Tang ’s collections to grace 6 institutions

In-person visual art exhibits a celebration of museum’s 20th year

In a celebration of reintroducing visual art for live public viewing and as a delayed celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College is sharing its art collection with six institutions in Saratoga and Warren counties.

Titled “All Together Now,” the monthslong project aims to bring art to traditional and nontraditional spaces. The partnerships include The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls; the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Saratoga Arts, Saratoga Performing Arts Center and Yaddo, all in Saratoga Springs; and Saratoga County History Center in Ballston Spa.

The project, supported by a $275,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, runs May 1 through January. All exhibits will be in-person with safety measures and will also be available for online viewing on the Tang website. Although every venue will be exhibiting during that time frame, not all exhibits will run concurrently.

“This was meant to be a way that the Tang celebrated its 20th anniversary with its neighbors and to really highlight the collection of the Tang,” said the museum’s director, Ian Berry. “We pushed it forward an entire year, and in that year, we’ve all had this time to look at ourselves, look at our institutions, relook at mission statements, redefine who we are and work to reopen and reopen strong, and in potentially new ways.”

Berry and his team knew that they had to find solutions for problems caused by the pandemic, from audience access to budget cuts and furloughs. The organizations were all operating with limited resources, and they realized that it made sense to pool what they had.

“In the beginning it was really about sharing collections, but it has developed into a way where we’re sharing conversation and photography and writing and even staff,” Berry said.

“We’re helping install exhibitions at each other’s places; we’re helping each other with information and conversation and resources about reopening.

“What we started as a way to share and promote art collections has turned into a way for us to really strengthen community partnerships in a lot of ways.”

The team at Tang is particularly excited because audiences will now get to see works that have never been displayed before, he said. For example, a collection of Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of dance, selected by local independent curator Lisa Kolosek, will be shown at Yaddo.

“I think besides the fact that these photographs, I don’t believe, have been in any exhibition at the Tang. We’re also excited about the site,” said Kolosek. “It’s a really nontraditional exhibition venue. I’m not sure that Yaddo does this kind of thing at all.”

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This was meant to be a way that the Tang celebrated its 20th anniversary with its neighbors and to really highlight the collection of the Tang.”

Museum Director Ian Berry

She said that it would be exciting for the public “to be able to go to Yaddo, to experience the place and then look at some really great art at the same time.”

According to Jonathan Canning, director of curatorial affairs and programming at the Hyde, while “All Together Now” brings together resources, it is also an opportunity to take stock of the Capital Region’s collective art collection, particularly the wealth of modern and contemporary art.

“I don’t think we’ve really understood how strong our collections have become, particularly in the last 20 years,” said Canning. “In those 20 years, the Tang has built up a collection many of us — myself included — didn’t really know. And then in 2017, the Feibes & Schmitt Collection came to the Hyde permanently, and that grounded us in ... mid- to late-20th-century abstraction.

“It gave us a collection in that area that we did not have before. So we’re really celebrating this by putting the two collections in dialogue.”

Canning said that the collaboration will help the region strengthen the arts and creative economy and provide inspiration for artists across all media and forms.

Through the series of exhibitions, the team at Tang hopes to revamp the Capital Region’s art ecosystem and change the way art is displayed, Berry said.

“We are having these really exciting conversations that I think we hoped for with a grant like this, but they are really coming to fruition in ways that I think we just dreamed of,” Berry said.