Sarah McCoubrey

The exhibition features a survey of McCoubrey’s exploration of a variety of media and output, including themes of ecology, technology, landscape and humanity. This retrospective exhibition examines McCoubrey’s career, showcasing her well-known landscape paintings alongside recent and never-before-seen paintings and drawings.

“Sarah has made a lasting impact not only on the landscape art genre but also on the lives and careers of countless students and members of the ���ϲ����� community,” says Emily Dittman, director of the ���ϲ����� Art Museum, reflecting on McCoubrey’s impact on the University’s campus. “We are proud to showcase the breadth of her creative achievements and the profound influence she continues to have as both an artist and educator.”

The exhibition is timely for McCoubrey, who recently attained professor emeritus status after 34 years as a professor of painting in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Over the course of her career, she has been represented by the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia and has held significant solo exhibitions at institutions including the Everson Museum of Art, the Clifford Gallery at Colgate College, The Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, the Luther Brady Gallery at George Washington University, and the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. McCoubrey has also been the recipient of prestigious awards and fellowships including both a 2010 and 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting and a 2006 New York State Council for the Arts Fellowship.

Fellow ���ϲ����� professor and Currents curator Andrew Saluti notes that McCoubrey’s work explores diverse themes and media with unexpected range. Saluti continues, “[McCoubrey] nimbly exposes the seriousness of man-made environmental disaster alongside the playfulness of a flying potato escaping that same terrible terrain, inviting us into a world that is both beautiful and disturbing, amusing and sober. As an educator, she has inspired generations of emerging artists in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at ���ϲ����� to think beyond traditional approaches and to be fearless in that process.”

“Currents: Sarah McCoubrey” will be on display until Sept. 18.

‘What If I Try This?’: Helen Frankenthaler in the 20th-Century Print Ecosystem

In the Joe and Emily Lowe Galleries, “What If I Try This?” examines the printmaking career of celebrated abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler H’85 (1928-2011). Curated by Melissa Yuen, the exhibition grew from a 2023 gift of 11 prints and one set of process proofs from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative and explores how Frankenthaler, in collaboration with seven print studios, pushed the boundaries of printmaking.

Featuring loans from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation (New York), the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation (Portland, Oregon), the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (Rochester, New York), Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey) and Munson Museum of Art (Utica, N.Y.), the show considers the collaborative and technical nature of printmaking and emphasizes that prints are not simply ink on paper, but the outcome of experimentation and technological innovation.

“I am delighted to celebrate and share the Frankenthaler Foundation’s generous gift to ���ϲ����� with our audiences,” says curator Melissa Yuen. “At the same time, through the different partnerships the artist sustained throughout her five-decade-long printmaking career we are able to explore the vibrant printmaking ecosystem that continues to flourish today. The daring experiments Frankenthaler and her collaborators realized remind us that invention requires risk, and that the creative process is rarely linear.”

An opening reception on Thursday, Sept. 11, will feature a keynote talk by Alexander Nemerov, the Carl and Marilynn Thomas Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. A part of yearlong series focusing on the theme of “Creativity,” presented by the , Nemerov’s talk will explore Frankenthaler’s ���ϲ����� connection by way of ���ϲ����� alum and famed 20th-century art critic Clement Greenberg ’30. The talk begins at 4:30 p.m. at 500 Hall of Languages with a reception to follow at the Art Museum in the Shaffer Art Building.

Helen Frankenthaler, the celebrated 20th-century abstract artist, pushed the boundaries of printmaking in collaboration with print workshops around the world, including Crown Point Press in San Francisco where she collaborated with Kathan Brown on this work, “Nepenthe. “

‘A Sense of Arrival’

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

A public reading and conversation with Browne will be held later in the fall, offering a unique opportunity to engage with the artist-scholar’s evolving work.

This self-portrait of Kevin Adonis Browne, professor of rhetoric and writing in the College of Arts and Sciences, is one of a series on view this fall as part of a series taken in 2020.

‘Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art’

A new permanent collection exhibition in the Morton and Luise Kaish Gallery and Collection Galleries, “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art” examines the relationship between people and their environments across time and space. The exhibition draws from the museum’s collection of nearly 45,000 works and includes works ranging from ancient to contemporary.

Organized around themes such as landscape, the home, places of gathering and the human figure, “Human/Environment” asks viewers to consider how physical, cultural and material environments shape artistic expression—and vice versa.

This exhibition will be on view for the next four academic years, and the museum hopes it will serve as an anchor for broader conversations about humanity and our place in the world.

