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A Legacy of Firsts: The Everson Collects

On View November 16, 2019 – March 22, 2020

In 1911, the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts (known today as the Everson) made history as the first museum in the country to declare that it would focus on collecting works made by American artists. This decision, implemented by Museum Director Fernando Carter, was the first of many made by directors that ultimately defined the Everson’s collection as it exists today. This exhibition examines over one hundred years of the Museum’s collecting priorities, from the Museum’s earliest acquisitions in 1911 to work acquired in 2019.

Earth Piece

Named after Yoko Ono’s 1963 Earth Piece, a score that invites the reader to “Listen to the sound of the earth turning,” this exhibition examines artists who have combined clay and ceramics with performance art, photography, conceptual art, and even land art. Far from being used as “just another material,” clay comes freighted with millennia of associations with material culture.Earth Piece highlights the work of well-known figures from the art world, as well as lesser-known artists whose work shaped the field of ceramics into a vibrant discipline that is equally at home in both domestic and contemporary spheres.