A Daily Dose of Art: The Everson Museum of Art
Today, I visited the Everson Museum of Art while visiting my daughter in Syracuse, and several things stood out to me. Here are two…
First, this exhibition: Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
It’s amazing. Truly. I could’ve sat with each piece for 45 minutes. I rarely feel that way about an entire exhibition.
“For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. Contested Territories presents a selection of Kozloff’s works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.
Kozloff’s wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.” —Everson Museum of Art
Joyce Kozloff, Uncivil Wars: Battle of New Madrid, 2020
And I was glad to learn about Syracuse native Charles B. Hinman and sit with his piece Round Trip for a few minutes.
“Hinman has been painting hard-edged, shaped abstract canvases for over half a century. His active involvement as a painter parallels Frank Stella during the mid-1960s when both artists became involved in changing the format of a painting from a mainstay rectilinear surface to other improbable shapes. In some ways, Hinman’s early painting from 1964 became a touchstone for artists who gradually began to focus their attention on the shaped canvases. The genre, in which both he and Stella were major practitioners, evolved during a strategic period in the history of contemporary abstract painting, a period that refuted the authority of the gesture in favor of geometric space.” —The Brooklyn Rail
Charles B. Hinman, Round Trip, 1969
(Also, unrelated, I totally missed a work thing I was supposed to do this morning because time is weird when I’m traveling and I dropped the ball. I’m trying to not berate myself over the mistake. I’ll make it right. But dang. I wish I had done a better job keeping track of time. Sigh.)
What do you think? Please share your thoughts on this art/topic or a glimpse into one of your recent doses of art in the comments below.