Burke Gallery

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The Burke Gallery was dedicated on September 17, 1995 in honor of Dr. Joseph C. Burke, who served with distinction as president of SUNY Plattsburgh from 1974 to 1986, as provost of the State University of New York from 1986 to 1995, and as interim chancellor of SUNY in 1994, and his wife Joan T. Burke, who ably assisted Dr. Burke in representing SUNY Plattsburgh and the State University of New York. Their deep and abiding interest in the arts was well known and frequently manifested during their years at the college. The Burke Gallery is a permanent tribute to their outstanding campus and community leadership.

Current Exhibitions

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Borders: Migrations North + South

October 11, 2023 – March 8, 2024

• Location: Burke Gallery and Slatkin Study Room
• Reception: October 19, 4–6 p.m.

Curated by Amy Mountcastle, Department of Anthropology 

The exhibition comes from ongoing research by a group of SUNY Plattsburgh faculty on the irregular border crossing at Roxham Road in Champlain, New York and includes art, photography, and artifacts related to migrations across the US-Mexico and US-Canada borders.

There are four artists included in the show:

Bill McDowell 
McDowell is the 2013 recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, and has received the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, the New York Foundation on the Arts Photography Fellowship, as well as many other artist grants. In Bill’s project, Roxham Road, he photographically triangulates the current exodus of asylum seekers from northeastern New York state into Canada with two historical examples of societal intolerance which took place in the same region; the imprisonment of Chinese citizens in the early 1900s and the Underground Railroad corridor.
 
Ruth Kaplan  
Ruth Kaplan is a documentary-based photographer whose work explores a variety of themes such as the social behaviour of bathers in communal hot springs, congregants participating in rituals of spirituality, and, most recently, refugees living in shelters along the Canadian-American border as they await decisions on their pending status. Her work integrates still photographs and video.

Paula Allen
Paula Allen is a photographer, lecturer and social justice activist. She has worked for human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, V-Day (the global movement to stop violence against women and girls) and Refugees International, in counties such as Afghanistan, Haiti, North America, Iraq and The Democratic Republic of Congo. Presently, Ms. Allen continues photographing on the border between Mexico and Arizona, as well as the border between Canada and New York state and the resistance movement to the border wall on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, Arizona.

Álvaro Enciso 
Álvaro Enciso is an artist who works to safeguard memories of migration in the Arizona desert. He is a retired veteran who served in Vietnam. Shortly after moving to Tucson in 2011 he became interested in learning about the hardships that migrants face when crossing the desert en route to their destination in the United States and he was moved by the tragedy that so many live each day. Álvaro has spent years of his life leaving crosses in the desert for migrants who died while traveling to the United States.

Past Exhibitions

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BFA Senior Exhibition 2023

The Plattsburgh State Art Museum invites you to join us in celebrating the academic and artistic achievements of the graduating class of 2023.

Joe Remillard: Adirondack Visions

June 7 – August 5, 2022

The Plattsburgh State Art Museum is pleased to host the work of contemporary realist, Joe Remillard. Joe is a native of Peru, New York currently living in Georgia where he is a professor of drawing and painting at Kennesaw State University. Although he practiced law for several years in New York, his desire to create art led him to return to school to earn an M.F.A. Degree.

Since then, Remillard’s work has been recognized by various international and national realist organizations. Including the ARC Annual International Salon and the Portrait Society of America. His work has also been featured on the cover of International Artist Magazine and in a feature article in America Artist Magazine.

The people and places he paints are ones with which he has a personal connection. Many of his works have a narrative, and in all of his pieces he strives to capture a sense of beauty. He is attracted to images which have a distinctive sense of light and is inspired by various American realists including the Wyeth family and Homer.

2022 B.F.A. Senior Exhibition

April 9 – May 21, 2022

The Plattsburgh State Art Museum is pleased to present this year’s B.F.A. Virtual Thesis Exhibition. This exhibition features work created by graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts students in the SUNY Plattsburgh Department of Art. This represents the culmination of each undergraduate student’s experience of developing a body of work. The exhibition features student work from a variety of studio areas: ceramics, drawing, graphic design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

For more on the B.F.A, please visit the B.F.A Senior Exhibition page.

