October brings a lively mix of open studios, gallery exhibitions, live music, dance, and outdoor arts events to Hudson and the surrounding communities. Here are some of the month’s highlights.

Featured Event: Hudson Open Studios 2026

Saturday, October 10–Sunday, October 11, 2026
11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily
Admission: Free

More than 50 Hudson artists will open their studios and temporary exhibition spaces for a behind-the-scenes look at their creative practices. Visitors can meet painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, and multidisciplinary artists while exploring studios, galleries, storefronts, and pop-up venues throughout the city.

The self-guided weekend includes a map of participating locations, making it easy to create your own art walk through Hudson.

View the Hudson Open Studios website Join the Art Journey 2025

Arts and culture

Festivals, Music and Dance

Hudson Jazz Festival

Friday, October 2–Sunday, October 4, 2026
Hudson Hall and venues throughout Hudson

Hudson Hall’s annual jazz festival brings more than 70 artists to stages and unexpected spaces around the city. The 2026 program includes the Afro-Cuban rhythms of the Dafnis Prieto Sí o Sí Quartet on Friday, vocalist Vuyo Sotashe with pianist Chris Pattishall on Saturday, and Shenel Johns closing the festival on Sunday. Free “Sounds Around Town” performances will also take place in Hudson’s parks, restaurants, galleries, shops, and gathering spaces.

Explore the Hudson Jazz Festival hudsonhall.org

Hudson Oktoberfest

Saturday, October 3, 2026
12:00–8:00 p.m.
Upper Depot Brewing Co., 708 State Street

This full-day autumn celebration combines four live bands, regional craft beer, wine and cider, local food, independent makers, family activities, and participating animal-rescue organizations. Philadelphia indie-rock band Mo Lowda & the Humble headlines the music program.

Event information and tickets Brewery in Hudson, NY

Hudson Valley Dance Festival

Saturday, October 10, 2026
Historic Catskill Point, Catskill

Just across the river from Hudson, this annual benefit presents acclaimed dance companies, choreographers, and performers inside the atmospheric waterfront setting of Historic Catskill Point. Proceeds support Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Learn more about the Hudson Valley Dance Festival Dancers Responding to AIDS

Gallery Exhibitions and Art Destinations

Fertile Ground at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Through October 18, 2026
622 Warren Street, Hudson

Carrie Haddad Gallery’s fall exhibition brings together Dora Somosi, Allyson Levy, Annika Tucksmith, Betsy Weis, Lily Morris, and Eileen Murphy. Through painting, photography, textiles, encaustic work, and other media, the artists explore growth, transformation, weather, landscape, and the passage of time.

Visit Carrie Haddad Gallery Carrie Haddad Gallery

In Flux at Private Public Gallery

Through October 17, 2026
530 Columbia Street, Hudson

Set inside a striking restored 1865 synagogue, Private Public Gallery presents In Flux, an exhibition bringing together Judy Pfaff and Michael David. Their expansive works move between painting, sculpture, assemblage, and installation.

Visit Private Public Gallery privatepublicgallery.net

The Campus: 2026 Annual Exhibition

Through November 1, 2026
341 NY-217, Claverack

Located in a repurposed former school just outside Hudson, The Campus returns with its third annual exhibition. The sprawling presentation brings artists from its six founding New York galleries together with eight invited UK galleries, filling former classrooms, corridors, and communal spaces with contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and multimedia work.

Explore The Campus 27 June – The Campus

Sutter Antiques: Art Across Continents and Centuries

556 Warren Street, Hudson

A visit to Hudson’s arts district should also include Sutter Antiques, where historic art and objects create a dialogue across periods and cultures. The showroom offers a changing selection of 19th- and 20th-century paintings, Japanese works on paper, woodblock prints, scrolls, and decorative art from the United States, Asia, and Europe.

Founded in 1976, Sutter Antiques combines an established antiques tradition with the spirit of an intimate, highly personal gallery—an ideal stop for collectors and anyone interested in seeing how art from different cultures and eras can live together.