On display as part of “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art,” [Ishtar] is one of the oldest items in the Art Museum’s collection.

The Art Wall Project: ‘Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?’

2025-26 Art Wall artist Bhen Alan has constructed a monumental handwoven banig (like the one pictured here) from plant fibers, strips of plastic and deconstructed paintings he previously made of his family members.

Artist, dancer and educator Bhen Alan brings his lived experience as a Filipino immigrant in Canada and the United States to a large-scale, site-specific installation in the museum’s Art Wall Project. Alan has constructed a monumental banig, a traditional Filipino handwoven textile created from plant fibers, strips of plastic and paintings he previously made of his family members.

“I want [museum visitors] to understand the experience of immigrant people … especially with everything that is happening right now in this political climate,” artist Bhen Alan says. “This work really is a labor of love, and I hope that whoever spends time with the work or whoever sees the work, even in a brief moment, I hope they find love and care for one another and for themselves.”

Now in its fifth iteration, the Art Wall Project spotlights contemporary artists whose work inspires interdisciplinary conversations within the campus community. The project is generously supported by the Wege Foundation.

The ���ϲ����� Art Museum’s fall season presents a range of exhibitions grounded in its diverse collection that explores art and ecology, personal family narratives and pioneering printmaking. Together, they demonstrate art’s ability to spark conversation, bring together disciplines and help us better understand our world and each other.

Watch a Time-Lapse Installation of ‘Why Does My Adobo Taste Different?’

Video filmed, edited and produced by Amy Manley, senior multimedia producer

For more information on exhibitions, events and museum hours, visit .

The scrolls were donated by Geraldine Forbes, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at the State University of New York at Oswego, whose career as a historian of India and teaching professor has shaped generations of scholarship on gender, visual culture and oral traditions in South Asia.

A single panel from Satya Narayan Pir, Jharna Chitrakar, circa 2004. It is one of the more than 80 works gifted to the ���ϲ����� Art Museum by Geraldine Forbes.

Patachitra, meaning “cloth picture” in Sanskrit, are hand-painted scrolls crafted by patuas (“scroll painters”) in the West Bengal region of eastern India. These vibrant scrolls are historically performed alongside narrative song which transforms them into a unique experience that straddles the line between visual art, oral history and performance.

Forbes began purchasing these scrolls because of her love for folk art and slowly amassed her collection over many trips to Calcutta. Now, she is concerned that such a dynamic art form is at risk of disappearing. As patuas have adapted to the rapidly changing media landscape of India, those performances are becoming less common. Many patuas have even eschewed traditional scroll painting in favor of selling painted souvenirs such as kettles, spoons and umbrellas at local flea markets

Geraldine Forbes, center, with Hazra and Madhu Chitrakar in India (Photo courtesy of Geraldine Forbes)

“Although India has a thriving art market, this folk art has not ‘caught’ on with galleries and buyers,” Forbes notes. “Unless things change, it is doubtful that [patachitra scrolls] will be continued to be painted.”

The scrolls in Forbes’ gift were created during the 1960s to the present day. Traditionally, patachitra scrolls depict mythological or folkloric scenes, while many in this collection address contemporary issues such as climate change, plastic pollution, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and even global political events like the 9/11 attacks. Their themes demonstrate the versatility and relevance of patachitra as an art form to capture both enduring myths and the challenges of our modern world.

Forbes feels that her collection of scrolls will endure the test of time and fit in with the museum’s already impressive collection of South Asian art and material culture, including Mithila paintings previously donated to the Museum by Susan Wadley, professor emerita in the anthropology department and Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies.

“The fact that [the SU Art Museum] has the Ruth Reeves collection of folk art objects, as well as [Professor Emerita] Susan Wadley’s collection, [Associate Professor of Art History] Romita Ray’s interest and Melissa Yuen’s role at [the museum] made it an ideal location for my collection of Bengali scrolls,” Forbes says.

“We are honored to receive this gift from Geraldine,” says Emily Dittman, director of the ���ϲ����� Art Museum. “These hand painted, intricate scrolls represent a centuries-old storytelling tradition that is now at risk of disappearing. By preserving them, we not only safeguard a vital art form but also create meaningful opportunities for cross-cultural learning, research and engagement across campus and beyond”

With this generous gift, the ���ϲ����� Art Museum deepens its commitment to preserving and showcasing global visual cultures. Currently, the scrolls are being processed and catalogued by museum staff to be made available for scholars at a future date. The patachitra scrolls will support not only exhibitions, but also interdisciplinary research and curricular collaborations, offering students, faculty and the public access to a unique storytelling tradition.