Art Seen

ight acclaimed contemporary artists with roots in the Hudson Valley have their works featured at the new Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts; The Heartwood at Vassar, a boutique hotel; and the farm-to-table restaurant, The Salt Line Hudson Valley. The shared lobby, each of the hotel rooms, the restaurant, and the Institute feature more than 160 pieces of artwork in various media from an eclectic group of artists. The artists—Andrea Baldeck ’72, Laura Battle, Mark Dion, Nancy Graves ’61, Mara Held, Ransome, Amy Talluto, and Julia Whitney Barnes—all have Hudson Valley roots and were inspired by regional surroundings.

The building’s artwork—curated by staff from Vassar’s on-campus museum, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center—responds to the mission and rich history of collecting at Vassar, and creates a visual dialogue between art and science objects. “From professors and administrators to classes and individual students, the College benefits from prolonged engagements with contemporary artists, including those from local communities,” said the Loeb’s Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and the Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator. “The artwork on display provides an enriching, new visual experience that we expect visitors far and wide will enjoy.”

A new, commissioned work by artist Mark Dion, “The Vassar Atheneum,” was created specifically for the space. The work, which was three years in the making, delves deeply into the history, ideology, and methodologies of collecting practices at Vassar and speaks to the College’s mission and traditions.

A major component of the installation are two large-scale, custom-made cabinets featuring documents from Vassar’s vast holdings of material culture and archives. The cabinets create a semi-enclosed area of the facility’s lobby, which allows for conversation and exchange. The contents of the cabinets highlight not only the College’s deep commitment to excellence in the sciences and humanities, but also the rich history of student culture and interdisciplinary learning at the school.

“These projects demonstrate that historical objects and collections have a role to play, even at times for works of art created just yesterday, whose traces will be left for future generations to treasure and criticize, but, also, hopefully, to preserve,” said artist Mark Dion.

A work located in the second-floor “snug,” a cozy lounge at The Heartwood, brings nature indoors with “The Botanist’s Mural,” a room-sized wall mural by Julia Whitney Barnes, who often uses historical processes and plant collection as inspiration for her art. The mural draws inspiration from the Vassar College Herbarium, which dates back to when the school welcomed its first class of students in 1865. The Herbarium holds over 15,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, and algae—and for this enormous piece, Whitney Barnes spent years poring over hundreds of specimens, and incorporated 63 plants from its extensive collection as well as her own garden in Poughkeepsie.

Other works either commissioned by or pulled from the Loeb’s collection for the building include: Hudson Valley artist Laura Battle’s “How long is your past, how far is your future,” a painting inspired by astronomer and alum Vera Cooper Rubin ’48 that was made for the 2016 Loeb exhibition Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy; and artist Ransome’s “Quilter Rosie,” a painting that honors his African American heritage and depicts his grandmother, Rosie, a matriarch and a quilter from the American South. Located in The Salt Line is Nancy Graves’s “Bendigo,” a work that layers boldly colored motifs suggesting plants, cast shadows traced from the artist’s own sculptures, prehistoric drawings, and early pictographic language. Another of her works, “Five Fans, Lampshades, and Lotus,” is located on the first floor of the building.

Mark Dion currently lives and works in Copake, NY. For over two decades Dion has worked in the public realm across a wide range of scales, from architecture projects to print interventions in newspapers. Dion has extensive experience working in higher education. In 2012, he installed more than 700 objects gathered from around the Johns Hopkins University campus in the Brody Learning Commons for his project An Archaeology of Knowledge.

Nancy Graves ’61 (1939–1995) was an American artist of international renown. She became an accomplished sculptor, painter, printmaker, and video artist and is considered one of Vassar’s most recognized artist alums. Graves experimented with the intersections between art and science. She is best known for her brightly colored, abstract compositions in various media.

Mara Held is known for energetic yet delicate paintings on linen and paper, depicting lyrical organic forms in vibrant colors. Her intricate line work and patterning evoke varied sources from plant life growing on ancient forest floors or pelagic forms found in coral reefs to Japanese woodcuts and psychedelic posters. Her work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions in New York City and abroad and included in group shows nation- and worldwide.

Amy Talluto was born in New Orleans and earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 2018 she was awarded a NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellowship in Painting and was an Artforum Critics Pick for her solo exhibition at Black & White Gallery (Brooklyn). She has recently shown her work at Jeff Bailey Gallery, the Berkshire Botanical Garden, the Samuel Dorsky Museum, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and Wave Hill Gardens.

Ransome is a contemporary artist whose practice is both personal and universal. His work focuses on images that center on his African American lineage, traced to formerly enslaved Africans of the American South who migrated to northern cities along the East Coast. The pictorial narratives are personal, yet the symbols used are universal and interplay with larger social, racial, ancestral, economic, and political history that speaks to current issues.

Julia Whitney Barnes is an artist living in Poughkeepsie, NY, who works in a variety of media including cyanotypes, watercolor, gouache, oil paintings, stained glass, murals, and site-specific installations. She spent two decades in Brooklyn before moving to the Hudson Valley in 2015. Whitney Barnes was recently awarded a glass commission for NYC Public Art for Public Schools/Percent for Art unveiled in fall 2024. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally.

For more information about The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts, The Heartwood at Vassar, and The Salt Line Hudson Valley, visit https://www.vassar.edu/institute.