Explore Sutter Antiques Sutter Antiques

Outdoor Creative Experience

Painting the Day: A Community Plein Air Event

Saturday, October 3, 2026
10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Athens Riverfront Park

Presented by the Athens Cultural Center, this community plein-air celebration invites regional artists to paint outdoors along the Hudson River during peak autumn color. Visitors can watch works take shape while enjoying the riverfront landscape and changing October light.

Event details from the Athens Cultural Center Athens Cultural Center

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Every artwork creates a world—and changes the one around it.

In our last series, What We Keep, we explored objects made to hold more than things. Boxes, chests, vessels, and cabinets often begin as practical objects. Over time, however, they become keepers of memory. They bear evidence of what they have held, where they have traveled, and how people have lived with them.

Artwork holds things too.

Living with art means living with other places, other periods, and other ways of seeing.

A painting can hold a place we have never visited. A photograph can preserve people whose names time has erased. A screen can hold the stillness of a landscape. Even an abstract work can hold movement, tension, rhythm, or atmosphere.

Art contains a scene, creates a scene, emerges from a scene—and eventually becomes part of ours.

The Questioner of the Sphinx

The Scene Within

Some artworks invite us directly into a recognizable world.

In The Questioner of the Sphinx, a lone figure confronts one of history’s most enduring symbols of mystery. The scene suggests that something has already happened—or is about to. The artist gives us no explanation. Instead, we enter midway through the encounter and must imagine the question for ourselves.

A Henry Billings harbor painting carries an entirely different energy. Boats, figures, buildings, and rigging gather into a scene of human activity. The painting captures what feels like a passing observation: a moment of work and movement caught before the harbor rearranges itself again.

Henry Billings, Oil on Canvas

Meanwhile, the Swiss gouache offers another kind of passage. It takes us across water, into mountain towns, along architectural facades, and toward distant shorelines. The scale may be intimate, but the world it contains is expansive. Like old travel journals, they preserve not only the appearance of a place but also the sensation of having arrived there.

Watercolor of Lake Geneva, Switzerland

This may be one of art’s quietest powers: it allows us to enter a scene that is complete without us—and yet seems to have been waiting for our arrival.

The Scene We Construct

Artists do not find every scene; sometimes they carefully construct one.

A French still life brings flowers, fruit, objects, architecture, landscape, and even a monkey into one elaborate composition. It is less a record of an ordinary tabletop than a small piece of theater. The artist arranges nature, heightens its abundance, and makes the familiar feel slightly fantastical.

French Still Life

Similarly, portraiture and photography remind us that careful staging can appear spontaneous. In an old family photograph, the sitters assemble before the camera and choose how they want us to see them. Their clothing, posture, expressions, and placement all become part of the picture.

We may not know who they were, what happened before the photograph, or what awaited them afterward. Still, the image offers evidence of a particular moment: these people stood together, faced the camera, and made themselves visible.

Framed vintage photograph of a family.

A signed Richard Avedon poster occupies yet another constructed world—the scene of fashion, photography, celebrity, performance, and the museum. It functions as both an image and a cultural artifact. Its presence reaches beyond the original photograph to encompass the exhibition, its audience, and the period that first encountered it.

Here, “the scene” is not simply what appears within the frame. It is also everything gathering around it.

Avedon poster

The Scene Behind the Artwork

Every artwork emerges from a particular place and moment. Culture leaves traces in its materials, imagery, and methods.

An Indian miniature painting or Persian manuscript page asks us to look differently than we might at a Western easel painting. Figures, architecture, landscape, pattern, and written language share the page. A single image can contain ceremony, storytelling, devotion, court life, or poetry. Rather than merely describing space, the artist organizes it according to another way of seeing.

Indian miniature and Persian manuscript

A Japanese Taisho-period screen creates an environment of its own. Geese move through grasses beneath a broad expanse of gold, their forms unfolding across several panels. The landscape does not remain confined to a conventional frame. Instead, it changes as the screen opens and closes, catching light differently throughout the day.

