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New Exhibits in New York State

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Currier & Ives Prints Exhibition at Senate House

September 8, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The exhibit Currier & Ives: “Cheap and Popular Pictures” is now open at the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston. The prints of Currier & Ives—one of the most successful purveyors of lithographic prints in the 19th Century—are diverse, full of fascinating historical information and compelling imagery, perhaps despite their perennial appearance on calendars and cards. This new exhibit at Senate House State Historic Site, offers us forty of their prints focusing on the ideals, values, and innovations of the 19th Century.

While it’s better known for its buildings and collections representing colonial and Revolutionary history, Senate House State Historic Site, located in uptown Kingston, also has impressive collections of objects, documents, and art of the 19th Century, including over 200 Currier & Ives prints, given to the site by the late Rutgers Ives Hurry, a Saugerties resident whose passion was collecting images of the Hudson Valley made by the firm.

The Senate House exhibition focuses on three themes: the ideal of the 19th-century home, images of New York City, and Hudson River steamboats (both the luxury and potential dangers they represented). The exhibit is entitled “Cheap and Popular Pictures,” a term touted by Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, who shrewdly observed and marketed their images–made by many different artists of the day—to the opinions, interests, and ideals of America’s growing middle class.

The Senate House is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and 1 – 5 pm on Sundays. The exhibit is free and open to the public. The exhibition runs through October 31 and is available by appointment and for school groups after that date. Senate House is located at 296 Fair Street, Kingston NY, 12401. For more information and other details, please call (845) 338-2786.

Illustration: Steamers Drew and St. John. Sketched and Drawn by C. R. Parsons.
Hand-colored lithograph published by Currier & Ives, New York. Courtesy of Senate House State Historic Site.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Art History, Kingston, Senate House Historic Site, Ulster County

Albany Institute Offers Shoe Exhibits

September 2, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Albany Institute of History & Art has announced two related upcoming exhibitions: “The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories” and “Old Soles: Three Centuries of Shoes from the Albany Institute’s Collection.” The exhibitions open on October 16, 2010, and close on January 2, 2011.

Since the invention of protective foot coverings by early societies thousands of years ago, shoes have become not only an essential element of our clothing, but also symbols of status, utility, amusement, and art. “The Perfect Fit” features more than 100 examples of fanciful footwear created by contemporary American artists between 2004 and 2008. The shoes are made of materials ranging from clay, metal, fabric, wood, glass, and paper, and transcend everyday style and function to illustrate various themes pertaining to issues of gender, history, sexuality, class, race, and culture.

The exhibition, curated by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, is organized by the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. An illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition and will be on sale in the Albany Institute’s Museum Shop for $10.00.

Accompanying “The Perfect Fit” will be a complementary exhibition entitled “Old Soles: Three Centuries of Shoes from the Albany Institute’s Collection.” The selection includes a variety of shoes ranging from a pair of brocaded silk women’s wedding shoes from the early 18th century to modern men’s and women’s footwear from the 20th century. The collection also includes protective over-shoes, pattens, slippers, jeweled buckles, work shoes, boots, and more. The Old Soles exhibition will be located in the museum’s Lansing Gallery, in proximity to many historic paintings in which the subjects are wearing shoes similar to those that will be on display.

Photo: Red riding shoes awarded to Miss Catherine Fitch for “Best Equestrian Rider” at the Albany Agricultural Society Fair, September, 1856, Wool felt and leather, 1856,
Gift of Margaret Boom, 1941.45, from Old Soles.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Albany County, Albany Institute For History and Art, Material Culture

Last Chance to See Inportant Photo Exhibit

August 29, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Fenimore Art Museum’s popular summer exhibition In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers will come to a close on Monday, September 6. In Our Time was organized to celebrate 50 years of photography at Magnum Photos Inc. and the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography.

This exhibition of 150 black-and-white photographs is from a comprehensive survey of Magnum Photos, Inc., which is considered to be one of the world’s most renowned photographic agencies. These images are a result of the extraordinary vision of the many talented photographers who have been associated with Magnum since its founding in 1947.

