Exhibits

John Singer Sargent, Totem Pole, at Fenimore Museum

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On Saturday, May 29, the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. becomes a hub of family-friendly activity with two exciting events: the long-awaited unveiling of the Museum’s newest acquisition – a thirty-foot Haida totem pole as well as the opening of the John Singer Sargent exhibition.

The Museum opens its doors at 10:00 a.m. offering the first public glimpses of the new exhibition John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women. This major exhibition features 25 works by John Singer Sargent, the foremost American portrait painter of the late 19th-century.

At 1:00 pm, the Museum unveils the latest addition to the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art &#8211 a Haida Totem Pole carved by Reg Davidson, Haida artist and master carver. The 30’ tall, 4’ wide cedar carving will showcase the work of a contemporary Native artist to a large public audience. Renowned art collector Mr. Eugene V. Thaw commissioned the internationally acclaimed artist to create the contemporary totem pole for the Museum which was completed and delivered early this spring.

Schedule: (Related activities begin Wednesday, May 26th)

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

10:30 a.m. Village Library of Cooperstown – Story Hour
Children’s Librarian Martha Sharer will read a totem pole themed book and have a related craft project during their preschool story hour. Please bring your little one to share in this fun family time.

7:30 p.m. FAM Auditorium &#8211 Otsego Institute lecture

Chuuchkamalthnii (Ron Hamilton) This is Mine: Nuu-Chah-Nulth Territory, Beliefs, and Material Culture

Nuu-chah-nulth artist Chuuchkamalthnii (Ron Hamilton) of Hupacasath First Nation has over 45 years experience as a member and active participant in traditional ritual and ceremonial life, acting as: singer, dancer, speaker, composer, carver, painter, and, most significantly as a planner concentrating on traditional Nuu-Chah-Nulth protocols. Most recently he collaborated on the documentary film, We Come From One Root, (Histakshitl Ts’awaatskwii).

Saturday, May 29, 2010

10:00 a.m. Fenimore Art Museum opens for the day

11:30 a.m. Children’s Center – Story Hour

Children’s Librarian Martha Sherer will read a totem pole themed book and have a related craft project. Come share in this fun family time. (Suggested ages: 1 &#8211 8)

1:00 p.m. Official unveiling of the totem pole

Join D. Stephen Elliott, Dr. Douglas Evelyn, Totem Pole creator Reg Davidson, and others for this long-awaited event.

1:30 p.m. Performance by the Rainbow Creek Dancers (Haida)

2:30 p.m. Totem Pole Talk by Steve Brown (associate curator of Native American art at the Seattle Art Museum) &#8211 Fenimore Art Museum Auditorium

Totem Pole Carving Styles of the NW Coast

A photo-illustrated presentation on the various totem carving styles of the NW Coast, their differences and similarities. The Kwakwakawakw, Nuxalk, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, and other NW Coast peoples developed individual sculptural techniques and styles that enable one to differentiate between the totemic works of these groups, and this presentation will be an introduction to the carving styles that have developed on the coast.

Steven Clay Brown has been a student of NW Coast Native cultures since the mid-1960s. He has participated in numerous carving projects from totem poles to dugout canoes in Native communities in Alaska and Washington State. In 1986, he began a writing career that has flourished to include more than five major books in this field, a large number of chapters in other books as well as numerous articles and scholarly papers. Brown lives in Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula with his wife Irma and their son Abaya.

5:00 p.m. Fenimore Art Museum closes to the general public.

7:00 p.m. Members Opening for John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women
(Not already a member? You can sign-up at the door!)

The Fenimore Art Museum will have ongoing children’s’ activities such as totem pole pages to color in the Education Room throughout the day. Please check the Museum’s website (FenimoreArtMuseum.org) or inquire at the admissions desk for more information.

Food will be available for purchase.

About the totem pole

The figures on the pole, from bottom to top, include: Beaver, Raven, Eagle – one of the major crests in Haida culture, and Black-finned Whale – one of the artist’s family crests. These figures tell a traditional Haida story of a raven stealing a beaver lodge. The totem pole is painted in the traditional Haida colors of black and red, with the natural cedar as a base.

The totem pole will be permanently sited on the Museum’s park-like front lawn and will be accompanied by an interpretive panel to provide important details about the piece.

Totem poles have a long tradition among the Native American peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and may be one of the most widely recognized art forms from that region.

About Reg Davidson, Haida artist and totem pole carver

Internationally acclaimed Haida artist and master carver Reg Davidson creates large and small cedar sculptures, silk-screen prints, jewelry, weaving, carved masks and painted drums. Born in 1954 in Masset, Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), British Columbia. Davidson was taught by his father, Claude Davidson, chief of the village of Dadens, Haida Gwaii. Many members of the Davidson family are artists, including his well-known brother, Robert Davidson. Davidson is an accomplished dancer and singer with the Rainbow Creek Dancers, a Haida Dance group formed by the brothers in 1980. Davidson designed and created much of the dance regalia for the group including masks, drums, and kid leather dance capes. Davidson’s style shows reverence for the masters and has changed only slightly over the years. &#8220Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve,&#8221 he says. His work is included in private collections throughout North America, Germany, Holland, England and Japan.

About John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women

Divided into three thematic sections &#8211 Women of Fashion, Women of Mystery, and Women of Substance &#8211 the exhibition showcases images of women who exerted leadership in the arts and society as well as in their careers and in the intellectual community. It will also demonstrate Sargent’s keen interest in exotic women little known or understood by an American audience, and his visual assertion of the importance of mystery in the definition of femininity.

