BU School of the Arts Inaugural Student Showcase: A Three-day Festival of the Arts

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.