The Syracuse University Art Museum kicks off its fall season on Aug. 26 with four new exhibitions that reflect the museum’s mission to foster diverse and inclusive perspectives and unite students across disciplines with the local and global community. From exploring abstract printmaking, to the lived experiences of diasporic communities, to the relationship between humans and the environment, this season’s programming invites the campus and Syracuse communities to engage meaningfully with art and its broader contexts.
In the Joe and Emily Lowe Galleries, “What If I Try This?” examines the printmaking career of celebrated abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler. Curated by Melissa Yuen, the exhibition grew from a 2023 gift of 11 prints and one set of process proofs from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative and explores how Frankenthaler, in collaboration with seven print studios, pushed the boundaries of printmaking.
Featuring loans from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation (New York), the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation (Portland, Oregon), the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (Rochester, New York), Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey) and Munson Museum of Art (Utica, N.Y.), the show considers the collaborative and technical nature of printmaking and emphasizes that prints are not simply ink on paper, but the outcome of experimentation and technological innovation.
“I am delighted to celebrate and share the Frankenthaler Foundation’s generous gift to Syracuse University with our audiences,” says curator Melissa Yuen. “At the same time, through the different partnerships the artist sustained throughout her five-decade-long printmaking career we are able to explore the vibrant printmaking ecosystem that continues to flourish today. The daring experiments Frankenthaler and her collaborators realized remind us that invention requires risk, and that the creative process is rarely linear.”
An opening reception on Thursday, Sept. 11, will feature a keynote talk by Alexander Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thomas Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. A part of Syracuse Symposium’s yearlong series focusing on the theme of “Creativity,” presented by the Syracuse University Humanities Center, Nemerov’s talk will explore Frankenthaler’s Syracuse connection by way of Syracuse University alum and famed 20th-century art critic Clement Greenberg ’30. The talk begins at 4:30 p.m. at 500 Hall of Languages with a reception to follow at the Art Museum in the Shaffer Art Building.
Helen Frankenthaler, the celebrated 20th-century abstract artist, pushed the boundaries of printmaking in collaboration with print workshops around the world, including Crown Point Press in San Francisco where she collaborated with Kathan Brown on this work, “Nepenthe. “
“A Sense of Arrival” brings together scholarship and artistic practice in a multimedia installation by Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition and chair of the Humanities Council, both in the College of Arts and Sciences. Browne’s exhibition combines photographs, sculpture and new writings that reflect a decades-long meditation on Caribbean blackness, being and rhetorical expression.
A public reading and conversation with Browne will be held later in the fall, offering a unique opportunity to engage with the artist-scholar’s evolving work.
This self-portrait of Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the College of Arts and Sciences, is one of a series on view this fall as part of a series taken in 2020.
A new permanent collection exhibition in the Morton and Luise Kaish Gallery and Collection Galleries, “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art” examines the relationship between people and their environments across time and space. The exhibition draws from the museum’s collection of nearly 45,000 works and includes works ranging from ancient to contemporary.
Organized around themes such as landscape, the home, places of gathering and the human figure, “Human/Environment” asks viewers to consider how physical, cultural and material environments shape artistic expression—and vice versa.
This exhibition will be on view for the next four academic years, and the museum hopes it will serve as an anchor for broader conversations about humanity and our place in the world.
On display as part of “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art,” [Ishtar] is one of the oldest items in the Art Museum’s collection.
2025-26 Art Wall artist Bhen Alan has constructed a monumental handwoven banig (like the one pictured here) from plant fibers, strips of plastic and deconstructed paintings he previously made of his family members.
Artist, dancer and educator Bhen Alan brings his lived experience as a Filipino immigrant in Canada and the United States to a large-scale, site-specific installation in the museum’s Art Wall Project. Alan has constructed a monumental banig, a traditional Filipino handwoven textile created from plant fibers, strips of plastic and paintings he previously made of his family members.
“I want [museum visitors] to understand the experience of immigrant people … especially with everything that is happening right now in this political climate,” artist Bhen Alan says. “This work really is a labor of love, and I hope that whoever spends time with the work or whoever sees the work, even in a brief moment, I hope they find love and care for one another and for themselves.”
Now in its fifth iteration, the Art Wall Project spotlights contemporary artists whose work inspires interdisciplinary conversations within the campus community. The project is generously supported by the Wege Foundation.
The Syracuse University Art Museum’s fall season presents a range of exhibitions grounded in its diverse collection that explores art and ecology, personal family narratives and pioneering printmaking. Together, they demonstrate art’s ability to spark conversation, bring together disciplines and help us better understand our world and each other.
For more information on exhibitions, events and museum hours, visit museum.syr.edu.
