Stephen Kuusisto, Urayoán Noel and OlaRose Ndubuisi—three poets whose work embody resilience, identity and the radical possibilities of language—will present their work at the annual poetry reading on

The event, produced by Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact, takes place at the , where the “” spring exhibition, which recognizes artists who live with disabilities, is currently displayed.

“This unique setting provides ��much excitement for our Cruel April series this year,” says , the University’s executive director of cultural engagement for the Hispanic community and Point of Contact director. “Just as the exhibition’s artistic expressions expand on ideas of creativity shaped by body, mind, culture and history, the works of the three poets enter into a dialogue across cultures and disciplines. Both forums offer varied perspectives on how artists navigate the world on their own terms.”

The poetry program begins at 5:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Poet and essayist is a University Professor and director of the . Blind since birth, Kuusisto has built a celebrated body of work that redefines understandings of perception and beauty. His poetry collections, “Only Bread, Only Light” (2000) and “Letters to Borges” (2013), along with memoirs including “Planet of the Blind” and “Have Dog, Will Travel,” have established him as one of the most compelling disability voices in American letters. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Poetry and The New York Times Magazine.

is an internationally recognized poet and scholar, an associate professor of English and Spanish at New York University and a defining voice in Latinx and Nuyorican literary traditions. He is the author of the landmark study “In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam” (2014) and the poetry collections “Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico” (2015) and “Transversal” (2021), which was a New York Public Library Book of the Year. He is also the winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Award. His work explores neurodivergence, migration and the politics of language. Cruel April is presented in partnership with the , , , and the .

’29, the 2024–25 New York State Youth Poet Laureate, is a Syracuse student pursuing dual majors in biology and journalism. She is also a Coronat Scholar and Renée Crown honors student and is enrolled in SUNY Upstate Medical University’s B.S./M.D. program. Her poetry draws on her experience with scoliosis, her Nigerian heritage and her commitment to uplifting marginalized communities. A premature birth survivor, she is the founder of The Finding Scoliosis Kindly Project and a Prudential Emerging Visionaries award winner.

The has received a significant gift of more than 25 works by 16 artists from the collection of Nancy Delman Portnoy.

A New York-based collector, gallerist and educator, Delman Portnoy’s collection focuses on artists addressing political and social issues across a wide range of media. She has held board positions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. The gift was facilitated by alumna Elizabeth “Liz” C. Tenenbaum ’98.

The donation transforms the museum’s holdings in lens-based media and broadens its representation in painting and contemporary voices. Highlights of the gift include works by Rashid Johnson, John Waters, Shimon Attie, David Goldblatt and Abel Barroso.

Johnson’s “Green Belt” (2009), a large-scale photograph of the artist’s father wearing a newly awarded taekwondo belt and seated against a bookshelf with a CB radio perched on it, offers a nuanced portrait of a soon-to-be-father’s self-exploration during the social upheaval of the 1970s.

“Rashid Johnson is one of the most incisive artists working today, and this early photograph encapsulates so many of the ideas he has explored throughout his career—Blackness, family, home life, community, literacy and access to sport,” says Art Museum Curator Melissa Yuen. “The wide-ranging conversations that a single work of art can encourage is the hallmark of what we do at Syracuse. We aim to acquire works that spark conversations across disciplines, and this incredible gift further develops our vision for the collection.

The gift also includes eight works by filmmaker and artist John Waters, whose photography draws from and recontextualizes iconic film imagery. The works by Waters present opportunities for collaboration with campus programs in film and media arts.

Other works turn a creative lens on histories that happen on local, neighborhood levels. Shimon Attie’s “Lasers Writing Out (in Yiddish) Jewish Senior’s Sleeping Dream” (1998) is part of his celebrated public art project which used animated laser projection to inscribe the personal and collective memories of immigrant residents onto the architecture of their neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

David Goldblatt’s “Sunset over the Playing Fields of Tladi, Soweto, Johannesburg, August 1972,” (1972) photographed during the apartheid era, is a striking example of Goldblatt’s commitment to documenting everyday life in apartheid South Africa. Goldblatt’s photograph is currently on view at the in New York City as part of the exhibition “New In: Recent Acquisitions at the Syracuse University Art Museum” through June 4.

The gift advances the museum’s commitment to a collecting philosophy that fosters interdisciplinary teaching and research across the University, with particular focus on programs and institutions that include and the in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

“This gift is transformative—for our collection, and for the students and faculty who learn with it. When a collector of Nancy Delman Portnoy’s vision chooses to place works at an academic museum, it reflects a deep belief in the power of art to educate,” says Art Museum Director Emily Dittman. “These artists speak directly to the interdisciplinary, socially engaged teaching that defines Syracuse University, and expand our ability to teach across disciplines in meaningful ways.”

The Syracuse University Art Museum stewards a collection of more than 45,000 objects spanning 4,000 years of world art and serves as a teaching laboratory for students, faculty and the broader community. For more information on the museum, including current and upcoming exhibitions and programs, .

’ paintings line the walls of her studio in Anchorage, Alaska. From “icon portraits” to landscapes, her artwork holds a palpable verve—carrying a panorama of stories, ideas and interpretations with them, often centered on Alutiiq culture and identity.