The broad events captured in these Magnum photographs include the D-Day landing in Normandy, France (1944); James Dean in Times Square (1955); Castro delivering a speech in Havanna (1959); Martin Luther King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (1963); Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy at Arlington (1963); women supporters of Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran (1979); and a crack den in New York City (1988).

In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers is toured by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

Other exhibitions currently on view at Fenimore Art Museum include John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women (through December 31, 2010), Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace: A Century of New York Fashion (through December 31, 2010), Watermark: Michele Harvey & Glimmerglass (through December 31, 2010), Virtual Folk: A Blog Readers’ Choice (through December 31, 2010). Ongoing Exhibitions include Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, The Coopers of Cooperstown, Genre Paintings from the Permanent Collection, and American Memory: Recalling the Past in Folk Art.

Museum hours: through October 11 (10 am – 5 pm), October 12 – December 31 (10 am – 4 pm) Adult admission (13-64) is $12.00 and senior admission (65 and up) is $10.50. Children 12 and under are free as well as NYSHA members, active military, and retired career military. Visit our website for more information at www.fenimoreartmuseum.org.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Fenimore Art Museum, Oswego County, Photography

NY Landscape Exhibit Opens at NYS Museum

August 23, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

“Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York” opens at the New York State Museum September 3rd showcasing the many different ways views of New York have been captured and used by artists, photographers, scientists and others during the past 200 years.

This is the first exhibition of landscape art to be completely culled from the State Museum’s vast collections. On display in the Museum’s West Gallery, this exhibition takes a unique look at the landscape art form, looking beyond the purely aesthetic. It features more than 100 landscape scenes and includes paintings, photographs, prints, ceramics, furniture and much more.

The rich and varied landscape of New York State has been a subject of interest to artists, photographers, historians, and scientists alike for hundreds of years. Artists have used the landscape in their work to draw tourists to Niagara Falls or the Adirondacks, create allegorical scenes of the Hudson River for advertising, and document the ever-changing streets of New York City.

The exhibition includes works by Currier & Ives, Seneca Ray Stoddard, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Benjamin Pope, Fairfield Porter, Edward Gay, Asa Twitchell, E.L. Henry and William Henry Jackson.

A complementary photo exhibition will also open on September 3 outside West Gallery in the West Hall Corridor. “Wish You Were Here! New York State Photographed by You” will feature photographs of the scenic New York State landscape submitted by the general public. These can be photographs of a beloved vacation spot or even the backyard, neighborhood street or other favorite place. Images chosen for the exhibition, as well as others that are submitted, will also appear on the Museum’s website and flickr page. Photographs will still be accepted after September 3, since new ones will continually be added to both the gallery and website.

Those wishing to submit photos for “Wish You Were Here” will find further information online.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Art History, New York State Museum, Photography

NYS Musuem Invites Exhibition Photo Submissions

August 10, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The New York State Museum is inviting the public to submit their digital photographs of scenic New York State landscapes, the best of which will be showcased in an upcoming Museum exhibition and displayed on the Museum website and Flickr page.

Scenic landscapes exist in every corner of New York State and are often found on picture perfect postcards that read “wish you were here.” The State Museum’s exhibition, Wish You Were Here! New York State Photographed by You will open in the State Museum’s West Hall Corridor on September 3, featuring a selection of the best landscape photographs submitted by the public. These can be photographs of a beloved vacation spot or even the backyard, neighborhood street or other favorite place. Images chosen for the exhibition, as well as others that are submitted, will also appear on the Museum’s website. Photographs will still be accepted after September 3, since new ones will continually be added to both the gallery and website.

Wish You Were Here will complement another exhibition in the Museum’s adjacent West Gallery — Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York. Also opening on September 3, this will be the first exhibition of landscape art to be culled from the Museum’s vast collections.

Those wishing to submit photos for Wish You Were Here will find further information at www.nysm.nysed.gov/wishyouwerehere.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: New York State Museum, Photography

‘Perceiving Buffalo’ Autistic Artists Exhibit

July 14, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society (BECHS) has announced “Perceiving Buffalo,” an exhibit of works by artists from Autistic Services, Inc. (ASI).

