(calming synth and piano) (mellow piano music) - We owe a great deal of thanks to artists like Susie Barstow and Sarah Cole and Louisa Davis Minot.

These founding mothers of the Hudson River School, of this movement of the American landscape, allows us to continue to celebrate and know and promote women artists who are dealing, who are contending with, who are painting, sculpting, immersing themselves in the American landscape experience.

(mellow piano music continues) - Landscape, as a term, is a construction.

And landscape, perhaps those made by Thomas Cole and others in the 19th century, as a single point perspective on a canvas with a horizon line doesn't always reflect the complexities of land.

Land is something that has political, economic, historic, cultural, spiritual, ecological, and personal realities.

And so, with this exhibition, we are really hoping that some of our visitors will think more deeply about the history of American landscape art but also their own relationship and connection to land today.

- We live in a time, I think, now, where, you know, there are more relevant perspectives to kind of mine and to look at too.

And so, while their important figures and their ideas carry to today, we also are living in a completely different time racially, politically, and socially.

And so, we definitely have room for different voices.

I think I have personally more of a focus on contemporary material because I think it's what's most important and relevant to people now.

My family's from Vietnam, a lot of them, and so I really think value, then understanding the perspectives of immigrant populations, too, and think it's sort of time for those artists and for those persons to be platformed more.

Certainly, I think a lot of the Hudson River School artists have been centered for so long that, I think, decentering them was actually a really beneficial thing.

(anxious piano music) - I am installing a piece made specifically for Thomas Cole, and it's called "Displaced."

My practice deals with everyday objects; again, so familiar, so everyday that we don't even think about it.

We don't assume anything about its origin, its purpose, what happens after I use it, you know?

And those sort of slippery spaces of these objects accumulate over time.

And then, culturally, it has become all consuming.

And I think that it really changes us when we see it all.

It's like, when you see the view, you cannot forget it.

And it's Thomas Cole all over; when you paint the view, someone cannot forget it.

So, I'm hoping that there is some change that evokes in visualizing not just the beauty, but our waste.

(calming music) You see these crates, and it's actually the crates that Thomas Cole's paintings and artifacts were used in a previous exhibition.

So, I'm using the leftover of previous exhibitions of his work as the structure and part of my artwork.

Then what we've done was also take the local dirt, and we're gonna fill the crates with the dirt of the site.

And then, I brought my studio remnants, the leftovers of my artistic production, the waste that I've saved, and to kind of bury them within the crates as an artwork.

(calming music continues) I've always enjoyed working in conjunction to a site because the site has this history; an incredible, rich history of an artistic one.

But at the same time, he wasn't the only one who was here, you know?

So, him discovering this land and painting these beautiful landscapes.

Also, displaced indigenous.

So, I always think that there's also invisible populations and narratives and histories that are not told, not seen not visible, you know?

And someone gets to claim it and be known or famous for it.

But we live in an ecosystem.

I'm trying to kinda reveal, unfold some of the other narratives that are often hidden.

(calming music continues) - As a historic Coleman Studios of an artist, we continue to engage and work with contemporary artists, because we really believe in the power of art and ideas to help us think about and engage with the issues that matter most to us right now in our present moment.

And so, if you can imagine Thomas Cole was here in the 1800s and he was making contemporary art and landscape paintings in his studio, and people from all over were coming to see the latest in contemporary landscape art.

So, today, we continue to activate this place as a place for ideas and creativity and art, and we engage contemporary artists to create site-specific installations and exhibitions.

- The perspectives of the contemporary artists in our show are really important and, I think, will help visitors think deeply about their own relationship to land.

We have artists such as Teresita Fernandez who is asking us to look below the surface and seeing the ways in which we can interact with land in sustainable ways.

We also have artists such as Sio Wolfack, the work of the artist behind me, who is thinking about a future when women are able to merge with plants that are not a part of the landscape, but are a part of the landscape.

So, I think this show, I hope, encourages visitors to think about their future and our future together within relationship with land.

(calming music ends) (serene music) - Sponsored in part by Albany Medical Health Systems and by Robert and Doris Fisher Medlis Hardy.

(serene music continues)