From April 6-17, Infante Lyons will bring her visual and academic storytelling to Syracuse University as the 2026 . Her two-week residency is organized around the theme of “Visions of Resilience: Sacred Art and Storied Landscapes.” Humanities Center Director Vivian May says she is excited about the many different ways Infante Lyons will engage the community through dialogues, lectures and seminars focused on her art, Indigenous cultural resilience, approaches to environmentalism and environmental activism, storytelling and more. Infante Lyons’ work, says May, “immerses us in a sense of place and asks us to build relationships across boundaries. Infante Lyons visualizes the sacred, imagines the environment and builds stories in ways that invite us to come together and imagine a more just future for all.”

All are welcome to meet Infante Lyons and experience her work in person at an at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Eggers Hall and at other .

Infante Lyons, a painter and multimedia artist whose work engages themes of Indigenous sovereignty, cultural resilience and environmental sustainability, was raised in Anchorage. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Whitman College, she studied at the Viña del Mar Escuela de Bellas Artes and spent 18 years in Chile. Her maternal family is from Kodiak Island—a large island in the Gulf of Alaska and the ancestral homeland of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people—where her grandparents were commercial salmon fishers. She is a registered Alutiiq Alaska Native and has tribal affiliation with the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq corporation, Koniag.

“I’m looking forward to conversations about learning from different cultures: the importance of a diverse mindset, the richness of looking at Indigenous cultures, how they see the world,” says Infante Lyons. Turning to the future, she asks: “And then, how can you apply that to a conversation [about] where we go forward? It could be applied to sustainability, or how we get along as human beings, or how we get along with the rest of the world.”

Notably, two new paintings by Infante Lyons will find a permanent home in the Syracuse University Art Museum. Melissa Yuen, curator at the museum, says Infante Lyons’ potrtaits “invite interdisciplinary conversation, highlighting humanity’s relationship with the environment, disrupting Eurocentric worldviews and celebrating the role women play in Alutiiq culture as connectors with the world.”

These as-yet unnamed pieces, to be unveiled on April 7, each depict Alaskan Native women dressed in kuspuks. The works incorporate traditional and contemporary Indigenous designs, and each woman cradles an animal central to Alutiiq culture: a seal pup in one painting, an otter in the other. The compositions echo a “Madonna and Child” style painting, complete with halos and other visual symbols of reverence.

In portraying animals in the style of sacred Orthodox paintings and iconography, Infante Lyons emphasizes an intimate relationship between humans and the natural world—one that opposes Western models of extraction and domination. Relatedly, some of her upcoming events on campus will highlight how Indigenous mindsets forge new pathways for understanding and caring for the environment.

Chie Sakakibara, associate professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies and geography and the environment, says when she came across one of Infante Lyons’ icon portraits, “” she was speechless.

“I was immediately struck by the work’s powerful expressivity, as Linda brings together multiple elements—ancestral presences and sacred, spiritual words—into the present, rather than relegating them to a past that no longer exists,” says Sakakibara.

Sakakibara invites the campus and broader Syracuse community into a shared encounter with Infante Lyons’ artistic wisdom, and hopes the residency will spark some of the same kinds of connections she cultivates with students around traditional and land-based knowledge, cultural resilience, multi-species relations and the continuity of Indigenous storytelling.

For co-host Timur Hammond, associate professor of geography and the environment, Infante Lyons’ residency opens up new points of academic connection, particularly for his Spring 2026 course, ‘Geography of Memory,’ and for strengthening his ongoing collaborations with the (EHN). One of EHN’s projects includes an , developed with Infante Lyons, to help spark discussion and activity in the classroom and community.

While Infante Lyons’ work carries many layers of meaning, her creative process begins without a preconceived agenda. Referencing Syracuse creative writing professor and author George Saunders, Infante Lyons subscribes to the idea that “the muse finds you.” A blank canvas is an invitation for her to explore meaning, and to see her life experiences naturally flow out onto the canvas.

“You come to the studio, you start something, and you may try to have a concept or an idea or a composition, but that will change,” she says. In being open to spontaneous inspiration during this creative process, “you end up with a better piece of artwork,” says Infante Lyons.

She hopes to inspire the same approach in those who come across her art. Her paintings—and the conversations that arise around them—need not uphold a rigid, absolute message. Rather, her work invites an opportunity for thought, exploration and emotion.

Story by Colette Goldstein G’25

will present “New In: Recent Acquisitions at the Syracuse University Art Museum” at the Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery through June 4, 2026. Featuring paintings, photographs, prints,��sculpture��and ceramics��acquired��since 2021, the exhibition reveals how��the��academic��museum puts new acquisitions to work in its galleries and study room, in faculty research and in conversations that reach beyond the museum walls.

“The museum’s wide-ranging collection provides opportunities to practice visual literacy and communication skills—essential to many fields and professions—across the University’s departments, schools,��and colleges,” says curator of education and academic outreach Kate Holohan. “In addition, teaching with objects is active, experiential and student-centered. Students themselves��analyze��visual��evidence in real time��in order to��pose��critical��questions,��develop interpretations of artworks and��make interdisciplinary connections.”

