Thursday, February 1, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Death Takes a Cruise
Acme Mystery Company

Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Pack your costume, grab your party hat, and step aboard our venerable riverboat, The Mississippi Mistress, as we prepare to set sail down the "Big Muddy" for New Orleans and Mardi Gras! Woooo-hooo! The mighty Captain "Crawdaddy" Cretin will help you navigate the shoals, sand bars, (and wet bars), while Scooter, the Porter, and your Cruise Director, Lucy Belle Juniper, see to your comfort and entertainment. Watch out for the other passengers (they look pretty suspicious). Someone might not make it to the "Big Easy" alive.

Hairspray
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

You Can't Stop the Beat! Hairspray, Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical comedy phenomenon is back on tour! Join 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad in 1960s Baltimore as she sets out to dance her way onto TV's most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world?

Featuring the beloved score of hit songs including "Welcome to the '60s," "Good Morning Baltimore," and "You Can't Stop the Beat," Hairspray is "fresh, winning, and deliriously tuneful!" (The New York Times).

This all-new touring production reunites Broadway's award-winning creative team led by Director Jack O'Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell to bring Hairspray to a new generation of theater audiences.

Don't miss this "exhilaratingly funny and warm-hearted musical comedy" (The New Yorker).

Preview: Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Friday, February 2, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Black Artist Collective: Paired Pieces -- 15th Ward Exhibition
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, four established professional artists mentored four talented student artists, embarking on a creative journey that explores the history of the 15th Ward's destruction and its lasting impact.

Through a series of prompt questions, the exhibition encourages viewers to contemplate the consequences of this historical event: What are the enduring effects of the 15th Ward's destruction? How does this impact resonate within the City of Syracuse today? What are our collective aspirations for a reparative future?

"Paired Pieces" presents diverse perspectives, artistic styles, and mediums. Each artist contributed their unique visions, inviting viewers to reflect on the past, engage with the present, and envision a future characterized by inclusivity and restoration.

Dan Bern with special guest Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Dan Bern is a captivating live performer with a loyal, multi-generational following. He has written thousands of songs, released dozens of albums, and played shows across North America and Europe–from coffee shops to Carnegie Hall.

*CANCELLED* The Motown Sounds of Touch
Palace Theatre

Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

For over 15 years, The Motown Sounds of Touch has been the #1 premier "old school" & Motown sound tribute band nationwide!

Experience the sights & sounds of The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, The Commodores & many more!

The Atkinsons
Folkus Project

Price: $20 regular, $17 Folkus members
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A powerful blend of sound and personality...

The Atkinsons are a family band, rooted in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. They play a style all their own, an acoustic genre of bluegrass, Americana and folk music with a refreshing sound. Their original songs tell the stories of their lives in the northern mountains of the Adirondacks.

Snaps & Taps Black Poets Talkback
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Join CFAC, 119 Euclid, and the Syracuse University Black Graduate Student Association for an incredible evening celebrating the arts through the power of poetry. This special edition of Snaps & Taps will feature candid stories from Black performing artists, moderated by Inspiration For The Nation George Kilpatrick. Our host Randum and the talented DJ Geda will provide the perfect backdrop to make the night truly magical.

Poet Oliver de la Paz
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
Online

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023). With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist's Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

Forever Plaid
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

On the way to their first big gig, tragedy strikes Forever Plaid, a "guy group" specializing in barbershop quartet harmonies and pitch-perfect melodies. Forever Plaid begins when the guys are given the chance to perform from the afterlife. This smash hit musical is a nostalgic homage to the music of the '50s and includes hits such as "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Directed by Bob Brown. Music Directed by Colin Keating. Choreographed by Shannon Tompkins.

Hairspray
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

You Can't Stop the Beat! Hairspray, Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical comedy phenomenon is back on tour! Join 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad in 1960s Baltimore as she sets out to dance her way onto TV's most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world?

Featuring the beloved score of hit songs including "Welcome to the '60s," "Good Morning Baltimore," and "You Can't Stop the Beat," Hairspray is "fresh, winning, and deliriously tuneful!" (The New York Times).