The show opened in BECHS’ second-floor Community Gallery on July 1st and will run through Sunday, August 22, 2010. The exhibit is open to the public, and free with regular museum admission. [Read more…] about ‘Perceiving Buffalo’ Autistic Artists Exhibit

Filed Under: New Exhibits, Western NY Tagged With: Buffalo, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Erie County, Medical History

Warhorse’s Olympic Bronze at Olympic Museum

June 23, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Lake Placid 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Museum has added another piece to its collection of artifacts from last February’s 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, Andrew Weibrecht’s men’s Super-G bronze medal.

Weibrecht’s bronze medal helped spark the U.S. alpine ski team to a record eight medals in Vancouver. Overall, the U.S. Olympic squad celebrated its best Olympics ever, claiming the overall medal count with 37.

“The medal was turned over for display and for safe keeping between appearances,” noted museum curator Liz Defazio. “It’s so nice for these athletes to have a place where they can share their accomplishments with others… sort of their home away from home.”

Nicknamed the “Warhorse” on the international alpine ski tour, Weibrecht began skiing at the age of five at Whiteface Mountain and began racing with the New York Ski Educational Foundation (NYSEF) program by the time he was 10. He had only been on the World Cup circuit since 2006 and Vancouver was his first Olympic Winter Games.

There are quite a number of artifacts on display in the museum from the 2010 winter games donated by several of the 12 area athletes who competed, as well as coaches and officials. The artifacts include race gear, Opening Ceremony clothing, official U.S. Olympic team clothing, event tickets, programs and pins.

Lake Placid’s 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Museum features the largest collection of winter Olympic artifacts outside the International Olympic Committee’s museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Some of the artifacts include the first Winter Olympic medal awarded, gold in 1924 in Chamonix, France, to Lake Placid native and speedskater Charles Jewtraw, equipment worn by U.S. goalie Jim Craig during the 1980 winter games, parade clothing from the 1932 winter games, athletes participation medals and Olympic medals from every winter Olympics.

Admission to the museum is $6 for adults and $4 for juniors and seniors. Admission is also included when purchasing an Olympic Sites Passport. The Passport gives visitors access to each of ORDA’s Olympic venues—from Whiteface Mountain to the Olympic Sports Complex and everything in between. Sold for $29 at the ORDA Store and all of our ticket offices, the Passport saves you time, money, and gets you into the venues at a good value. For more information about the Olympic Sites Passport, log on to http://www.whiteface.com/summer/plan/passport.php.

Photo: Andrew Weibrecht’s Super-G Bronze Medal. Courtesy 1932 and 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Museum, Lake Placid, NY.

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, New Exhibits Tagged With: Essex County, Lake Placid, Lake Placid Olympic Museum, Olympic History, Sports History

Ransoming Mathew Brady:Re-Imagining the Civil War

June 18, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

This Saturday June 19th the Albany Institute of History & Art welcomes a new exhibit entitled, Ransoming Mathew Brady: Re-Imagining the Civil War, Recent Paintings by John Ransom Phillips. The exhibit will be on display through Sunday, October 3, 2010.

In a series of 25 vibrant oils and watercolors, Phillips portrays the paradoxes and complexity of the famed 19th-century photographer. Born around 1823 in Warren County, New York, Mathew Brady visited Albany as a young man to seek medical attention for an inflammation of his eyes. While in Albany, he met the portrait painter William Page, who befriended him and encouraged him to become a painter. However, Brady demonstrated great talent in the new medium of photography, and quickly became a sought-after auteur. His iconic portraits of illustrious giants like Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman replaced paintings as the standard means of documenting the image of notable public figures. Lincoln and Whitman figure prominently into Phillips’s paintings.

“Whitman, who served in a hospital as a nurse for the war wounded, said the Civil War could never be portrayed because it was just too horrible; it was beyond human capacity to understand,” Phillips says. “Yet Whitman, like Brady, attempted to do so.”