Many of the works on view have already been��activated��at the museum with University students and faculty.��“Hotel Paradise Café,”��a��resist-ground etching and engraving by Peter Milton, is��a layered composition of mirrors and reflections��and other works by Milton��were featured��in an exhibition��co-curated��by Lyndsay Gratch, associate professor of communication and rhetorical��studies,��and a 2024-2025 Art Museum Faculty Fellow.

Gratch brought students from her course Performance Studies into the galleries,��and��using Milton’s print,��explored��questions of reflexivity, positionality and how the act of looking is never neutral. The Faculty Fellows program,��,��engages��professors from disciplines across the University with the permanent collection to develop this kind of object-based��teaching.

The Faculty Fellows program and others like it��are part of a broader effort. The museum routinely welcomes classes into its galleries and study��room,��where students examine original works firsthand. In 2025, over 200 classes from 38 different departments on��campus��made��observations, weighed��evidence��and built��research questions in real time. It is the kind of sustained, object-driven engagement that distinguishes��the��teaching museum, and one reason the��SU��Art Museum has made expanding��the perspectives and lived experiences in the collection a priority.

That priority is on full display here.

A photograph by Chinese American artist Jarod Lew, from his series “In Between You and Your Shadow”��grapples with��the limits of knowing your family history��within the social��context of��Asian American��by recreating��a scene from his childhood.��In “Untitled (Snack),” a��handwritten Post-it note��sits before a��plate of cut fruit��left by his mother��as an after-school snack.��It’s��a��quiet, intimate��photograph, but one that carries the weight of a larger history:��Lew’s mother was the fiancée of Vincent Chin, whose 1982 murder became a turning point in Asian American��history.

A��monocast��rubber sculpture by��Niho��Kozuru��points toward the kind of interdisciplinary conversations the museum aims to foster, with the potential of��catalyzing conversations��with material scientists in chemistry and the College of Engineering and Computer Science��and curators of the plastics collection in the Special Collections Ressarch Center at Bird Library.

The exhibition also includes a screenprint by painter,��College of Visual and Performing Arts����alumnus and��Syracuse University��Art Museum Advisory Board member James Little, made to��support��the 150th anniversary of the Art Students League where he now teaches; a print from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,��donated through��; and press photographs that build on the museum’s connection to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Many of these works are on public view for the first time.

“These acquisitions��are a testament to��the Orange community’s commitment to the University’s mission of teaching and research, and demonstrate how a diverse collection��strengthens��those efforts,” says curator Melisa Yuen. “We are grateful for the��generous��donations that made this��exhibition��possible, through both gifts of art and through funds that allow us to��purchase��work strategically.”

“New In”��presents��a��portrait of a museum where��acquiring��a work of art is only the first step. At Syracuse,��students��catalogue, curate and build research questions through direct engagement with original��art.��This exhibition��invites visitors to��explore that��process and��encounter��the works��that make it possible.

“New In: Recent Acquisitions at the Syracuse University Art Museum” is on view��now��through June 4, 2026, at the Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery in midtown Manhattan. For more information, visit�����ǰ� .

The Syracuse University Art Museum is now accepting applications for the 2026-27 Faculty Fellows program. The program supports faculty across all disciplines in bringing the museum’s collection of over 45,000 objects into their teaching.

Now in its fifth year, the Faculty Fellows program centers��on object-based teaching and research through an active,��experiential��approach that asks students to make close observations, analyze evidence and develop their own interpretations in real time. Up to four��fellows��will be selected and paired with museum staff—including curators Melissa Yuen and Kate Holohan—for a hands-on introduction to the collection and ongoing curricular support. Each Faculty Fellow receives a $2,500 stipend or research subsidy.

What’s Involved?

• Fellows work with museum staff to develop a museum visit lesson plan, at least one object-based student assignment and a collection-based teaching guide tied to a 2026-27 course.
• The bulk of the work takes place during the summer of 2026 (total time commitment of approximately50 hours).

Who can apply?

• The Faculty Fellows program is open to all University tenured, tenure-track and full-time non-tenure track faculty teaching in 2026-27.
• Proposals from any school, college or discipline are welcome.
• For fall 2026 courses, the museum especially welcomes proposals engaging in themes of ecology, climate change, consumption and material culture in connection with our upcoming exhibitions.

What you need to know

• More information including the entire call for applications andr equired application materials can be found on the .
• The museum’s collection can also be viewed .

Previous��Faculty Fellows

Colleen Cameron,��professor of practice in human development and family science in the College of Arts and Sciences,��is a Faculty Fellow for 2025-26 who integrated museum materials into her course, Healthcare Communications: Research, Theory and��Practice this past fall. As part of��the course, students selected an object that connected to death notification and presented their research at the end of the semester.

Omar��Cheta,��a 2023-24 Faculty Fellow and assistant professor of history in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs,��utilized��a carpet, painting and 19^th-century photograph in his course, The Middle East Since the Rise of Islam. Cheta��encouraged his students to��explore��traces��of the past��through material objects, rather than��just��through��textually transmitted ideas.

Elizabeth Wimer, assistant teaching professor��in��the Whitman School of Management, was a 2024-25 Faculty Fellow. She��explored how artistic representation of African culture relates to the continual evolution of the interconnectedness of the global economy through objects in the museum’s collection as part of her Managing in a Global Setting course.��Her work culminated in a Spring 2025 exhibition along with��a separate exhibition���ǰ�ganized by��Lindsay Gratch, a 2024-25 Faculty Fellow.

