ArtBeat: What To See

Gesche Würfel: At the Hands of People Unknown @ The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock. A move to North Carolina compelled Gesche Würfel, a German woman with an African-American husband and their mixed race son, to face the South’s complicated history of race and lynching. Würfel soon came to view grand southern trees as persistent reminders of over 4,700 recorded lynchings, most of which targeted African American males, but at least 170 black and white females as well. This photographic series combines Würfel’s concern for female lynching victims with the idea of trees as silent witnesses that remained after the mob dispersed. Also on display: Re-membrance of the Remembrance, an exhibition by Hye-Ryoung Min in which she revisits a past of her younger self in the form of over seventy meticulously written diaries, and re-imagines this past through the eyes of adult maturity. Gallery reception and artist talks: Saturday, August 25, 4-6pm. (Through October 14)

Jenny Kemp: Slow Grow @ Mandeville Gallery, Schenectady. Organic, biomorphic abstract paintings by Jenny Kemp. Opens Saturday, August 25. Opening reception: Wednesday, September 26, 5-6:30pm. (Through December 9)

Sharon Bates: Exhibit B @ Opalka Gallery, Albany. In her first solo show since 1986, this exhibition of site-specific installations, mixed-media assemblages and drawings serves as a survey of the work of Sharon Bates: visual artist, independent curator and the Founding Director of the Albany International Airport Art & Culture Program. Opens Tuesday, August 28. Opening reception: Friday, September 7, 6-8pm. Artist’s tour and lecture: Tuesday, September 25, 5:30pm. (Through October 13)

Hudson Valley Landscape Painters Exhibition @ Athens Cultural Center, Athens. Works by landscape artists of the Hudson Valley region: Sasha Chermayeff, John Kelly, Rick Leon, Gail Nicholson, Harry Orlyk, Marne Rizika, Barbara J. Sussman and Peter Homitzky. Opening reception: Saturday, August 25, 6-8pm. (Through October 7)

Picturing Mental Illness @ Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson. Two solo shows: Tamara Staples, Side Effects May Include and Kholood Eid, Diagnosed, examine themes of mental illness. Also on display are portfolio showcases by Talya Arbisser and Deyva Arthur. Artists’ reception: Saturday, August 25, 5-7pm. (Through September 16)

Daniel Kruger: In Decorum @ Sienna Patti, Lenox. Works by South African artist Daniel Kruger. (Through September 30)

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Heads and Tails @ MCLA Gallery 51, North Adams. A career retrospective covering four decades of images by photojournalist Charles Giuliano. Artist’s talk: Wednesday, August 8, 6-7pm. (Through August 25)

Quartet @ Wired Gallery, High Falls. Works by Kathi Robinson Frank, Sarah Draney, Lynn McCarty and Millicent Young. (Through August 26)

Summer Juried Art Show @ Sand Lake Center for the Arts, Averill Park. Works by 15 regional artists selected based the song titled “That’s What I Hear” by the late singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. (Through August 31)

Concinnitas Portfolio @ Mandeville Gallery, Schenectady. A portfolio of ten fine art aquatint prints featuring equations, expressions or formulas transcribed by ten notable mathematicians and physicists, in response to the prompt to record their ‘most beautiful mathematical expression.’ Each image was hand-drawn by each of the following participants: Sir Michael Atiyah, Enrico Bombieri, Simon K. Donaldson, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Karp, Peter Lax, David Mumford, Stephen Smale and Steven Weinberg. (Through August 31)

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The River Art Project @ Stockbridge Station, Stockbridge. An exhibition to raise awareness of the beauty and importance of the river environment and offer educational opportunities on protecting this resource, including works by Berkshire painters Bart Elsbach, Michael Filmus, Harriet Joffe, Scott Prior, Jim Schantz and Gabrielle Senza. Panel discussion: Wednesday, August 15, 6pm (Through September 2)

Escape Factory @ Installation Space, North Adams. A solo exhibition of three video works by François-Xavier de Costerd. Artist’s talk: Friday, August 3, 6pm. (Through September 2)

Light + Dark @ Sohn Fine Art, Lenox. A camera-less photography exhibition featuring work by Garry Fabian Miller and Chuck Kelton. (Through September 2)

Horse and Rider @ The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls. An exhibition that explores the relationship between man and beast in the contexts of sport, pleasure and work. The exhibition comprises ten works from the permanent collection by artists such as Edgar Degas, Frederick Remington, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Wilke, James Brooks and Danny Lyon. (Through September 2)

Out Of Line @ September Gallery, Hudson. A group exhibition examining words and language. (Through September 2)

Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900 @ The Clark, Williamstown. This exhibition showcases the remarkable artistic production of women artists working in Paris during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Rosa Bonheur as well as less well-known artists. Opens Saturday, June 9. (Through September 3)

Francis Greenburger Selects @ Love Apple Art Space, Ghent. The founder of Art Omi and current owner of Love Apple Farms curated this exhibition of contemporary works by Claus Brunsmann, Margaret Evangeline, John Morra and Sandi Slone.

