My favorite thing to do in New York City is leave it. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, but there’s nothing wrong with a little break, especially to explore the beautiful exhibitions below. They’re just a short trip from the city — and just as the weather’s beginning to hint at warmth.
Many of these shows offer alternate visions, not just from the concrete crush of New York City but from our dimension entirely. See, for instance, Liz Nielsen’s abstract photographs at Connecticut’s Hartford Art School Galleries — she dubs them “interdimensional timelines.” Or Piero Manzoni’s entirely white and furry room, on view in a major exhibition at Magazzino in Cold Spring.
Also Upstate, three artists at Utopia in Kingston commune with the world beyond perception, offering a way out of the overwhelm that seems to be the defining feature of our time. Who knows? A trip to Beacon to sink into those serene paintings by Agnes Martin might be just what the soul needs.
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
Spirit in the Flesh
Utopia, 35 North Front Street, Kingston, New York
March 7–28
What are we to do in times of extreme overwhelm? Perhaps we try to embrace moments of beauty as they come. At Utopia, three artists — Courtney Puckett, Ben Pederson, and Saul Chernick — come together to show sculptures, paintings, and works on paper that are playful, curious, and joyful in their engagement with a world beyond perception, what they call the “Source.”
Interdimensional Timelines: Liz Nielsen
Hartford Art School Galleries, 200 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut
March 5–April 11
Liz Nielsen calls her photographic works “light paintings.” These records of carefully timed exposures yield lush terrains of blues, greens, and yellows, achieved through a process that requires her to work in the dark. Timed with her post as a distinguished chair in the University of Hartford’s Photography Department, her recent works feel like transportive postcards from another dimension.
Piero Manzoni: Total Space
Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, New York
Through April 13
Despite his brief life, postwar artist Piero Manzoni has been credited with altering the very definition of art through his satirical approach to the avant-garde. Accompanying several works from his famous Achromes (1957–58) series are two experiential rooms, conceptualized by the artist yet only realized posthumously, multiple displays of Manzoni’s writings, archival materials, and a replica of “Base Magica (Magical Base)” (1961), a simple plinth that invites visitors to become artworks themselves.
E.E. Kono: Conversant
Wassaic Project at Troutbeck, 515 Leedsville Road, Amenia, New York
Through April 19
E. E. Kono’s vibrant silverpoint and egg tempera paintings will transport you to whimsical realms where legend, art history, and the natural world coalesce. For this show, the artist was inspired by the natural and man-made landscape of Troutbeck, and in particular the enchanting clematis blossoms that climb its walled garden.
Lines of Influence: Artists Teaching Artists
Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Avenue, Huntington, New York
March 29–May 3
Amid an art world that still prizes the “lone genius” myth, this show reminds us of the power of mentors and teachers. Structured as a genealogical tree of students and educators, such as Elaine de Kooning and Josef Albers, Lines of Influence traces the collaboration and exchange at the heart of so many artists’ practices across history.
Modern Women/Modern Vision
Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, New York
Through May 10
This touring exhibition features works by over 50 trailblazing women working in documentary, modernist, contemporary, and experimental modes, to acknowledge their undersung role in shaping photography over the last century. Modern Women/Modern Vision juxtaposes influential artists like Sandy Skoglund, Carrie Mae Weems, and Barbara Krueger with photojournalists Marion Post Wolcott, Dorothea Lange, and members of the Photo League.
Uman: After all the things …
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Through May 10
Landscapes across Africa, Europe, and the United States that have influenced Somali-born artist Uman’s intuitive, richly hued, semi-abstract imagery. Her first solo institutional exhibition features paintings, drawings, sculptures, and immersive environments that welcome viewers into her sensory world. Here, light and color seem to merge distant landscapes into a singular space.
Read Qingyuan Deng’s review
Women’s Work: Organizing New York Independent Film & Video
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York
Through May 24
So much of the work that sustains our everyday lives — from keeping home to fighting for rights we now take for granted — is undervalued and, not coincidentally, often done by women. This exhibition seeks to recenter the frame, celebrating how women have organized labor through programming notes, community and student planning documents, and other objects and stories frequently overlooked in the art world.
Regeneration: Long Island’s History of Ecological Art and Care
Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, Long Island
Feb. 22–June 14
An intergenerational group of 11 artists addresses the interconnected issues of rising sea levels, pollution, and the destruction of natural habitats on the coast of Long Island, which has been host to thriving communities for more than 10 millennia. A highlight is a commission made by artist Sara Siestreem in collaboration with the Indigenous collective Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, combining a long-standing tradition of harvesting seaweed with abstract mark-making.
Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay
Princeton University Art Museum, 63 College Road West, Princeton, New Jersey
Through July 5
Late ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu is beloved for her “closed” clay vessels and sonic bodies, but another crucial component of her legacy lives on at Princeton, where she taught for nearly 30 years. Alongside musings from her former students, this show places her sculptures in conversation with work by her own mentors and peers, including Isamu Noguchi, Helen Frankenthaler, and Lenore Tawney.
For Which It Stands…
Fairfield University Art Museum, 200 Barlow Road, Fairfield, Connecticut
Through July 25
The American flag is a fraught symbol, perhaps now more than ever. This exhibition maps the flag’s layered history and the subversive ways artists have engaged with it to disrupt nationalistic narratives, with over 70 works on view by the likes of Faith Ringgold, Robert Rauschenberg, and, of course, Jasper Johns.
Rina Banerjee: Take me, take me, take me . . . to the Palace of love
Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St, New Haven, Connecticut
Through July 26
What makes a monument? Rina Banerjee’s diaphanous take on the Taj Mahal undermines everything often considered monumental: permanence, solidity, costly materials. It floats above other debris from colonialism’s wreckage, including an antique Bombay chair and a chandelier that combines found objects with everyday items — revealing imperialism as a hollow endeavor that still haunts.
Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood
Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Through July 31
This exhibition, organized with Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, celebrates the creative vision of the late New Jersey-born, Boston-raised artist. Crite spent his career chronicling scenes of African-American urban life through paintings, illustrations, and prints. His artworks convey stories and histories largely focused on his local community, with rich details and color that make his realist imagery come alive.
Frederic Church: Global Artist
Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, New York
May 17–Oct. 25
Nineteenth-century American landscape painter Frederic Church absorbed the sights and sounds from his travels around the world, and now, his historic home studio is putting the fruits of his peregrinations on display. A small group of drawings and studies in this show captures slices of his trips through South America, Europe, the Caribbean, and elsewhere.
Agnes Martin: Painting is not making paintings
Dia Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York
April 4–ongoing
Drawing largely from Dia’s own collection, this exhibition focuses on the pivotal period of the 1950s and ’60s, as Martin transitioned from loose abstraction to her celebrated graphite grid pieces. Accompanying these are several works made after 1974, after a several-year painting hiatus, including her late “black” paintings. Collectively, they chart her creative evolution and massive contributions to Minimalism.