The Faculty Fellows program is made possible with the support of the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Office of Research.

From social media to television, popular culture is saturated with images of the rich and famous. But long before TV and the internet, portraiture elevated certain individuals while erasing others, promoting hierarchies of wealth, privilege and power. Exemplifying this historic trend in European art is a portrait titled “Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin” (1786) in the collections of the .

Recently cleaned and restored, the painting was made by�� (1723-92), the first president of the ��in London and the leading British portrait painter of his time. On view at the museum for the first time in five decades, as part of the exhibition “Human/Environment: 4,000 Years of Art” (through Spring 2029), the painting inspired this year’s����on the politics of portraiture.

Depicting Rebecca Lyne (Mrs. Seaforth) as Tuccia, a Vestal Virgin, the image represents Reynolds’s reliance on Classical and Renaissance art to animate many of his portraits—an approach to portrait-painting that he advocated in his highly influential book “.”

Drawing upon the Vestal Virgins or priestesses of ancient Rome, Tuccia’s story highlights the virtue of chastity. However, Lyne was known to be the mistress of Richard Barwell, a powerful and wealthy East India Company merchant and administrator whose portrait Reynolds had also painted—making the decision to present her as a symbol of chastity an intriguing choice, notes , associate professor of art history in the College of Arts and Sciences. Clothed in Bengal muslin—an Indian luxury—her face blushing with powdered rouge and her hair curled into ringlets, Lyne embodied the ideal of 18th-century British beauty.

“Her portrait was displayed for six consecutive exhibitions at Thomas Macklin’s Poet’s Gallery in London, talked about in the newspapers, then circulated widely as an engraving—functioning much like a viral image would today,” says Melissa Yuen, curator at the Art Museum.

Forget chips, candy and energy drinks.

Thanks to a new partnership between the and Maine-based printmaker Ana Inciardi, there’s a new vending machine on campus that dispenses something unique and entirely different: handmade art for only $1.

Quietly over the holidays, the museum began hosting one of Inciardi’s now-famous mini print vending machines. These small, bright red boxes have redefined expectations of what vending machines can do. Insert four quarters and out pops a surprise work of art.

The ten original prints available inside the machine include Syracuse-inspired images like an orange, a saltshaker and even a custom work featuring the Winged Victory of Samothrace (which stands in the historic Crouse College). Each three-by-five-inch linocut is hand-carved by Inciardi and her studio team, signed by the artist and numbered within its edition.

“My favorite thing about my mini print vending machine is how accessible it allows art to become,” Inciardi says. “Four quarters for a two-color linocut [print] feels pretty special to me.”

What began as a practical solution to collect quarters during the national coin shortage in 2020 has since become a viral sensation. An Instagram reel Inciardi posted showcasing the machine garnered more than 17 million views, according to NPR, and she now maintains more than 100 machines across the country hosted everywhere from local coffee shops to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

The prints have also spawned an enthusiastic collector community. Fans trade prints with each other and share their collections on a dedicated subreddit.

“The [mini print vending machine] perfectly embodies what we’re working toward at the museum—making art genuinely accessible and removing the barriers that can make people feel like they need permission to engage with it,” says Emily Dittman, director of the museum.

“It’s not just about the beautiful work Ana creates; it’s about becoming part of something larger, connecting with collectors across the country and realizing that art collecting can be joyful, spontaneous and absolutely for everyone,” Dittman says.

The mini print vending machine invites a moment of surprise and delight in the daily campus routine. You don’t know which print you’ll receive until it slides out of its protective sleeve, turning an ordinary transaction into a small adventure.

The acquired 227 works of art in 2025, significantly expanding contemporary perspectives in its permanent collection while strengthening its holdings in works on paper, which includes more than 22,000 objects spanning printmaking, photography and drawing, as well as ceramics.

The acquisitions reflect the museum’s ongoing commitments to centering diverse contemporary voices and deepening areas of collection strength.

New works expand the museum’s holdings in ceramics, particularly South American Indigenous ceramics with Julia Isídrez’s ceramic sculpture of Guarani mythical creature, “Teju Jagua.” The acquisitions also introduce new materials and media, including a painting made by pouring acrylic mixed with polymers, “Contrapuntal” by Jill Nathanson, while adding critical contemporary works that address subjects central to the teaching and research mission of the University such as ecology and identity.

These recent acquisitions were made possible through a combination of generous gifts from artists, collectors, galleries and alumni. This includes: Jill Nathanson and the Berry Campbell Gallery; advisory board member Leslie Tonkonow G’77 and her husband, art critic and curator Klaus Ottmann; advisory board member James Little G’76; the Christian Keesee Collection; and Eric ‘05 and Holly Gleason. Strategic purchases were identified by curator Melissa Yuen.

“These works allow us to forge critical interdisciplinary connections across our many audiences that range from the Syracuse University campus to the Central New York region. From materials science and engineering to questions of identity and social justice, these acquisitions create opportunities for conversations that extend far beyond the gallery walls,” Yuen says. “I am grateful for everyone who made these gifts possible, and I’m energized by the capacity that these works bring to the museum to catalyze interdisciplinary dialogue.”

