The Frances Young Tang
Teaching Museum and Art Gallery
at Skidmore College
815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Phone: 518-580-8080
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education art & ideas

Sound

A dark-skinned man in a purple tunic stands behind a table with a soundboard and laptop on a stage facing a crowd of people. Purple light shines from behind the man bathing the whole room in purple.
A tanned, older man stands on a wooden stage with red curtains with his hands raised facing a crowd of people sitting in wooden chairs.
A group of light-skinned people gather around a wooden table with wooden chairs in a narrow room. Rows of vinyls hang on the walls and vinyls lay scattered on the floor around the edges of the room.
Colorful, abstract artworks hang on a white wall in a hallway. A group of young people sit on the floor opposite the wall of artwork.
A group of young people lie in a starburst formation on a yellow, abstractly-patterned carpet underneath a red, yellow, and black abstract hanging sculpture.
A group of young people bang on different types of cans like drums while a crowd watches from behind them.
A group of three people stand looking at an artwork hanging on a white wall made of different colored, different sized squares and rectangles. On the floor in front of them, two clear garbage pails rest upside-down.
A dark-skinned man holding a mic close to his mouth looks at a laptop and adjusts a soundboard. He sits in front of a yellow wall with different scenes screenprinted in black.
A sculpture of an old, white, rusty cassette tape with some film pulled out and piled next to it.
A young, light-skinned man wearing big, silver headphones speaks into a microphone while facing an abstract, green painting of four aliens hung on a white wall.
Two light-skinned people dance in a glass vestibule wearing suits made of numerous plastic stands that sway and flare with the dancers movement.
A handmade string instrument made of wood and old cans sitting on a table being played by a light-skinned person wearing a white, button-up shirt holding a violin bow.
A light-skinned, young man in a tan, paisley shirt reclines in a cushioned blue chair with his eyes closed in front of two TVs stacked on top of each other displaying abstract patterns.
An older, tanned man stands behind a music stand in a black room with two men sitting behind him holding stringed instruments.
A screen inlaid in a white wall portrays an image of Beethoven with headphones hanging on the wall beneath the image. Kitty-corner to the screen, a tall, abstract sculpture stands next to a rack of hanging black and white images of paratroopers descending from the sky.
A group of four, light-skinned men stand in a row on a wooden stage using wooden sticks to beat on different ceramic bowls and mugs while a group of people look on in the background.
Three, light-skinned, female dancers in oriental-style clothing posing on a red rug with different small instruments lined up behind and around them. A tanned, Asian man sits playing a xylophone type instrument behind the dancers in front of elaborate wall hangings depicting a red temple.

Sound is a vibration that moves in waves through the air, solids, and liquids. We can perceive these vibrations by hearing, feeling, or even seeing the vibrations – like the way very loud bass sounds can cause a window pane to tremble. We might think of most of visual art as being audibly silent, but there are many visual artworks that evoke or employ sound in powerful ways. Here are artists who use sound as a primary medium, artists who evoke sound or music in their work, and musicians who respond to visual art through sound.

Explore art related to sound by clicking on the images above and browsing the content below.

Explore collection stories—texts, videos, and creative responses from faculty, students, artists, scholars, and curators to works in the Tang collection.

Elevator Music

The Tang’s Elevator Music series activates the museum’s elevator and engages artists across the visual and performing arts to create immersive, sound-based installations. Click the images below to explore installations from this series.
Colorful sound boxes connected by circuit wires rest on a white table in front of a TV and two abstractly colored speakers.
A gray tapeplayer rests on top of two crates next to a crate with a can on it and two crates with a row of tapes on them behind two square, abstractly-patterned seats.
Two vinyl records, one blue and one yellow, hang in black frames on a metal wall.
A print of three, yellow rectangles next to each other with text "listen. listen. listen." in purple above them.
A group of people crowd in an elevator to look at three, large glowing spheres hanging from the ceiling at different heights. Two of the spheres glow red and one glows yellow.
A male and female dancer pose in front of a colorful, abstract curtain hanging around them and two, small TVs.
A light-skinned man sits at a table in a dark elevator working on a laptop with a yellow ladder behind him. Cords litter the floor and run up the sides of the elevator and panels hang from the ceiling.
A young, light-skinned female in a bright pink coat is pointing an iphone at a colorful square in an elevator.
A cream piece of paper with printed, black text "CONCERT PIECE When the curtain rises, go hide and wait until everybody leaves you. Come out and play. 1963 autumn."
Two light-skinned people sit on purple cubes in an elevator with gray carpet, white and charcoal colored curtains and a record player, all tinted purple by the purple lights in the ceiling of the elevator.
The inside of a metal elevator with numerous posters banning photography in different languages scattered along the walls.
A tanned man holds onto a silver bar and feels his way along a metal wall.
A PDF checklist with text on the left and thumbnail pictures of artwork on the right.
View or download the checklist here!
Teaching Ideas
In Adam Tinkle’s class “Black Studies, Sound, and Technology,” students worked collaboratively with material from the Sun Ra archive to curate the exhibition Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow: Sound, Black Study, and the Multidisciplinary Artist.
The Young Years Exhibition Catalogue
The Young Years celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of the Skidmore Jazz Institute. In this exhibition, works of art recently acquired by the museum reflect various aspects of the Jazz Institute and its founder Don McCormack. This extensive catalogue accompanied the exhibition, with essays and artwork inspired by the Jazz Institute.
An abstract tan painting with colorful shapes and the text "the young years" printed in yellow across the top half.
Tang Collective Catalogs are short written responses from a multiplicity of voices responding to objects in the Tang Teaching Museum collection.

Additional Resources

Browse the Lucy Scribner Library Research Guides on:

Media & Film Studies
Music

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