This all-new touring production reunites Broadway's award-winning creative team led by Director Jack O'Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell to bring Hairspray to a new generation of theater audiences.

Don't miss this "exhilaratingly funny and warm-hearted musical comedy" (The New Yorker).

Opening: Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Saturday, February 3, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

Sana Musasama: Returning to Ourselves
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Throughout her career, Queens-based artist Sana Musasama has drawn inspiration from travel and research into global cultures. "Returning to Ourselves" centers around a series of dolls that Musasama produced that mirror African-American topsy-turvy dolls containing a white doll whose skirt can be flipped up to transform it into a Black doll.

Musasama uses this formal structure to juxtapose different figures drawn from the global Black diaspora. "Returning to Ourselves" is rounded out by a series of ceramic houses Musasama began early in her career but returned to during the pandemic to combat looming depression.

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Black Artist Collective: Paired Pieces -- 15th Ward Exhibition
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, four established professional artists mentored four talented student artists, embarking on a creative journey that explores the history of the 15th Ward's destruction and its lasting impact.

Through a series of prompt questions, the exhibition encourages viewers to contemplate the consequences of this historical event: What are the enduring effects of the 15th Ward's destruction? How does this impact resonate within the City of Syracuse today? What are our collective aspirations for a reparative future?

"Paired Pieces" presents diverse perspectives, artistic styles, and mediums. Each artist contributed their unique visions, inviting viewers to reflect on the past, engage with the present, and envision a future characterized by inclusivity and restoration.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

Mahtab Hussain: Muslims in America: Syracuse Edition
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-8:00 pm.

British photographer Mahtab Hussain is creating a major new body of work about the Muslim experience in America. In October, ArtRage hosted Hussain for a two-week residency to photograph Syracuse's Muslim community; the resulting work will be shared in this exhibition. The work created in Syracuse will join his work from New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities yet to be visited, and will be published as an artist book and a touring museum exhibition in 2026.

Hussain uses photography to explore the important relationship between identity, heritage, and displacement. His themes develop through long-term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism. His work has been widely exhibited in the UK and North America and is in many collections including the Brooklyn Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

*SOLD OUT* Kids Series: Peter and the Wolf
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Sergei Prokofiev's famous Peter and the Wolf is performed by Symphoria, offering his "symphonic fairy tale for children."

Before the concert, try different musical instruments at the Symphoria Instrument Discovery Zone, opening at 10:00 am.

Spark Series: Lunar New Year
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Ho-Yin Kwok, conductor

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Welcome in the Year of the Dragon and celebrate the Asian community in Central New York. Experience the unique melodies, instruments, and arrangements of some of the oldest and most complex music in the world.

Li Huanzi Spring Festival Overture
Texu Kim Dub Sanjo
Choi Sung-Hwan Arirang
He Zhanhao Butterfly Lover Violin Concerto
Long Four Songs from Chinese Folk Songs
Yuankai Symphony No. 2 "Sketches of Taiwan"
Hisaishi My Neighbor Totoro
Wei The Dancing Moonlight

*SOLD OUT* Miller & The Other Sinners
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Hairspray
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

You Can't Stop the Beat! Hairspray, Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical comedy phenomenon is back on tour! Join 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad in 1960s Baltimore as she sets out to dance her way onto TV's most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world?

Featuring the beloved score of hit songs including "Welcome to the '60s," "Good Morning Baltimore," and "You Can't Stop the Beat," Hairspray is "fresh, winning, and deliriously tuneful!" (The New York Times).

This all-new touring production reunites Broadway's award-winning creative team led by Director Jack O'Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell to bring Hairspray to a new generation of theater audiences.

Don't miss this "exhilaratingly funny and warm-hearted musical comedy" (The New Yorker).

