Art, as both creative output and curated object, is in constant dialogue with the past and the present. This never-ending conversation asks us to continually reimagine the ways that we project visions of ourselves and the world around us into the future. Order / Reorder: Experiments with Collections explores approaches to looking at American art and identity from new perspectives. A collaboration with the Hudson River Museum, in Yonkers, NY, the exhibition presents an assembly of works from the neighboring institution's collection. The works on view range across themes of landscapes, abstraction, and family, through two presentations that order, exchange, and reorder a collection of objects for the museum's fall and spring seasons. In lieu of a chronological arrangement, the installation is designed in constellatory arrangements, to spark discussion through juxtapositions of styles, outlooks, and eras.

The exhibition invites viewers to find connections in unexpected groupings of objects. Juxtapositions of landscapes by the Afro-Native artist Richard Mayhew, Shinnecock Nation photographer Jeremy Dennis, sculptor Louise Nevelson, and Hudson River School artist James Fairman, provoke discussions around land sovereignty, power, and feeling. Collages and paintings by artists such as Tuesday Smillie, Derrick Adams, and Alvin C. Hollingsworth present visions of futurity that collide with stories of community, family, and belonging. Meanwhile abstraction appears as a method to convey the energy of civic movements in works by artists such as Jamel Robinson and Charles Foreman, and more intimate, familial forms, in works by artists Lee Hall and a 19th-century quiltmaker.

Order/Reorder: Experiments with Collections was originally organized by, and presented at, the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. The exhibition is co-curated by Laura Vookles, Chair, Curatorial Department, Hudson River Museum, and Bentley Brown, Adjunct Professor of Art History at Fordham University and PhD Fellow, NYU Institute of Fine Arts. The presentation at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling is organized by Allie Tepper.

At the Hudson River Museum, several works were lent by Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, as part of the Art Bridges' Collection Loan Partnership initiative, and generous support was provided by the New York State Senate and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins