New Voices, New Directions
This year marked two of our most ambitious artist commissions to date. Ronny Quevedo’s and Sara Magenheimer’s solo exhibitions took on the museum’s signature architecture in bold new ways, providing nuanced insights into language, migration, unseen labor, luxury, and consumption, asking us to rethink how we see the world and navigate the spaces that surround us.
Join us in reflecting on a year in which we strove to develop new content in collaboration with the artists we presented and our campus partners across the disciplines. Through creative dialogues with artists, students, faculty, and community, we continue to affirm the importance of what it means to be an academic museum situated in a large public research university. We hope this year’s offerings will continue to resonate in the year ahead.
Come visit us often in 2023, see our new exhibitions, join us for an educational program or workshop, and say hello to our interns and student staff busily engaged in a host of projects in the main galleries, the Collections Study Space, and our new Collections Study Gallery. We are excited to share what we do best as we continue to champion new artistic voices and explore new directions in contemporary art—none of which would be possible without your continued support and generosity!
The museum team trusted me with the largest exhibition I have made to date in both scale and scope. They worked incredibly hard to execute my vision down to the smallest detail and I am endlessly grateful for their support!
—Sara Magenheimer, commissioned exhibiting artist in Sara Magenheimer: Dailies
January 25 – April 2, 2022
Multi-media artist Ronny Quevedo occupied the arched walls of the museum’s main galleries in a newly commissioned work, fuera de lugar (2021), comprised of diagrammatic vinyl lines that recalled both dress patterns and gymnasium floors. This work was inspired by his mother’s and father’s respective careers—a seamstress and a professional soccer player. Throughout this exhibition, which included artwork from 2012 to the present, Quevedo’s own family’s emigration from Ecuador to New York served as a catalyst for work reflecting on socio-political issues of migration, Indigenous architecture, and communal spaces.
Support for the University Art Museum Spring 2022 exhibitions was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the University Auxiliary Services at Albany, the Robin Kanson Lewis ’70 Exhibition Endowment Fund, and the Jack and Gertrude Horan Memorial Endowment Fund for Student Outreach.
Ronny Quevedo, fuera de lugar, 2021, vinyl, dimensions variable; Ode to Liga Deportiva Guayaquil de Indoor Futbol (Working Class Epistemology), 2019, enamel and wooden planks on panels, 96 x 144 inches; Ulama, Ule, Olé, 2012, milk crates, zip ties, and shoelaces, dimensions variable; Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York
It was such an honor to discuss Ronny Quevedo's art and collectively think of how the themes central to his artistic production—aesthetics, work, and play—reflect the ordinary lives of Latinx people in New York. Exhibits like these are key to making our students of color, and especially working class and Latinx students, feel they belong in all of the university's spaces.
—Johana Londoño, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies
January 25 – April 2, 2022
Rodrigo Valenzuela: Video Works, presented in the Nancy Hyatt Liddle Gallery, featured two video works by multi-disciplinary artist Rodrigo Valenzuela. A former day laborer in landscape, construction, and other sectors, Valenzuela frequently draws an analogy between soccer goalkeepers and his former job on an overnight cleaning crew in office buildings. In the two videos Prole (2015) and El Sísifo (2015), sports provide a backdrop for investigating issues of race, labor, solidarity, and workers’ agency.
Support for the University Art Museum Spring 2022 exhibitions was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the University Auxiliary Services at Albany, the Robin Kanson Lewis ’70 Exhibition Endowment Fund, and the Jack and Gertrude Horan Memorial Endowment Fund for Student Outreach.
Rodrigo Valenzuela, El Sísifo (still), 2015, video, 11:02; color, sound, courtesy of the artist
January 25 – May 15, 2022
Photographs from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections by Photorealist painter Audrey Flack and recent 3D printed sculptures by artist Gracelee Lawrence shared unexpected commonalities in the Collections Study Gallery. Using an intricate three-layer (cyan, magenta, yellow) dye-transfer process, Flack’s photographs explore color saturation and also function as sources for her groundbreaking vanitas still lifes from the 1970s and early 1980s. Printed in multi-colored, reflective filaments, Lawrence’s objects—which begin as 3D scans of bodies and fruit—exist in a transfigurative space between physical and digital reality. Paired together, Flack’s and Lawrence’s works provided meditations on time and subjectivity, mechanical and digital reproduction, and capitalist consumption in our contemporary world.
