Upstate Art Weekend
July 17 – 21, 2025
Upstate New York
The Untitled Magazine had the opportunity to explore Upstate Art Weekend 2025, a four-day celebration of contemporary art that brought together over 155 participants across the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and beyond. Now in its sixth year, the event has grown into a major summer fixture for artists, curators, and collectors seeking a deeper connection to the region’s cultural and ecological landscape. Spread across towns like Hudson, Beacon, Kingston, and more, this year’s presentations reflected the growing synergy between experimental art practices and the upstate environment, with a special emphasis on site-specificity, collaboration, and alternative modes of display.
Some of the most talked about highlights on view this year included 46 Gordon, a collaborative feminist performance-sculpture presented by The Campus in Hudson. Created by sculptor Nicole Cherubini and choreographer Julia K. Gleich, the work transformed a domestic interior into a meditative, durational performance space inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Across seventeen minutes, performers activated the sculptural installation through subtle gestures and inhabitation, inviting viewers to reconsider the aesthetics of labor, intimacy, and space-making. As a feminist intervention into both domestic and artistic spheres, 46 Gordon elegantly merged choreography, sculpture, and literature into a single immersive gesture.
At Upbringing, the Kingston venue serving as UAW’s headquarters, the group exhibition Presence gathered works by Zoë Buckman, Tamar Ettun, Nona Faustine, Qiana Mestrich, Cheryl Mukherji, Rebecca Reeve, and Keisha Scarville. The show approached ideas of memory, ancestry, and embodiment through photography, sculpture, and textile-based practices. Rather than making bold declarations, the works dealt in quieter gestures—an imprint of a hand, a maternal presence, the texture of loss. Installed throughout the domestic architecture of the space, Presence foregrounded themes of longing and remembrance, allowing personal and cultural histories to surface without spectacle.
At Dia Beacon, the institution joined the weekend with free access to its galleries—home to iconic works by Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, and Dan Flavin—alongside special public programming and tours. Dia Beacon also hosted a nostalgic moment with Caffè Panna offering free gelato for members, and public tours of Kishio Suga’s new installation and Imi Knoebel’s Play Sets, blending large-scale Minimalist legacies with the experimental themes of the weekend.
Another highlight of the weekend was The Rose at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. This exhibition brought together collage-based works by artists including Wangechi Mutu, Lorna Simpson, and Lee Bontecou, focusing on themes of femininity, resilience, and fragmented memory. The show reimagined the rose as both a symbol of beauty and a vessel of political commentary, weaving together archival materials, experimental photo processes, and layered narratives. The gallery’s intimate scale allowed each piece to resonate as a personal and tactile reflection on the intersections of gender and power.
Also on view at CPW was Sensual Empathy, a retrospective of Larry Fink’s photography that captured his signature ability to find intimacy and raw humanity in social moments. Fink’s iconic black-and-white images—spanning from political gatherings to private parties—served as a poignant counterpoint to The Rose, offering a glimpse of unfiltered human connection through the lens of a master documentarian.
We also checked out One Mile Gallery in Kingston, which presented a group exhibition of feminist mixed-media works that were both irreverent and unflinching. Highlights included whimsical crocheted female figures perched atop chrome mannequin hands, uncanny blue velvet gloves fused with seashells, and miniature paintings embedded in antique lockplates. These intimate, handmade pieces interrogated femininity, control, and the body with sharp humor and tactile power, nestled seamlessly within the gallery’s rustic stone architecture.
Other notable exhibits included Transmissions, a group show at Foreland Gallery in Catskill featuring artists such as Sahana Ramakrishnan and Hiba Schahbaz, who reimagine figuration through diasporic and mythological frameworks. At Elijah Wheat Showroom in Newburgh, Desert Blooms paired ceramicist Roxanne Jackson’s monstrous floral sculptures with Doreen Garner’s soft-tissue wall pieces, resulting in an installation that was at once sensual and uncanny.
The weekend also showcased the infrastructural growth of upstate arts institutions. Assembly in Monticello unveiled its newly renovated exhibition hall with “The Future is Land,“ a survey of agricultural-based artistic practices curated in collaboration with the nearby Black Dirt Farm Collective. Basilica Hudson’s multimedia programming included sound performances, video art, and a marketplace of local artist editions.
