The Campus and 'Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape' at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

 The Campus, Hudson, N.Y. through October 27, ‘24.

The Campus, 2024, Installation view, with works by Yinka Shonibare (foreground), Trenton Doyle Hancock and Andrea Bowers (background); Photo: David Ebony.

The latest addition to the mid-Hudson Valley’s burgeoning contemporary art scene, The Campus, located just outside the town of Hudson, N.Y., is a collaborative project of six cutting-edge New York City galleries: Andrew Kreps, Anton Kern, James Cohan, Bortolami, kaufmann Repetto, and kurimanzutto. The consortium recently purchased the 78,000 square-foot disused Ockawamick School, built in 1951, and vacant since the 1990s. The property also encompasses 22 acres of land for sculptures and outdoor installations. The seasonal space, open only on weekends, kicks off its program with a lively exhibition organized by former Andrew Kreps Gallery director Timo Kappeller. The show features works by more than 80 artists situated in 40 rooms spread throughout the sprawling venue.      

 The Campus follows the model of Jack Shainman’s The School, a successful seasonal showcase for contemporary art located in nearby Kinderhook, N.Y. In the future, The Campus, which lacks some of The School’s physical refinements, will hopefully invest in further renovation that would benefit the art. As is, many of the rooms and corridors have lots of “character,” but are in a rather rough and raw state that too often thwarts rather than enhances the impact of certain individual pieces. Nevertheless, there are many engaging and memorable works to be seen and explored.  The largest space, a former gymnasium and theater combo, for instance, features an arresting installation by Yinka Shonibare, showing fabric-covered life-size figures bounding up a gilt staircase. Elsewhere in the room, sculptures by Trenton Doyle Hancock, Abraham Cruzvillegas, and Lara Schnitger, are partly illuminated by Andrea Bowers urgent, glowing green neon message about climate change.

The Campus, 2024, Installation view, with works by Francesco DiMattio (foreground) and Talia Chetrit (background); Photo: Yael Eban and Matthew Gamber.

Among the most memorable works here are those by Jamaal Peterman, who painted a site-specific mural to bolster the innate power of his recent quasi-abstract compositions, one of which is trimmed in neon. Open Universe, an elaborate ceiling-hung geometric construction made of thin wooden rods by Ricci Albenda is as stunning here as it was when it debuted at T-Space in Rhinebeck in 2018. An especially seductive room (#33) contains a mural-size woven 3-D tapestry from 2022 by Goshka Macuga, showing an eerie sci-fi underwater scene (3-D glasses provided); and one of Josiah McElheny’s wall hung relief cases from 2023, filled with five solid glass sculpture totems in geometric shapes; plus a painting of a male nude by Philip Pearlstein hung on another wall. —David Ebony        

Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, N.Y, through October 27, ‘24.

Installation view; Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape, 2024, Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY, with works by Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Forest, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Forge Project; Thomas Cole, Solitary Lake in New Hampshire, 1830, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation / Olana State Historic Site, OL.1981.19.A,.B; and Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan),Sky Dome Pattern, 2024, digital rendering. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Peter Aaron/OTTO 

At once bold and graceful, “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape,” an exhibition pairing Thomas Cole’s work with that of Indigenous contemporary artists, serves as a corrective as well as a provocation. The panoramic landscapes painted by Cole (1801-1848) are widely regarded as seminal paintings of the Hudson River School. Allied with the European tradition of 19th-century Romanticism, Cole captured the breathtaking natural beauty of the United States that was being threatened by industrialization, as evidenced by the works on view here. Often regarded as an early environmentalist, Cole was, however, at pains to address the place of indigenous tribes who once thrived in the Hudson Valley and were being systematically supplanted. They sometimes appear in the paintings wearing native attire, arguably as touches of nostalgia or mere decoration.

Installation view; Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape, 2024, by Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Top: Sky Dome Pattern, 2024 by Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan). Courtesy the artist. Left: Solitary Lake in New Hampshire, 1830 by Thomas Cole. Right: Forest, 2019, by Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa). Courtesy the artist and Forge Project, Courtesy the artist and Forge Project, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck, Taghkanic, NY. Photo: Peter Aaron/OTTO.

Curated by Scott Manning Stevens [Karoniaktatsie (Akwesasasne Mohawk), director of Native American and Indigenous Studies Program at Syracuse University, the exhibition features works by Indigenous artists: Teresa Baker, Brandon Lazore, Truman T. Lowe, Alan Michelson, and Kay WalkingStick. As Stevens suggests in a press statement, he organized the exhibition in response to what he terms a “deep critique against American landscape painting by many viewers, but especially by Indigenous Americans who feel both painted out of the American landscape or set back in an Edenic past that is gone.” Intended as an “Intervention, critique and a conversation,” the show succeeds at all three of those goals with striking juxtapositions, such as Cole’s resplendent canvas Kaaterskill Falls (1828) hung next to Truman T. Lowe’s 3-D work, Waterfall VIII (2011). Lowe’s work, with long, narrow ribbons of wood—alluding to traditions of Native American basket weaving—juts out from high on one wall and streams into the gallery space onto the floor. Here, Lowe creates a cascade that indeed matches the mesmerizing effect of Cole’s waterfall in the Catskill Mountains.   

 “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape” coincides with the inauguration this summer of the Thomas Cole Site’s new Visitor Center. A nearly $2-million structure designed pro bono by New York-based architect Stephen Shadley, the modernist structure features 18-foot tall widows overlooking the complex of 19th century buildings where Cole lived and worked.   —David Ebony