Dorsky Museum: Who Really Cares?

Who Really Cares? at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, July 7 – November 14, 2021

Ransome, Gee's Bend Quilter Minnie, 2021, acrylic and collage on paper, courtesy the artist — Ransome, *Gee's Bend Quilter Minnie*, 2021, acrylic and collage on paper, courtesy the artist

The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz announces its annual juried exhibition, “Hudson Valley Artists: Who Really Cares?” will be curated by Helen Toomer, and it will feature a diverse group of more than twenty-five local artists, chosen from over 380 applications for the fourteenth annual Hudson Valley Artists exhibition.

It has been a year of reckoning, of questioning, of emotional and physical turmoil. We have been separated from, and confined with, our loved ones. This exhibition reflects a fractured year and the toll that both the minutiae and the monumental has had on us all.

This has been a challenging time. For many of us, an overwhelming amount of painful news was consumed and experienced from within our own homes, where the daily battle between being thankful for our health and angry at social injustices and isolation from loved ones, has challenged our mental health.

The pandemic, the fight for racial justice, the trappings of domesticity, the wonder of escapism, expressions of queerness and otherness, and gratitude for art are all present here. The artwork is almost all representational; you see figures, houses, people, places, things, animals and objects, striving to be present, seen, felt, and heard.

This exhibition is a snapshot of this time, intended to spark conversations, connect people, and provide moments of reflection and hope. So we ask you to stand still and listen to Marvin Gaye’s beautiful voice, his words, and ask yourself “Who Really Cares?”