Erie Canal Museum’s ‘Canal as Collaborator’ Exhibit Closes, But the Canal’s Next Artists Are Already at Work

SYRACUSE — The Erie Canal Museum closed the book this past weekend on Canal as Collaborator: Works by Sarah Cameron Sunde and Kari Varner, a five-month exhibition that asked visitors to see the 200-year-old waterway not merely as infrastructure, but as a living partner in New York’s history. Housed in the museum’s landmark 1850s weighlock building at 318 Erie Boulevard East, the show wrapped its run on September 27 after drawing steady crowds through the summer.

Two Artists, One River

Sunde and Varner spent 2025 as artists-in-residence through the New York State Canal Corporation’s residency program, each approaching the canal from a different angle. Sunde, an interdisciplinary artist, collaborated with Shinnecock Indian Nation photographer Jeremy Dennis to examine how history, identity, and geography intersect along the canal’s banks — work that pressed visitors toward harder questions about the waterway’s past. “How do we acknowledge that genocide, what really happened?” Sunde said of her research into the canal corridor’s impact on Indigenous communities. “In terms of historically, how do we recognize the people that were here, the plants that were here, the waters that were running, the way that they were running.”

Varner, a photographer and educator, spent her residency investigating three ecological sites along the canal, gathering plants and organic material — including samples tied to invasive species such as the round goby — directly into her photographic practice. One installation reimagined a library card catalog as a home for her findings. “I opted to put these small prints — over 70 of them — into these little drawers, into what was a library card catalogue,” Varner said.

A Weighlock Building With Its Own Story

Erie Canal Museum Executive Director Natalie Stetson called the museum’s home — one of the last surviving canal weighlock buildings in the country — a fitting venue for work that treats the canal as a collaborator rather than a backdrop. New York State Canal Corporation Director Ben Walsh echoed that framing, noting that the canal “has shaped the life, lands, and imagination of New York State” for more than two centuries — a legacy the corporation has leaned into throughout the canal’s bicentennial commemorations.

The Residency Keeps Moving

Sunde and Varner were the program’s third cohort. The Canal Corporation launched the residency in 2023 with photographer Matthew López-Jensen, followed in 2024 by Alon Koppel, Judit German-Heins, and Clara Riedlinger. This year’s residents, Hannah Smith Allen and Z Behl, are already at work: Smith Allen is building site-responsive collages from photography and archival material to explore the canal’s layered histories, while Behl plans to canoe the length of the canal collecting labor stories and folklore along the way. Their work is expected to surface in future exhibitions at the museum.

Part of a Bigger Story

The exhibit’s close comes as canal communities continue marking the Erie Canal’s bicentennial era, building on 2025’s 200th-anniversary commemorations of the waterway’s completion. For a corridor built to move grain and goods, exhibitions like “Canal as Collaborator” are part of a broader push by the Canal Corporation and its partners to also move ideas — about who the canal has served, what it has cost, and what it means two centuries on. Visitors interested in the residency program’s next chapter can follow updates through the Erie Canal Museum and the NYS Canal Corporation.