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

BraVa Children’s Theatre: Black History Month Cabaret
Community Folk Art Center

Price: $10 adults, $5 children
CFAC Black Box Theater
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Forever Plaid
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

On the way to their first big gig, tragedy strikes Forever Plaid, a "guy group" specializing in barbershop quartet harmonies and pitch-perfect melodies. Forever Plaid begins when the guys are given the chance to perform from the afterlife. This smash hit musical is a nostalgic homage to the music of the '50s and includes hits such as "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Directed by Bob Brown. Music Directed by Colin Keating. Choreographed by Shannon Tompkins.

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Hairspray
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

You Can't Stop the Beat! Hairspray, Broadway's Tony Award-winning musical comedy phenomenon is back on tour! Join 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad in 1960s Baltimore as she sets out to dance her way onto TV's most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world?

Featuring the beloved score of hit songs including "Welcome to the '60s," "Good Morning Baltimore," and "You Can't Stop the Beat," Hairspray is "fresh, winning, and deliriously tuneful!" (The New York Times).

This all-new touring production reunites Broadway's award-winning creative team led by Director Jack O'Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell to bring Hairspray to a new generation of theater audiences.

Don't miss this "exhilaratingly funny and warm-hearted musical comedy" (The New Yorker).

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Sana Musasama: Returning to Ourselves
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Throughout her career, Queens-based artist Sana Musasama has drawn inspiration from travel and research into global cultures. "Returning to Ourselves" centers around a series of dolls that Musasama produced that mirror African-American topsy-turvy dolls containing a white doll whose skirt can be flipped up to transform it into a Black doll.

Musasama uses this formal structure to juxtapose different figures drawn from the global Black diaspora. "Returning to Ourselves" is rounded out by a series of ceramic houses Musasama began early in her career but returned to during the pandemic to combat looming depression.

Black Artist Collective: Paired Pieces -- 15th Ward Exhibition
Art in the Atrium

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, four established professional artists mentored four talented student artists, embarking on a creative journey that explores the history of the 15th Ward's destruction and its lasting impact.

Through a series of prompt questions, the exhibition encourages viewers to contemplate the consequences of this historical event: What are the enduring effects of the 15th Ward's destruction? How does this impact resonate within the City of Syracuse today? What are our collective aspirations for a reparative future?

"Paired Pieces" presents diverse perspectives, artistic styles, and mediums. Each artist contributed their unique visions, inviting viewers to reflect on the past, engage with the present, and envision a future characterized by inclusivity and restoration.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

Black History Month Wind Quintet Concert
Alliance Classical Players

Price: Free
Betts Branch Library
4862 S. Salina St., Syraucse

Featuring works by Florence Price, Godwin Sadoh, Scott Joplin, William Grant Still, Valerie Coleman, and Fred Onovwerosuoke.

Vibrant Virtuosos
Silverwood Clarinet Choir

Price: Free; donation welcomed
St. Stephen's Lutheran Church
DeWitt St. and Mertens Ave., Syracuse

Enjoy a diverse selection of musical pieces spanning different genres and composers. Mozart, Holst, Bach and contemporary composers will represent a rich mix of classical and contemporary music. Each piece offers a unique experience, showcasing the beauty and diversity of musical expression.

Atmospheres
Civic Morning Musicals
Martha Grener, flute; Zachary Sweet, cello; Sar-Shalom Strong, piano

Price: $20
Park Central Presbyterian Church
504 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Amy Beach Pastorale and Caprice Water Sprites
Philippe Gaubert Trois Aquarelles
Heitor Villa Lobos Jet Whistle
George Walker Sonata
Bohuslav Martinu Trio for flute, cello, and piano

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Forever Plaid
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

On the way to their first big gig, tragedy strikes Forever Plaid, a "guy group" specializing in barbershop quartet harmonies and pitch-perfect melodies. Forever Plaid begins when the guys are given the chance to perform from the afterlife. This smash hit musical is a nostalgic homage to the music of the '50s and includes hits such as "Three Coins in the Fountain" and "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Directed by Bob Brown. Music Directed by Colin Keating. Choreographed by Shannon Tompkins.