Anything But Simple: Shaker Gift Drawings and the Women Who Made Them @ Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield. The Museum exhibits its rare and surprisingly ornate Shaker “gift” or “spirit” drawings for the first time in decades. (Through September 3)

Cuckoo’s Call @ Eclipse Mill Gallery, North Adams. Painting and sculpture by Wayne Hopkins and Cathy Wysocki that push figuration into strange territories. (Through September 3)

Liz Glynn: The Archaeology of Another Possible Future @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Los Angeles-based Liz Glynn will present her largest and most ambitious project to date in Building 5, MASS MoCA’s largest gallery — a sprawling multi-sensory sculptural experience of sight, sensation, sound, and scent stretching nearly a football field in length. The exhibition expands Glynn’s interest in the rise and fall of empires, labor, and shifting cultural values, in order to speculate upon our uncertain future. (Through September 3)

Albany Rocks @ Alacrity Frame Workshop, Albany. An exhibition of Amy Modesti’s concert photography of the local music scene as well as national touring artists. (Through September 4)

Thomas Nozkowski @ Art Omi, Ghent. Abstract paintings by Thomas Nozkowski in the Benenson Visitors Center. (Through September 4)

human @ John Davis Gallery, Hudson. Six solo shows of works by Herbert Reichert, Christopher Cairns, Joel Longenecker, John Lippert, Jiang Weixian and Fran Shalom. (Through September 9)

Younger Than Today: Photographs of Children (and sometimes their mothers) by Andy Warhol @ University Art Museum, Albany. 50 polaroids and photographs related to childhood, sibling relationships and the influence of the maternal. Also on display: Mickey Mouse has grown up a Cow featuring videos by Kalup Linzy, Yoshie Sakai, Frances Stark and Abbey Williams that address the represenation of children and parenting; and Triple: an exhibition of contemporary portrait paintings by Alex Bradley Cohen, Louis Fratino and Tschabalala Self. (Through September 15)

The Art of Iron @ The Clark, Williamstown. An exhibit of 36 wrought iron objects on loan from The Musée Le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen, France. (Through September 16)

Photography @ Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson. A group exhibit that demonstrates the power of technology to enhance our experience through magnification, distillation and narration in the digital age, including selections from Robert Hite, David Halliday, Jeri Eisenberg, David Seiler, James Bleeker, Lependorf + Shire, Lisa Frank, Stephanie Blumenthal, Andrew Buck and Elliott Kaufman. (Through September 16)

Wherever the Mushrooms Grown @ Wikoff Student Gallery, Schenectady. A solo exhibition of works by Natalya Brill that combine incongruous phrases with digitally altered drawings to create curious, ambiguous ether for viewers to meander through. Closing reception: September 14, 5-6pm. (Through September 16)

Subtlety and Substance @ The Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville. Featuring the artwork of Bruno LaVerdiere and Connie Saddlemire. (Through September 16)

No Nudes, No Sunsets @ Green County Council on the Arts, Catskill. A large group exhibition of photography, curated by Alon Koppel. (Through September 22)

Undiscovered Country @ Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham. Works by Marie-Claude Giroux, Jim Holl and Arthur Sordillo. (Through September 23)

give a damn @ The Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs. Recent acquisitions from artists such as Dawoud Bey, Corita Kent, Ana Mendiata, Zanele Muholi, Lari Pittman, Wendy Red Star and others whose work advocates for justice, for the marginalized, and for freedom, equality and understanding (Through September 30)

Liminal @ Cynthia Reeves Gallery, North Adams. Photographic works by David Burdeny and Georg Küttinger. (Through September 30)

Travelogue @ The School, Kinderhook. A survey exhibition of works by Radcliffe Bailey that incorporate found objects and photographs into textured compositions that address history, ancestry, migration and collective memory. Also on display are solo exhibitions by Nina Chanel Abney, Shimon Attie, Math Bass, Valérie Blass, Vibha Galhotra, Brad Kahlhamer, Margaret Kilgallen, Lyne Lapointe, Gordon Parks and Leslie Wayne. (Through October 6)

