CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

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.

Late Night Space Force features new work by Adam Milner that draws upon emerging NASA technology, the aesthetics of science and history museums, and the Moon’s presence in our daily lives through popular culture as a way to examine the Moon as a central figure in modern life. From late night talk shows to government and corporate space agencies, the Moon’s presence in our cultural landscape is the underpinning for Milner’s investigation into how our romantic attachment to the Moon so quickly slips into physical conquest.

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.

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.