Saturday, December 13, 2025

Emptiness: Works By Abisay Puentes
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A solo exhibition of 25 acrylic on canvas pieces. The exhibition will be on view, inviting art enthusiasts to immerse themselves in Puentes' interwoven tapestry of three inseparable languages — poetry, painting, and music.

The exhibition will also feature an interactive video component that intertwines art and classical music. Far from being an occasional addition, this medium expands the experience Puentes has cultivated for years, offering the viewer another gateway into the symbolic and existential narrative that defines his work.

   

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

40th Annual Festival of Trees and Light
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For 40 years, the Everson has watched thousands of families come through our doors in awe of the spectacular displays of trees and décor, mesmerized by the incredible live performances, and immersed in hands-on activities. We are committed to bringing the Central New York community the very best of all the Festival of Trees & Light has to offer as a time-honored holiday tradition. This year's Festival will pay tribute to the festivals of years past, honor all those who made the event possible for 40 years, and look ahead to all that's to come at the Everson.

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The Palestinian thobe is more than an embroidered garment — it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story — of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession — from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

This exhibit, "Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance," is both a memorial and a call to action: to rescue, preserve, remember, and honor the hands that embroidered them. More than fabric, these thobes weave memory and return into every stitch. This is more than an exhibit — it is a reclamation. An act of cultural preservation which ensures that this art form, and the Palestinian narrative itself, remains alive for future generations.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

Fair Trade Holiday Sale
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Come to ArtRage Gallery for your holiday shopping and support craftspeople from around the world. Featuring Guatemalan goods from Mayan Hands, handmade sandals and embroidered shoes from Mexico, West Bank Pottery from Palestine, Palestinian olive oil and preserves, plus chocolate, coffee, and unique gifts from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and more from SERRV International and Ten Thousand Villages.

   

Kids Series: The Snowman
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Bring the whole family to enjoy this beloved animated film based on a poem by Wallace Stevens with music performed live by The Syracuse Orchestra.

Tickets

   

Kids Series: The Snowman
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Bring the whole family to enjoy this beloved animated film based on a poem by Wallace Stevens with music performed live by The Syracuse Orchestra.

Tickets

   

Wassail! A Bells & Motley Christmas Concert
Bells & Motley Consort

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

Come join in the singing of historic carols, including Wassailing songs that celebrate community and the joy of the season! Sondra & John celebrate the holiday season with very special music, featuring their unique collection of instruments from Long Ago and Far Away! Our Baltimore Woods Nature Center setting, surrounded by forest, will allow us to focus on the connection of music and wonder. After the concert, musicians will be available to answer questions and share information about their instruments.

   

Candlelight Series: Christmas Candlelight Classics
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Taras Krysa, conductor

Inspiration Hall (formerly St. Peter's Church)
709 James St., Syracuse

Coleridge-Taylor Christmas Overture
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Greensleeves
Prokofiev Lieutenant Kijé, op.60: Troika
Hovanness Symphony No. 49 "Christmas"
Tchaikovsky The Seasons: Christmas (December)
Tchaikovsky selections from Nutcracker

Tickets

   

Sirsy
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

SIRSY is fronted by powerhouse vocalist Melanie (Mel) Krahmer, who is described as "one of the most powerful & flexible voices you'll ever hear." (-Times Union). Aftertaste Magazine said, "Bursting and belting out emotion and substance, she can be the queen of 'in the groove' rocking or be simple and delicate." Still, there is more to Mel than her soul-inspired vocals: she also plays a full drum kit while standing up (she's been featured in Modern Drummer Magazine and is officially endorsed by Paiste Cymbals and Vater Percussion). At their live shows, Mel also plays bass parts with a drum stick (on a keyboard mounted on her drums). She even throws in an occasional flute solo, too. Guitarist Rich Libutti plays a well-loved and road-worn Rickenbacker through a pedalboard full of vintage effects. "The guitar player is flawless and raw. Clean enough to be enjoyed, and just edgy enough to make you grin." (-SXSW Music Blog, Austin TX). Live, Rich also plays bass on a keyboard with his feet.

