Observer: Ten Upstate Art Weekend Exhibitions That Justify the Drive

Upstate Art Weekend is the final opportunity to visit Maria Lai's first U.S. retrospective and, with it, experience a captivating collaborative installation born from the resonant dialogue between fashion designer and multidisciplinary creative Antonio Marras and the late Maria Lai, on view in the U.S. for the first time. This gallery-sized work intertwines the two artists in a shared poetics of fabric and thread, used as vessels for both personal and collective memory and as tools for preserving tradition and fostering community. Titled Llèncols de Aigua—Catalan for "sheets of Water"—the installation comprises long, hand-stitched white sheets adorned with antique nightgowns embroidered with phrases gathered by Lai during an educational project with children. Drawing from a rural sensibility and an ethic of material economy, labor and communal exchange, the work revives the emotional solidarity of village life as a counterpoint to the alienation of urban modernity. Part of Marras’ private collection, the piece is installed in the isotropic room at the Robert Olnick Pavilion—the symbolic heart of the museum—and shown in dialogue with “Maria Lai. A Journey to America.” Featuring more than 100 works, this survey traces Lai’s six-decade practice, from her early 1950s landscapes to her later, boundary-pushing creations—many of which are being shown in the United States for the first time.