University Art Museum, University at Albany

Name: University Art Museum, University at Albany
Address: 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12222, US
Telephone: +15184424035
Price range: $

Home
United States
Albany, NY
University Art Museum, University at Albany

Contemporary art museum located on the University at Albany's uptown campus. Closed for renovations summer 2026. Reopening October 3, 2026.

The University Art Museum's mission is to advance knowledge and foster understanding in contemporary visual arts. At this time, in-person visits are limited to the campus community only.

09/02/2026

In Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon and Marcella Durand (on view October 3, 2026 – April 2, 2027), Painter Suzan Frecon and poet and translator Marcella Durand create a space for reimagining what collaboration can look like in the latest iteration of their project, The Light Factory. The exhibition features small-scale brushwork experiments with haematite pigments on paper by Frecon and ekphrastic poetry by Durand. Over a career spanning six decades, Frecon has made contemplative abstract paintings exploring relationships between material and light, and foundational structures and color. Durand, Frecon’s daughter, writes poems that intimately recreate the sights, sounds, and smells of the painter’s studio, and that draw associations with history and the larger world.

Museum Hours (beginning October 3):
Mon – Fri, 11am – 4pm
Open Select Saturdays: 10/3, 10/17, 11/7, 12/5
Closed Nov 25 – 26, Dec 21 – Jan 1, and most New York State Holidays.

Save the dates!
*Curator led Exhibition Walkthrough + Coffee hour: Saturday, October 3, 12pm
*Artists’ Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm

Additional programming forthcoming.

Also on view beginning October 3:
-Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core
-mosie romney: ash, whistle, & redress

Image 2 information: Suzan Frecon, untitled 7/2025, 2025, watercolor on paper, 10 ⅞ x 15 ⅜ inches, © Suzan Frecon/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner

08/26/2026

In mosie romney: ash, whistle, and redress (on view October 3, 2026 – April 2, 2027), romney explores echo, remedy, and ritual through paintings, poetry, and installation. They transform the museum’s second-floor mezzanine gallery into an environment built from felled trees painted silver, paintings of ping pong matches and recreational spaces, and references to earthquake notification systems, among other elements. The exhibition draws the personal and the geological into the same field of attention, situating the body on a spectrum from joviality to catastrophe that is not past but continuous, ancestral, urgent, and unresolved.

Museum Hours (beginning October 3):
Mon – Fri, 11am – 4pm
Open Select Saturdays: 10/3, 10/17, 11/7, 12/5
Closed Nov 25 – 26, Dec 21 – Jan 1, and most New York State Holidays.

Save the dates!
*Curator led Exhibition Walkthrough + Coffee hour: Saturday, October 3, 12pm
*Artists’ Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm

Additional programming forthcoming.

Also on view beginning October 3:
-Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core
-Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand

Image 2 information:
mosie romney, untitled, 2026, digital image

08/24/2026

It’s the first day of classes of the fall 2026 semester at UAlbany! Big welcome to first-year students, transfer students, and new faculty and staff; and welcome back to those returning!

Due to renovations, The University Art Museum (UAM) is currently closed. Please join us when we re-open on October 3, 2026!

The UAM is located in the Fine Arts Building, and you can identify us by our banners featuring 12 artists who have previously exhibited at the museum.

If you would like to schedule a class or group visit after we re-open, please visit our Education page at https://www.albany.edu/museum/education to access our Class/Group Visit and Collections Access Form.

Museum Hours (beginning October 3):
Mon – Fri, 11am – 4pm
Open Select Saturdays: 10/3, 10/17, 11/7, 12/5
Closed Nov 25 – 26, Dec 21 – Jan 1, and most New York State Holidays.

08/20/2026

In Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core (on view October 3, 2026 – April 2, 2027); Schwartzberg reconfigures the physical materials of painting to create new spatial and perceptual relationships. Exploring traditional painterly ideas of support and surface, as well as illusion, he creates sculptural forms that appear to be volumes of paint, cradled in burlap or resting on layers of canvas and wood.

Viewers can move through the newly-commissioned work, Orange Slice (2026), a nine-foot-high, site-specific sculpture situated at the center of the museum, and become immersed in its two expansive fields of color. New and earlier works in the exhibition, including previously unexhibited drawings, represent over thirty years of the artist’s practice.

Museum Hours (beginning October 3):
Mon – Fri, 11am – 4pm
Open Select Saturdays: 10/3, 10/17, 11/7, 12/5
Closed Nov 25 – 26, Dec 21 – Jan 1, and most New York State Holidays.

Save the dates!
*Curator led Exhibition Walkthrough + Coffee hour: Saturday, October 3, 12pm
*Artists’ Reception: Friday, October 16, 5-7pm

Additional programming forthcoming.

Also on view beginning October 3:
-mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress
-Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand

Image 2 information:
Howard Schwartzberg, As Advertised No. 27, 1997 – 2000, pen, paint, and white-out on paper, 11 x 8 ½ inches

08/12/2026

Save the date and join us on Friday, October 16, 5-7pm for the public Artists' Reception for our fall 2026 - spring 2027 exhibitions!

Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core
October 3, 2026 - April 2, 2027
1st Floor Main Gallery

mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress
October 3, 2026 - April 2, 2027
2nd Floor Main Gallery

Invitation to the Light Factory
Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand
October 3, 2026 - April 2, 2027
Nancy Hyatt Liddle Gallery & Collections Study Gallery

08/05/2026

In 1996, Xu Bing presented “A Book from the Sky” at the UAM: 800 feet of scripts in the form of rice paper banners and wall hangings and over 400 books printed and bound in Chinese classic tradition.

We are closed through Oct 2, 2026, for Phase 2 of our renovations. In the meantime, we are happy to share past site-specific projects at the UAM by artists who indelibly transformed our vision of the museum’s architecture, originally designed by Edward Durell Stone (1902–1978).

Xu Bing spent three years in isolation and created over four thousand new Chinese characters which carry no sound or meaning. These characters, however, appear unmistakably Chinese. Every "nonsense" character was then carved on a wood block, which were used as types in printing the books and banners.

Image credit:
Exhibition view of “Xu Bing: A Book from the Sky” (1996), University Art Museum, University at Albany, NY.

Come visit the museum Oct 3, 2026 when we reopen with three exhibitions: “Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core”; “mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress”; and “Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand”

07/29/2026

In 1967, Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) attended the UAM’s inaugural exhibition, “Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection” and addressed a large crowd from the second-floor mezzanine.

In 1960, he proposed the State University of New York system with Albany as one of its centers; two years later he broke ground at the site of the former Albany Country Club, now the uptown campus. More than sixty years later, the campus, designed by Edward Durell Stone (1902– 1978) remains the center of university life.

We are closed through Oct 2, 2026, for Phase 2 of our renovations. In the meantime, we’re sharing archival images from “Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection”.

Come visit the museum Oct 3, 2026 when we reopen with three exhibitions: “Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core”; “mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress”; and “Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand”

Image credit: Inaugural exhibition: Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection (October 5 through November 17, 1967)

07/22/2026

Translucent banners, based on archival and contemporary sources, occupied spaces within the UAM for Dave McKenzie’s 2017 project “An Intermission.” The work was a rereading and re-interpretation of images in the wake of recent social and political events.

We are closed through Oct 2, 2026, for Phase 2 of our renovations. In the meantime, we are happy to share site-specific projects commissioned by the UAM over the years by artists who indelibly transformed our vision of the museum’s architecture, originally designed by Edward Durell Stone (1902–1978).

A multi-disciplinary artist working in performance, sculpture, and video, among other media, Dave McKenzie is a keen observer of the ways in which larger truths are embedded in words and images from everyday life. Are images still powerful? What is the role of the individual to the social body? McKenzie believes that no matter how saturated we are by images, they remain an invaluable tool for the historian, student, artist, and activist to address basic questions about our place in the world.

Image credit:
Exhibition view of “Dave McKenzie: An Intermission” (2017), University Art Museum, University at Albany, NY.

Come visit the museum Oct 3, 2026 when we reopen with three exhibitions: “Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core”; “mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress”; and “Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand”

07/16/2026

Included in the UAM’s 1967 inaugural exhibition “Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection” was “Galaxy” (1951), a sculpture by artist, architect, set designer, and sculptor Frederick Kiesler (1890 –1965). Kiesler developed a theory he termed Correalism, exploring the correlations between artwork, individual, and the environment.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1908– 1979) selected Edward Durell Stone (1902– 1978) to design the University at Albany. The uptown campus was constructed between 1961 and 1971, and classes were first held on the podium in 1966. The academic podium has long been a site for political demonstrations, activities, conversation, and the formation of friendships. Much like Kiesler’s theory of Correalism, Stone’s open, architectural design serves as an environmental vessel that brings students and the larger community together.

In the accompanying catalogue, Edward Cowley, then Chairman of the Department of Art wrote: “The open space of the gallery should allow for considerable flexibility in presenting shows. It will serve to stimulate and encourage the experimental character of our entire program...”

We are closed through Oct 2, 2026, for Phase 2 of our renovations. In the meantime, we’re sharing archival images from “Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection”. Interacting with Kiesler’s sculpture is then Director Donald Mochon (center) and then Associate Director, Nancy Hyatt Liddle (right) along with several members of the student body.

Come visit the museum Oct 3, 2026 when we reopen with three exhibitions: “Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core”; “mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress”; and “Invitation to the Light Factory | Suzan Frecon & Marcella Durand”

Image credit: Inaugural exhibition: Painting and Sculpture from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection (October 5 through November 17, 1967)

07/15/2026

The Henry Luce Foundation Funds University Art Museum’s New “Collections and Exhibitions Archive: The First 50 Years (1967–2017)”

The University Art Museum at the University at Albany has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation’s American Art Program. This funding, along with support from the University at Albany’s Office of the President and Office of the Provost, will be used to create a dedicated Museum Archive: a centralized, accessible, and professionally maintained space for the preservation and study of the UAM’s extensive archival holdings.

See the full press release at https://livealbany.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/web_museum/IQBIBf0pIpKoRJFy8takUIseAXWqyAX9LDn4R4Uexu8EjVM?e=H1LQcA

Image ID:
UAlbany students view “Romare Bearden & Ralph Ellison: From the Archive” (August 25, 2025 – April 3, 2026) in the UAM's Collections Study Space.

Address

1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY
12222

Telephone

+15184424035

Website

http://www.albany.edu/museum

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when University Art Museum, University at Albany posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to University Art Museum, University at Albany:

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in Albany?