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Wicked
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

So much happened before Dorothy dropped in. Wicked, the Broadway sensation, looks at what happened in the Land of Oz ... but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin — smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships ... until the world decides to call one "good," and the other one "wicked." From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked — the untold true story of the Witches of Oz — transfixes audiences with its wildly inventive story. "If every musical had the brains, heart and courage of Wicked, Broadway really would be a magical place" (Time Magazine).

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

Sunday, December 14, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

*SOLD OUT* Nachos & Blancos
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Join us for our once-a-month rockin' rhythm and roots par-tay at The 443!

It's the best hang in town, and we can't think of a better way to spend Sunday afternoon than grooving to the tasty tunes of the mighty Los Blancos.

Join the waitlist

   

Home Is Where the Holidays Are
MasterWorks Chorale
Micheal Kringer, conductor

Price: $20 adults; children 18 and under free
First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles
97 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Songs of today and yesteryear — an annual highlight of Dickens Christmas festivities in Skaneateles!

   

Winter Solstice Concert: Coming Home
Syracuse Community Choir
Karen Mihalyi, conductor

Price: Sliding scale
St. Paul's Syracuse
220 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Join us as we celebrate 40 years of singing for peace and social justice with our Winter Solstice concert, Coming Home. The evening will feature songs of resistance, hope, community, and renewal. Many are familiar favorites from years past performed by our adult, teen, and children's choirs.

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Monday, December 15, 2025

Emptiness: Works By Abisay Puentes
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A solo exhibition of 25 acrylic on canvas pieces. The exhibition will be on view, inviting art enthusiasts to immerse themselves in Puentes' interwoven tapestry of three inseparable languages — poetry, painting, and music.

The exhibition will also feature an interactive video component that intertwines art and classical music. Far from being an occasional addition, this medium expands the experience Puentes has cultivated for years, offering the viewer another gateway into the symbolic and existential narrative that defines his work.

   

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

*SOLD OUT* Bywater Call
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Bywater Call, out of Toronto, Canada, is a perennial 443 favorite with a new, exuberant musical hybrid of rock, blues, New Orleans funk, R&B and southern soul.

Join the waitlist

   

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The Palestinian thobe is more than an embroidered garment — it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story — of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession — from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

This exhibit, "Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance," is both a memorial and a call to action: to rescue, preserve, remember, and honor the hands that embroidered them. More than fabric, these thobes weave memory and return into every stitch. This is more than an exhibit — it is a reclamation. An act of cultural preservation which ensures that this art form, and the Palestinian narrative itself, remains alive for future generations.

   

Griffin House
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Griffin House is an American singer-songwriter and storyteller. Touring and making records for over 20 years, House has a discography that includes over 13 albums. His debut record "Lost and Found" (2004) was featured on CBS Sunday Morning by music critic and then VP MTV/VH1, Bill Flanagan, who named House one of the best emerging singer-songwriters of our time.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Thursday, December 18, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The Palestinian thobe is more than an embroidered garment — it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story — of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession — from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

This exhibit, "Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance," is both a memorial and a call to action: to rescue, preserve, remember, and honor the hands that embroidered them. More than fabric, these thobes weave memory and return into every stitch. This is more than an exhibit — it is a reclamation. An act of cultural preservation which ensures that this art form, and the Palestinian narrative itself, remains alive for future generations.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

Dead to the Core: An Acoustic Celebration of the Grateful Dead
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Dead to the Core is a collective of singer-songwriters and acoustic musicians who explore the musical world of the Grateful Dead—not through note-for-note re-creations but by playing the songs their own way, with unexpected instrumental colors and lush vocal harmonies.

This show features the all-star Syracuse-based Dead to the Core band, with John Lennon Songwriting Contest winner Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers on guitar and Strumstick; Tim Burns (Two Hour Delay) on guitar and mandolin; Wendy Sassafras Ramsay (Starting Off Red) on accordion, flute, and clarinet; Josh Dekaney (Mary Fahl) on percussion/drum kit; and John Dancks (the Cadleys) on upright bass.

