Hudson River Museum Presents DRAW: Heat and Throwing Shade on Extreme Heat

YONKERS, NY, September 4, 2025—The Hudson River Museum proudly presents two timely and powerful exhibitions opening on September 19, 2025 that grapple with issues of “heat” in literal and metaphorical ways, and from the ideological to the environmental. DRAW: Heat features more than forty contemporary artists who explore the theme of heat through the ephemerality and urgency of drawing. Throwing Shade on Extreme Heat: Designing Shade Structures for Yonkers, a partnership with Yonkers-based environmental nonprofit Groundwork Hudson Valley, addresses extreme heat challenges in Southwest Yonkers through community-driven solutions and innovative environmental strategies.

Director and CEO Masha Turchinsky states, “We’re bringing together artistic rigor, climate resilience, and community input around the topic of heat in two captivating exhibitions this fall. In DRAW: Heat, the mark of the human hand conveys the emotional and environmental weight of this global issue, while underscoring the range of personal and geopolitical stakes involved. On the local level, Throwing Shade on Extreme Heat showcases the results of an excellent collaboration with Groundwork Hudson Valley that addresses extreme heat challenges and solutions in Southwest Yonkers. It will be exciting for the public to play an active role in exploring this fascinating topic with us.”

DRAW: Heat
September 19, 2025–January 11, 2026
View press images here.

Drawing has always been fundamental to artists, offering great freedom to work out ideas, experiment with techniques, and create striking works of art in a wide range of media. In DRAW: Heat, forty-three contemporary artists from across the United States, including the local Westchester and Hudson Valley region, explore “heat” in its many manifestations: the extreme heat caused by global warming, inequities of who is most affected by heatwaves, trends that make ideas “hot,” the passion behind an idea or argument, and even the perceived heat of contrasting ideologies. The exhibition is guest curated by artist, educator, and activist Tomas Vu, with Brian Novatny, Predrag Dimitrijevic, and HRM Curatorial Chair Laura Vookles serving as curatorial advisors, and is the latest installment in the DRAW Project series.

Curator Tomas Vu states, “The DRAW team and I are proud to be partnering with the Hudson River Museum on this upcoming exhibition. The concept of DRAW: Heat was born out of a conversation with the Museum where we began to imagine heat not only as a force of nature, but as a metaphor for our most pressing environmental and geopolitical tensions. In this exhibition, “heat” is translated through the elastic language of drawing, where interruption and intervention ignite new forms of vision and resistance. From many voices come many interpretations, and a myriad of starting points for reflections and solutions surrounding this prescient topic.”

DRAW: Heat showcases works by artists at various stages in their careers, from emerging to established. Featured artists are Ricardo Arango, Shanequa Benitez, Sanford Biggers, Natalie Birinyi, Margaret Braun, Ernesto Caivano, Nathan Catlin, Alejandro Contreras, William Córdova, Juan Hernandez Diaz, Predrag Dimitrijevic, Rafael Domenech, Adrián Fernández, Baris Gokturk, Richard Haas, Erika Harrsch, Emily Henretta, Christine Hiebert, Sonia Rosa Kahn, William Kentridge, Calvin Kim, Fred HC Liang, Thomas Lollar, Nicola López, Linn Meyers, LeRoy Neiman, Shirin Neshat, Brian Novatny, Jennifer Nuss, Rocío Olivares, Paul Rho, Jamel Robinson, Cristin Shea, Shahzia Sikander, Luis Silva, Kiki Smith, Sarah Sze, Motohiro Takeda, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Oscar Tuazon, Rafael Villares, Tomas Vu, Kara Walker, Zhiqian Wang, Beau Willimon, Thomas Ray Willis, Type A (Adam Ames, Andrew Bordwin), Sun Xun, and Yuan Zuo.

The artworks—ranging from small sketches and prints to large-scale drawings, sculptures, and video—are displayed salon-style, echoing the dynamic, interconnected exchanges found in artists’ studios and informal critiques. This curatorial approach fosters an immersive and entwined experience, guiding viewers through diverse artistic perspectives that flow from abstraction to observation to conceptualism.

Generous support for the Museum is provided by New York State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader.