Monday, February 5, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Jazz at Timber Banks: Mary Nickson
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation

Price: No cover
Persimmons
3536 Timber Banks Pkwy., Baldwinsville

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Sana Musasama: Returning to Ourselves
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Throughout her career, Queens-based artist Sana Musasama has drawn inspiration from travel and research into global cultures. "Returning to Ourselves" centers around a series of dolls that Musasama produced that mirror African-American topsy-turvy dolls containing a white doll whose skirt can be flipped up to transform it into a Black doll.

Musasama uses this formal structure to juxtapose different figures drawn from the global Black diaspora. "Returning to Ourselves" is rounded out by a series of ceramic houses Musasama began early in her career but returned to during the pandemic to combat looming depression.

Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Nancy Cantor Warehouse
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

"Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience" features works from local African American artists as well as the Syracuse University Art Museum and Light Work collections.

"Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience" offers a holistic and diverse portrayal of the African American experience, featuring influential African American artists who have played a pivotal role in introducing vibrant colors and unique outlooks to the city of Syracuse's artistic landscape. The works on display transcend mere aesthetics; they serve as a reflection of the African American journey, allowing all members of the Syracuse community to engage with and appreciate this rich and complex history. Topics such as identity, racial discrimination, fashion, and heritage are intertwined through a range of objects, from 1950s fashion to black and white documentary photography to contemporary art.

The exhibition is curated by Trinity Lowe G'24, a graduate museum studies student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts' School of Design, and features works from London Ladd, Cherilyn Beckles, David MacDonald, Jack White, Cjala Surratt, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Mahtab Hussain: Muslims in America: Syracuse Edition
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

British photographer Mahtab Hussain is creating a major new body of work about the Muslim experience in America. In October, ArtRage hosted Hussain for a two-week residency to photograph Syracuse's Muslim community; the resulting work will be shared in this exhibition. The work created in Syracuse will join his work from New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities yet to be visited, and will be published as an artist book and a touring museum exhibition in 2026.

Hussain uses photography to explore the important relationship between identity, heritage, and displacement. His themes develop through long-term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism. His work has been widely exhibited in the UK and North America and is in many collections including the Brooklyn Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Artist Talk with Mahtab Hussain
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Join us for a conversation with Mahtab Hussain, the artist behind our current exhibition, "Muslims in America: Syracuse Edition."

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!

Thursday, February 8, 2024

The Beauty of Birds: Photos by Meg Schader
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

The exhibit comprises 25 photographs of birds of Central New York in their natural habitats.

Two Views
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Wayne Daniels: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes
Tad Retz: Oil paintings of CNY landscapes and Maine seascapes
John Volcko: Hand-turned wooden vessels
Karen Convertino: Enamel jewelry

Read a review!

Unveiled Echoes: Works by Jalen Law
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

This visionary exhibition made up of 22 artworks harmonizes traditional art, digital innovation, and augmented reality (AR) to resurrect the forgotten narratives of Buffalo and the Erie Canal.

Sophia Chai: Character Space
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

In 1987, Chai immigrated to New York City from South Korea as a teenager without knowing English. Looking back, she has described that experience as feeling untethered to any internal compass that she could use to navigate her place in a new country with a new language. She visually explains these experiences to us by reinterpreting the Korean language's characters in photographs that enable us to see the contradictions of visual and verbal communication. Her images rest in the space between intellect and intuition. Chai's curiosity about the interior space of her tool — the large format camera, comparable to the interior space of a mouth — leads to the idea of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small opening to the world.

2024 BFA Art Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents the 2024 BFA Art Photography Annual of photographs by seniors from the Art Photography program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The exhibiting artists are Keming Chen, Madison Chloe, Zhiyu Feng, Siya Hu, Megan Ivy, Megan Jonas, Yu-Hsia Liu, Tyber Longacre, Chika Winston Ma, Clara Neville, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Avery Wild, Suhao Yang, and Joe Zhao.

