13 Art Destinations for Day Trips Near New York City This Summer

Upstate New York

Beatriz Cortez: The Volcano That Left
Until 13 November at Storm King Art Center, 1 Museum Road, New Windsor, New York

This new outdoor installation features three recent large-scale sculptures by El Salvador-born, Los Angeles-based artist Beatriz Cortez, a multidisciplinary maker best known for her sculptural reflections on the immigrant experience. The Volcano That Left, organised by Storm King associate curator Eric Booker and curatorial assistant Adela Goldsmith, takes on the simultaneous terror and freedom of contemporary futurity, grounding big questions about geologic ontology, history and the human condition in the language of improvisational steel construction.

The exhibition’s central thread relates to Ilopango, the Volcano that Left (2023), the artist’s “speculative reconstruction” of an ancient volcano that erupted 1,500 years ago in current-day El Salvador. The eruption, known as the Tierra Blanca Joven disaster, is considered one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history. Cortez frames the ash distribution from the eruption as a testament to Mayan spiritual and religious practices. “Lava flows under the volcanic range that unites my two homes,” Cortez has said, “Los Angeles and San Salvador. The underworld is not divided by these borders.” This non-linear, de-colonised relationship with time courses throughout Cortez’s practice; in November, her installation will travel by boat to Troy, New York for a show at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center titled Shifting Center. T.A.

Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969
Until 26 November at the the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, 33 Garden Road, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

This exhibition, the first large-scale show foregrounding the importance of performance and theatre in Indigenous art, takes 1969 as its origin point. That was the year the New Native Theater movement launched in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the exhibition features archival materials and documentation related to that movement. It was also the year the group Indians of All Tribes began their 19-month-long occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, which brought new visibility to contemporary Indigenous issues in the Americas.

The exhibition, curated by Candice Hopkins—a member of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation and the executive director of Forge Project—features more than 100 works by artists including Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee), Kay WalkingStick (Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Anglo), Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scot), Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota) and Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc), among others. Many of the featured works employ humour as a form of critique, depict Indigenous bodies (and their absences) as a means of undermining stereotypes about Native identity or reinterpret traditional art forms to address contemporary issues. B.S.

Ellsworth Kelly: States of The River
29 June-29 October at the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, 82 North Broadway, Nyack, New York

The Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center in Nyack, New York, has joined forces with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio and other organisations to launch States of The River, an exhibition focused on Kelly’s lithographs named for major waterways around the world, including the Hudson (which the Hopper House Museum overlooks), the Amazon and the Nile. Held at Hopper’s birthplace and childhood home, the exhibit will bring together nine lithographs Kelly created between 2004 and 2005 and coincides with the centenary of his birth. Kelly and Hopper were “equally captivated by rivers and the interaction of light on the water’s surface”, museum director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz said in a statement. C.P.

Rita McBride: Momentum
1 July 2023-January 2025 at Dia Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York

Rita McBride’s well known Arena (1997) will be installed at the Dia Art Foundation’s Beacon location this summer in an exhibition that explores how architecture and design is incorporated in day-to-day life within the public sphere. The artist’s modular Twaron and wood Arena seating area will be activated throughout the presentation with performances by artists, writers, musicians and dancers, according to Dia. A section of McBride’s work involving public infrastructure from the previous two decades will be presented alongside Arena. C.P.

Welcome to New York!
Until June 2024 at Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, New York

To mark Magazzino Italian Art’s sixth anniversary, the museum dedicated to post-war and contemporary Italian art is showing new work by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. A mixed media sculpture, Welcome to New York! draws inspiration from the Statue of Liberty and features colourful, cascading rags tied to a metal crown. Seven of Pistoletto’s mirrored sculptures will be displayed alongside Welcome to New York!. Magazzino will also unveil a permanent installation by Pistoletto, Terzo paradiso, on the museum's grounds. The project was completed with 46 stones excavated during the construction of a new pavilion. Magazzino will also host the official Upstate Art Weekend kickoff party on 21 July. C.P.

Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle
Until 29 October 29, Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street, Catskill, New York

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site is restoring a lost name to her proper place in the canon this summer. Women Reframe American Landscape is the first retrospective of artist Susie Barstow (1836-1925), well-respected in her time but forgotten in the century since her death. The exhibition seeks to retroactively “reinsert” Barstow into the legacy of the Hudson River School, America’s landmark artistic “fraternity” founded by the institution’s namesake, Thomas Cole. As the Hudson Valley continues to grow in popularity, the legacy of its art historical tradition is being updated for a contemporary audience.

Women Reframe American Landscape also features work by contemporary artists in conversation with Bartstow’s, reflecting subsequent approaches to the landscape. This portion of the show features a new work by the Guerrilla Girls, an outdoor sculpture by Jean Shin, an interactive library installation by Mary Mattingly and works on canvas by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick. “This exhibition represents the growing interest in, and need for, greater inclusivity and diverse voices when telling the story of the American landscape movement,” Nancy Siegel, professor of art history at Towson University and exhibition co-curator, said in a statement. (After its run at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the exhibition will go on view at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, 16 November 2023-31 March 2024.) T.A.

For a full list of art destinations for day trips near New York City, view the full article at The Art Newspaper.