NEWSLETTER
Glens Falls, NY – Opening August 22, 2026 at The Hyde Collection, Tanya Marcuse’s Book of Miracles is a three-part photographic series that revels in the interplay between photographic process and painting traditions from European Romanticism to Abstract Expressionism. Conceptually grounded in a richly illustrated manuscript published in Germany in 1552 called the Augsburg Book of Miracles, Marcuse’s series combines studio and field photography. The work is devastating and dark, yet also reverent and timeless—with its rich beauty underscoring the duality between realism and fiction, or documentation and artifice, of the photographic medium.
The Hyde’s solo presentation includes 19 photographs and two films from the series, including several 10-foot-wide apocalyptic landscape photographs, part of the Book of Miracles suite called Kingdom. In Kingdom, Marcuse uses elements she collects from the landscape then meticulously arranges, often over months, on a specially designed wooden frame. Once complete, she photographs the tableau from a scaffold in her outdoor studio—sometimes using flame, paint, or glitter to activate the composition.
Portent, the second suite in the Book of Miracles, consists of mysterious, fantastical-yet-real scenes that Marcuse has staged in swamps, rivers, and orchards. Without using any digital effects or artificial intelligence, she reveals the miraculous that lies within plain sight. The last part of the series, Emblem, consists of miniature, altar-like vignettes of flora and fauna—quiet, meditative studies of the dialogue between decay and renewal.
Marcuse started the project during the lockdown at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The project unfolded against the backdrop of wildfires, extreme temperatures, and political and social upheaval,” says Marcuse, “and reflects the increasing strangeness and instability of our world. Through this project, I began to think more deeply about photography’s ability to probe the unknown—to use the visible, material world as a way of approaching what is invisible and beyond our comprehension, where the known meets the unknowable.” Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Derin Tanyol describes Marcuse’s work as “devastating and solemn, with an emotional depth that offers viewers a reminder of the absorptive power of prolonged looking.” Like the historic Augsburg Book of Miracles itself, Marcuse’s series visualizes moments and conditions that defy the laws of nature, narrating catastrophic but sublimely beautiful phenomena in a rapidly destabilizing world.
In 2025, The Hyde exhibited a single large-scale photograph from Marcuse’s series Woven as part of its museum-wide exploration on the theme of still life by women artists. Marcuse’s project Woven (2015–2020) as well as a new project Deer (2023–2026) will be on view at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in Kingston, NY, in Marcuse’s exhibition Woven: An Ecological Tapestry, opening October 2.
Tanya Marcuse will give a lecture at the Museum on Thursday, October 15, at 6 pm as part of The Hyde’s monthly “Art After Hours” series. Her exhibition Book of Miracles will be on view at The Hyde through January 10, 2027.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tanya Marcuse (American, b. 1964) earned her MFA from Yale University. Her work is in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Denver Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. She has exhibited internationally at venues such as the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York; Galerie Miranda, Paris; Julie Saul Projects; the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology; the International Center of Photography in New York; and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Marcuse is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two MacDowell Fellowships, a 2025 NYFA award, and many other awards. Her published books include Undergarments and Armor (Nazraeli Press, 2005), Wax Bodies (Nazraeli Press, 2012), Fruitless | Fallen | Woven (Radius Books, 2019), Ink (Fall Line Press, 2021), Portent (Nazraeli Press, 2024), and Deer (Roman Nvmerals, 2026).
Marcuse is based in New York’s Hudson Valley and is an Associate Professor of Photography at Bard College.
Support for this exhibition is generously provided by Presenting Sponsors the Hoopes Family Foundation and the Charles R. Wood Foundation, and Community Sponsors Keena PEO Services.
Additional exhibition support provided by Leslie Fraser Gold & Irene Kamau, and Grasshopper Gardens.
ABOUT THE HYDE COLLECTION
The Hyde is one of the Northeast's exceptional fine art museums with distinguished European and American art collections. The core collection, acquired by Museum founders Charlotte and Louis Hyde, includes works by such artists as Sandro Botticelli, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, and Pablo Picasso and American artists Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, and Anna Hyatt Huntington. Throughout the years, the Museum has expanded considerably to include a modern museum complex featuring an auditorium, classroom, five galleries, and a state-of-the-art storage facility in addition to the historic home once inhabited by the Hydes. The Museum's Modern and Contemporary art collection features work by artists including Josef Albers, Dorothy Dehner, Sam Gilliam, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Robert Motherwell, Ben Nicholson, Robert Rauschenberg, Bridget Riley, and Paul Anthony Smith. Today, The Hyde offers significant national and international exhibitions and a packed schedule of events that help visitors experience art in new ways. Learn more at www.hydecollection.org
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Image: Tanya Marcuse (American, b. 1964), No 11 (Part I Kingdom) Book of Miracles, UV pigment on Dibond, 62 x 124 inches, Courtesy of the artist.