Fall 2026
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Light and Transient Causes
September 1-December 5, 2026
In the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this exhibition takes its name from a line in the document that suggests that some grievances may prove too fleeting to justify revolution—and considers asymmetries of perception of what is deemed light enough to ignore, transient enough to postpone.
FRI Sept. 11, 6-9pm, Exhibition reception in conjunction with our Pop-Up Beer Garden.
THURS Sept. 17, 7:30pm Talk
Suketu Mehta, author of This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto, will speak at Opalka Gallery in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute in recognition of Constitution Day. Earlier event at 4:30pm at UAlbany Performing Arts Center.
Now an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University, Suketu Mehta is an award-winning author who focuses on global migration inspired from personal experience as an immigrant in his acclaimed book This Land is Our Land – named by The Times as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2019 and one of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019. He is also the author of the acclaimed “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,” which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award and was a finalist for many others, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.
’This Land Is Our Land’ reads like an impassioned survey course on migration, laying bare the origins of mass migration in searing clarity.” —The New York Times
Mehta speaks at Opalka Gallery in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute.
This event is free but please register in advance.
SAT Sept. 19 1:00-2:30pm, Kids’ Art Workshop Led by RSC MAT Art Education students. Free but registration required. Class size limited.
TUES Sept. 22, 6:30-7:30pm
Come listen to artist Deborah Dancy speak about her work in the current exhibition Light and Transient Causes. Learn more about Deborah’s work here.
Tuesdays in October, 1-3pm, Art Workshop for Adults
Only a few spots left for this class that starts on October 6! register here
Layered History: A Mixed-Media Workshop for Adults
Taught by Albany Art Room founder and owner Karen Schupack. Materials supplied. Free but registration required. Class size limited.
Karen Schupack is the founder and owner of the Albany Art Room. Creating art has always been an integral part of Karen’s life. She spends her working life helping others to create, and this inspires her own artistic expression. Her award-winning work has been shown in galleries across the region. She holds a BA in Design of the Environment from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, and MA in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, New York, NY, and an MA in Elementary Education from the College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY.
This class is funded by The Arts Center of the Capital Region’s Statewide Community Regrant Program. made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
FRI Oct. 2, 6:30 -7:30pm, FIRST FRIDAY Music from Buggy Jive. Fresh off his sweep of the 2026 Eddies Music Awards, Buggy Jive stops by Opalka for First Friday! Gallery will be open late until 8pm so stay and check out the current exhibition!
Soul rock singer-songwriter Buggy Jive has always made music while in hiding, quietly uploading songs and music videos from a basement studio somewhere in Upstate New York. Equal parts Zeppelin and D’Angelo and Prince and Joni in sound and sensibility, his lyrics often mine the literature of the past to make sense of the present – from Ellison to Morrison to Eliot to Didion. Even before his pandemic-era music video and reclusive rallying cry “Ain’t Going Anywhere” went viral, the only way to see him perform live was the occasional house concert streamed live from his basement studio.
Website: http://www.buggyjive.com
SAT Oct. 3, 1-2:30pm Talk+Performance, registration required(see below)
In its 2026/27 season, the Albany Symphony revives a cherished tradition with the launch of a new Chamber Music Companion Series, bringing audiences up close and personal to the artists and ideas behind the orchestra’s celebrated commitment to exhilarating performances, music education, and adventurousness.
The first performance in this new four-concert chamber music series is Saturday, October 3, 1-2:30pm, at the Opalka Gallery, with each event connecting directly to the themes, artists, and repertoire featured throughout Albany Symphony’s mainstage programming. Each concert will illuminate the composers, ideas, and broader civic context presented on the Albany Symphony stage, creating new points of entry into the orchestra while highlighting its longstanding commitment to championing new music, building the future of our living musical heritage.
The inaugural concert, October 3, features acclaimed composer Celka Ojakangas, five musicians from the Albany Symphony, in interactive conversation with the audience, led by Music Director David Alan Miller. Works on the program include Ojakangas’ Toons to complement the world premiere of her new work Shuffle, which will be premiered later that day at the Albany Symphony’s Rome, Romance, and Rising Stars opening night program. The juxtaposition offers a deeper introduction to Ojakangas as one of today’s most imaginative and exciting compositional voices. Rossini’s intimate and lyrical Una Larme gives listeners an intimate counterpart to William Tell Overture, showcasing the lyrical beauty and expressive voice of the cello that opens Rossini’s orchestral masterpiece. The chamber program is rounded out by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s richly expressive Clarinet Quintet and Henri Vieuxtemps’s virtuosic Souvenir d’Amérique, reflecting the Albany Symphony’s commitment to pairing beloved repertoire with hidden gems in the orchestral music cannon.
