“Beautiful Mistake” is a contemporary abstract art exhibition by Natalie Dadamio that explores the mystery and surrender inherent in the creative process. Rooted in intuition and emotional truth, the work emerges not from control, but from allowing—allowing the unknown to lead, allowing feeling to shape form, and allowing beauty to arise through what might otherwise be seen as a flaw. This body of work is a personal record of survival, transformation, and the ongoing return to self. It’s a lived inquiry into how the emotional, energetic, and spiritual can become guiding forces in art-making—and how, through that devotion, something alive is born.
BEAUTIFUL MISTAKE
The Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity in partnership with the Binghamton University Art Museum present Harriet Tubman sculptor, Zoe Dufour, Artist Talk and Reception beginning at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, March 24, 2025 in the Main Gallery of the Binghamton University Art Museum.
The Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity at Binghamton University will unveil a statue of Tubman during a special event at 11 a.m. Friday, March 21, at the Binghamton University Downtown Center, 67 Washington St., Binghamton. The statue will be located at Tubman’s marker along the Downtown Binghamton Freedom Trail, a public trail denoting Underground Railroad stops and other anti-slavery and civil rights sites. This event and the accompanying talk on March 24 are free and open to the public.
To RSVP for the unveiling, visit https://tinyurl.com/HTCstatue. For more information, visit the Tubman Center website.
Zoe Dufour, a figurative sculptor based in New York City, designed the bronze statue. In 2023, Dufour’s design was selected – with feedback from the public – from a short list of five finalists. Dufour said the project was a “dream” for her and is grateful to have been able to bring the sculpture to Binghamton.
“It is an incredible honor to commemorate an individual like Harriet Tubman,” said Dufour. “I want to spend my career sculpting individuals like her, that show us the best parts of humanity. She championed for rights and freedom against what must have felt like unassailable odds and was successful beyond what was imagined possible. She still captivates us today. Her story transcends time and is a reminder to hold hope hand in hand with action, rather than to give into despair.”
Zoe Dufour Artist Talk and Reception is an event in coordination with the Binghamton University Art Museum’s Spring 2025 exhibition, Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy organized by the New York Historical.
For details on upcoming BUAM programming, see our “Events” page on the BUAM website and social media.
The Binghamton University Art Museum presents Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy, organized by The New York Historical, on view February 27 to June 14, 2025. The exhibition explores public monuments and their representations as points of debate over national identity, politics, and race. Monuments offers a historical foundation for understanding recent controversies, featuring fragments of a torn-down statue of King George III, a replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York City’s first public monument to a Black woman (Harriet Tubman), among other objects. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed.
Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy is curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, Vice President and Chief Curator at The New York Historical. The exhibition is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided at Binghamton University by the Office of the Provost, the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Harpur College Dean’s Office, the Binghamton Fund for Excellence, the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, and Rebecca Moshief and Harris Tilevitz ’78.
Also opening in the Mezzanine Gallery is Existential Color: Photography from the Permanent Collection, organized by John Tagg, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Art History and Luisa Casella, Photograph Conservator, Fellow of American Institute for Conservation. In 1976, John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, hailed the arrival of a “new generation of color photographers” who saw color as “existential,” “as though the world itself existed in color.” This “new generation” included William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz, whose work here prompts a wider re-examination of color in Binghamton University Art Museum’s photographs collection. Within this exhibition, which features works made between the mid 1970s and the early 2000s, a display of historical processes dating back to the mid-nineteenth century shows that color was an integral part of photographic expression from its very beginnings. What viewers are asked is whether Szarkowski’s notion of a decisive break holds up, or whether the question of color and photography has to be seen from a much longer and broader historical perspective.
In the Museum’s Lower Galleries, three small exhibitions open: Chiura Obata: Japanese Art in America, curated by Yao Shen He ’27; History and Myth: Violence in Early Modern Prints, curated by Leah Dascoli ’26; and Japanese Design and the Arts and Crafts Movement in New York, curated by Joseph Leach, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.
For details on upcoming programming, see our “Events” page and social media.
All events are free and open to the public.
All members of the Cooperative Gallery 213 can show their work, be it fine crafts, fabric art, jewelry, woodwork, paintings, photography, mied media during our December show. Ideal for gift shopping or just browsing. Open First Friday December 2nd 5-9 pm through December 24th. Open regular hours on Fridays 5-8 pm and Saturdays 11 am- 3pm and by appointment. Art Talk by artisans on Third Thursday 7 pm by Zoom or in person. All welcome.
Join us and shop from dozens of local artisans set up at the Vestal Public Library!
Saturday, May 25th
9AM – 2PM
320 Vestal Pkwy E, Vestal, NY 13850
This is also the first day of the Vestal Farmers Market!!
Shop fresh fruits, veggies, baked goods, and handcrafted artisan items all in one spot!
See you Saturday!
Everything I’ve Never Said
April 4 – April 18, 2024
Opening on Thursday, April 4, 4:30 – 6:30 pm
Artist talks on Monday, April 8, 4:30 – 6:30 pm
The fifteen graduating Binghamton University Art & Design BFA students will feature their works in the exhibition Everything I’ve Never Said. The exhibition opens to the public April 4th, with an opening reception at 4:30 pm, and will remain on view until April 18th. Artist talks will take place Monday, April 8th at 4:30 pm. All events are free and open to the public.