At the peak of his success, Brady chose to move his profession to the field of war, a decision that would ultimately cost him, psychologically and financially. At the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Brady was lost in the woods for three days and was nearly captured by Confederate troops. Although his images of the battle would become legendary as the first photographic depictions of war, Brady was badly shaken by the death, destruction, and violence he encountered in the field. Thereafter, he hired teams of photographers to work under his direction, unable to stomach the carnage that would be wrought in the years of fighting to come. As a result, many of the famous Civil War images attributed to Brady were actually taken by his employees.

“Brady in many ways reminds me of Andy Warhol,” Phillips said. “There are a lot of interesting parallels between the two artists. Both had huge studios in New York, on Union Square, not too far from each other. They occupied a similar geography. They also each hired about 50 to 60 people who would prepare the sitter or scene for a depiction. Both were uncomfortable with human feelings and poured their passion into celebrities,” Phillips said.

Plagued by vision problems throughout his life, Brady wore dark blue glasses to protect his eyes, and also employed blue-tinted skylights in his studios, for effect in his portraits but possibly to provide additional protection for his eyes. Many of the paintings in the Ransoming Mathew Brady series reflect this condition through the prominent use of the color blue. Heavily in debt when the post-war government declined to purchase his Civil War images, Brady died broke and virtually blind in the charity ward of a New York City hospital in 1896.

Phillips says he was inspired by Brady’s ability to reinvent himself, at a time when doing so was unorthodox. “Today, a lot of artists, and in fact people in all aspects of life, are very interested in reinventing themselves,” he says. “Mathew Brady was very much ahead of his time in this regard. He was an accomplished celebrity photographer in the studio, who then became known for battlefield photography.”

In his book-length essay in the illustrated 244-page catalog that accompanies the exhibit—Ransoming Mathew Brady (Hudson Hills Press, 2010)—photography expert and Yale professor Alan Trachtenberg writes, “Ransoming Mathew Brady tells a story at once sensuous and cerebral, esoteric yet enticing. An intellectual discourse in paint and words, this extraordinary cumulative work by John Ransom Phillips fits no existing genre (history painting may come closest). It’s an essay on history, on vision and blindness, on violence, on color and space, on death and rebirth. It asks from its viewers/readers not only eyes wide open but a heart willing to take on such immensity.” The catalog will be on sale in the Albany Institute’s Museum Shop.

John Ransom Phillips’s work has been exhibited internationally at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, and the Heidi Cho Gallery in New York. He has been a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He has a Ph.D. in the history of culture from the University of Chicago.

The Albany Institute exhibition will be complemented by a concurrent exhibition of Phillips’s work, entitled, Ransoming Mathew Brady: Searching for Celebrity, at the Opalka Gallery of the Sage Colleges in Albany. For more information about the Opalka exhibit, visit www.sage.edu/opalka or call (518) 292-7742.

Illustration: Photographing You, John Ransom Phillips, 2006, oil on canvas, 28 in. x 26 in.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Albany Institute For History and Art, Art History, Civil War, Military History, Photography

Rocking Another Boat at the Adirondack Museum

June 10, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

There is a new boat on the small pond at the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York. It is a Bisby Scow and will be used to provide a genuine “on the water” experience for thousands of museum visitors this summer.

The new boat is a reproduction of one in the museum’s extensive collection. Although “Adirondack” in design and history, this Bisby scow started life far from the North Country. The hand-made boat is the work of young boat builders from the Bronx, participants in Rocking the Boat, a non-profit youth development organization.

On Saturday, May 22, 2010, the boat building crew, accompanied by adult builders and faculty, delivered, christened, and launched the Bisby Scow on the museum pond. This is the second boat created by Rocking the Boat expressly for the Adirondack Museum. The first, a replica of an Adirondack logging bateau, was launched in 2007.

Rocking the Boat is a traditional wooden boat building and environmental education program based in the southwest Bronx, New York City. Through an alternative multi-faceted hands-on approach to education and youth development, Rocking the Boat addresses the need for inner city youth to achieve practical and tangible goals, relevant to both everyday life and future aspirations. The program was founded in 1995.

