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Peter Svoboda, the curator of a new gallery named The Station, is tired of average things.

“There’s a lot of regular stuff (in Syracuse). We don’t want to do regular stuff,” Svoboda said. “You’ve got regular theater. You’ve got ballet…That’s regular cultural offerings. What we want to do, and here’s the important point, we want to do challenging stuff.”

The Station is on the grounds of an abandoned train station, hence the name, which only adds to Svoboda and his board’s desire to make the gallery “unique.” The gallery is full of art Svoboda has found and collected over the years that Svoboda hopes will inform people of untold stories.

Svoboda is frustrated with the other displays of art around town. The Syracuse area isn’t engaging or educational enough, he said. He wants to bring edgy and rebellious art to Syracuse.

Many of the decisions The Station’s board makes are based on their passion for activism. The board is made up of Svoboda, Steve Susman, the vice president, and Matt Cutler, the secretary.

Svoboda and Susman are also leaders of the nonprofit Pinnacle International, which they founded in 2020. The organization sponsors the gallery and is a way for Svoboda to be able to impact the community in a positive way.

From a young age, Svoboda saw the importance of activism, but as he matured, he found that many of the organizations he joined were too disorganized to actually take action.

So he decided to make change himself. With his gallery, Svoboda, who also used to be an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and taught a consulting to emerging enterprise course, wants to make people think about the culture around the city and the world.

“It wasn’t to make money,” Svoboda said. “It was to have an impact on culture, and people’s lives.”

In The Station’s current featured show, The Degenerate Art Show of Hitler’s Germany, Svoboda wanted to educate and inspire people in a powerful way. The exhibition is based on the art that Adolf Hitler deemed unworthy, but it also features the work of many famous artists like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.
Svoboda curated the exhibition using many photos and paintings he had from when he traveled to Europe in 2019. His own knowledge of World War II and European History helped inform many of the decisions made in the exhibition.

With the show, Svoboda wanted to achieve three things: display modern art, teach about the lives of each artist and encourage visitors to think about what happened to German people at that time and why.

“That’s most important, because since we’re all people, we are all subject to influence,” Svoboda said. “I hope that (viewers) will learn what series of events that happened that made (the German people) susceptible to this guy, Hitler, that came along.”

Cassandra Roshu | Staff Photographer

Along with the exhibitions, The Station wants to display unique art from around the city of Syracuse. The board members frequently talk with local artists and encourage them to share their ideas with The Station. Through this, they have scheduled art lessons, lectures and musical performances in their gallery, Svoboda and Cutler said.

Susman is passionate about growing the local art scene. He said he sees it as a chance to really make Syracuse a special city.

“We stick around and actually develop the same love for the unusual and can’t see it anywhere else, that idea,” Susman said. “Some of the suggestions that come in, a lot of them are non-traditional art, which is great.”

Susman and the rest of The Station said that they want the gallery to be a place that no other city has — a place where all forms of art could be celebrated. Part of this non-traditional art came during their “Poetry Brigade,” when The Station brought poets to different spots around Syracuse to recite poetry and help them hone their skill.

Still, Cutler worries that the space isn’t known widely enough even with its great programming.

“The biggest bummer of it all is without the strong word of mouth or getting the word out there, a lot of people are missing out,” Cutler said. “We just need to get the word out there and get some support for it.”

Svoboda said he hopes that The Station will make an impact on his community and make something unique in Syracuse.

“I wanted this to be a place where people that were into arts and culture and literature and intellectual subjects could come,” Svoboda said. “We want to do edgy stuff…we want to do cutting edge stuff.”

Published on November 28, 2022 at 11:13 pm