Several of these works will be featured in “New In: Recent Acquisitions at the Syracuse University Art Museum,” opening Feb. 9, 2026, at the Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery at the Joseph I. Lubin House in New York City.

Highlights from 2025’s acquisitions include

Tomoko Sawada, ‘Early Days 32’

A representation of Japanese photographer Sawada’s early work, this unsettling self-portrait features Sawada’s face painted with clock numerals, exploring themes of self-identity and the transition to adulthood. The tightly cropped image deliberately denies viewers full access, making the act of withholding part of her self-presentation.

Brett Weston, ‘Scrub’

“Scrub,” by acclaimed 20th-century photographer Brett Weston, son of modernist photographer Edward Weston, exemplifies the artist’s distinctive focus on Western landscapes and natural forms. The 50 prints from the Christian Keesee Collection were selected by the Brett Weston Archives to deepen the museum’s commitment to environmental and ecological themes. These quintessential examples of modernist photography allow us to expand our exploration beyond photographic histories into broader interdisciplinary conversations.

James Little, ‘Miss Kitt’

Syracuse University alumnus James Little donated four artist proofs for prints he created in support of the Art Students League of New York where he currently teaches. “Miss Kitt” references bògòlanfini or mud cloth, the handmade cotton fabric from Mali traditionally dyed with fermented mud, which uses what Little describes as ‘forms on dark ground’ to create high contrast patterns that appear black but reveal “a rainbow of colors” upon closer inspection. The title honors the legacy of singer Eartha Kitt, whom Little met years ago at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Julia������í������,��‘Teju Jagua’

This coil-built, pit-fired work depicts the seven-headed Guarani mythological creature and reflects a matrilineal ceramics tradition the artist learned from her mother. Isídrez is Paraguayan and of Indigenous Guarani heritage.

Pao Houa Her,��‘untitled (opium flower with pink fabric)’

Her’s photograph connects to the Hmong diaspora experience and her family history while exploring the complex history of the poppy plant. The work engages with the University’s broader interest in ecology and human relationships with the environment.

Robert Freeman, ‘Struggle��–��3’

Freeman’s powerful painting responds to the murder of George Floyd as part of his larger “Struggle” series. In an artist statement, Freeman writes that “Artists and writers use pens and paints to express their personal shock,��horror��and indignation to announce:��‘This terror must end.’”

Hung Liu, ‘Women of Color (White Paper)’

Chinese American artist Hung Liu immigrated to the United States in 1984 to attend University of California – San Diego after living through the Cultural Revolution. This is one of Liu’s earliest prints published from Pyramid Atlantic and layers archival images of turn-of-the-century Chinese sex workers. “Women of Color (White Paper)” blends autobiographic elements, including dimensional fortune cookies made from paper pulp, and ruminations on the Chinese immigrant experience in the United States.

Jill Nathanson, ‘Contrapuntal’

Nathanson’s abstract painting further strengthens the potential for interdisciplinary conversation at the museum regarding materiality and painting techniques. This luminous painting that explores the interaction of colors is created by pouring and manipulating acrylic that has been mixed with polymers. Nathanson also employs theatrical lighting gels to plan the composition.

A glowing sculpture cast in rubber. A photo-print-drawing hybrid that defies easy categorization. An aquatint that looks nothing like your usual aquatint.

The works are among the 48 that alumnus John Thompson ’72 has gifted to the . The donated pieces are just as stunning as they are unconventional, showcasing what happens when artists refuse to accept the limits of their medium. And their gift to the University presents a unique educational opportunity for an academic museum.

Thompson, a graduate of the College of Visual and Performing Arts with a B.F.A., is himself a working printmaker with studios in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Harpswell, Maine. He has taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Framingham State University and workshops across the country.

The significant gift acquired by the museum throughout 2024 and 2025 from Thompson represents a collection shaped around works that demonstrate mastery through innovation. The collection includes pieces by artists such as Al Held, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Niho Kozuru, Robert Freeman and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, among others.

The Collector’s Eye

Among the gift’s most striking pieces is Niho Kozuru’s “Cosmic Glow,” a relief sculpture cast in rubber.

“[Kozuru’s sculpture] is glowing and it’s made out of rubber,” museum curator Melissa Yuen says. “It looks like jello, so you really expect it to wobble, but texturally it’s surprisingly firm.”

Meanwhile, Richard Ryan’s aquatint “Scapes II” pushes technique in another direction, demonstrating a surprising delicacy.

“It’s rare to see an aquatint that looks as painterly as ‘Scapes II’ does,” Yuen says.

And Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s “Cinq Sujets réunis” employs a hybrid technique called cliché-verre. The artist draws an image on a glass plate, which is then printed onto light-sensitive paper.

For the Students

That these works will now serve students isn’t incidental— it’s why Thompson chose Syracuse as their new home.

As an undergraduate, Thompson received a full scholarship. He travelled extensively throughout Europe with the University’s support, and nearly five decades later, he is returning the investment.

“I feel like I have a responsibility to give back what Syracuse gave me,” Thompson says.

His years as an educator sharpened his sense of what students need. When Thompson was a student, access to original works was limited.

“We only saw slides or picture books,” he says. “There wasn’t a study room. You couldn’t go see Rembrandt prints as you can with the museum now.”

