The sun is scorching, the muggy subway platform is unbearable, and the distinctive smell of urine is encroaching onto the sidewalk outside your apartment — it’s time to take a trip north. Just in time, 130 art venues are opening their doors next week for the fourth annual Upstate Art Weekend. From July 21 through 24, arts organizations in the Hudson Valley will offer exhibitions, screenings, open studios, and performances. With so many participants, the event can become overwhelming, but a custom map — and our run-down of highlights below — make it easy for visitors to plan personalized trips.

While last weekend’s storm flooding hit some upstate venues especially hard (Storm King was forced to close for a day and the Russel Wright Design Center in Garrison suffered extensive damage), the upstate arts scene is bouncing back for its big celebration. Helen Toomer, who co-founded the Stoneleaf Residency Program in Eddyville in 2017, started Upstate Art Weekend in 2020. Stifled by COVID restrictions, only 23 organizations participated that first year, but the event has grown exponentially since.

Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Springs will host the official kickoff on Friday evening. The private museum was founded in 2017 to showcase contemporary Italian art and recently opened an exhibition of works by Michelangelo Pistoletto as part of a new series dedicated to the Arte Povera movement. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, Magazzino will present Cinema in Piazza, an outdoor film series in collaboration with the Cold Spring Film Society and Artecinema in Naples.

In Kingston, Women’s Studio Workshop will open to the public on Saturday with an exhibition of “itty-bitty works of art” by artists Rebecca Bingham, Andrea Fabrega, Lydia Ricci, Pat Sweet, Donna Thomas, and Imin Yeh. Their creations include a miniature tea set, a tiny bicycle, and a little cabin equipped with a minuscule guitar, wood stove, and bookshelf.

At one of the most popular upstate art destinations, visitors to Dia Beacon will see the recently opened Rita McBride exhibition titled Momentum in addition to the museum’s ongoing installations of works by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Michael Heizer, and Sol LeWitt. On Saturday morning, Dia Beacon will also host a family tour of its galleries where kids can engage in hands-on activities.

A short drive away, Storm King Art Center is also coming through with special programming for kids, inviting children to draw inspiration from Ugo Rondinone’s “the sun” (2018) and “the moon” (2021) to create their own sculptures. The Swiss artist’s pair of works is one of three special installations for the 2023 season shown in addition to the permanent collection. Viewers can also see Beatriz Cortez’s The Volcano That Left (2023) and RA Walden’s access points // or // alternative states of matter(ing) (2023), and adults can take part in activities including outdoor yoga and meditation.

At Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, the school’s Center for Indigenous Studies will host a concert by Ya Tseen and a movement-based art performance titled “Being Future Being: Land / Celestial” by Emily Johnson/Catalyst. The performances accompany the center’s ongoing exhibition Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969. Painter Jeffrey Gibson and writer Arielle Twist will make appearances during the weekend lineup, which also includes conversations with participating artists.

And if you can’t get enough of performance, PS21 at the upper boundary of the Upstate Art Weekend’s map is holding two shows by Czech performance group Cirk La Putyka, which it describes as an “inventive, rebellious circus troupe.” On PS21’s publicly accessible grounds, visitors can also see Silda Wall Spitzer & Tim Jones’s “Dandelions” (2023) and James Casebere’s “Solo Pavilion for Two or Three” (2021).

In Catskill, Foreland — a collection of galleries, studios, co-working spaces and other venues housed in a renovated mill — will partner with NADA (the New Art Dealers Alliance) for the second iteration of its sprawling art exhibition. More than 40 galleries and 60 artists will show their work, including sculptors Judd Schiffman and Courtney Puckett, presented by Testudo Gallery.

Another Catskill highlight is the current show at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The museum commemorates the famous Hudson River School painter, but this two-pronged exhibition, titled Women Reframe American Landscape, is shining an overdue spotlight on Susie Barstow and other women artists of the 19th-century movement. The second section of the exhibition explores how contemporary artists are revitalizing and reimagining the practice of landscape painting. Exhibited artists include the Guerrilla Girls, Marie Lorenz, Tanya Marcuse, and Wendy Red Star.

Back where Upstate Art Weekend began, Stoneleaf Retreat is hosting open studios on Sunday. Visitors can see the creative spaces of Lizania Cruz, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, and Cheryl Mukerji as well as works from the residency program’s alumni — Liz Collins, Joy Curtis, Moko Fukuyama, Macon Reed, and Rebecca Reeve.

