Binghamton University Art Museum to celebrate 50th anniversary with 50 Years/50 Highlights

BINGHAMTON, NY – The Binghamton University Art Museum will open its fall exhibitions with a black-tie optional gala reception from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 15. The Main Gallery exhibition, 50 Years/50 Highlights, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the museum.

Opening in October 1967, the new Art Gallery, founded by Professor Kenneth C. Lindsay, featured temporary exhibitions and began in earnest to acquire objects – paintings, sculptures and works on paper – to support its teaching mission. Over the last 50 years, some of the pieces on view arrived as donations from alumni and local residents, while others were acquired with funds provided by New York state under the administration of Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. The celebratory exhibition features works that range from a Neolithic Chinese vessel to 20th-century paintings and works on paper. In between, Old Master paintings and drawings, prints by Picasso and Rembrandt, and a Buddhist temple painting figure among the 50 highlights. A catalogue for the exhibition, published by the Binghamton University Art Museum, includes a history of the museum and entries for each of the 50 objects written by Binghamton University faculty and staff.

In addition to 50 years/50 Highlights, the museum will open smaller exhibitions, curated by students, in the Nancy J. Powell Lower Galleries. Making Wood Engravings with Lynd Ward, curated by Christina Rose ’17, explores the fine techniques of wood engraving with prints made by one of the medium’s masters: American printmaker Lynd Ward. Works on view are loans and donations by local residents Gil and Deborah Williams. Also on view is an exhibition of French prints – portraits, landscapes, maps, frontispieces and genre scenes – that illustrate the range and level of accomplishment of early modern French printmakers. The exhibition, entitled French Prints: 16th-18th Centuries, was curated by Marisa Davila ’19 and Michael Morganti ’19. Also, a continuing and evolving exhibition remains on view. Issues in Accessioning Pre-Hispanic Objects was curated by Fernando Flores, a graduate student in anthropology. The exhibition displays only a few pieces, but each object illustrates a particular problem that museums confront when managing gifts with unclear provenance, or record of ownership. Finally, in recognition of the founder of the Binghamton University Art Museum, then the Art Gallery, playful drawings by Kenneth C. Lindsay will be on view in the study room named in his memory.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit binghamton.edu/art-museum.