Young people enrolled in the program have built well more than twenty boats over the time, and Rocking the Boat is recognized as one of the most dynamic after school and summer programs in New York City. For more information, visit www.rockingtheboat.org.

Museum Curator Hallie Bond, who coordinated the project, says that a member of the Bisby Club designed the original Bisby Scow in 1888. The craft was intended for all-purpose every day use and few exist today. The Bisby Scow in the collection of the Adirondack Museum – a rare survivor — dates from the 1920s: the name of the builder is unknown.

The Adirondack Museum has the second largest collection of inland wooden watercraft in the United States. Many extraordinary examples are on display in the popular exhibit “Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks, 1850 – 1950.”

Photo: Young boat builders from the Rocking the Boat project with their new boat, christened Naomi II.

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Adirondack Museum, Adirondacks, Education, Maritime History

Soap Box Derby Exhibit Opens at NYS Museum

June 7, 2010 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Seventy years after the debut of Albany’s first Soap Box Derby, the New York State Museum will mark the occasion with the opening of a small exhibition on the Derby June 8, followed by an awards ceremony at the Museum in conjunction with this year’s Albany competition. “Derby Doings: The All-American Soap Box Derby,” will be open in the Museum lobby until August 15.

The annual Capital District Soap Box Derby competition will be held in front of the State Museum on Madison Avenue on Saturday, June 12th and Sunday, June 13th. The awards ceremony in the Museum’s Huxley Theater will immediately follow Sunday’s races at approximately 5 p.m. The winners in three divisions will advance, all expenses paid, to the World Championships in Akron, Ohio later in July.

The exhibition traces the history of the Derby to the summer of 1933 when Dayton, Ohio Daily News photographer Myron Scott saw three boys racing down the hill and proposed what he expected would be a one-time competition. Nineteen children showed up and Scott was compelled to arrange for another competition on August 19, 1933. Intensely publicized, the event attracted 362 contestants and about 40,000 spectators.

The first national championship which Scott called the All-American Soap Box Derby was launched the following year with promotional and financial support from newspapers, magazines and Chevrolet. In 1935, the Derby relocated to Akron, Ohio.

Albany’s first competition dates to 1940 when 15,000 people watched 100 boys compete in the first races on Clermont Avenue. The Derby was locally sponsored and promoted chiefly by Chevrolet automobile dealers and the Albany Times Union. Ongoing support from both allowed such large events to continue through the 1940s. The Derby was televised by WRGB in 1949. Racing continued off and on at various locations, with different sponsors, until it ceased in the 1970s.

However, the Albany Derby was revived in 2006, managed by Ginger Miller. Boys and girls, ages 8-18, are now invited to participate.

The Derby was also held in Schenectady at one time. Richard Russell built two cars – one in 1948 and the other in 1949 — for the annual races on Fehr Avenue in Schenectady. He constructed both of his cars in a building at the Mattice service station and Mattice Fuel Oil service facility at 1025 Altamont Ave. in Schenectady, a business dating from the 1920s. It is still operated by the Russell family, including Richard Russell and his son, Richard Russell Jr., who donated the Russell car to the State Museum in 1995.

The 1949 Russell car will be on display in the exhibition, along with a contemporary Super Stock model built by Michael Morawski in 2007. He won with it on Madison Avenue in 2008 and went on to compete in Akron later that summer. Visitors can also see a helmet worn by Russell at the Schenectady races in 1948 and 1949, a trophy won by Donald Matthews in the Albany derby in July 1941, and several photographs that appeared in the Times Union and Daily Gazette in Schenectady.

Photo: Richard Russell in his car that is on display in the New York State Museum exhibition “Derby Doings: The All-American Soap Box Derby.” This photograph was used in a Mattice ad which appeared in the Schenectady Gazette on July 30, 1949. (Courtesy of NYS Museum)

Filed Under: New Exhibits Tagged With: Albany, New York State Museum, Schenectady

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