The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is partnering with the Cary Institute, NY Natural Heritage Program, Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and SUNY New Paltz biology department to monitor birds, such as the Bicknell’s thrush, that nest in rare mountaintop habitats. [Read more…] about Catskills Montane Breeding Bird Survey Underway
SUNY New Paltz
Active Dissent: 1970s College Protests in New York
On May 8th, 1972, New Paltz students went from dorm to dorm at the state university, pulling fire alarms, their reaction quick and spontaneous. Few students had television sets, but word spread quickly about President Nixon’s broadcast announcing he had ordered the mining of North Vietnam ports.
Just hours after Nixon’s address, around midnight, the college’s assistant director of housing placed a frantic call to campus security. [Read more…] about Active Dissent: 1970s College Protests in New York
Black History Talk Begins Huguenot Street Series
Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz is introducing a new “Fourth Saturday” event series. The first event in the series, on Saturday, February 28, with feature a lecture by Dr. A.J. Williams-Myers, Professor of Black Studies at SUNY New Paltz.
Dr. Williams-Myers will be presenting a lecture entitled “There is a River: Social and Economic Contributions of Africans Along the Hudson, From the Dutch Period to the American Revolution.” In honor of Black History Month, this lecture will focus on the influence of enslaved labor on the economic development of the Hudson River colonies, and the societal impact of African participation in both the French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War. [Read more…] about Black History Talk Begins Huguenot Street Series
Realist Art Exhibit: Eugene Speicher At NYS Museum
The New York State Museum has opened a new exhibition featuring the work of New York artist Eugene Speicher. Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher explores Speicher’s diverse art career ranging from portraits to still life to landscape.
On display in West Gallery through March 22, 2015, the exhibition features more than 70 artworks by Speicher, who was born in Buffalo, NY. [Read more…] about Realist Art Exhibit: Eugene Speicher At NYS Museum
Dutchess County Writing Programs Focus On History
The Hudson Valley Writing Project at SUNY New Paltz (HVWP) will offer two “place-based” writing programs in Dutchess County in collaboration with the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site and the Friends of Clermont. [Read more…] about Dutchess County Writing Programs Focus On History
Bruce Dearstyne: History, Humanities and Social Sciences
Readers of the New York History blog may be interested in a new report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, “The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive and Secure Nation”. It explores the need for more support for the humanities and social sciences, particularly in education.
“The humanities remind us where we have been and help us envision where we are going,” says the report. “Emphasizing critical perspective and imaginative response, the humanities – including the study of languages, literature, history, film, civics, philosophy, religion and the arts – foster creativity, appreciation of our commonalities and our differences, and knowledge of all times. The social sciences reveal patterns in our lives, over time and in the present moment.”
Some of the examples are rooted in history. [Read more…] about Bruce Dearstyne: History, Humanities and Social Sciences
State Museum to Host Russel Wright Exhibition
An exhibition featuring the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright will open May 4, 2013 at the New York State Museum. Russel Wright: The Nature of Design explores Wright’s career from the 1920s through the 1970s and features approximately 40 objects along with photographs and design sketches.
On display through December 31 in the Crossroads Gallery, the exhibit was first organized by and presented at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz from August 2012 to March 2013. The exhibit includes objects such as wood serving bowls and spun aluminum trays designed Pre-World War II as well as Wright’s more experimental and innovative Post-World War II designs, including earthenware plates, bowls, pitchers, and vases. [Read more…] about State Museum to Host Russel Wright Exhibition
Ulster County Architecture Focus of May 14th Event
Monday, May 14th the Gardiner Historical Society will host their annual meeting with the Historical Society of Shawangunk and Gardiner at 7 pm at the Gardiner Town Hall. The event is open to the public and is free of charge, refreshments will be served.
Author William B. Rhoads will share his book Ulster County, New York, The Architectural History & Guide, A Historical guide to 325 sites in all 20 Ulster County townships and the city of Kingston. The sites explored in the book show the variety and changing architectural styles that have appeared over nearly 300 years in the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains, from 17th century Dutch limestone houses of the colonial era, through the Federal and Victorian periods, up to the Modernist architecture of the mid-1950’s.
