Binghamton University Art Museum

Located at the center of campus, the Binghamton University Art Museum is a dynamic public space where staff and faculty engage students and the wider public through frequent original exhibitions and programming. The Binghamton University Art Museum has a permanent collection of over 4,000 objects selectively acquired over 50 years. These include works on paper, paintings, sculpture and decorative arts from around the world and spanning 5,000 years. These activities and objects are vital to Binghamton University, one of four research universities as well as the most selective undergraduate campus in the State University of New York.

Exhibits

The Binghamton University Art Museum in Binghamton, NY announces the opening of Michal Heiman: Chronically Linked. It is on view September 8 through December 10, 2022 in the main gallery and mezzanine of the Art Museum, located in the Fine Arts Building. All Fall 2022 exhibitions will open Thursday, September 8, 5-7 pm.

Featuring photographs, videos, and archival materials, the exhibition explores the intersections of psychoanalysis, asylums, and oppression through recent projects including Michal Heiman Tests (1997-2012); Radical Link: A New Community of Women, 1855-2022 (2013-present); and Hearing (2020). The latter projects found their genesis in 2013 when Heiman, doing research for another project, encountered a photograph of a young woman taken around 1855 at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum in London by Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond. A few years later, Heiman found a similar image, this of Maria Dominica D’Alberto who was photographed by Oreste Bertani at the San Servolo Asylum in Venice in January 1880. Heiman recognized a version of herself in both images, thus setting her on a path to recontextualize the photographs through her artistic process and research. The exhibition is organized by curator of collections and exhibitions, Claire L. Kovacs.

In conjunction with the Michal Heiman exhibition is Unconventional Care: The Mission of the NYS Inebriate Asylum. It is on view in the Museum’s lower galleries, along with Death in Venice: Bright Scenes with Dark Themes, curated by Eliana Ellerton ’23; Beau Idéal: American Love and Life, curated by Taylor Garris ’23; and Returning to Touch, curated by Aaron Berkowitz ’23.

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