With the arrival of summer, Vassar’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is rolling out the red carpet for art lovers this season with a wide range of events and exhibitions spanning improvised performances utilizing the gestural composing language of Soundpainting to exhibitions that explore the reciprocal relationship between place and person, showcase the museum’s collection of Hudson River School art, and examine images of the body fragmented into pieces.

“This summer, visitors to the Loeb will enjoy a dynamic mix of programming that will include performances, artist talks, and showcase the work of a vast array of amazing artists,” said Bart Thurber, the Anne Hendricks Bass Director.

In collaboration with Powerhouse Theater, the Loeb will host Performing Art on Sunday, June 29 for three sessions at 1:00 p.m., 2:30 p.m., and 3:00 p.m. This highly collaborative project, conceived and directed by Liz Dahmen, brings together an ensemble of creators to explore the relationship between visual and performing art. Inspired by the works currently on display at the Loeb, the production’s performers respond to the artwork through the kaleidoscope of their lived experiences and create a site-specific, one-of-a-kind performance inside the gallery. No tickets are necessary, but reservations can be made through the Powerhouse Box Office at 845-437-5599.

On Thursdays in July (July 3, 10, 17, 24) from 6:00–7:00 p.m., the Loeb features Biography Soundpainting, an ensemble-based, improvised performance conceived and composed by Max Reuben and performed by members of the Training Company. Utilizing the gestural composing language of Soundpainting—a universal multidisciplinary live composing sign language for musicians, actors, dancers, and visual Artists, with roots in the Hudson Valley—Biography depicts the life and achievements of a spontaneously made-up person who is very, very real. This event is free and open to the public. No ticket required.

As part of the Loeb’s participation in Upstate Art Weekend (UPAW), following the performance on July 17, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. there will be an artist talk with photographer Caleb Stein, Vassar Class of 2017, who will return to campus to discuss works from his ongoing series Down by the Hudson. Works from the series are on view in two current exhibitions. Following artist talk, attendees will be able to enjoy refreshments in the Loeb atrium.

All programming is free and open to the public.

Summer exhibitions include:

Where We Go, Where We Stay: Exploring Place and Identity Through Photography

April 4–June 29, 2025

Sometimes we must leave a place to realize why we do or do not want to return. With a focus on portraiture, the works in this exhibition explore why people leave places, move to new ones, and how they establish connection within the places they are. Together, these works raise questions such as: If we want to reinvent ourselves, do we need to go somewhere far away to do so? What if we are not granted the chance or privilege to leave?

Entirely drawn from the Loeb’s collection, this exhibition explores the reciprocal relationship between place and person, which each of the included artists explores in a unique way. Where We Go, Where We Stay was organized by Léa Greenberg, Vassar Class of 2025.

In Pieces: Fragmentation and the Body

July 5–September 28, 2025

This single-gallery exhibition of photography from the Loeb’s collection explores images of the body fragmented into pieces, whether through techniques of collage and photomontage, or by using props and play. Artists including Justine Kurland, Mike Mandel, Nari Ward, and Vanessa Woods use experimentation and satire to question the idea that a person can be represented or known in full. They propose instead that we are often pieced together, bit by bit. In Pieces: Fragmentation and the Body is organized by Jessica D. Brier, Curator of Photography.

Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues: Art and Myths of the Hudson Valley

February 15–August 17, 2025

For over two centuries, artists have continued to portray the Hudson Valley as an earthly paradise remote from the modern world. Artists imagined the region as a promised land of religious freedom, a haven of ethnic identity, an opportunity to reconnect with nature, and a space to experiment with alternative lifestyles. At the same time, this enduring pastoral myth cloaks the region’s active ties to urban tourism and trade while obscuring histories of violent settlement, enslaved labor, and resource extraction. Gathering historic and contemporary art in various media, the exhibition invites viewers to explore how the Hudson Valley has been pictured as a place both proximate to the city and its opposite—a “great green hope” as much myth as reality.

Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues kickstarts the Loeb initiative, generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, to reinterpret and reinstall the museum’s significant collection of Hudson River School art.

Water/Bodies: Sa’dia Rehman

February 22–August 17, 2025

Artist and researcher Sa’dia Rehman has created a large, site-responsive wall drawing that breaks with the idealized pastoral representations of the Loeb’s founding collection of Hudson River School art. Paying attention to water’s material nature, and to its varying relationships with land (flooding, draining out of, contained within), Rehman will critically engage with the latent themes of empire, religion, and Manifest Destiny that undergird the Hudson Valley, as well as global histories of dam displacement and shifting waterways.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Space-Making from Harlem to the Hudson Valley

February 8–August 17, 2025

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a retelling of the history of the Hudson Valley. While there are hundreds of pages dedicated to capitalists and art they funded, this small exhibition creates a home for an alternative history. With the Hudson River School built during the nation’s industrialization period, the Hudson Valley was a break from modernity. The school’s landscape captured the trees, the lakes, and called it utopia. Utopia for who?

Between a Rock and a Hard Place was organized by 2024 Ford Scholar/Pindyck Summer Fellow Harrison Brisbon-McKinnon, Vassar Class of 2026.

Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free and all galleries are wheelchair accessible. The Loeb is now open to the public Tuesday to Sunday (10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) and from June through August, late nights on Thursdays (5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.). The Loeb is located at 124 Raymond Avenue near the entrance to the Vassar College campus. Parking is available on Raymond Avenue. Directions to the Vassar campus in Poughkeepsie, NY, are available at https://www.vassar.edu/visit/tour#directions.

The Art Center is also accessible via the Dutchess County Public Transit, Bus Route L. For additional information, the public may call 845-437-5632 or visit https://www.vassar.edu/theloeb.

About the Loeb Art Center

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is a teaching and learning museum, free and open to all, supporting Vassar College’s educational mission and communities. Formerly the Vassar College Art Gallery, the Loeb is the first art museum at a college or university that was part of the institution’s original plan. Today, the permanent collection includes over 22,000 works, comprising paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, textiles, and glass and ceramic wares. The Loeb strives to be a catalyst for scholarly, creative, and social justice work by Vassar students and others. It aims to reflect a commitment to broaden and amplify the voices represented in the museum setting, and to ensure that the Loeb’s programs and practices have a positive impact on campus and beyond. To learn more, please visit vassar.edu/theloeb or follow on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Commitment to DEAI

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College commits to Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion (DEAI) as core values across its culture, systems, and practices. We pledge to allocate resources (human and financial) to create and sustain a museum culture in which difference is celebrated. The Loeb staff is dedicated to integrating DEAI priorities into gallery installations, programming, interpretation, collections management, acquisitions, and internal processes. Our ongoing work is guided by an intention to care for all people engaged with the Loeb while welcoming the exchange of ideas, enriching experiences, and diverse perspectives through art.

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that Vassar stands upon the homelands of the Munsee Lenape, Indigenous peoples who have an enduring connection to this place despite being forcibly displaced by European colonization. Munsee Lenape peoples continue today as the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin, the Delaware Tribe and the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma, and the Munsee-Delaware Nation in Ontario. This acknowledgment, however, is insufficient without our reckoning with the reality that every member of the Vassar community since 1861 has benefited from these Native peoples’ displacement, and it is hollow without our efforts to counter the effects of structures that have long enabled—and that still perpetuate—injustice against Indigenous Americans. To that end, we commit to build and sustain relationships with Native communities; to expand opportunities at Vassar for Native students, as well as Native faculty and other employees; and to collaborate with Native nations to know better the Indigenous peoples, past and present, who care for this land.

Vassar College is a coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.