The architecture reflects the history, tracing the evolution of one of the first regions in today’s New York State to be settled by Europeans. Dutch and French Huguenot villages and homesteads of the 1600s form the core of today’s Kingston, New Paltz, and Hurley, surrounded by the structures built by their descendants and later immigrants – the English, Irish, Italians and scores of other ethnic and national groups – as Ulster county rose from the American Revolution and became an important commercial center, with bustling ports on the Hudson River, the booming 19th century “Empire State’s” first superhighway. Everywhere one looks in Ulster County there are vestiges of the past – abandoned cement mines, locks of the old D&H Canal, idle railroad depots, the ghostly shell of a grand old hotel that never opened to the public. And there is the “living history” as well, the structures built by previous generations that are still vital today, like the Mohonk Mountain House and the hundreds of other historic buildings representing nearly every American architectural style from 1660 to 1950 that remain private homes, libraries, schools, houses of worship or have been converted into museums.
William B. Rhoads is a professor emeritus of art history at SUNY New Paltz, where he taught from 1970 to 2005. His publications include studies of Colonial Revival architecture and Franklin Roosevelt’s sponsorship of architecture and art. Rhoads’s Kingston, New York: The Architectural History & Guide was published by Black Dome Press in 2003.
Dorsky Museum to Feature Historic Textile Expert
Rabbit Goody, a leading expert in the study and manufacture of 18th and 19th century textiles, will be featured at a panel discussion at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz on Sunday, February 20th at 3pm.
The panel discussion is coincides with the exhibit currently on view at the Dorsky: Binary Visions: 19th Century Woven Coverlets from the Collection of Historic Huguenot Street. This exhibit features more than 20 coverlets woven from cotton and wool on water-powered looms in small factories across the mid-Hudson Valley during the first half of the 19th century. The exhibition is a particularly important opportunity for historians and scholars to conceive new ways of thinking about the visual power of these coverlets.
Rabbit Goody is owner of Thistle Hill Weavers in Cherry Valley, New York. For more than 20 years, Thistle Hill Weavers has been weaving luxurious custom fabrics, carpet, and trim for designers, home owners, museums, and the film industry. Goody specializes in creating accurate historic reproductions, working from surviving examples, documented patterns, and period weavers’ drafts. Goody was a consultant for the Binary Visions exhibit.
Joining Goody on the panel will be Leslie LeFevre-Stratton, Curator of Collections at Historic Huguenot Street and Jessica Poser, Assistant Professor of Art Education at SUNY New Paltz. Poser has used the textile collections at Historic Huguenot Street as the inspiration for some of her most recent works of art. The panel will be moderated by Brian Wallace, Curator at the Dorsky Museum.
The panel discussion will be held in the Student Union Building closest to the campus entrance off South Manheim Boulevard and is free and open to the public.
For more information about the exhibit and the panel discussion, visit www.huguenotstreet.org or www.newpaltz.edu/museum.
Archaeologist to Discuss Historic Huguenot St. Finds
Professor Joseph Diamond, head of the summer Archeological Field School sponsored by the State University of New York at New Paltz, will be the featured speaker at Historic Huguenot Street’s Second Saturday talk on Saturday, April 10th.
The Archeological Field School, which is administered by the Department of Anthropology, has been based at Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz for the past several summers. Students working under the direction of Professor Diamond conduct archaeological digs on the six-acre site where a small group of French-speaking Huguenots founded New Paltz in 1678.
The project is an excellent example of “town-gown” collaboration. Students receive credit for their participation in the field school and Historic Huguenot Street gains valuable and new information about the community’s earliest years.
Work conducted most recently on the lawn opposite the DuBois Fort Visitor Center is revealing an interesting variety of European and Native American artifacts along with what may the foundation of at least one early home and a protective stockade fence. Nothing of these two features remains above ground. “While we are fortunate to have some very early documents in our archives,” says Eric Roth, executive director of Historic Huguenot Street, “These alone do not explain what this settlement looked like in the years before the stone houses were built. Professor Diamond’s work has dramatically expanded our understanding of these years and of Native American presence before the Huguenots arrived.”
The talk will be held on Saturday, April 10th at 7pm at Deyo Hall, located at 6 Broadhead Avenue between North Chestnut and Huguenot Streets in downtown New Paltz. Because street work on Broadhead Avenue may be underway during this time, those attending are advised to enter on North Front Street and following the signs to Deyo Hall. More information or directions can be found by visiting www.huguenotstreet.org or by calling (845) 255-1889
Photo: Pit Showing Possible Stockade Fence Post Holes (Courtesy HHS).