Support for the University Art Museum Spring 2022 exhibitions was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the University Auxiliary Services at Albany, the Robin Kanson Lewis ’70 Exhibition Endowment Fund, and the Jack and Gertrude Horan Memorial Endowment Fund for Student Outreach.
Fruit Soup: Contemporary Vanitas by Audrey Flack and Gracelee Lawrence (installation view)
April 26 – May 15, 2022
The 2022 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition featured work produced by candidates for the University at Albany Department of Art and Art History’s two-year, 60 credit hour program of intensive training and study in traditional and contemporary fine art practices.
Sara Alonge, Alicia Barton, Juliana Haliti, Maddie Hinrichs, Tara Holmes, Minling Lin, H.C. Tiffany Lo, Jeanna Mead, and Dani Ruf
Supported by the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Ann C. Mataraso Endowment Fund in honor of Professor Emeritus Mark Greenwold.
2022 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition (installation view)
August 8 – December 5, 2022
“This time of social upheaval has re-invigorated language as it performs publicly, in posters and protest signs, tweets, captions, chyrons and political speeches,” writes artist, poet, and filmmaker Sara Magenheimer. Magenheimer sublimates her own poetic language into the work in her commissioned solo exhibition Dailies. Turbulent distortions of vinyl texts spanning the museum walls, still and animated text in her video works, and intimately scaled wire and found object sculptures embody the major themes of the exhibition—rest, absence, motion, stillness. Ever sensitive to architecture and the body, Magenheimer has created a contemplative environment inviting viewers to move with and through language and subtly reflect on power, politics, and poetics.
Support for the University Art Museum Fall 2022 exhibitions and programs was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the University at Albany Alumni Association, the University Auxiliary Services at Albany, and the Robin Kanson Lewis ’70 Exhibition Endowment Fund.
Sara Magenheimer, Some things you can ask me (still), 2022, HD video, 21:45 minutes; color, no sound, courtesy of the artist
August 8 – December 5, 2022
16 large-scale screenprints by Chryssa (1933-2013) from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections, on view in the Collections Study Gallery, celebrate the letterforms and neon lights of Times Square. Emerging from the Coenties Slip group in Lower Manhattan in the 1950-1960s, alongside Agnes Martin and Ellsworth Kelly, Chryssa drew inspiration from her immediate urban environment, as well as ancient Cycladic sculpture from her native Greece, and became a forerunner in the use of neon in the fine arts. These 1978 screenprints—including tangled patterns of saturated red and blue and nested lines in unexpectedly meditative formations—demonstrate Chryssa’s life-long investigation of text as image.
Support for the University Art Museum Fall 2022 exhibitions and programs was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the University at Albany Alumni Association, the University Auxiliary Services at Albany, and the Robin Kanson Lewis ’70 Exhibition Endowment Fund.
As an M.F.A. candidate working towards my thesis exhibition, I had the pleasure of working with the museum staff in the UAM’s incredible and unique space. The entire experience from initial meetings and scheduling, to installation, marketing and beyond, allowed grads to get a glimpse into what it’s like to work with an entire museum team as working artists, not just as students.
—Juliana Haliti, M.F.A. ’22
The museum welcomed back the First Year Experience seminar Why Museums? which examines how museums have transformed and continue to transform our interpretation and construction of contemporary culture. Students interacted with guest artists, museum professionals, current students, and other campus professionals to gain first-hand knowledge about how museums have become active social spaces that engage visitors in critical conversations about vital issues affecting us all. Throughout the course, students kept an ongoing visual journal and inserted their own voice and perspective in the form of exhibition labels surrounding artwork on view at the museum.
