History, Natural History & the Arts
Theodore Roosevelt spent a bit of time in Saratoga County, particularly in the years leading up to and including his time as Governor of New York (1899-1900).
TR would often visit a friend, Guy Baker, who lived in Ballston. He hunted on Baker’s Hawkwood estate and sometimes brought members of his family for short visits with the Bakers. [Read more…] about Ballston’s Hawkwood Estate: Teddy Roosevelt, Guy Baker & The Countess
A work by Serena Perrone, Assistant Professor of Printmaking and Drawing at PrattMWP College of Art and Design, Utica, has recently been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the City of New York. [Read more…] about Utica Area Artist’s Work Acquired by the Met
The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) has announced its annual Awards for Excellence in the categories of museum Catalogues, Articles/Essays, and Exhibitions.
Four New York Museums were recognized in the Catalogues category, with first place for museums with an operating budget of $4M going to The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation by Mary-Kay Lombino and Peter Buse, of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. [Read more…] about New York Museum Exhibit Catalogues Recognized
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives has announced the availability for research of two collections of records of 20th century museum officials.
These are among 15 collections being arranged, described, and cataloged over 27 months with funding from the Leon Levy Foundation. Work on the approximately 300 linear feet of records by two full-time archivists began in January 2013. Finding aids are now available online for: [Read more…] about Met Museum of Art Archives Opens Two Collections
In conjunction with its newest exhibition The Mystery of the Albany Mummies, the Albany Institute of History & Art will host an international lecture series. The first lecture will take place on this Sunday, September 22, 2013, at 2 PM.
Dr. Peter Lacovara, Senior Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, and guest curator of the new exhibition, will explore how he helped solve the mystery of the Albany mummies, gathered objects from around the world to tell the story of Ankhefenmut and his coffin, and how the exhibition offers a window into the life in ancient Egypt’s 21st Dynasty. The lecture is free with museum admission. [Read more…] about Mystery of the Albany Mummies Exhibition, Lectures
Here’s a quick look at some of the latest New York History resources to hit the web:
Just about any morning, cars as well as trucks race back and forth through the intersection of Stone Castle Road and Route 17K in the Town of Montgomery. Many of these commuters, shoppers, or moms driving their children to school are oblivious to the ruins that stand right off to the side, in a wood lot, of the rather busy part of this Orange County road.
Only while stopping along the road, some years ago, I happened upon the remains of what seemed to have once been a beautiful mansion. A blue New York State Education Department sign alerts people that this skeleton, almost lost in the woods, was the site of “the Colden Mansion built of stone in 1767 by Cadwallader Colden, Jr.” How many families, like the Coldens, can boast about having Royal Surveyors, Lieutenant Governors, Acting Governors of New York, noted scientists, and even one of the first female botanists in the Americas among them? [Read more…] about Coldengham: The Colden Family Seat in Orange County
The Met is offering a wide range events in conjunction with their recently opened exhibition, Photography and the American Civil War.
A Civil War Dialogue will take place this evening, Wednesday, April 10, at 6:00 PM ($25). Novelist Geraldine Brooks and historian Tony Horwitz have both written about the Civil War-and are married to one another. They will discuss their work as well as their different approaches to the Civil War and the writing of history. The discussion will be moderated by Bill Goldstein, book critic for NBC’s Weekend Today in New York. [Read more…] about Met Museum Civil War Events Begin Tonight
The New-York Historical Society is displaying Mort Künstler’s “Washington’s Crossing at McKonkey’s Ferry” until January 17, 2012. Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” commemorates General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River on December 25 in 1776 during the American Revolutionary War. His original painting is part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mort Künstler, a New York artist known for his historical paintings, has created what he considers a more historically accurate version of Washington crossing the Delaware River. The painting was unveiled at the New-York Historical Society on Monday, December 26, the date in 1776 that Washington led his troops into battle in Trenton after crossing the Delaware.
David Hackett Fischer, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Washington’s Crossing, and featured speaker at the unveiling, says Künstler’s version is “quite accurate” and “got more right than any other image.”
The original painting shows the Betsy Ross flag flying, however that flag was not adopted until 1777; Mr. Künstler’s version has no flag. The original painting depicts the action taking place in the middle of the day, though the actual crossing took place during a stormy night. Based on historical research, the new painting shows Washington and company in a flat-bottomed ferry boat rather than on a row boat.
On that last detail however, there has been some debate. Rick Spilman, writing in the Old Salt Blog, noted:
“The problem is that most historians think that the American crossing of the Delaware used Durham boats, large flat-bottomed boats which hauled cargo such as ore, pig-iron, timber, and produce from upcountry mines, forests and farms down the Delaware River to Philadelphia’s thriving markets and port. Robert Durham, an engineer at the Durham Iron Works in Reiglesville, Pennsylvania, reputedly designed a prototype for these large cargo boats as early as 1757. Washington wrote to Governor Livingston of New Jersey, directing him to secure “Boats and Craft, all along the Delaware side…particularly the Durham Boats” for his anticipated crossing.”
In any event, you’ll have just one day to compare the two paintings first hand. The newly restored Luetze painting will be unveiled in a new frame in the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum on January 16, the day before the new Künstler painting comes down at the New-York Historical Society.
Illustrations: Above, Mort Künstler’s “Washington’s Crossing at McKonkey’s Ferry”; below, Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware”.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the completion of a collaborative project coordinated by the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library to preserve and digitize the early exhibition catalogs of Knoedler & Company, a renowned art gallery in New York.
In total, we digitized 898 catalogs, checklists, and unpublished materials from the Watson, Arcade, and Knoedler collections, comprising approximately 14,000 pages of content created between 1869 and 1946. Many items include extensive handwritten annotations; in several cases, more than one copy of a particular catalog was digitized to capture these unique additions.
Knoedler & Company was established in 1857 and has been among the most important art dealers in New York City for a century and a half. Following the pattern of Watson Library’s successful collaboration with the Frick Art Reference Library on the Macbeth Gallery project, we worked with Knoedler & Company and the Arcade libraries (Frick Art Reference Library, Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, and the Museum of Modern Art Library) to identify Knoedler exhibition catalogs, pamphlets, and checklists in our collections to create a series that is as complete as possible.
Access to these items is available through the libraries’ respective online catalogs, Watsonline and Arcade, as well as the OCLC library cooperative catalog, WorldCat. The catalogs’ contents are full-text searchable in Watson Library’s digital content management system, CONTENTdm.
The project was made possible by the Lifchez Stronach Fund for Preservation at the Thomas J. Watson Library and funds from the Frick Art Reference Library.
Illustration: An image from the Catalogue of an exhibition of woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer : March 6th to April 7th, 1928.