The Chamber Music Companion Series launches in partnership with the Opalka Gallery, with the first concert free and open to the public. Known for fostering creative dialogue across disciplines, the Opalka Gallery at Russel Sage College provides an inspiring setting for the new chamber series, and underscores a shared commitment to artistic excellence, community connection, and exploration. Chamber Companions continues on December 16, February 10, and in June 2027, concurrent to each of the Albany Symphony’s core concerts. More details, including locations and community partners, forthcoming.
RSVPs starting Sept. 30 and after, may be standing room only
Event Details and Registration here: https://www.albanysymphony.com/upcomingconcerts/chambermusic
The Albany Symphony’s new Chamber Music Series, launching in the 2026/27 season, is made possible thanks to a generous commitment by Paula & Dana Oakes.
THURS Oct. 8, 6:30-7:30pm, Poetry Reading by Susan Comninos, Janet Bowdan, and Shira Dentz, contributors to The Color Wheel: Poems (Terrapin Books, 2026). Join three local authors in an interactive experience of engaging with poetry that speaks to both art and all the hues of human and natural experience. The audience will be invited to participate by collectively viewing images and offering their own brief impressions.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
WEDS Oct. 14 5:30-7pm, Member reception and private tour with Light & Transient Causes curator Marisa Espe. Become a member or renew your membership by Oct. 7 and join us for this special event.
THURS Oct 15. 6:30-7:30pm, Book talk and signing. Ira Baumgarten, producer of the multi-media project Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water, will give a brief presentation on the project and will have copies of the book of the same name for purchase and signing. All proceeds will be donated to In Our Own Voice Emergency Assistance program. Shapeshifters honors the deep connections between the body, land, and queer wisdom.
THURS Oct 22, 6:30-7:30pm, Stage and Stanza: Conversations with Creatives, hosted by Albany poet Carol Durant and David Baecker, of RSC Theatre Institute.
FRI Oct. 30, 6:30 snacks, 7pm talks, PechaKucha Night. Sponsored by Druthers Brewing and Honest Weight Food Co-op.
- Maeve McEneny, Albany’s First Competitive Cat Show of 1904
- Adam Williams, “Dystopia of the Future Past: The Ninja Warriors (Taito Japan, 1987)”
- Chet Boehlke, Jr. cboehlke@mac.com
- Lacey Wilson, “8 Selections of Improvements on State Symbols by Lacey Wilson”
BREAK
- BJ Costello, Len Tantillo, and Chet Opalka on the Albany Waterway Canal Project
- Laura Welles, Quantum Hypnosis Practitioner, “Quantum Hypnosis”
- Carol Durant and Anna Doren from Cherry Hill
- Michael Esterbrook-Mount Ida
FRI Nov. 6, 6:30-7:30pm, FIRST FRIDAY music with Belle-Skinner
Gallery will be open late until 8pm so stay and check out the current exhibition!
Belle-Skinner is a dark nostalgic singer-songwriter based in New York. With a hauntingly beautiful, lilting soprano and innate sense of melody she crafts tales of songbirds, sirens and desert nomads – nuanced and layered stories which bridge the gap between past and present. Though her influences cover a broad range of genres – from French chansons and Russian folk to contemporary alt-pop and rock – her voice often draws comparisons to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Jeff Buckley, Mary Hopkin, and early St. Vincent.
SAT Nov. 7, 2-3 pm. A reading and Q&A with acclaimed poet and RSC alum Hajar Hussaini ‘19, recent recipient of a prestigious 2026 Whiting Award in Poetry and author of Disbound Poems (University of Iowa Press, 2022)
Hajar Hussaini is the author of Disbound: Poems (University of Iowa Press, 2022) and the recipient of a 2026 Whiting Award in Poetry. Her translations from Persian include Death and His Brother: A Novel by Khosraw Mani (Syracuse University Press, 2027), which won a 2025 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and Wounded Vita Nuda: Poems by Maral Taheri (Deep Vellum, 2027), which won the 2024 Mo Habib Translation Prize. She was a 2025 MacDowell fellow and a 2025 Baldwin for the Arts Fellow. Hussaini also co-curates the Salon Salvage performance and reading series in Troy, NY. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is an assistant teaching professor of English at Skidmore College and lives in Saratoga Springs, NY.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
FRI. Nov. 13, Save the date! Light and Transient Causes: A Culinary Experience
In dialogue with Opalka Gallery’s exhibition Light and Transient Causes, Dishing.Studio presents a ticketed culinary experience. Finding parallels in food x art, tastes reflect the lived experiences of artists and third culture culinary memory shaped by displacement, hybridity, belonging, identity, and the slow transmission of knowledge. Food as material. Flavor as connection. Start time and ticket availability information to come!
FRI Dec. 4, 6:30-7:30pm, FIRST FRIDAY music with Sarah Claire
Gallery will be open late until 8pm so stay and check out the current exhibition!
SAT Dec. 5, 2:00-4:00pm, Closing reception and tour for Light and Transient Causes
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