To Understand & To Be Understood: Abstractions by Asian Diasporic Artists
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Curated by graduate students in art history, this exhibition foregrounds abstract art created between 1960 and 1980 by Asian American and Asian diasporic artist living in the United States. These artists, each in their own way, sought a type of universal language and expression through their art, which helped them to understand the world around them and which they hoped would be understood by diverse audiences.

Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"Assembly" features artworks made by Syracuse University faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the Museum's collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Art Wall Project: Nona Faustine, My Country
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Art Wall Project features photographs and silk-screen prints made by Nona Faustine, a Brooklyn-based photographer. Faustine will consider the legacy of monuments in the United States and explore how, as she has described, "history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And who gets celebrated."

The Syracuse University Art Museum's new Art Wall initiative is dedicated to site-specific works by emerging and leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually.

Pick and Mix
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Spring 2023 marks the beginning of a massive project that will convert an area adjacent to the ceramics gallery, which previously held paintings and prints, into dedicated ceramics storage. To accomplish this, we will close a portion of the ceramics gallery to make room for all the sorting and organizing that is to come. More than 200 paintings will come out of storage and hang salon-style in the Everson's upstairs galleries for the exhibition, Off the Rack.

In the face of space limitations like these, most museums would offer you less art—but that is not the Everson way. Instead, we offer you "Pick & Mix," a cornucopia of five fabulous exhibitions under one banner. Pick & Mix highlights the vitality of the Museum's mission to gather works that document the ways that artists draw inspiration from their cultures, as well as the ways that artists give back. Ceramics are an ideal lens to examine the gender roles, politics, and material culture of any given moment.

The Turner's Prize: Art Pottery from the Bill and Dorothy Paul Collection
As the keeper of potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau's legacy, the Everson has a heavy investment in American Art Pottery of the early and mid-20th century. The Turner's Prize highlights the extraordinary collection of Athens, Georgia-based Bill Paul. Instead of following mainstream collectors and market trends, Paul and his late wife Dorothy spent decades gathering rare and exotic works from the Art Pottery era that highlight hand-turned forms and experimental glazes.

Holding Space, Holding Pattern: Radical Decoration Strikes Back
Holding Space, Holding Pattern springs from a moment in the 1970s when pattern became a political and cultural weapon in the hands of feminist artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro. The Pattern and Decoration movement kicked open the doors for women to move past the Japanese-inspired stonewares and muscular abstract sculptures that dominated ceramics throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Natural Synthesis: African Stoneware from the Ramage Collection
Natural Synthesis tells the story of a group of talented Nigerian potters who apprenticed at a colonial British pottery school led by Michael Cardew. Potters like Danlami Aliyu and Ladi Kwali blended British forms and firing techniques with motifs and functional elements from their own aesthetic heritage, then opened their own studios and handed down their legacy to their own students.

Feelies
Over a career that spanned more than seven decades, Arizona-based potter Rose Cabat perfected the Feelie, a matte-glazed pottery form that begs to be held and touched. Feelies brings together more than 100 of Cabat's pots in a show-stopping array highlighting her mastery of glaze and form.

Cosmic Pipes: Pipes from the Clayton and Betty Bailey Collection
The Everson's recently acquired collection of Cosmic Pipes from the late 1960s joins other clay pipes from Indigenous and European cultures in the permanent collection. Ceramist Clayton Bailey created these pipes along with friends Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, and Maija Peeples-Bright in 1969. Legend has it that Bailey's wife, Betty, an artist in her own right, encouraged the group to make what she called "paranoid pipes" in the form of everyday objects like ice cream cones and flowers to disguise their purpose and blend into their surroundings.

Off the Rack
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Off the Rack" is the happy by-product of a major renovation of the Everson's on-site art storage.

As hundreds of paintings and framed works are displaced from their racks while renovations take place, the public has an unprecedented opportunity to view objects that have been in deep storage for years, never-before-seen recent acquisitions, and some perennial favorites — all hung together salon-style in our exhibition galleries.

