{"id":257767,"date":"2026-06-06T22:02:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T22:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/257767\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T22:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T22:02:37","slug":"inaugural-medina-triennial-transforms-small-village-in-upstate-new-york-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/257767\/","title":{"rendered":"Inaugural Medina Triennial transforms small village in upstate New York – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when arts funding in the United States is dwindling<\/a>, art triennials have taken a hit. Cleveland\u2019s Front International folded in 2024<\/a> after two editions, and Prospect New Orleans is skipping its seventh edition next year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A new arrival, however, offers an unusual approach and an unlikely origin story. Opening Saturday (6 June) and continuing until 7 September, the Medina Triennial is named after its off-the-beaten-track location, a town of 6,000 in Western New York. It was initiated by the New York State Canal Corporation\u2014a subsidiary of the New York Power Authority\u2014as part of a $300m drive<\/a> to boost tourism and recreational activity along the Erie Canal, which marked its bicentennial in 2025.<\/p>\n

Established as a nonprofit, the triennial appointed Kari Conte and Karin Laansoo as curators and drew up a budget of less than $2m, financed by regional foundations and overseas grantmakers such as Outset in the UK and the Mondriaan Fund in the Netherlands. As a seed funder, the New York Power Authority is a rare example of a public institution investing in culture as it would in infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a crazy idea that I think no one in the field of art would have had,\u201d Conte tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cWe hope this can be a model around the country for other agencies that are not necessarily cultural agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few today have heard of the village of Medina, which is an hour by car from Buffalo or Rochester, and two hours from Toronto. Fewer know how to say it: unlike its namesake in Saudi Arabia, the middle syllable is pronounced \u201cdie\u201d. In the 19th century, though, Medina was a major stop for boats plying the Erie Canal. Slicing across New York State to connect the Midwest with the Atlantic Ocean, the canal fuelled trade with Europe and lifted the fortunes of New York City and Great Lakes cities such as Chicago and Detroit. Medina was also famous for its sandstone, used widely to pave streets and construct buildings.<\/p>\n

In shaping the triennial, the curators drew on past experience\u2014Conte has worked with the Helsinki Biennial<\/a> and the Aichi Triennale<\/a>, and Laansoo with Performa<\/a>, the New York City performance art biennial\u2014as well as research into other examples, particularly the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. Launched by Japan\u2019s Niigata prefecture to revitalise its rural regions, that festival similarly emphasises local participation and a strong connection with nature. The biggest difference is that the Medina Triennial is smaller in scale, the entire presentation contained within a walkable half-mile radius.<\/p>\n

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Mary Mattingly planting her Floating Garden, a work developed during the triennial\u2019s residency programme Photo: Dawson Andrews, courtesy Medina Triennial<\/p>\n

Titled All That Sustains Us, the triennial’s first edition is inspired by the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles<\/a>, the unsalaried artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977. Ukeles\u2019s 1969 manifesto for \u201cmaintenance art\u201d sought to foreground the labour of women and workers that keeps cities and families running. In a similar vein, Conte and Laansoo assembled 39 artists and collectives from around the world and commissioned and selected works that relate to how social, ecological and infrastructural systems are sustained in Medina and the Erie Canal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a triennial that has a bunch of abstract paintings on the wall,\u201d Conte says. \u201cThere are forms and ideas that the community knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

The art is spread across ten sites, including two parks, a YMCA, a church and a former high school for the main exhibition. The triennial hub, housed in a historic building that used to be a hotel, features furniture made of wood reclaimed from the Erie Canal. In addition to hosting its own programmes, the hub provides an art library and a meeting space for locals and visitors.<\/p>\n

Many commissioned pieces were created in collaboration with local residents and regional institutions. Two Waters by Tania Candiani, for example, is a video in which the wordless vocalisations of hundreds of locals evoke the flow of Oak Orchard Creek and the Erie Canal through the village. And on the first day of the triennial, Lina Lapelyt\u0117 will debut Faithfully Recording at the Medina Railroad Museum, a live performance in which singers and construction workers build a sculpture from reclaimed Medina sandstone.<\/p>\n

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Tania Candiani, production still for Two Waters,2026 Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

Through the triennial\u2019s residency programme, artists have developed works in consultation with Medinan experts and business owners. Last autumn, Mary Mattingly planted a Floating Garden on a barge with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology and residents, who contributed trees from their backyards and personal stories of relationships with plants. This past spring, Michael Wang collaborated with maple farmers to produce Sugarbush Energy, a canned maple-sap drink distributed at Medina shops.<\/p>\n

To stage the triennial, Conte\u2019s and Laansoo\u2019s team worked closely with the village, seeking approval for sites, signage and building alterations. They conducted talks at schools, churches and other organisations, enlisted hundreds of volunteers and harnessed the skills of youth from the Iroquois Job Corps, a local trade school\u2014although specialists commuting from Buffalo and Rochester still had to be engaged for the installation of works.<\/p>\n

The curators have been pleasantly surprised by the public\u2019s support despite their limited exposure to contemporary art. \u201cThe village of Medina is excited for the triennial,\u201d says mayor Deborah Padoleski. \u201cThe participants have opened the eyes of the residents of our small village to art forms that we were previously unaccustomed to!\u201d<\/p>\n

For Scott Hocking\u2019s sculpture at the Medina Theater, the building owner stepped in to facilitate logistics. For Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge\u2019s installation at the Medina Memorial Hospital, its marketing director volunteered to help with publicity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community shows up when you least expect it,\u201d Laansoo says. \u201cWe stand outside the hub, and somebody will walk by and offer something that we exactly need, which would never happen in a big city. Nobody\u2019s asking: \u2018Is it art?\u2019 They\u2019re asking: \u2018What can we do? How can we get involved? In many ways, we made a triennial together with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medina Triennial 2026<\/a>, 6 June-7 September, Medina, New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when arts funding in the United States is dwindling, art triennials have taken a hit.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[89334,10341,9,11,10,49,100518],"class_list":["post-257767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-biennials-festivals","tag-exhibitions","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-triennials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}