Our intern and work-study programs offer students first-hand experience in the museum field including research, art handling, condition reporting, database entry, assistance with program planning, development of student outreach fliers, as well as administrative and technical support. Our recent Collections interns have graduated and gone on to promising careers in the museum and library fields: Iszzy Hernandez ’22 is now the Assistant to the Deputy Director at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Lily Hopkins ’20, ’21 is employed at the Schaffer Law Library, Albany Law School, Albany, New York; and John Epp ’20 is a Curator at the USS Slater (DE-766), Albany, New York. In addition, Graduate Assistant Jackie Mendez ’19 is now the Education Coordinator at One River School, Clark, New Jersey.
The museum hosted numerous exhibition-based interactive class visits this year, including Culture and Power in the Americas; Narrative Journalism; Photography and Related Media; Contemporary Immigration; Beginning Painting; Topics in Art History: Latin American and LatinX Art; Writing and Critical Inquiry; Three-Dimensional Design; Futbol in Latin America: The Politics; Intermediate Drawing; and Research Seminar in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; among others.
Students from Siena College gather to discuss the exhibition Ronny Quevedo: offside.
It’s surreal to learn about artists in lectures and then see the physical work in front of you. The UAM Collections Study Space allows for this experience on an extremely personal level.
—Jesse Alsdorf, Studio Art, Minor in Art History ’22, Collections Intern
The museum team has been hard at work developing the upcoming Spring 2023 Collections-based exhibition Near & Far: Six Photography Portfolios from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections. Our curatorial team has spent the past few months reviewing the extensive photography-based works in our Collections, making connections and constructing themes among artists. The museum team has been working to mat and frame the artworks, culminating in an exhibition that will highlight an intimate selection of photographs from our holdings.
A behind-the-scenes look at the Collections Study Space with our interns and Collections team was featured in UAlbany Magazine’s first-ever Fine Arts Issue. In addition, alumni museum directors Ian Berry ’95 (The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College) and Corinna Ripps Schaming ’84 (University Art Museum, University at Albany) discussed questions facing academic art museums today.
Artist Tanja Hollander donated a selection of photographs from Ephemera Project, 2020-21, which were featured in Well/Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair(2021).
Our Spring exhibitions served as the starting point for conversations amongst artists, students, faculty, and the community.
Exhibiting artists Ronny Quevedo and Rodrigo Valenzuela joined in conversation about their work with art historian and critic Robert R. Shane. Quevedo returned with Johana Londoño, UAlbany Associate Professor, Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies, to delve into topics of art and socio-political issues of migration, Indigenous architecture, and communal spaces.
Exhibiting artist Gracelee Lawrence presented a talk on her work and shared her explorations of the mental space between digital and physical reality.
Led by Sydney Pennington ’23, UAM Social Media and Student Outreach Intern, and Jaci Yong ’24, Intercultural Specialist for Asian Heritage, Multicultural Resource Center, UAlbany students gathered to discuss the Spring 2022 exhibitions and explored what it means to live authentically.
This Fall we hosted exhibition walkthroughs with exhibiting artist Sara Magenheimer and with curators Corinna Ripps Schaming and Robert R. Shane.
We also hosted lively receptions, during which students, exhibiting artists, alumni, and community members gathered, reconnected, and formed new connections.
Artists Ronny Quevedo and Rodrigo Valenzuela discuss their art practices with art historian and critic Robert R. Shane.
Students enrolled in the First Year Experience seminar Why Museums? discuss their thoughts on Sara Magenheimer: Dailies.
The University Art Museum has been a crucial escape coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, with engaging events and installations that have been a most welcome creative outlet. Kris Seto’s movement workshops were the perfect way to bring life back onto campus and one of my favorite things to photograph in 2021. I’m always excited to see the new ways the museum transforms itself.
—Patrick Dodson, Photographer, Office of Communications and Marketing
January 23 – April 5, 2023
Photographers Tom Baril, Andreas Feininger, Larry Fink, Mary Ellen Mark, Edward Steichen, and Andy Warhol from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections offer nuanced views of social class, power, desire, and beauty. Mark’s intimate American portraits make strangers feel familiar. Fink’s candid shots of socialites oscillate between satire and seduction. Warhol’s close-up Polaroids of celebrities and photos of empty New York City streets contrast with Feininger’s towering telephoto images of New York from a distance. And Steichen’s pictorialist sensitivity continues to resonate in Baril’s tactile botanical studies and cityscapes.
