing social and political injustices. The survey spans more than six decades, bringing together significant works in film, music, performance, and visual art that are presented both inside and outside the museum building. From germinal early works to recent, large-scale installations, REMEMBERING THE FUTURE traces Ono’s experimental approach to engaging audiences as a means of contributing to a more accepting and peaceful world.

Named after Yoko Ono’s 1963 Earth Piece, a score that invites the reader to “Listen to the sound of the earth turning,” this exhibition examines artists who have combined clay and ceramics with performance art, photography, conceptual art, and even land art. Far from being used as “just another material,” clay comes freighted with millennia of associations with material culture. Earth Piece highlights the work of well-known figures from the art world, as well as lesser-known artists whose work shaped the field of ceramics into a vibrant discipline that is equally at home in both domestic and contemporary spheres.

The Everson’s commitment to video art began in 1971 with the launch of one of the first exhibition programs in the country to feature the work of video artists, and today the Everson’s historic video art collection contains over 400 tapes. Over the last several years, the Museum has worked to conserve and digitize a significant portion of the collection and this exhibition features a number of the newly digitized works.

The Everson’s legendary ceramics collection contains everything from treasured antiquities to cutting edge sculptures and conceptual art. Mixed Doubles pairs artworks by contemporary artists with historical works from the cultures that inspired them.

Coordinated by ARISE, a non-profit agency based in Syracuse, UNIQUE celebrates the artistic talents of Central New Yorkers living with disabilities. The works included in this exhibition eloquently speak to the myriad thoughts, ideas, and feelings that all humans share, regardless of individual ability or circumstance. The annual competition invites submissions of art and literature which are then selected for display by a panel of judges, and the works are exhibited in several venues throughout CNY.

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.