North by Nuuk: Greenland After Rockwell Kent

February 1 – March 11, 2022

Location: Burke Gallery

North by Nuuk is an intimate, contemporary look at the people and the social and primal geographic landscapes of Greenland. Photographer Denis Defibaugh presents his journey from Nuuk to the settlement of Illorsuit, 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, following Rockwell Kent’s earlier footsteps and offering a fresh look at timeless Greenland. Defibaugh’s revealing documentary photographs made during 2016–17 introduce a changing country and its cultural continuity in response to Kent's 1930s historic writings and hand-tinted lantern slide images made during his residence in Greenland. The innovative documentary project, supported by a National Science Foundation award, weaves Defibaugh’s stunning photographs through past and present daily life while linking Greenlanders with their pristine and revered landscape.

Artist Lecture with Denis Defibaugh: February 2, 2022 from 7–8 p.m. in Yokum Building, Room 202. Reception: February 3, 2022, 5–7 p.m. in the Myers Lobby Gallery

 

Rockwell Kent’s Greenland

Location: Slatkin Gallery

Also running from Feb. 1 through Mar. 11, this companion exhibit features original works completed by Rockwell Kent during his time in Greenland, interviews with current Illorsuit residents conducted by Denis Defibaugh, hand-tinted lantern slide images and ephemera made during his residence in Greenland. The majority of these works are generously on loan to us from private collections.

Rick Shaefer: The Refugee Trilogy

August 30 – December 10, 2021

How does one deal with the onslaught of horrific imagery and news of countless waves of refugees coming from the Middle East and elsewhere? The vast scale of the humanity involved and the agony and desperation of those afflicted feels both epic and almost biblical. When the stories and photos first started appearing the visual vocabulary that instantly came to mind was such paintings as Rubens’ The Last Judgment and Massacre of the Innocents, Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa, Picasso’ Guernica, and Goya’s Disasters of War series, as well as the multitude of imagery of vast throngs fleeing war and oppression from Exodus to the partition of India to our own native American “Trail of Tears.”

“Refugee Trilogy” is a suite of large-scale charcoal drawings that is a reaction to this ongoing immigration crisis unfolding across the globe and reflects the three thematic scenes that began to distill the journeys taken by refugees everywhere. The three triptychs, each measuring 96” x 166”, are in a chronology suggested by news reports. “Land Crossing”, the first of the three, addresses the hazardous journeys faced by refugees fleeing war, famine, drought, or other causes. The second work, “Water Crossing”, portrays the perilous journeys across open water. The third work, “Border Crossing”, addresses the conflicts and hostilities faced at borders. The three works employ the vernacular of the Baroque (primarily incorporating various figurative elements of a wide assortment of Rubens’ paintings) to express this contemporary debacle in a language both familiar and historical: reminding us of the tenacious persistence of this epic human tragedy.

Excerpt from Rick Shaefer’s website. Please visit RickShaefer.com for more information on The Refugee Trilogy or to see his other works.

POP for the People

February 15 – March 12, 2021

POP for the People celebrates pop as our most civic art, mapping the surfaces we share, and the startling human depths we find there. Inspired by and interwoven with the lyrical text of SUNY Plattsburgh English professor M.I. Devine’s Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry, the exhibit offers an inclusive, redeeming and multi-generational vision of pop. Through startling juxtapositions and thematic rhymes with regional artists, Pop for the People shines a new light upon Warhol and others in the college’s extensive pop collection.

Curated by Devine and Amy Guglielmo (artist, author, teacher and co-founder of Outside Art: The Plattsburgh Public Art Project), the exhibit draws widely upon the work of SUNY Plattsburgh student artists and filmmakers past and present; Outside Art muralists; Saranac high school students; and the work of the Art Detectives (a N.Y.-based art collective fostering the talents of neurodivergent students). At once playful and profound, the exhibit details pop’s urgent pursuit to find new depths, new meaning in the surfaces of things. If pop is more superficial than we can take, POP for the People suggests that it’s also deeper than we might ever suspect. POP for the People: a reminder — in this moment of isolation — to look upon our world anew and see how each one of us is connected, no matter how far apart.

