The 6^th Annual Upstate Art Weekend is Here

If you’re ready for an early summer escape, the sixth annual Upstate Art Weekend is here for you. Founded by curator Helen Toomer as a celebration of local and regional creativity hubs, this massive, self-guided art experience breaks down gallery walls entirely. It transforms the pastoral landscape of the Hudson Valley and Catskills into an open-air art crawl on steroids. For five consecutive days this year, over 160 artists, open studios, non-profits, and major institutions open their doors to audiences coming from New York City and beyond. It is a rare chance to step directly into the working barns, garages, and converted mills where art is made. You can explore site-specific installations, and experience the incredible synergy between art people, and place.

What began in 2000 as a localized initiative with just 23 participants determined to reconnect the creative community during the height of the pandemic, UAW has evolved into a massive, internationally recognized cultural phenomenon. From witnessing the wild, lawless energy of outdoor sculpture installations to watching local printing presses ink-up for collaborative workshops, the weekend bridges the gap between creator and observer in the most grounding way possible. It is less about passive viewing and more about absorbing the raw, workplace energy of a brilliant community.  Above: The historic Foreland Building in Catskill, where 50+ artists and makers open their studios for the weekend. Info

You can get to some of the hubs by public transit— one strategy is to pick a single destination per day. For instance, spend Thursday the many galleries in downtown Hudson, and spend Friday taking the Metro-North to Beacon to explore DIA and browse the local gallery clusters on the main drag. Click to follow updates on Instagram.

Thursday, June 25, 11am-1pm: UAW Founder Helen Toomer at Olana

This year UAW festivities kick off at what might just be the spiritual epicenter of art and nature in the region: Olana [above]. The choice of venue coincides with the bicentennial celebration of Frederic Edwin Church, the Hudson River School master who spent decades sculpting Olana’s 250-acre landscape into a living work of art.

Here, on Thursday morning, Upstate Art Weekend founder Helen Toomer will gather a formidable trio of contemporary visionaries—Jean Shin, Gabriela Salazar, and Ellen Harvey—at the new Frederic Church Center. Together, they will explore the subjects of history, environmental stewardship and the ephemeral nature of public art. The event is free with required RSVP.

The Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape at Olana, 5720 NY-9G, Hudson, NY  Info

Flower Power at New York Botanical Garden

Closer to home, you can experience a living time capsule of 1960s counterculture by immersing yourself in New York Botanical Garden’s summer-long installation, Flower Power. For anyxone who tracks the intersection of graphic art, environmentalism, and sheer visual spectacle, this is the go-to design pilgrimage of the season. The heart of the show for the print and design community resides inside the Mertz Library Building, now presenting an extraordinary graphic portfolio from the era, anchored by Andy Warhol’s iconic Flowers (1964) serigraphs, which sit in magnificent conversation with the bold, typographic protest art of Corita Kent and the immortal, swirling lines of Milton Glaser. Together with reproductions of photographs by Bernie Boston, Bob Edelman and other photojournalists, these displays exemplify the era’s social movements and culture.

Outside on the lawns, the scale shifts from the intimate page to the monumental. Giant, hand-painted fabric canopies by William Hochweber catch the breeze, while local street artists have turned vintage Volkswagen beetles and school buses into brilliantly subverted canvasses. At the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, psychedelic floral arrangements by contemporary weave counterculture iconography directly into the glasshouse's botanical displays

For a total 60s vibe, book a ticket for the Flower Power Nights—the sight of pioneering liquid light shows bleeding across the neoclassical facade of the library while Ghost Funk Orchestra plays is worth the trip alone. Tickets

Through October 18 at New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd, Bronx, NY. Info 

Last chance, June 28: Raphael | Sublime Poetry at The Met

If you’ve been looking for a reason to spend the weekend in the city, The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers the last chance to experience Raphael: Sublime Poetry. Curated by Carmen C. Bambach after eight years of intense preparation, this is the very first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the High Renaissance master ever held in the United States. For anyone invested in the pure mechanics of drawing, line, and composition, it is an absolute must-see.

What makes this show a standout—and a uniquely tactile experience for working artists—is its deep dive into Raphael’s obsessive preparatory process. While blockbuster crowd-pleasers like the Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione (on a rare holiday from the Musée du Louvre) and Washington’s Alba Madonna are rightfully getting the banner headlines, it’s the massive gathering of 144 preparatory drawings and Vatican studies that truly steals the show [below].

Seeing his ink and chalk studies displayed side-by-side with finished masterpieces allows you to trace the exact lineage of his thought process. You can see him working through the spatial dynamics, wrestling with the weight of a limb, or capturing the sudden, poetic twist of a torso. It is a rare, intimate look at the relentless discipline behind what looks, on canvas, like effortless grace.

The exhibition also features an extraordinary feat of museum diplomacy: the temporary reassembly of the Colonna Altarpiece [above]. Broken apart and scattered to various collections around 1663, its components are reunited here as a singular, cohesive ensemble.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry runs through June 28, 2026. Do yourself a favor: plug into the excellent companion audio tour narrated by Isabella Rossellini, take your time through the galleries, and then go home and open up your sketchbook.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info