History, Natural History & the Arts
The Cayuga Museum of History and Art is set to re-open for the 2018 season with a new initiative, the CNY Emerging Artist Project.
Showcasing nine emerging artists from the Central New York region, this juried exhibit series will feature a different artist each month, from March to November. [Read more…] about Cayuga Museum Re-Opening With New Art Initiative
Lifelong train enthusiast Paul Shinal will present an illustrated lecture on the “Auburn Road” in Theater Mack on Tuesday, November 15 at 7 pm, at the Cayuga Museum.
Shinal will be presenting an historic overview of the railway that still exists today from Canandaigua to Geneva, through Auburn and into Solvay. [Read more…] about Railroad History: Lecture on the ‘Auburn Road’
The Cayuga Museum will host a new film and guided discussion series titled “Exploring the Prison through Film: A Journey with Dr. Lucien Lombardo.” The series will show four films, each exploring a different theme within the context of imprisonment. Each film will be screened and then followed with a conversation guided by Dr. Lucien Lombardo, who will place the themes of the film in context in penal history.
The series begins on Tuesday, October 18 at 6 pm with the 1932 film “20,000 Years in Sing Sing,” starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis. Exploring the theme of managing a prison, this film was loosely based on an influential book by Lewis Lawes, Warden of Sing Sing. Scenes from the movie were filmed at Sing Sing, using real prisoners as extras. [Read more…] about Cayuga Museum: Exploring Prison through Film Series
In April, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Harriet Tubman will be featured on the front of new $20 bills. Tubman is the first woman to appear on modern U.S. currency. She displaces former president Andrew Jackson, whose image will move to the back of the bill.
Lew’s decision came after a year’s discussion, including soliciting public input, on images for redesigned currency. [Read more…] about Harriet Tubman: The Long Road To The $20 Bill
Two of Auburn’s leading cultural institutions, the Cayuga Museum of History and Art, and the Seward House Museum, have joined forces to create a new exhibit, “Untold Stories: Treasures from the Seward Family Collection” will be on display at the Cayuga Museum from until August 30, 2015.
Showcasing items from the collections of the Seward House Museum in the spacious galleries of the Cayuga Museum, this unique collaboration explores the themes of family life in the Victorian era and the Seward family’s world travels. [Read more…] about Seward Family Treasures On Exhibit In Auburn
The Cayuga Museum, in Auburn, is beginning a new monthly program. Called simply word., the new event will debut on Thursday, February 19 at 7 pm in Theater Mack. Writers can share their original work with the audience – poems, short stories, essays, segments of larger work, the spoken word, or more. Poetry, fiction or non-fiction, read or recited, word. is meant to celebrate the writer’s art and help local writers find their voice. [Read more…] about Cayuga Museum Presenting Writers Event
Residents of antebellum New York State assumed a large responsibility for sheltering slaves fleeing to Canada. It’s rare that we hear how families dealt with the challenge of concealing a fugitive, a crime for which they could pay high fines or even jail terms. The following account of Martha and David Wright’s experience reveals some of the complications involved when a family with young children offered lodging to runaways.
Martha and David Wright offered their Auburn, New York home as a station on the Underground Railroad from its early years. In letters to her sister, Lucretia Mott, Martha described the stories and challenges that boarding fugitive slaves presented to her and her family. One of those stories happened in January, 1843. [Read more…] about Harboring Runaway Slaves in Antebellum New York
The Cayuga Museum is working on a new exhibit to open next month. From Gilded Stage to Silver Screen, A History of Auburn’s Theaters will tell the stories of the operas, playhouses, community theaters, parlor shows and movie palaces that once graced the city.
Museum staff are seeking the public’s help in gathering photographs, costumes, playbills, and anything else that can help tell these stories. If you have any of these objects, or you were involved in local theater and would like to share your story, please call Kirsten or Eileen at the Museum, 315 253-8051. All loaned objects are logged in, covered by the Museum’s insurance, and returned at the end of the exhibit. [Read more…] about Cayuga Museum Seeks Objects From Auburn’s Theater History
The film 12 Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was lured away from Saratoga Springs, New York in 1841, and sold into slavery. Though he played the fiddle (and the men who tricked him into leaving Saratoga told him they wanted him to fiddle for a circus), the film overstates Northup’s status as a musician. Primarily, he earned his money from other work.
In his 1853 autobiography however, Northup wrote that prior to moving to Saratoga he had performed: “Wherever the young people assembled to dance, I was almost invariably there.” He attained some renown in Washington County, since: “Throughout the surrounding villages my fiddle was notorious.” [Read more…] about Early Black Musicians in Upstate New York
A North Woods Elegy: Incident at Big Moose Lake is a documentary feature film that explores one of the most famous American murder cases. Grace Brown, a pregnant young woman from upstate New York, was killed in the Adirondacks on July 11, 1906 [watch the trailer].
Her lover, Chester Gillette, was eventually tried and convicted of her murder. Gillette died in the Auburn Prison electric chair on March 30, 1908. The case became the basis for Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy.
A North Woods Elegy explores the fascination America had, and still has, with the case, encompassing issues of class, jurisprudence in America at the turn of the 20th century and ethics and sensationalism in news reporting.
The documentary film will be shown in Theater Mack at the Cayuga Museum, twice on Saturday, September 15, at 1:00 pm. and again at 4:00,. Derek Taylor, the film’s producer, director and editor, will answer questions after each screening.
At 3:00 p.m., there will be a lecture on “Gillette in Auburn” by Tompkins County Judge Jack Sherman, editor of The Prison Diaries and Letters of Chester Gillette. Gillette spent more than a year in Auburn Prison before his execution; his diary from that time is today in the collection of Hamilton College. Both the film screenings and the lecture are free and open to the public.