Pop Art Party

February 20, 2021

POP ART PARTY story time and craft activity for kids hosted by author and art educator Amy Guglielmo. Tune in on Zoom for a fun, colorful children’s event. Bring paper and crayons — make some patterned pop-art hearts. Saturday, February 20 at 10:30 a.m. All ages welcome.

Coney Island Fables: The Films of Vagabond

February 22, 2021

What is more pop than Coney Island? From Joseph Stella to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, artists have long found a pop muse in the amusements of Coney Island.

In this Zoom screening and discussion (with Pop for the People curator M.I. Devine), the indie filmmaker and artist Vagabond will speak about Coney Island, and its place in his series of short films Coney Island Fables.

Brooklyn born and borough raised, Vagabond began his career in film working on Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and has gone on to create works addressing topics such as the Puerto Rican Diaspora (Machetero) and the Nuyorican poets (All Roads Lead to the Fire Escape). A multidisciplinary pop artist, Vagabond has created murals, posters, pamphlets and political art in conjunction with the Ricanstruction Netwerk.

Watch Coney Island Fables on Vimeo

POP for the People: Meet the Artists!

March 3, 2021

A chance to meet the artists behind POP for the People! Join muralist Brendon Palmer-Angell (Michael Anderson/Jean Arthur murals), Adam Kritzer of the Art Detectives (a neurodiverse art collective), and many more of the PEOPLE behind the exhibit for a conversation on civic art, their work with and for people and the future of the arts in Plattsburgh. Hosted by curators M.I. Devine and Amy Guglielmo, the conversation is Wednesday, March 3 from 7 – 8 p.m. via Zoom.

States of Incarceration

January 27 – March 13, 2020

Location: Burke Gallery, Myers Fine Arts Building — Second Floor

Opening Public Reception: January 30 at 4 – 7 p.m. in Burke Gallery

The States of Incarceration (https://statesofincarceration.org/) exhibit is created by over 800 people in 18 states, and growing. The goal is to explore the roots of mass incarceration in our own communities and to open a national dialogue on what should happen next. Currently the United States incarcerates more of its people than any country in the world — and at any point in its history.

In early 2018, SUNY Plattsburgh was named one of 10 new partners to receive Mellon Foundation help to create SUNY Plattsburgh’s addition to the national “States of Incarceration” traveling exhibit, led by Dr. Breea Willingham. Willingham, assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Department, is an expert in the impact of incarceration on families, higher education in prison, and women in the criminal justice system. Education and incarceration was the focus of student research in Dr. Breea Willingham’s special-topics criminal justice course during the Fall 2018 semester. The student findings are included in this national project. Calling their contribution to the States of Incarceration project “Cuffs to Classroom: College in Prison,” Willingham said it’s her hope that the panel will help show the campus and community how a prison education can redefine incarceration in New York. Here’s a link with more information on Dr. Willingham’s class: https://www.plattsburgh.edu/news/news-archive/special-project-enables-students-to-support-education-in-prisons.html

“States of Incarceration” is a project of the Humanities Action Lab, a coalition of universities led by Rutgers University-Newark’s work with issue organization and public spaces, to create traveling public projects on the past, present, and future of pressing social issues. The exhibit is generously supported by SUNY Plattsburgh College Foundation.

Public Events

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Cuffs to Classroom: How Higher Education in Prison Can Redefine Mass Incarceration in New York State

Panel Discussion

• February 5, 2020
• 5 – 6:30 p.m.
• Cardinal Lounge, Angell College Center (ACC)
• SUNY Plattsburgh

In early 2018, SUNY Plattsburgh was named one of 10 new partners to receive Mellon Foundation help to create SUNY Plattsburgh’s addition to the national “States of Incarceration” traveling exhibit, led by Dr. Breea Willingham. Willingham, assistant professor in the criminal justice department, is an expert in the impact of incarceration on families, higher education in prison, and women in the criminal justice system. Education and incarceration was the focus of student research in Dr. Breea Willingham’s special-topics criminal justice course during the Fall 2018 semester. The student findings are included in this national project.