January 23 – April 5, 2023
This presentation marks the twentieth anniversary of the inception of Carrie Mae Weem’s feature-length video Coming Up for Air. The video’s poignant vignettes include appropriated early 20th century archival and cinema footage interwoven with staged scenes of family quarrels and reconciliation, poetic reflections on parental loss, and socially pointed moments examining present and historical race and gender relations. With stylistic echoes of Maya Deren’s and Federico Fellini’s films, this early foray into video—a medium which is now a mainstay within Weems’s oeuvre—was in the artist’s words a “way of extending the vocabulary” of the photographic work for which she was already renown.
April 27 – May 14, 2023
The annual exhibition features work produced by candidates for the University at Albany Art and Art History Department’s two-year, 60 credit hour program of intensive training and study in traditional and contemporary fine art practices.
2022 M.F.A. Thesis Candidate Juliana Haliti installing their artwork with UAM staff.
August – December 2023
Operating at the intersection of craft, technology, and contemporary art, Mark Barrow and Sarah Parke explore visual systems with their collaborative weaving practice. In their patterns—and the images that emerge from them—viewers find references to tri-color computer screens, shapes reminiscent of smartphone finger swipes, and even echoes of prehistoric art. This first solo museum exhibition for the artist duo will showcase Barrow Parke’s textiles and paintings, as well as wallpapers that extend their patterns throughout the space.
August – December 2023
Handmade books published by small presses from Cuba, Mexico, and several South American countries, including Argentina and Peru, become documents of protest, tools for forging cultural pride, and records of their creators’ resourcefulness. Made with innovative papermaking processes, they at times contain unexpected materials, including cardboard, jute, seeds, wax, fabric, and found objects. This exhibition is presented in partnership with the University at Albany M.E. Grenander Special Collections and Archives, which has been collecting these books since 2005; the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; and the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies.
Especias, 2015, artisan book designed by Emiliano Álvarez and AnaÏs Abreu D'Argence, published by La Dïéresis, Mexico City, six poems in bottles: Cardamomo by Anais Abreu; Pimienta by Ana Franco; Azafrán by Jorge Esquinca; Tomillo by Luis Tellez-Tejeda; Comino by Emiliano Álvarez; Sal by Victor Cabrera. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany
Working with the UAlbany museum team is a pleasure! They are generous collaborators and excellent team players. It is exciting working with such an energetic and talented team in putting together an exhibition that will connect with our academic community in new and creative ways.
—Jesús Alonso-Regalado, Subject Librarian for History, Latin American Studies, and Romance Languages
When you make a gift to the University Art Museum, you ensure the fiscal health of our organization and allow us to continue our work championing artists, students, and the role of academic museums in public higher education.
Make a gift via The University at Albany Foundation’s secure website.
Contributions can also be mailed to The University at Albany Foundation, PO Box 761, Albany, NY 12201. Checks may be made payable to The University at Albany Foundation with “University Art Museum” noted in the memo line.
For more information about opportunities to support the University Art Museum, please call Michael Boots at 518-225-1229 or email MBoots@albany.edu.
Gifts of any size make a difference. Thank you so much for your support!
Artists Ronny Quevedo, Gracelee Lawrence, and Rodrigo Valenzuela.
Artists Ronny Quevedo, Gracelee Lawrence, and Rodrigo Valenzuela.
The following donors have contributed to the University Art Museum from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. These gifts include annual contributions, bequest intentions, and gifts-in-kind.
Edward P. Waterbury Society
($25,000 to $99,999)
Brian T. Barlow ’18
Michael A. Boots
Fountain Society
($5,000 to $9,999)
John P. Lowe, Jr. ’73
Matthew H. Mataraso, Esq.
Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation
John F. Orser ’55
Ellen Wasserman
Podium Society
($2,500-$4,999)
Charles A. Forma, Esq. ’73
Jennifer Troiano
John P. Troiano ’83
UAlbany Alumni Association
1844 Society
($1,000-$2,499)
Community Foundation for the Capital Region
Charles M. Liddle, III
Minerva Club
($500-$999)
**Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund
Michael J. Marston
Richard Parritz
Janet Riker
Carillon Club
($250-$499)
Laura J. Backus ’92
Timothy P. Backus ’89
Sarah R. Cohen, Ph.D.
*Marco A. DeThomasis
William B. Hedberg, Ph.D. ’90
Cathy Hedberg
Constance H. Saddlemire ’78
Thomas P. Saddlemire
Albany Club
($100-$249)
Ashley M. DelSignore
Carlsbury W. Gonzalez ’79
Timothy S. Kline ’98
*John J. Libera, Ph.D. ’73
Barry C. Ross ’71
Corinna Ripps Schaming ’81, ’84
Richard W. Southwick ’75
Mary J. Wyatt-Ross
Contributors Club
(under $100)
Darcie Abbatiello ’02
Laura Barron
Andria L. Bentley ’04
Valerie A. DiRocco-Ruskin ’95
Radames J. Figueroa
Deborah L. Forand
Melissa N. Fry ’12
Lesley Heller
Tanja A. Hollander
Carolyn D. Hopkins ’17
Judith A. Hugentobler ’96
Naomi R. Lewis ’99
Cheung Y. Li ’01
Heather M. Miller ’06
Sheryl Quinn
John P. Reidy ’17
Stephen Ruskin
Stuart S. Seidel ’12
Peter A. Silverberg ’81
Gerald A. Thompson, Ed.D. ’81
Patricia Alsid Thompson ’85
*Individuals whose employers generously matched their gifts
**Employers who have generously matched gifts of their employees
The University Art Museum gratefully acknowledges the continuing support of the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and The University at Albany Foundation.
It has been a point of pride to see the University Art Museum evolve from a regional gallery to become a museum of national scope in the past two decades. Their extraordinary exhibitions and programs have added immeasurably to the education of our students and created a dynamic energy for the campus and larger community. As a faculty member for thirty-seven years, I am grateful to have worked collaboratively on numerous projects including producing graduate exhibitions, co-curating the memorable Mr. President show, participating as an artist in group exhibitions and taking part in panels and lectures. My time at UAlbany would have been much diminished without the impressive resources made possible through the efforts of the dedicated, forward-thinking museum staff. It has been a bright spot throughout my long career as a faculty in the studio arts.
—JoAnne Carson, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Art and Art History
Exhibiting artist Sara Magenheimer installing No Clock (You can't be late twice), 2017.
Exhibiting artist Sara Magenheimer installing No Clock (You can't be late twice), 2017.
Darcie Abbatiello
Registrar/Collections Manager
Berly Brown
Education and Public Engagement Coordinator
Gil Gentile
Exhibition and Publication Designer
Corinna Ripps Schaming
Director/Chief Curator
Robert R. Shane
Associate Curator
Christine Snyder
Office and Operations Manager
Jeffrey Wright-Sedam
Preparator/Facilities Manager
Jesse Alsdorf, Studio Art, ’22
Collections Intern, Department of Art and Art History
Robin du Plessis, M.F.A. ’23
Graduate Assistant, Department of Art and Art History
Eve Fedrick, Communications ’22
Work Study Student
Halima Koma, Sociology and Human Development ’26
Work Study Student
H.C. Tiffany Lo, M.F.A. ’22
Graduate Assistant, Department of Art and Art History
Cody Mills, Criminal Justice ’22
Work Study Student
Sydney Pennington, Computer Science ’23
Social Media and Student Outreach Intern
Aminata Sall, Communications ’24
Work Study Student
Nevaeh Slater, Public Health ’24
Work Study Student
Ashly Yanez, Political Science ’26
Work Study Student
Riveting and cozy the University Art Museum became my easel and muse. My poetry and intellect kissed by the unsung and sung stories of the artists and staff. My little poet heaven, my silent epiphany, the world is waiting.
—Eve Fedrick, Communications ’22, Work Study Student