Contemporary Sculpture At Chesterwood: 40 YRS @ Chesterwood, Stockbridge. An exhibition of 12 outdoor sculptures, the majority of which are kinetic, including works by noted artists with local ties such as Alexander Calder and George Rickey and a new kinetic sculpture by contemporary artist Pedro S. de Movellán. (Through October 8)

Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Lithographs @ Bershire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge. This first major exhibition in the Garden’s Center House Leonhardt Galleries features Ellsworth Kelly’s iconic plant lithographs, created during his stay in southern France between late 1964 and the summer of 1965. (Through October 8)

A Cold Hole + Assembled Audience @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. In these two new installation-based commissions, artist Taryn Simon activates the rituals of applause and the cold water plunge, examining individuals’ campaigns for public admiration, the status of physical community spaces in the digital age, and our persistent desire for a quick fix. In the first installation, participants jump into icy water while visitors in an adjacent gallery watch through a cinemascopic aperture.

Keepers of the Flame: Parrish, Wyeth, Rockwell and the Narrative Tradition @ Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge. More than 85 works by American and European masters spanning 500 years that trace the student-to-teacher lineage of illustrators Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell to their artistic forbearers in the Italian Renaissance. (Through October 28)

RAWR! A WCMA Bestiary @ Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown. An exhibit that considers how art has helped to create arbitrary distinctions between the human and the animal, with works from WCMA’s encyclopedic collection exploring the representation of animals in art and artifacts across time and across the globe. (Through October 31)

Pitch @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Allison Janae Hamilton’s photographs, videos, sculptures and installations feature environments familiar to the north Florida and Tennessee landscapes that are home to her family.

The Lure of the Dark @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Over a dozen contemporary artists, including Patrick Bermingham, William Binnie, Cynthia Daignault, TM Davy, Jeronimo Elespe, Cy Gavin, Shara Hughes, Josephine Halvorson, Sam McKinniss, Wilhelm Neusser, Dana Powell, Kenny Rivero and Alexandria Smith, illustrate the ways in which the hours of darkness continue to provoke the contemporary imagination.

Natasha Bowdoin: Maneater @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Houston, TX-based artist Natasha Bowdoin builds wall-works with words. In her largest-ever cut paper and collage installation, she investigates the intersections of the visual, the experiential, and the literary, treating language and nature as kindred phenomena.

Rachel Howard: Paintings of Violence (Why I am not a mere Christian) @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. In her first U.S. solo museum show, London-based painter Rachel Howard examines human cruelty; the work’s title references both C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian,” texts which argue respectively for and against adherence to Christianity.

The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery & American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004) @ The Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson. The first US exhibition to examine the shared histories, art and programming activities of Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art, with works by over 40 artists, including Roy Arden, Alex Bag, Art Club 2000, Lutz Bacher, Dennis Balk, Bernadette Corporation, J. St. Bernard, Tom Burr, Moyra Davey, Jimmy DeSana, Jessica Diamond, Stephan Dillemuth, Mark Dion, John Dogg, Andrea Fraser, Peter Fend, Renée Green, Pat de Groot, Mary Heilmann, Susan Hiller, Joan Jonas, John Knight, Jutta Koether, Silvia Kolbowski, John Miller, Simon Leung, Ana Mendieta, Marlene McCarty, Mariko Mori, Mark Morrisroe, Claire Pentecost with the Critical Art Ensemble, Christian Philipp-Müller, Kembra Pfahler, Jack Pierson, Julia Scher, Pieter Schoolwerth, Peter Schuyff, Jason Simon, Jessica Stockholder, Spencer Sweeney, Philip Taaffe, Tishan Hsu, Lincoln Tobier and John Waters and more. (Through December 14)

Come to your Senses @ MASS MoCA, North Adams. Sally Taylor, daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon, curates this exhibit in MASS MoCA’s Kidspace gallery and art-making studio, which will include new music by both of her parents. A program of Taylor’s long-running Consenses project, the show asks visual artists, poets, dancers, musicians, perfumers, chefs and sculptors to use one another’s art as a catalyst to create their own work.

A Menagerie of Whimsey: The Art of William B. Schade @ Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany. Works by Albany native William B. Schade including prints, sculptures, paintings and ceramics. Also on display: Birds & Beasts: The Scary, Magical, and Adorable Animals of the Albany Institute, an animal-inspired exhibition drawn from the Institute’s collection that explores animals as iconic elements of art and as cherished household members. (Through December 30)

Josh Simpson: Galactic Landscapes @ Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield. A solo show of woks in glass by Josh Simpson. (Through January 6)