Panelists include:

• Dr. Erin S. Corbett, Director of Policy at the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice and founder of the Second Chance Educational Alliance
• Klarisse Torriente, Prison Education Coordinator at State University of New York
• Tyrrell Muhammad, Project Associate at The Correctional Association of New York
• Gabrielle Elsbree, SUNY Plattsburgh Class of 2018

Moderator:

• Dr. Breea Willingham, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at SUNY Plattsburgh

College Behind Bars

PBS Film Screening & Talk Back with Breea Willingham & Thom Hallock

• February 20, 2020
• 6 – 7:30 p.m.
• 208 Yokum Hall
• SUNY Plattsburgh

“College Behind Bars”, directed by award-winning filmmaker Lynn Novick, produced by Sarah Botstein, and executive produced by Ken Burns, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the United States — the Bard Prison Initiative.

Through the personal stories of the students and their families, the film reveals the transformative power of higher education and puts a human face on America’s criminal justice crisis. It raises questions we urgently need to address: What is prison for? Who has access to educational opportunity? Who among us is capable of academic excellence? How can we have justice without redemption?

The series originally aired on PBS on November 25th and 26th.

https://mountainlake.org/states-of-incarceration/

Prison in the Woods: Environment & Incarceration in New York’s North Country

Lecture
Clarence Jefferson Hall Jr., Ph.D
Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Queensborough Community College/CUNY

• March 5, 2020
• 7 – 8 p.m.
• Alumni Conference Room, Angell College Center (ACC)
• SUNY Plattsburgh

Clarence Jefferson (Jeff) Hall Jr. is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Queensborough Community College/CUNY, located in Bayside, Queens, New York. Hall’s research focuses on the intersection of environmental politics and the carceral state in nineteenth- and twentieth-century New York.

Beginning in the 1840s and accelerating in the 1970s, prisons became a prominent feature of the North Country landscape. However, correctional facilities built in the Adirondack Park in the last quarter of the twentieth century were as much a product of modern environmental regulation as they were the result of wars on drugs and crime waged at the state and federal levels. In his talk, Clarence Hall will focus on how environmental law and environmentalism helped shape the carceral state in New York’s North Country.

Hall has presented his research at academic conferences and colloquia hosted by the New York State Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, American Society for Environmental History, Binghamton University Department of History, Stony Brook University Department of History, and at venues large and small across New York state.

His work has also been featured in major national media outlets, including The New York Times, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Canadian Television (CTV), CNN, and MSNBC, among others.

Visions of Place: Complex Geographies in Contemporary Israeli Art

Dynamic Exhibition of Contemporary Israeli Art Addresses Complexities of Geography, Culture, Identity, History

September 3, 2019 – December 3, 2019

Location: Burke Gallery & Slatkin Study Room, Myers Fine Arts Building — Second Floor

Opening Public Reception: September 3, 2019, at 4 – 5:30 p.m. in Burke Gallery

Dr. Martin Rosenberg and Dr. J. Susan Isaacs, curators of Visions of Place: Complex Geographies in Contemporary Israeli Art, will give a lecture on their work on Thursday, Sept. 5, at 7:30 p.m. in 110 Ward Hall.

The exhibit explores the poignant impact of place in Israeli life, as seen through the penetrating eyes of some of the country’s most prominent contemporary artists. Featuring approximately 50 photographic, video, painted, and mixed media works by 34 Israeli artists (including Sigalit Landau, Miki Kratsman, Pavel Wolberg, Asad Azi, Adi Nes, and Guy Ben-Ner, among others), the exhibition illuminates intertwining views of history, place, and identity in Israeli culture. While the majority of the artists are Jewish, others are Muslim, Christian, and Druze, reflecting the diverse mosaic of peoples that populate the country.

