Top 10 Art Exhibitions to Visit in Upstate New York in April
Title: Art as a Balm: Exploring Spring 2024’s Most Inspiring Art Exhibitions in Upstate New York
Header image: Cathy Wysocki, “When the light of your eyes falls to the ground (for Wayne)” (2025), oil, ashes, and glitter on canvas. Courtesy LABspace, Hillsdale, NY.
As spring breathes new life into Upstate New York, the region’s galleries and art centers are blossoming with a diversity of expressive works that offer solace, imagination, and introspection. Amid a bleak global news cycle, these curated exhibitions remind us of art’s timeless power to inspire, challenge, and heal.
Here’s a curated journey through some of the most exciting art exhibitions currently on view in Upstate New York.
🎭 FREE STYLE: Idiosyncratic/Eclecticism
🗓 Through April 20
📍 Garner Arts Center, Garnerville, NY
A jubilant celebration of eclectic creativity, this group exhibition curated by Brett DePalma features 34 regional artists working across disciplines—from sculpture and painting to digital installations. Works on view include George Horner’s neon satire, “Retrospective,” and Nils Karsten’s poignant homage to political resistance, “Tankman” (2024). The show is a vibrant embrace of artistic freedom, resisting the commodification of attention.
🧠 Cathy Wysocki: It Has Always Been the Mind
🗓 Through April 27
📍 LABspace, Hillsdale, NY
Cathy Wysocki’s deeply intimate and fantastical paintings radiate emotional depth and vitality. Her work, such as “When the light of your eyes falls to the ground (for Wayne)” (2025), incorporates her late husband’s ashes to memorialize love and loss. Other pieces blend surrealism and sci-fi aesthetics to conjure “a topsy-turvy” emotional cosmos filled with color, energy, and tactile charm.
☁️ Paddy Cohn: Clouds, From All Sides Now
🗓 Through April 27
📍 Robin Rice Gallery, Hudson, NY
Cohn’s ethereal paintings explore clouds as metaphors of transience and thought. With titles like “In the Pink,” “Hush,” and “After the Rain,” each work taps into an emotional resonance, inviting viewers to slow down and reconnect with natural beauty and imagination.
🧵 dismantle
🗓 Through April 27
📍 Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY
Curated by Liz Lorenz, this four-woman show exemplifies the power of breaking down and rebuilding. Ana Maria Farina’s expressive textiles, Maria Manhattan’s ceramic saints, and Marianne van Lent’s dream-like mixed-media collages demonstrate how deconstruction can foster healing and empowerment.
🌌 The Destiny… Is to Take Root Among the Stars
🗓 Through May 10
📍 Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY
Drawing from Afro-Futurist frameworks, this exhibition curated by Jaime Ransome features BIPOC artists reimagining futures filled with resilience and transformation. Noteworthy pieces include Destiny Arianna’s immersive domestic installation and Alisa Sikelianos-Carter’s mystical collages of ancestral spirit figures.
👣 I Was Here
🗓 Through May 11
📍 SEPTEMBER Gallery, Kinderhook, NY
An exploration of personal narrative and material memory, this show offers six artists’ autobiographical approaches. Highlights include Odessa Straub’s beaded textile works and Kesewa Aboah’s large-scale pigment impressions of human bodies, creating haunting records of presence and identity.
🎨 Familiar/Unfamiliar
🗓 Through May 17
📍 Bill Arning Exhibitions, Kinderhook, NY
This cheeky and nuanced show toggles between the known and extraordinary. From Sue Muskat’s playful works with cartoon elements to Kevin Mosca’s sensual evocations of ‘milkman’ memories, each piece straddles familiarity and surprise while teasing our visual expectations.
🕊 Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
🗓 Through May 18
📍 Perry Lawson Fine Art, Nyack, NY
Six artists channel the enchanting symbolism of birds to offer hope and reflection. From Hanna von Goeler’s canary painted on vintage currency to Bryn Jayes’s dynamic flocks dissolving into crimson atmospheres, the show is a heartfelt nod to expression, resilience, and flight.
🖼 15
🗓 April 5–May 25
📍 Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
This year’s graduate exhibitions from the Center for Curatorial Studies showcase cutting-edge themes ranging from digital dystopias to queer archival work. With nearly 50 artists across 15 student-curated projects, the show provides a sweeping vision of the future of curating and artistic practice