This exhibition represents the culmination of their BFA degree program and features artworks spanning multiple disciplines, including painting, drawing, graphic design, printmaking, sculpture, game design, video installation, and more. Everything I’ve Never Said is an ode to life’s unspoken moments and a celebration of art’s ability to materialize the experiences, emotions, and personal narratives of the participating artists. It is also an invitation to viewers to explore themes of introspection, reflection, and self-discovery, as each artist confronts the unspoken and finds solace in the act of creation.
Binghamton University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a pre-professional degree with an intensive focus in studio art and design for students who wish to pursue arts-related careers. Our students go on to work in a wide range of creative industries; as practicing artists after graduation; or go on to pursue graduate degrees. Students can choose to concentrate in Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Printmaking, or Graphic Design.
The 2024 BFA artists are: Zoe Congdon, Anna Faulkner, Gabriella Harbord, Jade Kirdahy, Santa Barbara Maslar, Atlas Mason, Giovanna Mitchell, Em O’Brien, Santiago Parra, Addy Phoenix, Fahim Rahman, Caitlin Smith, Fiona Sullivan, Alexa Valadez, and Samantha Velasquez-Ballin.
Ulysses Jackson, Senior Formulator, Golden Artist Colors
Saturday, March 16, 2:00PM
Main Gallery
This brief overview by a paintmaker describes how artists have pushed the limitations of available materials, used new techniques to work at the margins of material capabilities, and embraced new technologies — for better or for worse.
Join the Binghamton University Art Museum for Painted Exchanges: Artists and Paintmakers 1968-76 opening reception, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 1, 2024. At 6:00 p.m. there will be remarks and a short musical performance inspired by artwork on view.
Between 1968 and 1976, paintmaker Leonard Bocour, with his wife and collaborator Ruth Bocour, made a series of gifts to the collection of the Binghamton University Art Museum, augmented by additional gifts from Sam Golden, Bocour’s nephew and partner in Bocour Artist Colors. The artists represented in this collection were beneficiaries of a network of exchanges, whereby the paintmakers gave paints to financially strapped artists to enable them to continue to make work, made connections for them with galleries, and gave lectures to their art school students, and, in exchange, they solicited feedback on the qualities that the painters sought in their materials, received assistance in placing their paints in local art stores, enjoyed being part of the creative milieu, and frequently received paintings in lieu of monetary payments.
Some of the artists in this exhibition have found a place in the narrative of art history, others have gained less recognition, yet together, their works offer insight into American artmaking during a period of reorientation in the waning days of the New York School’s abstraction. This exhibition invites visitors to closely examine the paintings’ surfaces, offering insight into a range of styles, materials and techniques, as some artists sought to expand the possibilities of abstraction, while others leaned toward the figurative.
Gifts from Leonard and Ruth Bocour and Sam Golden to the Binghamton University Art Museum are among the many contributions they made to university and civic museums in the Northeast, and beyond. In so doing, they supported artists in placing their work in public institutions, furthered art education, expanded the audience for contemporary art by affording regional access to it, and enabled museums to enrich the collections under their stewardship.
The exhibition was incubated in the Thinking Through Painting course, co-taught by the curators. Preliminary research on several of the paintings from the Bocour collection was conducted by students in the two-semester research intensive course sequence offered under Binghamton University’s Source Project initiative.
Co-curated by Andrea Kastner, Department of Art and Design, and Pamela Smart, Department of Art History. Support is provided by donors to the Kenneth C. Lindsay Study Room Fund and to the Binghamton Fund for the University Art Museum.
Also opening are David Hammons: Street Specific, curated by Tom McDonough, Adjunct Curator and Professor of Art History; The Intimate Photographic Style of Larry Fink, curated by Jason Anglum ’24, History and Physics majors; and Käthe Kollwitz: Timeless Desolation, curated by Toby Olson ’25, Art History and Sculpture majors, German and Russian Studies minor. All events are free and open to the public.
Shop a wide variety of all handmade items from local crafters and artists!
At the Apalachin United Methodist Church
303 Pennsylvania Ave
Saturday, November 19th, 2022
9am – 3pm
Lunch will be available!
Directions: Exit 66 off Rt. 17 to RT. 434 West. Turn left at the 1st light onto Pennsylvania Avenue. The Church is on the left across the street from the Apalachin Fire Department, about a quarter mile from Rt. 434.
Betsy Jo Williams, a longtime member of the Cooperative Gallery teams up with her daughter Amy McLaren in a joint show called “A Tale of Two Stories.” Williams works clay and wood sculptures and Williams-Mclaren is an oil painter. “A daughter and a mother. One in her late 70’s one in her late 40’s. Each has her own story to tell but then isn’t all art about stories? Some stories are more camouflaged than others. Some are beautiful stories. Some are sad. Some are told in a way that makes you smile or laugh even when the story is not a happy one. People respond differently to the same story since they bring their own experiences and interpretations into it.” OPEN Fridays 5-8 pm Saturdays 11 am- 3 pm and by appt with the artists. Art Talk on third Thursdays at 7 pm via Zoom or in person.