This exhibition is made possible by Sarah Lawrence College through a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Additional support provided by Joyce F. Menschel and Yonkers Honda.

Exhibitions are made possible by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.

 

Throwing Shade on Extreme Heat: Designing Shade Structures for Yonkers
September 19, 2025–February 15, 2026
View press images here.

Extreme heat is responsible for more fatalities in the United States annually than any other weather-related event—more than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined—and it’s only getting hotter. 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, and 2025 is projected to be even warmer. While extreme heat is an issue across the country, it is felt most acutely in dense urban environments, like areas of Yonkers where buildings, paved roads, and parking lots absorb and retain heat. As cities adapt to warmer weather, city managers, urban planners, and scientists are finding that shade is one of the most effective ways to keep people cool when they are outside.

The Hudson River Museum is partnering with Groundwork Hudson Valley, a Yonkers-based environmental nonprofit, on a collaborative three-year initiative supported by Con Edison that addresses extreme heat challenges in Southwest Yonkers through community-driven solutions and innovative environmental strategies. In 2025, the organizations worked with local community members, representatives from the City of Yonkers, and Starr Whitehouse, a landscape architecture, planning, and urban design practice whose mission is to shape beautiful and resilient civic spaces that connect people to nature and each other, to identify locations and develop designs for shade structures in the city’s—literally—hottest neighborhoods.

Oded Holzinger, Executive Director of Groundwork Hudson Valley states, “Throwing Shade on Extreme Heat shows the power of community-led design to tackle climate challenges. It celebrates creativity, collaboration, and the transformative potential of art and design to create safer, more resilient, and equitable public spaces.”

“We’re proud to support projects that help communities become more resilient to extreme weather,” said Jen Hensley, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Con Edison. “This effort brings communities together to find solutions for neighborhoods most vulnerable to extreme heat, designing a structure that will literally throw shade and help keep folks cooler in some of Yonkers’ hottest spots.”

Three neighborhoods—Radford, Nodine Hill, and Getty Square—were identified as the most heat vulnerable residential areas in Southwest Yonkers. A community group, known as the Shade Structure Working Group, helped determine ideal locations and designs for shade structures in their communities.

This exhibition will highlight the initial phase of this project with background information and proposed designs for shade structures in areas where planting trees is not an option. It will feature sections on extreme heat, Groundwork Hudson Valley’s approach to community engagement, and renderings and a model of shade structures designed specifically for Yonkers. The innovative designs proposed are a result of community members’ input on both locations and forms. Visitors will also have the opportunity to leave their mark by adding comments about their lived experiences with extreme heat and drawing shade structures of their own through a collaborative activity.

This project is made possible with funding from Con Edison’s Climate Justice Resiliency Program which supports organizations advancing initiatives to mitigate extreme heat, and other climate-related weather events in disadvantaged and marginalized communities in New York City and Westchester County.

 

Related Programs

Curator Tour of DRAW: Heat
Saturday, September 27, 2pm
Join the curators of DRAW: Heat for insights about how artists use the expanded language of drawing to explore the theme of “heat” in literal and metaphorical ways. Guest curators and artists Tomas Vu and Brian Novatny, together with Laura Vookles, Chair of the HRM’s Curatorial Department, will guide visitors through the exhibition. From sketches and prints to large-scale drawings, murals, and projections, the artworks span abstraction, observation, and conceptualism.

Duty to Warn: Facing our Climate Future
Saturday, October 18, 3pm
Deadly heat waves, struggling forests, melting glaciers, stifling summer nights… the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases that humans are adding to the air is already causing weather-related disasters. Given the danger, many scientists and artists have felt compelled to publicly address the current and future effects of climate change. Hear from artist Erika Harrsch, whose work is featured in DRAW: Heat, and climate researcher Dr. Casey Ivanovich about how they communicate the myriad effects of climate change and encourage action in their own ways. Marc Taylor, Senior Manager of Planetarium and Science Programs, will moderate a wide-ranging discussion of the crossover between their fields of interest and concern.

Support provided by Sarah Lawrence College and the Mellon Foundation.

 

Press contacts:

Jeana Wunderlich
jwunderlich@hrm.org
(914) 963-4550 x240

Samantha Hoover
shoover@hrm.org
(914) 963-4550 x216