Alumni Invitational 5 features work by contemporary artists Zaria Forman, Fitzhugh Karol, Zehra Khan, Susan Meyer, Eliza Naranjo Morse
Robert Tracy on Dance showcases photographs of New York City Ballet stars collected by the late dancer/writer/educator
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announces the opening of two new exhibitions on June 4 that celebrate Skidmore alumni. Both exhibitions will be open through August 21.
Alumni Invitational 5, the fifth in a series of such exhibitions, features five Skidmore alumni who are contemporary artists—Zaria Forman ’05, Fitzhugh Karol ’04, Zehra Khan ’04, Susan Meyer ’86, and Eliza Naranjo Morse ’01. They work in a variety of media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, and performance. Together, their work offers a visual conversation around nature and our human relationship with the environment.
Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator Rachel Seligman will lead a public tour of Alumni Invitational 5 on Saturday, June 4, at 3:30 pm.
Robert Tracy on Dance presents photographs of celebrated members of New York City Ballet, including George Balanchine and dancers such as Alexandra Danilova, Violette Verdy, Suzanne Farrell, and Melissa Hayden, who taught at Skidmore College. Robert Tracy, Class of 1977, was a dancer, critic, author, educator, and partner of legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. His archive of dance photographs included material gathered for his seminal book, Balanchine’s Ballerinas: Conversations with the Muses, which was published in 1983. He later donated his archive to Skidmore.
Robert Tracy on Dance is being presented in conjunction with the exhibition Merce My Way by Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (June 5–9, 17–19) and The Ageless Dancer at Saratoga Arts (June 18–August 13).
The Tang is open on Thursdays from noon to 9 pm, and Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 pm. Admission to the Museum is free. For more information, call the Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang website at https://tang.skidmore.edu.
About the Artists
Zaria Forman ’05 makes large-scale pastel drawings on paper and videos that immerse viewers in the ethereal blue light of the earth’s disappearing glaciers. Intensely naturalistic yet otherworldly, her work is intended to connect us with the reality of climate change’s adverse effects while depicting the unique beauty of some of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world.
Fitzhugh Karol ’04 makes abstract sculptures of wood and metal which evoke hills, valleys, steps, and portals—elements of real, imagined, and remembered landscapes. Whether monumental or intimate, each sculpture combines a playful vocabulary of geometric forms to draw and strengthen connections between people and the landscape.
Zehra Khan ’04 is a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes drawing, sculpture, performance, and painting—the latter often on her fellow humans. Always playful, often absurdist and provocative, Khan uses unconventional and found materials and methods to explore relationships—those between individuals as well as those between humans and the flora and fauna of the world around us.
Susan Meyer ’86 is inspired by defunct utopian communities, scholar’s rocks, and other potent elements of popular culture. From these sources, she makes sculpture, installations, and two-dimensional work that evoke a host of tenuous relationships—between the natural world and the built environment, between growth and decay, between aspiration and failure.
Eliza Naranjo Morse ’01 (Santa Clara Pueblo) explores the existential questions which arise from current events, personal experiences, and spiritual seeking. Her art, in materials as varied as wood, clay, fiber, graphite, and paint, is guided by the needs of each project and blends references and techniques from her academic art education with her Pueblo heritage and ancestral knowledge to reflect on cultural history, spirituality, and contemporary existence.
Robert Tracy ’77 studied Classics and dance, and was a student of Melissa Hayden at Skidmore. As a dancer, Tracy was known for his powerful leaps and earned a scholarship to study at the New York City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet in New York, where he met Nureyev. Their relationship lasted 14 years, until Nureyev’s death in 1993 of AIDS-related complications. After his time as a performer, Tracy turned to writing and teaching. He taught dance history at Fordham University and wrote on dance, theater, music, art, and film for publications such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Dance, Elle, and Vogue. His book Balanchine’s Ballerinas and the exhibition feature work by leading practitioners of dance photography such as Costas Cacaroukas, Steven Caras, Fred Fehl, Carolyn George, George Platt Lynes, and Martha Swope.
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