History, Natural History & the Arts
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the very first modern traveling art exhibition was not the three-venue, 1913 New York City “Armory Show.” Instead, and a decade earlier, Syracuse and Rochester, New York hosted an important art exhibit.
The novelty of a traveling art exhibition in 1903 is matched by the surprising reason it occurred: a furniture maker’s business deal with an educational institution. [Read more…] about Traveling Art: Gustav Stickley’s 1903 Exhibitions
What might Lake George have looked like 265 years ago, on the eve of the French attack on Fort William Henry?
That’s the focus of the display in the entryway to the Fort museum and historical attraction. It includes three figures – an American provincial, a British regular and a ranger, all created by the late Jack Binder for the reconstructed fort, which opened to the public in 1955. [Read more…] about Comic Book Artist Jack Binder & Fort William Henry History
“Men Working in Slate Quarry,” the 1939 Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded mural displayed at the Slate Valley Museum in Granville, Washington County, NY is as good an example as you will find of “Art for the People.”
The subject of the museum’s current exhibition “One Painting, Many Stories,” explores many of the artistic, cultural and political contexts within which the mural was created. [Read more…] about Granville’s WPA Mural of Working in a Slate Quarry
Two signature paintings in the permanent collection of the Historical Society of Woodstock – Arnold Blanch’s Hervey White in his Studio (1926) and Edmund Rolfe’s Landscape (1914) – have been restored and are currently displayed at the Historical Society’s Eames House Museum at 20 Comeau Drive. [Read more…] about Restored Paintings on View at the Historical Society of Woodstock
The late 1920s and 1930s were crucial years in New York’s rise as an international artistic center. Cultural contacts between Europe and the United States multiplied. American artists who had studied in Paris returned with fresh ambitions; dollar rich patrons were willing to finance new initiatives; the First World War had unsettled European artists and gallerists, many of whom settled in New York. They were joined by others who fled the Nazi threat. Manhattan was turning into a Mecca of modernism where a multi-national cohort of artists, dealers and investors mixed and mingled.
By our standards the art world was relatively small. At any one time in that epoch, there were probably fewer than fifteen galleries active in New York with only a handful concentrating on contemporary art. A pioneering role was played by Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery on Fifth Avenue. Operational since 1905, the gallery introduced the Parisian avant-garde to an American audience. In modernist Manhattan, Stieglitz was the Godfather. [Read more…] about Julien Levy & Art at the Heart of Manhattan
Plastered on walls in public spaces and civic buildings, scattered in hotels and restaurants, hidden in private mansions, a plenitude of murals form part of New York City’s infrastructure.
Although American interest in the medium originated in the 1893 World Fair which presented visitors with numerous large-scale murals, the vogue for this form of artistic expression dates back to the Great Depression. With the introduction of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, federal funds were made available to support and promote public art. Muralism became fashionable. [Read more…] about New York: A Metropolis of Murals
Banker and philanthropist Felix Moritz Warburg was born in January 1871 in Hamburg. In 1895 he married Frieda Schiff, the only daughter of the New York financier Jacob Schiff. In 1908 the couple had a six-story mansion built in a French Gothic Revival style on Fifth Avenue. Felix died in October 1937 and was buried in Salem Fields Cemetery, Brooklyn. Seven years later his widow donated their estate as a permanent home for New York’s Jewish Museum.
The source and context of the topographic Warburg surname throws light on complex historical patterns of migration. [Read more…] about Bankers and Brush Makers: What’s in a Name?
In 1906 Milan hosted the World Exhibition which, significantly, focused on the theme of transportation. The occasion for the exhibition was the inauguration of the spectacular Simplon Tunnel, connecting Milan to Europe’s major cities.
The opening up of commercial and cultural connections unleashed a burst of buoyancy. Milan became associated with the first aesthetic movement to praise the potential of the modern metropolis. [Read more…] about The Cult of Technology: Futurism in New York
The Brooks-Park Home & Studios in East Hampton on Long Island is an important physical link to the Abstract Expressionist Art movement and the artists who made it their home.
Artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park were at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist art movement of the 1940s and 50s. James Brooks in particular is especially is well known for painting the largest site-specific Works Progress Administration (WPA) wall mural, in the landmarked interior of the Marine Terminal at New York’s La Guardia Airport. [Read more…] about Under Threat: James Brooks / Charlotte Park Home & Studios, East Hampton
Albany’s first museum was started in 1798 in a building on the corner of Green and Beaver streets. In the summer of 1808, two royal tigers were housed at the Thespian Hotel, a circus pitched its tent, and Ralph Letton started the Albany Museum.
The Albany Museum was located in the Old City Hall (Stadt Huys) on the northeastern corner of South Market Street and Hudson Avenue (today’s Broadway and Hudson Avenue). The Old City Hall was built in 1741 and was the site of the 1754 Albany Congress meeting where Benjamin Franklin first proposed the Albany Plan, a plan of union of the colonies that later was a basis for the U.S. Constitution. On its steps, the Declaration of Independence was first read to Albany on July 19, 1776 by the order of the Provincial Congress. With the construction of the new building on Eagle Street in 1808, the Old City Hall was converted into the Albany Museum. [Read more…] about The Albany Museum: Curiosities, Circus & Performing Arts