Saturday, December 6, 2025

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

“What If I Try This?”: Helen Frankenthaler in the 20th-Century Print Ecosystem
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"What If I Try This?" explores how Helen Frankenthaler, the noted 20th-century abstract artist, collaborated with printmakers in print studios and workshops throughout her long career. By focusing on her works on paper, this exhibition considers how printshops are key nodes within the printmaking ecosystems, or sites where artists and printers simultaneously championed technical innovations and created community.

   

Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing on the museum's extensive collection that encompasses almost 45,000 historic and contemporary artworks made around the globe, this exhibition explores how humans have interacted with and shaped the environment in which they live. Thematic sections focus on plants, home, population centers, and human figures.

   

Bhen Alan: Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The fifth iteration of the Art Wall Project features textiles made by the Filipino-American artist Bhen Alan. Through the creation of a monumental banig, or a traditional Filipino handwoven mat made from plant fibers, Alan grapples with the traumas of immigration and explores how diasporic communities work to recover a lost idea of home.

   

A Sense of Arrival: Kevin Adonis Browne
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"A Sense of Arrival" brings together scholarship and artistic practice in a multimedia installation by Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the Department of Writing Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Browne's exhibition combines photographs, sculpture, and new writings that reflect a decades-long meditation on Caribbean blackness, being, and rhetorical expression.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Step into a world of swirling snowflakes, dancing sweets, and holiday magic, all sparked by Clara's Nutcracker doll that comes to life. This timeless favorite returns with dazzling choreography, Tchaikovsky's unforgettable score, and joy for the whole family.

Tickets

   

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Step into a world of swirling snowflakes, dancing sweets, and holiday magic, all sparked by Clara's Nutcracker doll that comes to life. This timeless favorite returns with dazzling choreography, Tchaikovsky's unforgettable score, and joy for the whole family.

Tickets

   

Special Event: Messiah
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Syracuse University Oratorio Society

Most Holy Rosary Church
111 Roberts Ave., Syracuse

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Sunday, December 7, 2025

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

Bhen Alan: Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The fifth iteration of the Art Wall Project features textiles made by the Filipino-American artist Bhen Alan. Through the creation of a monumental banig, or a traditional Filipino handwoven mat made from plant fibers, Alan grapples with the traumas of immigration and explores how diasporic communities work to recover a lost idea of home.

   

Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing on the museum's extensive collection that encompasses almost 45,000 historic and contemporary artworks made around the globe, this exhibition explores how humans have interacted with and shaped the environment in which they live. Thematic sections focus on plants, home, population centers, and human figures.

   

“What If I Try This?”: Helen Frankenthaler in the 20th-Century Print Ecosystem
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"What If I Try This?" explores how Helen Frankenthaler, the noted 20th-century abstract artist, collaborated with printmakers in print studios and workshops throughout her long career. By focusing on her works on paper, this exhibition considers how printshops are key nodes within the printmaking ecosystems, or sites where artists and printers simultaneously championed technical innovations and created community.

   

A Sense of Arrival: Kevin Adonis Browne
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"A Sense of Arrival" brings together scholarship and artistic practice in a multimedia installation by Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the Department of Writing Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Browne's exhibition combines photographs, sculpture, and new writings that reflect a decades-long meditation on Caribbean blackness, being, and rhetorical expression.

   

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Step into a world of swirling snowflakes, dancing sweets, and holiday magic, all sparked by Clara's Nutcracker doll that comes to life. This timeless favorite returns with dazzling choreography, Tchaikovsky's unforgettable score, and joy for the whole family.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Monday, December 8, 2025

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

Corpórea
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Corpórea is a showcase of powerful, large-scale works in mixed media, body maps created by a collaborative of local Latino artists, community members, SU faculty and students through a series of adult workshops that integrate the principles of Art Therapy. Facilitated by Syracuse University graduate student in Creative Art Therapy, Bennie Guzmán, the workshops explored themes of healing, identity, and embodiment, and the transformative power of creativity.

   

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

“What If I Try This?”: Helen Frankenthaler in the 20th-Century Print Ecosystem
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"What If I Try This?" explores how Helen Frankenthaler, the noted 20th-century abstract artist, collaborated with printmakers in print studios and workshops throughout her long career. By focusing on her works on paper, this exhibition considers how printshops are key nodes within the printmaking ecosystems, or sites where artists and printers simultaneously championed technical innovations and created community.

   

Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Drawing on the museum's extensive collection that encompasses almost 45,000 historic and contemporary artworks made around the globe, this exhibition explores how humans have interacted with and shaped the environment in which they live. Thematic sections focus on plants, home, population centers, and human figures.