This smorgasbord of paintings and works on paper showcases the breadth and depth of the Museum's collections and provides a glimpse into the world of collections management and care.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Based in Skaneateles, David Edward Johnson creates mixed media assemblages that address belief systems, the birth and death of the American Dream, and the effects of loss at a personal level. No Roses in December features a series of works in which Johnson explores his father's diagnosis of and descent into dementia. Johnson pairs his own photographs of bleak West Texas vistas and abandoned adobe dwellings with abstract mixed media painting, vintage papers, found objects, and other ephemera as a way to evoke fragmented shards of memory that mimic his father's state of mind. The series title references a poem by Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy that was popularized in a speech about courage by Peter Pan author JM Barrie: "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Without memories, we have no blooms in the chill of the December of life.

David Edward Johnson: No Roses in December is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists.

Sana Musasama: Returning to Ourselves
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Throughout her career, Queens-based artist Sana Musasama has drawn inspiration from travel and research into global cultures. "Returning to Ourselves" centers around a series of dolls that Musasama produced that mirror African-American topsy-turvy dolls containing a white doll whose skirt can be flipped up to transform it into a Black doll.

Musasama uses this formal structure to juxtapose different figures drawn from the global Black diaspora. "Returning to Ourselves" is rounded out by a series of ceramic houses Musasama began early in her career but returned to during the pandemic to combat looming depression.

Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Nancy Cantor Warehouse
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

"Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience" features works from local African American artists as well as the Syracuse University Art Museum and Light Work collections.

"Black Excellence: Celebration of Resilience" offers a holistic and diverse portrayal of the African American experience, featuring influential African American artists who have played a pivotal role in introducing vibrant colors and unique outlooks to the city of Syracuse's artistic landscape. The works on display transcend mere aesthetics; they serve as a reflection of the African American journey, allowing all members of the Syracuse community to engage with and appreciate this rich and complex history. Topics such as identity, racial discrimination, fashion, and heritage are intertwined through a range of objects, from 1950s fashion to black and white documentary photography to contemporary art.

The exhibition is curated by Trinity Lowe G'24, a graduate museum studies student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts' School of Design, and features works from London Ladd, Cherilyn Beckles, David MacDonald, Jack White, Cjala Surratt, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Mahtab Hussain: Muslims in America: Syracuse Edition
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

British photographer Mahtab Hussain is creating a major new body of work about the Muslim experience in America. In October, ArtRage hosted Hussain for a two-week residency to photograph Syracuse's Muslim community; the resulting work will be shared in this exhibition. The work created in Syracuse will join his work from New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities yet to be visited, and will be published as an artist book and a touring museum exhibition in 2026.

Hussain uses photography to explore the important relationship between identity, heritage, and displacement. His themes develop through long-term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism. His work has been widely exhibited in the UK and North America and is in many collections including the Brooklyn Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Comedy Night featuring Erin Harkes
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

On the heels of a successful YouTube special and album release entitled 'Uncle Ernie', Erin Harkes brings her dry, wry, sarcastic, and self-deprecating humor to the 443.

Theo Von: Return of the Rat
The Oncenter

War Memorial at Oncenter
800 S. State St., Syracuse

Death Takes a Cruise
Acme Mystery Company

Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Pack your costume, grab your party hat, and step aboard our venerable riverboat, The Mississippi Mistress, as we prepare to set sail down the "Big Muddy" for New Orleans and Mardi Gras! Woooo-hooo! The mighty Captain "Crawdaddy" Cretin will help you navigate the shoals, sand bars, (and wet bars), while Scooter, the Porter, and your Cruise Director, Lucy Belle Juniper, see to your comfort and entertainment. Watch out for the other passengers (they look pretty suspicious). Someone might not make it to the "Big Easy" alive.

Clyde's
Syracuse Stage
Chip Miller, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage comes this delicious new "dramedy" that has it all — wit, heart, snappy dialogue, and big surprises. Creating the perfect sandwich is the quest of the formerly incarcerated staff at Clyde's truck stop. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, Clyde's serves up a masterful play that reminds us, sometimes a hero is more than just a sandwich!