Geography — in all its physical, personal, religious, political, and historical manifestations — remains an inescapable part of Israeli life. While focusing specifically on Israel, the themes addressed in the exhibition also have wide interest and applicability in the broader modern world. A powerful and engaging exhibition, Visions of Place demonstrates the richness, complexity, and diversity of current artistic practices in Israel, catalyzing a dialogue on important issues raised by the resonant visions of some of Israel’s finest contemporary artists.

Visions of Place: Complex Geographies in Contemporary Israeli Art was organized by the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts and the Towson University Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education Galleries, and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.

Artists as Innovators:

Celebrating Three Decades of New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships

April 15 – August 9, 2019

Location: Burke & Slatkin Gallery, Myers Fine Arts Building — Second Floor

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is commemorating three decades of NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships with the landmark traveling exhibition Artists as Innovators: Celebrating Three Decades of New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. The fellowship program has supported more than 4,000 artists in various fields in the visual arts, literature, and performing arts at critical stages throughout their careers.

The artists in the exhibition are acclaimed and respected around the world, but what is less known is that they all received support from NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships at crucial points in their careers. Curated by Judith K. Brodsky and David C. Terry with the assistance of Madeline Scholl, Artists as Innovators: Celebrating Three Decades of New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships will feature work by more than 20 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellows who have gone on to record significant achievements in their artistic careers. The works on display will show how the fellows have addressed pressing and often controversial issues through their art, including racism, gender equality, sexual orientation, immigration, and globalization.

Participating artists include: Elia Alba, Ida Applebroog, Dawoud Bey, Sanford Biggers, Ross Bleckner, Wendell Castle, Tara Donovan, Carroll Dunham, Chitra Ganesh, The Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Kruger, Christian Marclay, Marilyn Minter, Lori Nix, Tony Oursler, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Dread Scott, Andres Serrano, Shinique Smith, Carmelita Tropicana, and Fred Wilson.

Patrice Charbonneau: Headquarters

January 28 – March 15, 2019

Location: Burke Gallery, Myers Fine Arts Building

Public Reception to meet the artist, Thursday, February 28, 2019 from 5 – 7p.m.

Plattsburgh State Art Museum is pleased to introduce to Northern New York State the painting of Québec artist Patrice Charbonneau. Charbonneau’s background as an architect informs his work, which is rich in psychological, emotional, and experiential aspects. Charbonneau’s paintings are characterized by a luscious, vibrant, and varied palette and by the haptic quality of the painted surface. Museum visitors are invited to engage closely with these works in all their intricacies and nuance.

A Trip Takes Us: Photography by Theron Humphrey

November 15, 2018 – January 6, 2019

Location: Burke Gallery

“What Was He Thinking?” Jan Balet: Watercolors & Lithographs

February 13, 2018 – March 16, 2018

Lithographs and watercolor renderings by German-born artist Jan Balet were shown for the first time in the United States at the Burke Gallery in Myers Fine Arts Building from Feb. 12 to March 16.

The collection, titled “What Was He Thinking?” highlighted Balet’s lithography and featured his often-humorous personal perceptions of human relationships and situations.

Balet is known for his widely collected paintings and prints in Europe and for his work as an illustrator and art director in New York.

“Visual Sway: Political Art From the Collection”

September 19, 2017 – November 3, 2017

The Plattsburgh State Art Museum and guest curator Dr. Jason Miller presented a lecture on “Visual Sway.” Miller is a professor of philosophy at Warren Wilson College, a researcher of aesthetics and social and political philosophy, and a writer of several essays, including “Politics of the Apolitical: Art and Politics at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College.”

This exhibition from the museum’s collection explores intersections of art and politics and the multiple dimensions of “visual sway” in art. The artwork encompasses portraiture, commemorative images, overt propaganda posters, government sponsored projects and apolitical visual content produced by politicized artists.

Rockwell Kent, Dorothea Lange, Andy Warhol, Kathe Kollwitz and Leon Golub are some of the many artists that were featured in “Visual Sway.” 

Love Letters: Wood Type & Printing History

(Diane Fine and Tracy Honn)

Sept. 17 – Nov. 2, 2017

Opening Event: Thurs., Sept. 20, 2018
Location: Burke Gallery