Upstate Art Weekend officially begins at 6pm on Friday, July 21. Hours vary from venue to venue throughout the weekend, and many exhibitions and events are free. With a bit of planning, many sites are accessible without a car — city dwellers might have to endure a sweltering journey to Penn Station, but if you ask us, it’s well worth it.

I am always impressed by the courageous tourists who flock to Washington, DC, during the unbearably hot and humid summer months. Particularly so this year when the planet seems determined to break its own heat record on a daily basis. Fortunately, the city is blessed with many museums behind whose walls you can escape the heat. Below are a few choices to consider before wandering through their revolving doors. The good news is, all the exhibitions listed here are free. But be careful, even if you can dodge the heat outdoors, you will be confronted with heated metaphors indoors.

Going Through Hell: The Divine Dante

The show brings together a small but distinguished selection of works inspired by Dante’s Inferno. The artists include usual suspects like William Blake, Auguste Rodin, and Robert Rauschenberg, who are shown alongside a range of rare objects and prints, all testifying to the wider appeal of Dante’s classic. The anonymous “Allegorical Portrait of Dante” from the 16th century that greets the visitors at the entrance is enough to make you appreciate the fact that you wandered into the gallery. Other treats include a first edition of Gustave Doré’s illustrated Inferno from 1865, which he self-published, and a late-15th-century engraving of the Inferno depicting the same scene from the well-known Camposanto of Pisa fresco.

The National Gallery of Art (nga.org)
6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through July 16

National Small Works Competition & Exhibition

While DC may be famous for its massive architecture and museums, some people here still like it small. Such are the members of the Washington Print Foundation, who organize a small works competition every year to recognize innovation and experimentation in printmaking. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the competition, and the exhibition highlights the first round of its juried selections. Works from 36 artists offer a satisfying peek into the studios of a much bigger printmaking community, most of whom practice their craft out of love and out of pocket. The range of techniques included in this show includes but is not nearly limited to, collagraphy, stone lithography, solar plates, intaglio, and photopolymer etchings. The spirit of experiment and innovation lives on and a catalogue of the show is available for free online.

Washington Printmakers Gallery (washingtonprintfoundation.org)
1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through July 30

Re/Envisioning

Looking for a glimpse of what DC area emerging artists are up to these days? This is my summer pick. Re/Envisioning features the works of Adele Yiseol Kenworthy, Antonio McAfee, Stephanie Mercedes, Fargo Tbakhi, Jessica Valoris, and Stephanie J. Williams, most of whose works I am familiar with through regional venues. These artists are unapologetically open-minded in terms of their use of mediums, but truly focused in terms of their intent and passion. They explicitly state that their work represents only a few drops in a much larger pool of human struggle for self-determination, and they re/envision what personal and collective identity could and should have be in the age of social media, migration, war, and popular conservatism.

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (reenvisioningexhibit.com)
200 I Street SE, Washington, DC
Through August 18

Philip Guston Now

The infamous Philip Guston retrospective — which was supposed to open in 2020 but was shelved due to the presumed consequences of showing works that featured Ku Klux Klan imagery — is finally on. The retrospective maps Guston’s career as he switches back and forth between figurative and abstract painting. More relevantly, it replicates his controversial 1970 show at the Marlborough Gallery in New York, where he first showed his Klansmen paintings. More than 50 years later, these paintings are still shocking, mainly because they are brutally honest depictions of Guston’s personal experience of living in a racist society and feeling complicit to injustices on a daily basis. If they are unsettling and hard to stomach, it is because they depict personal daily routines and silences that enabled institutionalized injustice throughout history.

National Gallery of Art (nga.org)
East Building, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through August 27

I Dream a World: Selections From Brian Lanker’s Portraits of Remarkable Black Women

More than three decades after its first publication, the National Portrait Gallery brings together the original portraits that appeared in Brian Lanker’s photography book I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. In a two-part exhibition, portraits of the charismatic Black women who shaped American culture, their careers, and their personalities are juxtaposed. They include Civil Rights Movement fighters and luminaries including Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Septima Poinsette Clark, Lena Horne, Alice Walker, and Elizabeth Catlett.