He hopes his gift changes that for current and future students and that the work will strengthen the teaching potential of the museum across campus.

“Part of what I would hope is that the works I’m donating are not treated as precious objects,” Thompson says. “I want students to look at it, examine it, feel that their lives and their emotions are as important as any piece of art.”

A Teaching Collection

The art museum, located adjacent to the College of Visual and Performing Arts, in the Shaffer Art Building serves as a teaching museum for the University and broader community. Thompson’s gift reinforces that mission.

“We are honored that John Thompson has donated this incredible collection of work to the museum,” says director Emily Dittman. “These 48 works expand our potential as a teaching museum and embodies the spirit of our mission to be a museum-laboratory for learning, engagement and exploration.”

For Thompson, the gift is mutual.

“It is a gift to me too,” he says, “to be able to give some of this great work to an institution I believe in.”

In an era when artificial intelligence (AI) can aid in diagnosing diseases, serve as a virtual health assistant and help discover life-saving pharmaceuticals, there are certain irreplaceable human skills that algorithms cannot replicate.

At the College of Arts and Sciences’ (HDFS), students are developing empathy, cultural humility and critical reasoning through innovative courses that prepare them for some of health care’s most challenging moments.

Helping to lead this effort is , professor of practice in HDFS. Her courses, rooted in hands-on and community-engaged learning, represent a growing recognition that the future of health care depends not just on technical knowledge, but on uniquely human abilities that ease patients’ often stressful experiences.

At the heart of Cameron’s classes are what’s referred to as object-based learning. This pedagogical approach uses physical or visual objects as the primary focus for teaching and educating. Instead of learning solely from textbooks or lectures, students directly engage with real objects, artifacts, artworks, specimens or other tangible materials to develop critical thinking, observation and analytical skills. This fall, students in her class, HFS 400: Healthcare Communication, studied works from the s collections to discover how art can deepen their capacity for sensitive, compassionate patient care.

“In the age of AI, these kinds of classes become more important,” says Cameron, whose collaboration with the Art Museum was supported by their Faculty Fellows program. “This art-centered teaching method strengthens [students’] core humanistic and cognitive skills. The uniquely human skills of interpretation, narrative building and empathetic understanding become even more central to professional identity, which AI can’t do.”

Visual Thinking in Health Care Education

Inside the Art Museum, Cameron’s students aren’t just viewing paintings. Instead, they’re practicing the observation and listening skills that will one day help them in the real world. Students select works of art that represent one of medicine’s most difficult moments: death notification.

In the clinical setting, death notification, or the process by which medical professionals inform family members or loved ones that a patient has died, is considered one of the most difficult and emotionally challenging tasks health care providers must perform.

The approach draws on visual thinking strategies (VTS) increasingly adopted by medical schools nationwide. Rather than memorizing facts, students learn to carefully observe, interpret multiple perspectives and communicate effectively—skills directly transferable to patient care.

Research published in the journal indicates VTS-based interventions consistently help develop crucial clinical competencies, with several studies showing statistically significant improvements in observational skills among medical students and residents.

For Sophie Heieck ’26, a pre-med student who plans to pursue a career in pediatrics, the museum experience has taught her something textbooks cannot. “As someone who is very fast paced and always on my toes, it was extremely beneficial to slow down, and really tune into my senses and what I saw and interpreted from what I was looking at,” says Heieck. “Medicine can be really fast paced at times and can often leave patients feeling like a number or a statistic. It is important to build that rapport with them.”

Heieck, who aspires to become a physician in her hometown of Geneva, New York, and to address health care disparities there, selected artwork portraying a poignant final moment between a loved one and the deceased.

After reviewing Federico Castellon’s work “Stop Him & Strip Him I Say,” she reflected on how it reinforced the importance of respecting grief and recognizing that individuals cope with loss in different ways—insights essential for delivering difficult news.

Sophia Kuber ’26, an HDFS major who plans to pursue a doctorate in occupational therapy after graduation, had a similar revelation. She chose to analyze Castellon’s “And the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all,” a work that explores universal themes of mortality.

Reflecting on the piece, Kuber noted how it shaped her understanding of death—revealing that cultural and personal beliefs influence how people perceive it. She observed that many

interpret death as a shared destination, a concept reinforced by the artwork’s depiction of bodies intertwined, evoking both the physical reality of burial and the symbolic unity of life’s end.

“This style of learning has allowed me to view heavily discussed topics in this course in a new light,” says Kuber. “Art has given me a new perspective on issues such as death notification that I would not have been exposed to without the help of the SU Art Museum.”

Through her analysis, Kuber discovered how cultural background shapes how people perceive death—insights directly applicable to patient care. “This experience will allow me to use what I learned to consider different perspectives of all medical situations and help me re-evaluate my decision-making for all patients in the best way possible,” she says.

“A lot of research and practice shows that our in health care profession training and medical school,” says Cameron. “So one of the benefits of leaning into the patient experiences is really honing your skills of observation and perspective taking.”

The pedagogical innovation aligns with recommendations from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which emphasizes competencies that extend far beyond scientific knowledge. Students are learning to be better observers and interpreters, developing health care communication skills they’ll use not just with patients and families, but also within health care teams.

“We’re unlocking these new ways of thinking and processing, which enhances their abilities and their skills,” says Cameron.