   

Bhen Alan: Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The fifth iteration of the Art Wall Project features textiles made by the Filipino-American artist Bhen Alan. Through the creation of a monumental banig, or a traditional Filipino handwoven mat made from plant fibers, Alan grapples with the traumas of immigration and explores how diasporic communities work to recover a lost idea of home.

   

A Sense of Arrival: Kevin Adonis Browne
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

"A Sense of Arrival" brings together scholarship and artistic practice in a multimedia installation by Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the Department of Writing Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Browne's exhibition combines photographs, sculpture, and new writings that reflect a decades-long meditation on Caribbean blackness, being, and rhetorical expression.

   

Corpórea
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Corpórea is a showcase of powerful, large-scale works in mixed media, body maps created by a collaborative of local Latino artists, community members, SU faculty and students through a series of adult workshops that integrate the principles of Art Therapy. Facilitated by Syracuse University graduate student in Creative Art Therapy, Bennie Guzmán, the workshops explored themes of healing, identity, and embodiment, and the transformative power of creativity.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Corpórea
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Corpórea is a showcase of powerful, large-scale works in mixed media, body maps created by a collaborative of local Latino artists, community members, SU faculty and students through a series of adult workshops that integrate the principles of Art Therapy. Facilitated by Syracuse University graduate student in Creative Art Therapy, Bennie Guzmán, the workshops explored themes of healing, identity, and embodiment, and the transformative power of creativity.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Corpórea
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Corpórea is a showcase of powerful, large-scale works in mixed media, body maps created by a collaborative of local Latino artists, community members, SU faculty and students through a series of adult workshops that integrate the principles of Art Therapy. Facilitated by Syracuse University graduate student in Creative Art Therapy, Bennie Guzmán, the workshops explored themes of healing, identity, and embodiment, and the transformative power of creativity.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Friday, December 12, 2025

Tough Skin, Soft Ribs
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Light Work presents "Tough Skin, Soft Ribs," a selection of photographs from our collection by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Jeremy Dennis, Amy Elkins, Tarrah Krajnak, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Pamela Shields, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Kathy Vargas, and Cristina Velásquez. This exhibition is curated by Cali M. Banks, who manages communications and outreach at Light Work.

Resistant to 19th-century staged portraits of Indigenous people and the posed photographic work of Edward S. Curtis, the chosen artists confront colonial frameworks of Northern, Central, and Southern Indigeneity. This grouping of artists points back to the Four Directions, a cultural foundation that honors a holistic view of our interconnectedness; a place where borders do not exist, and we can join together as relatives. Through spectacles of Indigenous tropes, satire, religious testaments, diasporic histories, and fantasy, these artists are unpacking stereotypes, forcing a reclamation of personal and collective identities.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Corpórea
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Corpórea is a showcase of powerful, large-scale works in mixed media, body maps created by a collaborative of local Latino artists, community members, SU faculty and students through a series of adult workshops that integrate the principles of Art Therapy. Facilitated by Syracuse University graduate student in Creative Art Therapy, Bennie Guzmán, the workshops explored themes of healing, identity, and embodiment, and the transformative power of creativity.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

The holly, the ivy, and the rose
NYS Baroque

Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

Carols for the season from medieval and renaissance England, including music by King Henry VIII.

Tickets

   

Maggie's Wake
Folkus Project

Price: $20 regular, $17 Folkus members
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Bringing the rich history of folk music to life in a contemporary way

Maggie's Wake is a Canadian, female-fronted roots band that delivers unforgettable performances while creating a sound that is at once both classic and modern. With original compositions that remain faithful to their influences in traditional folk and classic country music, their songs are enhanced by Celtic instrumentation, giving them an unmistakable sound. Band members are passionate about bringing the rich history of folk music to life in a contemporary way and strive to create a unique sound that reflects their heritage while also being wholly original. Their goal is to bring joy and inspiration to audiences through music.?

Tickets

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Saturday, December 13, 2025

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

Kids Series: The Snowman
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Bring the whole family to enjoy this beloved animated film based on a poem by Wallace Stevens with music performed live by The Syracuse Orchestra.

Tickets

   

Kids Series: The Snowman
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Bring the whole family to enjoy this beloved animated film based on a poem by Wallace Stevens with music performed live by The Syracuse Orchestra.

Tickets

   

Candlelight Series: Christmas Candlelight Classics
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Taras Krysa, conductor

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Coleridge-Taylor Christmas Overture
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Greensleeves
Prokofiev Lieutenant Kijé, op.60: Troika
Hovanness Symphony No. 49 "Christmas"
Tchaikovsky The Seasons: Christmas (December)
Tchaikovsky selections from Nutcracker

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.