Japanese Taisho Screen

The screen also reminds us that people have long integrated art into the rooms where they live. For centuries, images have appeared on screens, vessels, textiles, lacquer, furniture, porcelain, and architectural surfaces.

A painted Chinese porcelain plaque, a bronze relief, a Japanese lacquer panel, and a 19th-century Chinese embroidery all exist somewhere between image and object. Moreover, their materials remain inseparable from the scenes they depict. Porcelain provides luminosity. Bronze gives weight and shadow. Lacquer creates depth and reflection. Embroidery builds an image one thread at a time.

These are not simply pictures of something. They are physical presences.

When the Scene Is Suggested

Of course, an artwork does not need to show a recognizable place or event to create a scene.

In an abstract drawing, geometry and color can generate their own activity. Shapes advance and retreat. Lines suggest direction. Areas of color establish balance, friction, or momentum. The eye moves through the composition much as it might move through a landscape or crowded room.

Signed Abstract Drawing

A framed mixed-media work creates a scene through fragments, surfaces, and interruptions. Likewise, a contemporary photo collage by a Hudson Valley artist gathers separate images into a new visual reality. Meaning arises not only from the individual parts but also from the relationships between them.

As a result, these works leave more space for the viewer. They do not tell us exactly where we are; instead, they ask us to complete the scene ourselves.

Perhaps that is why the same abstract work can feel energetic to one person and meditative to another. What we bring ultimately shapes what we see.

Mixed Media by Robert Kelly                                         Oil on linen paper by Nancy O’Ohara

The Scene Within the Room

Once an artwork leaves the artist’s hand, it begins another life.

For example, a small drypoint of tulips by Mily Possoz can create a quiet, intimate pause within a room. A bold modern lithograph can sharpen everything around it. Meanwhile, a Japanese screen can give an interior a sense of distance and atmosphere. A botanical print can bring order, curiosity, and the natural world to an otherwise empty wall.

Drypoint by Mily Possoz, Les Tulipes

This is why choosing artwork differs from simply filling space.

The right work can change the emotional temperature of a room. It can make the room feel calmer, stranger, more expansive, more playful, or more alive. It may harmonize with its surroundings or interrupt them. Sometimes the most compelling placement is the least expected: an old photograph in a contemporary room, an abstract work above an antique chest, or a formal portrait somewhere decidedly informal.

Artwork does not need to match the furniture. It needs to enter into conversation with it.

Becoming Part of Our Scene

An artwork often draws us in before we understand why.

Perhaps it recalls somewhere we have traveled—or somewhere we still hope to go. Its subject may feel familiar, its atmosphere comforting, or its strangeness impossible to ignore. Sometimes the material, the frame, a particular shade of blue, or the expression on a face stops us.

The attraction does not always arrive with an explanation.

Over time, we connect the artwork to the circumstances in which we found it. We remember the shop, the journey, the person who pointed it out, or the room we chose it for. It witnesses dinners, conversations, changes of season, and rearrangements of furniture. What began as someone else’s vision gradually enters our own visual history.

That may be the final scene every artwork creates: the life that gathers around it.

The works in this collection cross countries, centuries, and materials. They include paintings, prints, photographs, screens, textiles, collage, porcelain, lacquer, and bronze. Some tell their stories clearly, while others remain enigmatic. Together, they remind us that art is never simply an image on a wall.

It contains a scene.

It emerges from a scene.

It creates a scene.

And, if we choose to live with it, it becomes part of ours.

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Objects made to hold more than things.

The Things We Choose to Keep

Boxes have always helped us bring order to life.

Some were created for very specific purposes. Writing boxes held brushes, ink, and paper. Small cases protected pills, snuff, cigars, jewelry, playing cards, letters, and other personal possessions.

Their forms often revealed their purpose. Their decoration revealed something more.

Lacquer, silver, carved wood, painted surfaces, inlay, and intricate metalwork transformed practical containers into objects of beauty.

Even the smallest box could suggest ceremony, privacy, status, or affection.

The things placed inside mattered.

So did the objects chosen to protect them.

Leather Lap Desk

Made for a Purpose

Across cultures and centuries, boxes became companions to everyday life.