National Portrait Gallery (npg.edu)
8th Street NW and G Street NW, Washington, DC
Through September 10

Put It This way: (Re)visions of the Hirshhorn Collection

There is a hidden lounge on the third floor of the Hirshhorn Museum, the only place from where you can look beyond the curved walls of the building and enjoy a fabulous view of the National Mall, the premiere site of political protest in the United States. Presently, this lounge is taken over by the Guerrilla Girls, who transformed it into a feminist activist’s quarters. It is part of Put It This Way, an exhibition dedicated to radical feminist works from the museum’s collection. The title of the show comes from Rosalyn Drexler’s 1963 painting, which is included in the show. So are Ana Mendieta’s performance video “Blood and Feathers” (1974) and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s mosaic piece “Untitled” (1973–1974), legendary works which are being shown for the first time in Washington, DC. Showcasing the works of 49 historically overlooked women and nonbinary artists, this exhibition bears witness to the Guerrilla Girls’ iconic 2007 poster/zine cover that declared, “Thousands of Women locked in basements of DC museums!”

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (si.edu)
Independence Avenue at 7th Street SW, Washington, DC
Through September 17

John Akomfrah: Purple

This is a six-channel video installation in which Akomfrah masterfully combines his own cinematography with archival footage. The 62-minute-long projection is an ode to human interaction with nature and climate change. Accompanied by a massive ceiling installation at its entrance made out of hundreds of oil dispensers, it starts as a criticism of the fossil fuel industry. However, as its real and imaginary characters watch and participate in the demise of the only planet they have ever known as their home, Purple becomes a statement of grief. Akomfrah’s work is probably more significant today than when it was first released in 2017, for it depicts our collective regret and complicity with an astonishing style.

Hirshhorn Museum (hirshhorn.edu)
Independence Avenue and 7th Street, Washington, DC
Through January 7, 2024

Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures

Sun Ra released his infamous Space Is The Place album exactly 50 years ago. And he was only one of the artists following an old tradition of reimagining Black identity within the parameters of a fictional future. The Afrofuturism exhibition digs deep into the past and brings together a fascinating show which looks at the enduring appeal of the creative freedom and futuristic thinking offered by the Black community. The galleries are designed like an interstellar spaceship and there is some time travel involved. But you shouldn’t be fooled by any of the glitter and glamor as if it is entertainment. In this show, George Clinton’s rainbow wig from the 1980s accompanies Benjamin Banneker’s 1795 anti-slavery Almanac, Aaron Douglas’s 1928 cover for the Crisis magazine, and Octavia E. Butler’s handwritten manuscripts. Together, they provoke the audience to contemplate how Black identity was deconstructed and reconstructed countless times.

National Museum of African American History and Culture (nmaahc.edu)
1400 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Through March 24, 2024

Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023

The Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery biennially invites a select group of artists over a chosen theme. This exhibition features 55 works by six Native American and/or Alaska Native artists, all addressing the issues related to family and tradition. Joe Feddersen’s 2013 glass installation “Charmed (Bestiary)” is one of the highlights of this show, evoking the transcendence and fragility of tradition and memory. Another is Maggie Thompson’s On Loving (2022–23) builds on a painful personal experience, reimagining the coroners’ body bags, in which her father was taken away, as ornate Native American sacks.

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (americanart.edu)
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Through March 31, 2024

One Life: Frederick Douglass

Did you know that the most photographed American of the 19th century was the formerly enslaved and lifelong abolition activist, Frederick Douglass? How about the fact that he called photography the “true art” because it depicted reality in a way that can transform society? Utilizing more than 36 prints, photographs, and ephemera, One Life traces the legendary life of Douglas, including his friendship with Abraham Lincoln, who adopted Douglass’s views on photography as a campaign strategy. The contrast between the 1818 slave ledger in which Douglass’s name made its first appearance as an infant and later his face on a c. 1841 daguerreotype that was one the earliest taken in the United States is hard to put into words.

National Portrait Gallery (si.edu)
8th Street NW and G Street NW, Washington, DC
Through April 21, 2024

Janet Echelman: 1.8 Renwick

Echelman’s massive installation covers the entire ceiling of Renwick Gallery’s main hall. It is in essence a data visualization project, basically an enormous information cloud. The installation takes its title from the seismic activity registered during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. The geological event was of such proportions that it shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day by 1.8 millionth of a second, hence the work’s title. Visitors are invited to lie down on the carpeted floor and contemplate the enormity of a natural force beyond their control.

Renwick Gallery of National Museum of American Art (americanart.edu)
8th and G Streets, NW, Washington, DC
Ongoing