Throughout the event, what stood out most was not just the caliber of the work, but the way it unfolded in relation to its surroundings. Whether embedded in rolling hills, tucked into former factories, or housed within domestic-scale spaces, the exhibitions felt purposefully integrated with the rhythms of the landscape. In that sense, Upstate Art Weekend continues to differentiate itself from art fairs and biennials by emphasizing slowness, locality, and intimacy. It’s not just a weekend getaway for the art world, but a genuine invitation to reimagine how and where art can live.
PARTICIPATING GALLERIES
1053 GALLERY, 386 Taylor Road, 68 PRINCE ST. GALLERY, KINGSTON, ABRI MARS, Accord Market, ADS Warehouse, Akin Free Library, All One One All (AOOA) Farm, Alpana Bawa, Ann Street Gallery, AR at Weird Specialty, Army Of Frogs Studio, Art at Bull Farm, Art Fort, Art Omi, Art Sales & Research, Art@GoshenGreenFarm, ArtPort Kingston, Arts&Rec, OSMOS Station, Ashley Garrett & Brian Wood Studio, Assembly, Athens Cultural Center, Atlas Studios, BalletCollective, Bank Art Gallery, Bard MFA, BAU Gallery, BCMT GALLERY, Beattie Powers Place, Bill Arning Exhibitions, Bird Room, Borscht Belt Museum, Boscobel House and Gardens, Büro Koray Duman Architects, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Catskill Art Space, Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, Charlotte Woolf at Foxtrot Farm & Flowers, ChaShaMa North ( ChaNorth), Chatham Soccer at the Paper Mill, Color Wheels, Cornwall Chamber Public Art Program, CPW, CUT TEETH, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance (DVAA), Dia Art Foundation, Distortion Society, Ed. Varie, Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, Foreland, Friends of River Hook, Gallery 495, GARNER Arts Center, Garrison Art Center, Gatherwild Ranch, Glasshouse Project, Good Black Art, Good Naked Gallery, Hawk + Hive, Headstone Gallery, Hero’s Hill, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Howland Cultural Center, Hudson Hall, Hudson Hangar x Gray Nivas Collective at Whimsy Flowers Farm, Hudson Valley Seed Company, INNESS, Interlude Artist Residency, INTERVENTIONS 5, Jack Shainman Gallery, The School, Jack Shear Collection at the Ellsworth Kelly Studio, Jasper Richmus, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Kayrock Editions, KinoSaito, Kube Art Center – Ethan Cohen Gallery, Lexington Arts + Science, Ligenza Moore Gallery, Cold Spring, NY, Loose Parts, Lynn & Lorraine, Magazzino Italian Art Museum, Magenta art projects, Make Your Own Art, Manitoga, The Russel Wright Design Center, Marie’s at the Catskill Octagon House, Mary MacGill, Material Projects Space, Millbrook Arts & Open Studios, Mother-in-law’s hosting Field Projects and Elijah Wheat Showroom, N,A Project Space, NAMAI STUDIO, NOISE FOR NOW ,North River Electric House, OLANA, One Mile Gallery, Peep Space, Perry Lawson Fine Art, Pinkwater Gallery at Kingston Social, Private Public Gallery, PS21: Center for Contemporary Performance, PUF Community Printmaking Studio at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory and The Poughkeepsie Trolley Barn, RAVENWOOD, River Valley Arts Collective, Roost Arts Hudson Valley, RUTHANN, Say Collie, SEPTEMBER, Shadow Walls, Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, Sky High Farm, Sleepy Hollow Mermaid Festival, Soon is Now, Spencertown Academy Arts Center, Sqrypt Atelier: Inn Way Art-Coop, steven harvey fine art projects, Stony Kill Studios, Storm King Art Center, STRONGROOM, Studio Tashtego, Stuhl Werner Studio, Sunfair, T’ Space | Steven Myron Holl Foundation, The Barn on Berme, The Callicoon Depot, THE CAMPUS, The Capa Space, The Catskills Barn, The Church in Staatsburg, The Cronin Gallery, The Department of Things, The Dorsky Museum, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, The Gallery at Citiot, The Gallery at Yellow Studio, The Green Lodge, The Hudson Eye, The Lace Mill, The Lockwood Gallery, The Lovebugs, The Macedonia Institute, The Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Post Office, The Source, Thomas Cole National Historic Site, TRANSART, Tree At My Window Collective, UAP in collaboration with Elijah Wheat Showroom, Unison Arts ,upbringing, UTOPIA, VERSE Work,Shop, Wassaic Project, Weird Specialty Studio, Wild Minded, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Woodstock byrdcliffe guild, Woodstock School of Art