A Japanese writing box organized the tools needed for calligraphy. A lacquer sewing box held implements for careful handwork. Card cases protected playing cards. Small silver boxes carried pills or snuff. Other boxes guarded jewelry, correspondence, tobacco, personal papers, and treasured keepsakes.

Some were humble.

Others were extraordinarily elaborate.

Yet their underlying purpose remained remarkably similar: to gather something together, give it a place, and keep it safe.

The box created a boundary between what belonged inside and everything else.

Perhaps that is part of their enduring appeal.

Our Fascination With Boxes Remains

Centuries later, our fascination with boxes has not disappeared.

What we place inside them, however, has changed.

In my own home, one box holds batteries. Another contains remote controls. Keys have their own place. Pet medication stays in another.

On my desk, boxes organize stationery, pens, paper clips, calculators, charging cords, adapters, and the endless small accessories that accompany modern technology.

I even have a box for mobile devices.

None of these things would have made much sense to the original owners of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century box.

Yet the impulse behind using one feels surprisingly familiar.

We still want to gather things together.

Place them where we know they belong.

We still want to protect certain objects, conceal others, and bring some measure of order to the accumulation of everyday life.

Box Collection

The Beauty of Containment

Batteries and charging cables may seem mundane beside handwritten letters, precious medicines, or jewelry.

But they belong to the lives we actually live.

Organization can give even ordinary objects a sense of intention.

A handful of loose batteries scattered in a drawer is clutter.

Place them inside a beautiful antique box, and something changes.

The batteries remain batteries.

But the act of containing them becomes deliberate.

A box creates a small piece of architecture around whatever we place inside it. It defines a space, establishes an order, and quietly removes visual noise.

Perhaps this explains why old boxes adapt so easily to new lives.

Their original contents may be gone, but their usefulness has not disappeared.

Old Boxes, New Lives

Collection of Antique Boxes                                        Visit us in Hudson, NY

There is something particularly satisfying about giving an antique box a contemporary purpose.

A lacquer box no longer needs to hold the object it was originally designed for.

A card case need not contain cards.

A writing box does not have to remain empty because we no longer use inkstones and brushes at our desks.

These objects can continue doing what they have always done.

They can gather, organize, conceal, and protect.

And perhaps most importantly, they can make us consider what we choose to keep.

The contents evolve.

The box remains.

The contents have changed. The instinct to keep has not.

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An Ancient Evening Ritual

Every evening, we repeat one of humanity’s oldest rituals.

As daylight fades, we reach for light.

For thousands of years, that light came from the moon and stars. Then came fire,

In Search of Light

torches, oil lamps, candles, and gas lanterns.

Each new invention pushed back the darkness a little farther. Light allowed us to gather, read, work, and linger after sunset.

These early forms of lighting were practical. They helped people see, travel, prepare food, and remain active at night.

Yet they also created warmth and intimacy. A flame did more than illuminate a room. It drew people together.

When Electricity Changed Everything

Then electricity changed everything.

At first, people did not abandon the forms they already loved. Candlesticks, lanterns, and candelabra were carefully electrified.

French Napoleon III Oil Lamp

These familiar objects preserved a connection to the past. At the same time, they embraced a remarkable new technology.

Before long, designers created lamps intended from the start to be electric. These lamps were not simply functional. They were also beautiful.

Form, material, scale, and ornament became part of the experience. Lighting began to influence the character of a room.

From Necessity to Atmosphere

Somewhere along the way, lighting became more than illumination.

It became atmosphere.

We see this in the glow beside a favorite chair. We feel it in the lamp that welcomes us into a room.

Soft light can make a space feel calm, intimate, or inviting. It can highlight an object, soften a corner, or create warmth.

A carefully placed lamp can transform a house into a home.

Mack Lantern

How We Use Light Today

Today, our homes are brighter than ever. Yet brightness alone is rarely what we seek.

We instinctively dim overhead lights. Then we turn to the softer glow of a table lamp or floor lamp.

We are not simply trying to see. We are shaping how a room feels.