The band's repertoire spans classics and rarities from the Dead as well as Jerry Garcia Band, Garcia and Grisman, and Old and in the Way—sometimes mashed up with originals by Dead to the Core's own songwriters.

Tickets

   

A Dickens of a Death
Acme Mystery Company

Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

It's been three years since the ghosts came to visit Scrooge and he is a changed man. He is making up for all that he has missed in life and we're not just talking charity work. He is living La Vida Loca, baby, with expensive wine, fast women, and way too much song! Huzzah! He is throwing money around like a lottery winner in Vegas! Bob Cratchit, nephew Freddy, and the rest of the Scrooge gravy train have to stop him soon or they are all headed for the Poor House. Join us for Scrooge's Third Annual Holiday Bash and raise a glass to old Fezziwig (but try not to be the one who goes face down in the Figgy Pudding). Cheers!

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Friday, December 19, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The Palestinian thobe is more than an embroidered garment — it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story — of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession — from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

This exhibit, "Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance," is both a memorial and a call to action: to rescue, preserve, remember, and honor the hands that embroidered them. More than fabric, these thobes weave memory and return into every stitch. This is more than an exhibit — it is a reclamation. An act of cultural preservation which ensures that this art form, and the Palestinian narrative itself, remains alive for future generations.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

Winter Gala
Off the Dock Chamber Festival

Price: Suggested donation $25
First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles
97 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

A festive night of music featuring Skaneateles Schools Alumni, benefiting Off The Dock Chamber Festival and the Skaneateles Education Foundation. Join the Off The Dock Chamber Choir for a program of Christmas carols, followed by a program of instrumental and vocal solos featuring SCS performing arts alumni and friends of Off The Dock.

A free holiday reception will follow in Dobson Hall.

RSVP to guarantee a seat

   

Scott Tournet
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Scott Tournet is a producer, mixing engineer, solo artist, the frontman for Elektric Voodoo, and a founding member of Grace Potter & The Nocturnals (2003-2015). With The Nocturnals he was a co-writer on 3 Top 40 albums and scored a gold record for the song "Paris".

In addition to his work with the Nocturnals, Scott has written and recorded with Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys), Willie Nelson, T Bone Burnett, Kenny Chesney, Alison Krauss, Mark Batson (Dr. Dre, Alicia Keys, Eminem) and others. He has performed with The Allman Brothers, members of The Grateful Dead and Phish, Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top) and many others.

Tickets

   

A Dickens of a Death
Acme Mystery Company

Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

It's been three years since the ghosts came to visit Scrooge and he is a changed man. He is making up for all that he has missed in life and we're not just talking charity work. He is living La Vida Loca, baby, with expensive wine, fast women, and way too much song! Huzzah! He is throwing money around like a lottery winner in Vegas! Bob Cratchit, nephew Freddy, and the rest of the Scrooge gravy train have to stop him soon or they are all headed for the Poor House. Join us for Scrooge's Third Annual Holiday Bash and raise a glass to old Fezziwig (but try not to be the one who goes face down in the Figgy Pudding). Cheers!

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Saturday, December 20, 2025

40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Step into a winter wonderland at the 40th Annual Gingerbread Gallery, a cherished holiday tradition. Dozens of gingerbread creations crafted by local bakers will be on display in the 19th-century storefront windows.

Tickets

   

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Iconoclasts" marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste's vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

   

Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories, 1983-2023
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

For more than four decades, Joyce Kozloff has explored how the entanglements of geography, history, and power influence the visual language of maps. "Contested Territories" presents a selection of Kozloff's works that uncover how maps shape our understanding of the world—not as neutral tools, but as instruments of influence, ideology, and control.

Kozloff's wide range of sources include historical maps, classroom wall maps, atlases, globes, and even satellite imagery from Google Maps. Her dense and colorful works often layer these materials with hand-painted details, collage, and intricate ornamentation. By combining sources that span centuries—from Renaissance celestial charts to contemporary digital mapping—she exposes how maps carry the legacies of empire, conflict, and shifting territorial claims.

A founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement, Kozloff combines meticulous craftsmanship with political critique. Her works are labor-intensive, involving the detailed process of painting, drawing, and collaging over cartographic surfaces. The resulting richly textured visual field invites viewers to look closely—and to question the conquest, division, and erasure found beneath the official surface narrative.

Whether reimagining educational globes or deconstructing colonial-era charts, Kozloff transforms maps from static documents into contested, dynamic spaces. Her work encourages viewers to reconsider how borders are drawn as well as how art can reclaim such boundaries as sites of resistance, memory, and possibility.

   

Jake Troyli: Open Season
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Jake Troyli's works address the commodification of Black and Brown bodies, confronting and exploring labor capitalism and sweat equity as a demonstration of value. Troyli also injects his paintings with a sense of humor and absurdity through the inclusion of his own self-portrait. His avatar populates the works in "Open Season," where Troyli is both the hunter and the hunted as he participates in a variety of physical activities. As a former Division I basketball player, Troyli has a potent understanding of how athletes in America, particularly athletes of color, are simultaneously celebrated and criticized.

   

Lessons in Geometry
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Artists have obsessed over the relationship between mathematics and art for millennia. As artists turned toward abstraction in the early 20th century, Europeans like Piet Mondrian used geometry to create a set of rules and parameters that guided their creative process. Meanwhile, American artists began developing their own styles and movements—particularly Abstract Expressionism, which was typified by bold, quickly executed brushwork, drips, and splashes. In the mid-20th century in the United States, artists laid the groundwork for Geometric Abstraction as a more cerebral alternative to the often macho flamboyance of Abstract Expressionism. Over the ensuing decades, artists used geometry to produce abstract works that ranged from the dazzling Op Art of Victor Vasarely to the restrained Minimalism of Sol LeWitt.

"Lessons in Geometry" traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson's collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.

   

Patterns of Resistance
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In the early 1970s, the Pattern & Decoration Movement emerged as an antidote to the vice grip in which abstraction had held American art since the 1950s. Artists like Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Miriam Shapiro began juxtaposing colors and patterns that critics and artists alike had previously dismissed as feminine to powerful effect. Simultaneously, other feminist artists like Lynda Benglis were consciously subverting clay's associations as a masculine and/or craft medium.

As the '70s played out, a generation of artists like Andrea Gill, Nancy Selvin, and Betty Woodman did not just embrace the decorative strategies of the Pattern & Decoration Movement, they also sought to place a feminist spin on their work. As ceramics become more common in a fine art context, hierarchies surrounding different materials faded, giving artists the ability to experiment and construct narrative and meaning through pattern. Long denigrated as "decorative" and closely associated with domesticity, patterns are now an integral part of the language of contemporary art.

   

Art Mart Syracuse
Syracuse Allied Arts

500 S. Franklin St.
Syracuse

A pop-up art show featuring 45 or more local artists who have created everything from jewelry, watercolor painting, oil painting, ceramics, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, textiles, consumables, photography, and other unique products.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/artmartsyracuse.

   

Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance: A Palestinian Diaspora Collection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The Palestinian thobe is more than an embroidered garment — it is a living archive. For Palestinians in the diaspora, these intricately stitched dresses are tangible connections to a homeland many have never seen, yet fiercely carry within them. Each motif tells a story — of identity, ancestral village, and unbroken resilience. Tragically, many thobes have been lost to time, war, and dispossession — from heirloom dresses smuggled out of Palestine to stolen thobes rediscovered in antique markets, their narratives preserved only in the whispers of fading thread.

This exhibit, "Reclaiming Our Collective Inheritance," is both a memorial and a call to action: to rescue, preserve, remember, and honor the hands that embroidered them. More than fabric, these thobes weave memory and return into every stitch. This is more than an exhibit — it is a reclamation. An act of cultural preservation which ensures that this art form, and the Palestinian narrative itself, remains alive for future generations.

