February 8–August 3, 2025

Those who tended to the land and rose the buildings, were never welcomed to participate in Utopia of their making. The Hudson River is escape as in freedom, but not free, closer to flee. Parasitic clinging to something bigger, draining life. Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a retelling of the history of the Hudson Valley. While there are hundreds of pages dedicated to capitalists and art they funded, this small exhibition creates a home for an alternative history.

Since Turtle Island has known the pest, the Europeans have known escape. Wide and wet her valley is the curvy womb of American art. The birthplace of escape. With the Hudson River School built during the nation’s industrialization period, the Hudson Valley was a break from modernity. So much so that when trains began to penetrate the land, artists erased human presence from their paintings. The school’s landscape captured the trees, the lakes, and called it utopia. Utopia for who?

The Hudson River Valley deep, dark, fugitive, and resisting was amusing for settlers but, more importantly, a muse and a home to those looking for an escape. Escape as in out of sight, out of reach, out of confinement. Able to unfurl like leaves, bask in the light of day unafraid, to be nourished by the Earth. The Hudson Valley is a refuge. With this display, I wish to complicate the myth of the Hudson Valley. I will not dispute the beauty of the trees and rivers; rather, I’ll add there is a richer beauty. Akin to the bliss of sitting under a tree on a summer day, it is the covered (hidden) asylum that has attracted Black people to the Hudson Valley since the moment ships hit the shore. Each piece, placed in chronological order, shares the story of people resisting White settlers’ attempts to craft the myth of the great green hope.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place was organized by 2024 Ford Scholar/Pindyck Summer Fellow, Harrison Brisbon-McKinnon, Vassar College class of 2026. Support for Spotlight is provided by Mary Ellen Weisl Rudolph ’61, P ’98 and James N. Rudolph P ’98.