Perhaps that has always been the deeper purpose of light.

It does not merely chase away darkness.  Light creates places where conversation lingers, books are opened, and meals are shared.

It allows ordinary moments to feel more memorable.

The search for light has never really ended.

We are still searching.

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How a Collection Begins

Collectors are often drawn to objects that share a common thread while still expressing individual character. A collection may begin with something as luminous as mother-of-pearl, as tactile as ceramic, or as organic as shells gathered over time. Each object stands on its own—but together, they begin to form something richer.

As objects accumulate, something subtle and powerful happens. What once felt like individual pieces begins to form relationships. Colors echo one another, forms create rhythm, and materials reveal their distinct voices. The objects begin to speak—and this quiet dialogue is often the moment when a group transforms into a collection.

A Collection Begins with Intimacy

Mother-of-Pearl purses, card carriers, and boxes.

Small personal objects—boxes, cases, and purses—come together to form a luminous and intimate beginning to a collection.

A grouping of mother-of-pearl objects illustrates how collections often begin with pieces meant to be handled and admired closely. Their iridescent surfaces shift in tone—from soft cream to flashes of pink, green, and gold—capturing light in constantly changing ways.

Individually, each piece is delicate and complete. Together, they form a field of reflection and texture, where subtle differences in pattern and construction become more apparent.

Character and Repetition in Form

Bennington Dogs

Repetition of form reveals variation—each ceramic figure holds its own character within a unified group.

Bennington pottery dogs demonstrate the beauty of collecting within a single form. Though similar in silhouette, each figure carries its own personality through glaze, tone, and surface detail.

Arranged together, the figures create a sense of presence—almost conversational. The richness of the mottled glazes, ranging from warm browns to deep, near-black tones, emphasizes the individuality of each piece while maintaining cohesion.

Nature as the First Collection

Silver Mounted Cowrie Boxes

A collection of cowrie shells offers a study in pattern and variation. Their smooth, polished surfaces are marked by intricate speckling—each shell distinct, yet clearly part of a larger family.

Reimagined here as English Georgian boxes with silver mounts, these natural forms take on a refined, decorative function. The addition of finely worked silver elevates each shell, transforming it from found object into crafted artifact—bridging the organic and the ornamental.

These objects remind us that collecting often begins in nature. The act of gathering—guided by curiosity and attraction—lays the foundation for more intentional collections later in life, where beauty is not only discovered but thoughtfully preserved and framed.

Glass and the Language of Light

Glass Collection

Glass transforms a collection through light—color, transparency, and form shifting with every angle.

Vintage glass introduces luminosity into collecting. Deep ruby, amber, and saturated blue tones interact with light, creating reflections and shadows that change throughout the day.

Grouped together, these vessels become more than functional objects—they act as sculptural forms. Their differences in thickness, cut, and shape create visual rhythm, allowing the eye to move easily from one piece to another.

The Collector’s Rule of Three

Shagreen cases

Collectors often discover a simple truth:

One object stands alone.
Two objects begin a relationship.
But three objects create a conversation.

With three or more pieces, something changes. The eye begins to move between them—comparing, connecting, and interpreting. This is often the moment when a collection is born.

From there, growth becomes intentional. Each new addition is chosen not only for its beauty, but for how it contributes to the evolving dialogue.

Following the Collector’s Eye

Series of collages – private collection

Most collections begin with instinct rather than expertise.

A collector may notice recurring attractions—the glow of glass, the warmth of ceramic glaze, the shimmer of mother-of-pearl, or the organic beauty of shells. Over time, these preferences become clearer, shaping the direction of the collection.

Experience refines the eye, but instinct remains essential.

The Pleasure of the Hunt

Silver Hunt box

Collecting is never truly finished.

There is always another discovery waiting—a piece that fits perfectly, or one that unexpectedly reshapes the collection. Each object deepens the narrative.

In the end, collecting is not simply about owning objects.

It is about noticing them—recognizing beauty, craftsmanship, and history—and allowing those discoveries to gather into something meaningful.

A collection is not built all at once.
It is revealed, piece by piece.

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