   

The Portal's Keeper
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Clove Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future. The artists asked them to embody their answers not only through words, but through movement as well. "The Portal's Keeper" realizes those visions through the technological "portal" of a popular game engine better known for first-person shooter and battle royale MMO games. Here, the artists use this technology not to realistically simulate violence, but instead as a means to represent what liberation might look like.

Screening, projected on the museum wall, begins at dusk.

   

The Nutcracker
Central New York Ballet

Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Tickets

   

The Nutcracker
Central New York Ballet

Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Tickets

   

Winter Warmer Holiday Party with Cool Club & the Lipker Sisters
The 443 Social Club

The 443 Social Club
443 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Down-home chic and big-city sound plus small-town charm. Cool Club & The Lipker Sisters are an intoxicating blend of intricate harmonies and the sophistication of jazz, the soul of R&B mixed with Latin and good old rock & roll.

The club will be decked out for the holiday season, our bartenders will be whipping up fun holiday cocktails, and festive holiday attire is strongly encouraged. Be sure to wear your dancing shoes… Cool Club will have you moving and grooving!

Tickets

   

Liamna Pestana Roche, guitar
Skaneateles Library Guitar Series

Price: Free
Skaneateles Library
49 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Liamna Pestana Roche is a Cuban-American musician whose artistry spans a remarkable array of plucked string instruments, including the Renaissance and Baroque guitars, 6-course and 19th-century guitars, classical guitar, medieval citole, vihuela, Renaissance lute, oud, archlute, and the Cuban tres.

She is also an accomplished soprano and has performed with vocal and instrumental ensembles across Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, and the United States.?

A passionate interpreter of early music, Liamna directed the ensemble Cantiga Armonica, with whom she toured extensively, appearing in concerts and festivals throughout Cuba, Mexico, Sweden, Argentina, and Colombia. As a concert guitarist, she has earned awards and recognition in festivals and competitions in Mexico and Cuba.?

   

Pops Series: Home for the Holidays
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Ronnie Leigh, vocals; Syracuse Pops Chorus; Syracuse Community Gospel Choir
Sean O'Loughlin, conductor

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Orchestra celebrates the season with your holiday favorites joined on stage by CNY favorite Ronnie Leigh plus the Syracuse Pops Chorus and the Syracuse Community Gospel Choir.

Tickets

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

A Twilight Zone Christmas
CNY Playhouse
Bella Lupia, director

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A world premiere production! Revisit the iconic Christmas episodes of science fiction horror anthology The Twilight Zone in this incredible onstage experience.

Tickets

   

A Christmas Story
Syracuse Stage
Robert Hupp, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The beloved holiday film, live onstage!

9-year-old Ralphie Parker has his sights set on a coveted Christmas gift, but he'll have to play his cards right if he's going to convince the "Old Man" to leave it under the tree. Meanwhile, he'll have to deal with the neighborhood bully, an annoying kid brother, nagging teachers, and the constant cold of a frigid Indiana winter. Filled with the most memorable moments from the beloved 1983 film — a glorious leg lamp, grandma's bunny pajamas, Orphan Annie's decoder ring, and one serious triple-dog-dare — this nostalgic adaptation faithfully captures author Jean Shepherd's small-town wit while inviting new audiences to discover this timeless family comedy for the first time.

   

Guys and Dolls
Redhouse

Redhouse at City Center
400 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, Guys and Dolls is an oddball romantic comedy. Gambler Nathan Detroit tries to find the cash to set up the biggest craps game in town while the authorities breathe down his neck; meanwhile his girlfriend, nightclub performer Adelaide, laments that they've been engaged for 14 years. Nathan turns to fellow gambler Sky Masterson for the dough, and Sky ends up chasing the straight-laced missionary, Sarah Brown, as a result. Guys and Dolls takes us from the heart of Times Square to the cafes of Havana, Cuba, and even into the sewers of New York City, but eventually everyone ends up right where they belong.

Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows.

Tickets