For their final project, students will present the artwork they’ve chosen, explaining how it captures themes of health care communication and death notification. The public is invited to attend the presentation on Dec. 9 at 9:30 a.m. at the Art Museum. The exercise transforms abstract concepts into visceral, memorable understanding—exactly the kind of deep learning that prepares students for the emotional complexity of real clinical settings.

Cameron’s course demonstrates the power of collaboration across the University. She partnered with Kate Holohan, the Art Museum’s curator of education, who helped design the curriculum and lead the museum sessions. Holohan’s expertise in using art for VTS and object-based learning was pivotal in creating meaningful interactions between students and artworks. This cross-disciplinary partnership—bridging health sciences and arts education—shows how shared university resources can spark innovative learning experiences.

Connecting With Pediatric Patients

Building on this foundation of experiential learning, Cameron is developing another innovative program: a teddy bear clinic scheduled to launch in fall 2026 at the Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse. The initiative will teach pre-health students to communicate effectively with pediatric patients by using play as a teaching method.

“One of the really well studied and well applied practices is play as an approach to teaching and learning for children,” Cameron says. Students will learn developmentally appropriate approaches to communicating about health topics, from explaining what a stethoscope does to preparing children for procedures like getting stitches or an IV.

“Our students will be using play to teach children around very general and basic introductory topics,” says Cameron. “The teddy bear becomes the patient.”

The clinic will feature different stations at the MOST, which already hosts health-related educational programming for the Syracuse community. Local families will be invited to bring their children and their favorite stuffed animals to learn about health care through interactive play, while Syracuse students practice crucial communication skills in a low-stakes, supportive environment.

Cameron credits support from A&S’ (EHN) for helping refine the project. As part of the initiative, she receives funding and cohort-based pedagogical and logistical support to help her students apply their scholarly knowledge and skills to serve the public good.

“It’s really a collective of thoughtful faculty who are intentionally designing courses with students and our community in mind,” she says. EHN’s cohort meetings provide opportunities for faculty to share insights and receive feedback that strengthens their teaching approaches.

Real Skills for Real-World Impact

Both initiatives reflect Cameron’s core mission as a professor: preparing students for the health care field by connecting theory to practice through simulation and real-world experience.

“My main goal is to orient our students to the field of health care,” Cameron says. “And so a lot of it is theory and evidence. But we take it to the next step and allow them to apply what they’ve learned.”

As AI continues to transform health care delivery, these experiences are a reminder that medicine remains fundamentally a human endeavor. The ability to comfort a grieving family, to explain a diagnosis with clarity and compassion, to recognize the unspoken fears in a child’s eyes—these are the skills that help clinicians provide truly excellent care.

For Syracuse students preparing to enter health care professions, the path forward involves not just mastering technology, but cultivating the irreplaceable human capacities that make medicine an art as well as a science.

Nine faculty members in the (VPA) and five Universitywide organizations are among more than 2,400 nonprofit arts and culture organizations and individuals receiving (NYSCA) funding for 2026. NYSCA recently.

The following organizations received Support for Organizations awards totaling $110,000 to assist with general operations:

• , $10,000
• , $25,000
• , $10,000
• , $40,000
• , $25,000

Support for Artist awards of $10,000 each were also announced for these faculty members:

• , professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for the project “Aphrodite’s Conception”
• , assistant professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, supporting the Light Work project “By the Skin of Her Teeth”
• , associate professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for “By All Your Memories”
• , associate professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, for “Mid-Film Crisis,” presented with New York Women in Film & Television
• , assistant professor, School of Art, for “Demigoddess Comic Series”
• , associate professor, Setnor School of Music (in VPA) and School of Education, for “We Hold These Truths: Commemorating the 250th Birthday of The United States of America”
• , assistant professor, Department of Drama, for the project “Wolf Women”
• , instructor in the School of Art, for the work “Night Field,” presented at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park.

In addition, , associate professor in the School of Art, in collaboration with Columbia University faculty members Lynnette Widder and Wendy Walters, received a for the book initiative, “Seeds of Diaspora: Plants, Migrations, Settlements, Cities.” The grant program, a partnership between NYSCA and The Architecture League of New York, recognizes work in architecture, historic preservation and various fields of design.

Hannah Payne G’26 has been named the 2025-26 Louise ’44 and Bernard Palitz Graduate Art Scholar.

Payne is pursuing dual master’s degrees in art history in the and museum studies in the , with research focusing on the intersection of ancient Greek and Etruscan cultures through pottery and trade networks, ceramic iconography, burial and feasting rituals, and human-animal relationships.

Last summer, she served as assistant lab director at the San Guiliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) in Italy, where her expertise proved critical in identifying large, intact vessels discovered in a recently excavated, unlooted Etruscan tomb.

As the 2025-26 Palitz Art Scholar, Payne will pursue formal research on Etruscan vessels in the museum’s collection, illuminating the histories of the objects held since the mid-20th century. She will also develop an education program proposal to engage the campus community with these artifacts and deepen interdepartmental appreciation for their historical significance.

“I am incredibly honored and blessed that the museum sees potential in me and that they want to come alongside me and partner with me as I partner with them to do research on the collection,” says Payne. “I feel very excited that I get this opportunity to come in every week and engage hands on with vessels that have been mostly on the shelves and rediscovering them in a way, and getting to stretch my muscles as I grow as a scholar.”

