Downtown Challenge '22
Downtown Syracuse Events


Kite: Fever Dream
April 21—August 7, 2022
Museum Admission
Fever Dream is an interactive multimedia installation by Kite, an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer, and Devin Ronneberg, a multidisciplinary artist of Kanaka Maoli/Okinawan descent working primarily in sculpture, sound, image-making, and computational media. The work brings together their mutual interests in the implications of emergent technologies and artificial intelligence, information control and collection, Indigenous ontologies, and bodily interfaces. In response to the audience’s proximity in the gallery, a large projection flips between channels algorithmically tuned in to scraped footage of conspiracy theories, paranormal and extraterrestrial sightings, and recent news broadcasts. The work plumbs the depths of the settler-colonial psyche and the ways in which settler conspiracies are often founded on a denial of Indigenous agency, such as the belief that “ancient aliens” are responsible for the building of Indigenous earthworks and monuments.
Date/Time | 6/29/2022 (All day) |
Runs | 4/21/2022 - 8/07/2022 |
Cost | Museum Admission- check Everson.org for details |
Contact Phone | 315-474-6064 |
Venue | Everson Museum of Art 401 Harrison St. Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 |


Curious Vessels: The Rosenfield Collection
On View March 12—October 23, 2022
Louise Rosenfield is among the most avid pottery collectors in the United States. Over the past thirty years, she has amassed a collection of more than 4,000 pieces of functional pottery from artists across the globe. Her ambition for her collection has always been clear—instead of donating work to a museum, she would rather donate it to a restaurant, where patrons could enjoy the work as originally intended.
Curious Vessels is a celebration of both Rosenfield’s eclectic taste and her unrivaled generosity. Museum visitors will be able to touch many of the pieces in this exhibition while watching videos of Rosenfield and notable potters from the collection pointing out details of the work. After viewing the exhibition, viewers are invited to become participants and collaborators by eating a meal in the Everson’s innovative new café, Louise, which is entirely stocked with functional vessels from the Rosenfield Collection.
Brooks Oliver, Squiggle, 2015, Porcelain, 8 x 16 x 16 inches, Courtesy of the Rosenfield Collection
Date/Time | 6/29/2022 (All day) |
Runs | 3/12/2022 - 10/23/2022 |
Cost | $8 Adults, $6 Seniors/Students, Free Children 12 and Under |
Contact Phone | 315-474-6064 |
Venue | Everson Museum of Art 401 Harrison St. Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 |


Sekou Cooke: 15-81 Opens to the Public
On View April 30–August 21, 2022
15-81 presents architect and urban designer Sekou Cooke’s project We Outchea: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space alongside documents relating to the 15th Ward in Syracuse, New York. Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 2021 as part of their exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, We Outchea focuses on the legacy of placement and displacement of Black residents in Syracuse and considers various events in the city’s history—the razing of the historic 15th Ward, the building of multiple public housing projects, and the construction of Interstate-81—while simultaneously critiquing recent proposals to replace low-income communities with mixed-income housing. By contextualizing the We Outchea project with photographs and ephemera that tell the story of the once vibrant 15th Ward, Cooke points to a post I-81 Syracuse future of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Visit everson.org/exhibitions to learn more.
We Outcha: Hip-Hop Fabrications and Public Space, 2021
9 digital and screenprints on paper, 13 x 13 inches each
Courtesy of the artist
Date/Time | 6/29/2022 (All day) |
Runs | 4/30/2022 - 8/21/2022 |
Cost | Museum Admission: $8 Adults, $6 Seniors/Students, Free Military and Kids Under 12 |
Contact Phone | 315-474-6064 |
Venue | Everson Museum of Art 401 Harrison St. Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 |


Sharif Bey: Facets
On View April 30—August 14, 2022
Over the past two decades, artist and educator Sharif Bey (b. 1974) has created a body of work in ceramics and glass that explores the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania. Since accepting a teaching position at Syracuse University in 2009, he has become a vital part of Syracuse’s social fabric. Coming on the heels of an exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where he was born and raised, the Everson presents a survey of Bey’s work, starting with the functional pottery that has served as a touchstone throughout his career, and continuing through his most recent body of large-scale figurative sculptures in clay.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
Sharif Bey, Star Child Series #3, Earthenware/Mixed Media, 32 x 11 x 11 inches
Date/Time | 6/29/2022 (All day) |
Runs | 4/30/2022 - 8/14/2022 |
Cost | $8 Adults, $6 Students & Seniors, Free Children Under 12 |
Contact Phone | 315-474-6064 |
Venue | Everson Museum of Art 401 Harrison St. Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 |


Achala Wali: Surface Densities
On view June 25—August 7, 2022
Achala Wali’s complex drawings unfold through the layering of graphite, ink, and other mixed media onto paper. She takes inspiration from the natural world—everything from the forms made by ice as it breaks over a lake to shadows caused by an eclipse to industrial rust. She translates these scenes into abstract forms. As Wali layers one pattern over another, her drawings emerge, some pulsing with energy and movement and others appearing frozen in time.
Surface Densities contemplates the natural world through the physical act of drawing. The work is informed by personal and shared experiences alike, including the force of rivers, electromagnetic currents, the teardrop shape of an ear, or the structure of hair tendrils on Greek archaic sculpture.
Wali is one of the artists selected as part of the CNY Artist Initiative, a competitive program that highlights the multi-faceted talents of CNY artists.
Visit everson.org/exhibitions for more information.
Date/Time | 6/29/2022 (All day) |
Runs | 6/25/2022 - 8/07/2022 |
Cost | Free with Museum Admission |
Contact Phone | 315-474-6064 |
Venue | Everson Museum of Art 401 Harrison St. Syracuse, NY 13202 315-474-6064 |