The Syracuse University Art Museum will open its fall 2025 season on August 26 with four new exhibitions that highlight a range of artistic practices and perspectives. The museum aims to connect students from various disciplines with both the campus and local communities through these exhibitions.
One of the main shows, “What If I Try This?,” focuses on the printmaking career of Helen Frankenthaler, a well-known abstract artist. Curated by Melissa Yuen, this exhibition was developed after a 2023 gift from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. The show features works loaned from several institutions including the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation in Portland, Memorial Art Gallery at University of Rochester, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, and Munson Museum of Art in Utica. It explores how Frankenthaler collaborated with seven print studios to advance printmaking techniques.
“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 for this exhibition is scheduled for September 11 and will include a keynote talk by Alexander Nemerov from Stanford University. His presentation is part of Syracuse Symposium’s yearlong series on “Creativity,” organized by the Syracuse University Humanities Center. Nemerov will discuss Frankenthaler’s connection to Syracuse through art critic Clement Greenberg ’30.
Another exhibition titled “A Sense of Arrival” presents multimedia work by Kevin Adonis Browne, professor in Writing Studies at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Browne combines photography, sculpture, and writing reflecting on Caribbean blackness and rhetorical expression. A public reading with Browne will be held later in the semester.
“Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art” is a new permanent collection show in Morton and Luise Kaish Gallery examining how people interact with their environments over time using pieces from nearly 45,000 works owned by the museum. Themes include landscape, home life, gathering places, and depictions of people. This exhibit will remain up for four academic years as an anchor for discussions about humanity’s place in its surroundings.
The fifth iteration of the Art Wall Project features Bhen Alan’s installation “Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?” Alan—a Filipino immigrant—has created a large handwoven banig using plant fibers mixed with plastic strips and deconstructed paintings depicting 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.”
The Wege Foundation supports this project which highlights contemporary artists whose work fosters interdisciplinary dialogue within campus life.
For more information about current exhibitions or visiting hours at Syracuse University Art Museum visit https://museum.syr.edu/.