Payne emphasized her commitment to making the collection accessible beyond the museum’s walls. “I am a really big advocate for bridging the gap between academia and the public and giving people an opportunity to engage with the ancient world to form critical thinking skills, but also be able to have or form some kind of personal connection through experiential learning.”

The Louise and Bernard Palitz Endowed Fund was established in 2011 by longtime music advocate Louise Beringer Palitz and Bernard Palitz to support outstanding students in art history and museum studies who demonstrate exceptional accomplishments and potential in their fields.

Art historian Alexander Nemerov stood waiting before Helen Frankenthaler’s “Untitled, 1979” with 11 graduate students in the study room. He opened the session with a simple invitation for students to share their observations—not looking for the right answer, but any answer at all. When the first student broke the silence, Nemerov didn’t lecture. Instead, he asked another question.

What followed wasn’t a lecture but a conversation—one that would leave the art history students reconsidering not just how to approach modern art, but how to imagine their own futures in the field. The visit exemplified what makes graduate education transformative: intimate engagement with distinguished scholars who challenge students to think in new ways.

Nemerov Arrives

Nemerov holds an acclaimed career in art history and is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. Nemerov authored the biography “Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York” and visited Syracuse to deliver the keynote talk for the Syracuse University Art Museum’s latest exhibition, curated by Melissa Yuen.

His keynote, titled “Do You Know What It’s All About?”: Helen Frankenthaler, Clement Greenberg, and a Painting at Syracuse, was organized by the Syracuse University Art Museum. It was sponsored by the Syracuse University Humanities Center and was part of their program. Additional sponsors included the dean’s office of the College of Visual and Performing Arts; the departments of art and music histories, women’s and gender studies, and English in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S); and the Goldring Arts, Style and Culture Journalism Program in the Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The Close-Looking Session

Nemerov’s visit began with a close-looking session attended by graduate students in art history, arts journalism and museum studies. Hung on the wall before them was the subject of the close-looking session: “Untitled, 1979.” The painting was gifted to the University by alumnus Clement Greenberg ’31, one of the most important art critics of the 20th century, who was instrumental in launching Frankenthaler’s career.

Nemerov had a keen interest in the painting as well, considering Frankenthaler herself originally gifted the work to Greenberg whom she shared a romantic relationship with—a ��subject explored in “Fierce Poise.”

For the students expecting a lecture from the distinguished scholar, Nemerov’s question about what they observed caught them off guard.

“It felt like he was trying to break us out of our grad school imposter syndrome,” says Em Spencer, an M.A. student studying modern and contemporary American art in A&S.

The session began mostly silent, before prodding by Nemerov. Then one by one students began to speak up and make insightful observations relating intentionality in this painting to her previous works, the tension present in the work and even how Frankenthaler might have felt working on the painting.

For Katie Vogel, an M.A. student studying Renaissance and medieval art through the Florence-based art history program in A&S, she initially felt somewhat out of her depth looking at modern art. This feeling soon faded away because of the openness in the room fostered by Nemerov.

“It was really wonderful to work through these ideas with other people in the room and by the end, any sort of sense of like ‘oh, the thing that’s going to come out of my mouth isn’t going to be the most intelligent thing’ had very much dissipated and Nemerov definitely cultivated that environment,” Vogel says.

Impact on Students

What shifted in that study room wasn’t just how students looked at a painting, but how they saw themselves in their fields of study.

Vogel had come from Pratt Institute with a background in creative writing and performance studies, and with it, questions about whether her approach belonged in the formal study of art history. By the end of the session, something had changed.

“It was affirming to have somebody who is clearly very accomplished and sort of embodies these different approaches to scholarship and a more creative lens,” she says, reflecting on Nemerov’s background in English literature and nontraditional approach. “To see that reflected back, was very affirming.”

Visitors can experience “‘What If I Try This’?: Helen Frankenthaler in the 20th-Century Print Ecosystem” through Dec. 9.

Syracuse University was a forerunner in fine arts education in the United States. In 1873, the College of Fine Arts opened as the first-degree conferring organization of its kind stateside, and in 1875, the first student graduated with a bachelor’s degree in painting. The same year, the opened its doors. These lockstep legacies are being celebrated in a new exhibition, “Depicting the Everyday: A Legacy of Fine Arts Education at the Art Students League,” at the , the ’s visual arts venue in Midtown Manhattan.

The Art Students League was founded with a commitment to creative freedom for how the fine arts were taught. Since the first figure drawing sessions were offered 150 years ago, the league has seen over 200,000 artists practice their craft in its studios. Drawn from the University Art Museum’s collection, “Depicting the Everyday” explores the range of subject matter artists who taught at the league turned to while honing their technique, from urban vignettes to intimate portraits of loved ones.

On Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025, from 6–8 p.m. the University Art Museum will host a reception and gallery talk at the Bernard and Louise Palitz Gallery. Art Students League assistant curator Esther Moerdler will speak about the exhibition and the institution’s legacy, followed by a Q&A session. The event is free and open to all, with drinks and light refreshments provided.

“Depicting the Everyday: A Legacy of Fine Arts Education at the Art Students League” will be on view through Feb. 9, 2026.