Connecting people with art and each other at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in the heart of New York's Hudson Valley.
With over 20 years experience in arts and museum administration, threads that weave between my leadership, teaching, research, and curating include a desire to grow creative thinking, a commitment to diverse cultural expression, and my core belief that representation matters.
I'm honored to work with a team that partners with SUNY New Paltz students, artists, and communities on and off campus to further our mission and enrich the cultural life of the Hudson Valley.
Hudson Valley Artists 2020: New Folk
September 12 – October 25, 2020
This year’s annual Hudson Valley Artists juried show features twenty-nine local artists in a vibrant exploration of craft, cultural heritage, and the communities we create together. New Folk showcases artwork that distinctively captures the spirit of contemporary folk practice in the Hudson Valley today. It offers a vision of what folk art can be—highly skilled, locally-sourced, idiosyncratic, and resourceful. New Folk is also a catch-all for the long history of visitors and immigrants in our region, and the exhibition explores the inherited cultural traditions that “new folk” bring with them.
Stay Home, Make Art: Hudson Valley, NY, Edition
April – July 2020
At the beginning of April 2020, The Dorsky Museum asked Hudson Valley artists, how are you being creative during social distancing? We were humbled by the remarkable response we received. Over 250 Hudson Valley artists have shared what they have been making and we are exhibiting their art on the Museum social media channels. Stay Home, Make Art is a virtual exhibition that addresses how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted creative practice, keeps local artwork visible, and promotes safe social distancing.
Totally Dedicated: Leonard Contino 1940–2016
January 22 – April 5, 2020
Leonard Contino was a Brooklyn-born, self-taught abstract artist whose tenacious exploration of pictorial space spanned a fifty-year career. In 1959 at the age of 19, Contino was severely injured in a diving accident. Paralyzed from the shoulders down, he retained some mobility in his arms and hands, and needed to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. While in rehabilitation at the Rusk Institute in New York City, Contino met a fellow patient, the sculptor Mark di Suvero, who would become a lifelong close friend. Di Suvero challenged him to start making art. Until this point, Contino’s creativity had been mostly directed to “pinstriping” decorative lines onto hot rod cars in his Brooklyn neighborhood. With di Suvero’s encouragement and the help of a metal brace to support his wrist, he began to draw and then to paint. Contino went on to create extraordinary art for the next five decades. He became devoted to his daily practice of painting from morning to evening, and often then making collages late into the night. Contino later observed that being an artist was like a religious calling, you had to be “totally dedicated.” Featuring over eighty artworks, Totally Dedicated is the largest exhibition of Contino’s work to date and encompasses large hard-edge geometric paintings, playful collages, delicate reliefs and sculptures from the 1960s through the 2000’s. It also includes two painted steel sculptures that di Suvero and Contino made together.