John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women features well known subjects such as Sargent’s famous Capriote model Rosina Ferrara and perhaps his most famous (or infamous) subject of all, Virginie Avegno Gautreau, or Madame X, represented in the exhibition by two preparatory drawings for her 1883-4 portrait.

“John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women breaks new ground in several ways,&#8221 commented Dr. Paul S. D’Ambrosio, Vice President and Chief Curator at the Fenimore Art Museum and exhibition organizer. &#8220It is the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to Sargent’s portraits of women. It is the first exhibition to directly compare the varied attributes of the women Sargent portrayed and the visual strategies employed by the artist to communicate those characteristics. Lastly, paired with the Museum’s new exhibition Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace, the first exhibition of the Museum’s collection of historic costumes, the Sargent exhibition will be the first to allow visitors to see and experience broader historical context of women’s fashion.&#8221

A full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition. A variety of public progra
ms will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition.

Pricing

The Totem Pole Celebration takes place on the Museum’s front lawn and is free to everyone. Museum admission is only $12.00 for Adults and Juniors (13-64)- $10.50 for Seniors (65+)- Children 12 and under are free. NYSHA members are always free as well as active and retired career military personnel.

Grateful Dead Exhibit at the NY Historical Society

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Tracing the career and achievements of a band that became one of the most significant cultural forces in 20th century America, the New-York Historical Society presents The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition, on view until July 4, 2010, represents the first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Through a wealth of original materials, the exhibition will explore the musical creativity and influence of the Grateful Dead from 1965 to 1995, the sociological phenomenon of the Deadheads (the band’s network of devoted fans) and the enduring impact of the Dead’s pioneering approach to the music business. Among the objects in the exhibition will be documents, instruments, audio and video recordings, album art, photographs, platinum records, posters, programs, newsletters, tickets, and t-shirts and other merchandise. Highlights will include the band’s first record contract, tour itineraries, backstage guest lists, decorated fan mail, rare LP test pressings, drawings for the fabled Wall of Sound amplifier array, scripts for the Grateful Dead ticket hotline, notebooks of Dead archivist Dick Latvala, life-size skeleton props used in the band’s “Touch of Grey” video and large-scale marionettes and other stage props.

“Despite the Grateful Dead’s close association with California, the band and New York have been an important part of each other’s history from the first time the Dead played here in 1967 to the band’s year-on-year performances in New York from the late 1970s through 1995,” commented Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “This exhibition not only celebrates the band’s relationship with New York but its tremendous impact on American culture.”

&#8220The Grateful Dead Archive is one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th century,&#8221 said Christine Bunting, the head of Special Collections and Archives at the University Library at UC Santa Cruz. &#8220We are delighted that the Historical Society is presenting this unprecedented exhibition, providing the public and the thousands of fans with such an exciting overview of the band’s musical journey.”

The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society provides unique glimpses into the political and social upheavals and artistic awakenings of the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous and transformative period that shaped our current cultural and political landscape, and examines how the Grateful Dead’s origin in northern California in the mid-1960s was informed by the ideology and spirit of both the Beat Generation and the burgeoning Hippie scene, including the now-legendary Acid Tests. The exhibition also explores how the band’s refusal to follow the established rules of the record industry revealed an unexpected business savvy that led to innovations in a rapidly changing music industry, and also to a host of consumer-driven marketing enrichments that kept fans in frequent contact with the band.

Co-curated by Debra Schmidt Bach, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts, and Nina Nazionale, Director of Library Operations at the New-York Historical Society, the exhibition will be organized thematically, beginning with an examination of the Grateful Dead’s early days in the Bay Area and its first performance in New York City. Other major exhibition themes include the band’s musical artistry, the business of the Grateful Dead, and the band’s special relationship with its fans.

Materials in the exhibition will be drawn almost exclusively from the extraordinary holdings of the Grateful Dead Archive, established in 2008, along with a small number of objects on loan from Grateful Dead Productions and private collectors. A series of public programs will complement the exhibition.

About the Grateful Dead Archive

The Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California at Santa Cruz, University Library, represents one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th Century. It documents the Dead’s incredible creative activity and influence in contemporary music history from 1965 to 1995, including the phenomena of the Deadheads, the band’s extensive network of devoted fans, and the band’s highly unusual and successful musical business ventures.

The Archive contains original documents, clippings, media, article and other publications about the Dead and its individual members, its tours and performances, productions, and business. Among the resources that will be invaluable for researchers are show files, programs, newsletters, posters, cover art, photographs, tickets and stickers. These artifacts document three decades of the band’s recordings and its performance of thousands of concerts. A collection of stage props, tour exhibit material, and, of course, tee-shirts gives dimension and visual impact to the collection. An unusual feature of the Archive will be the correspondence and art contributed over the years by supportive Deadheads and held as very important by the Dead.

The Archive, when processed, will be widely and freely accessible to fans and scholars It will be housed on the UCSC campus, and material from it will be prominently displayed and available for listening, viewing, and research in a dedicated Grateful Dead room located in UCSC’s new and renovated McHenry Library.

It is expected to take two years to process the Archive- parts of the collections will be debuted in stages as processing progresses. Material in the Archive will be physically preserved, its content described in detail in an electronically available finding aid, and digital copies, when appropriate, will be offered for viewing and listening from a UCSC Grateful Dead web site.

Photo: Amalie Rothschild, Fillmore East Marquee, December 1969. Special Collections, University of California, Santa Cruz. Grateful Dead Archive. Provided.

Adirodnack Museum to Open for 53rd Season

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The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, New York will open for the 53rd season on Friday, May 28, 2010. Food and fun are on the menu this year as the museum opens a tasty new exhibit and introduces a host of activities and special events.

The Adirondack Museum extends a special invitation to year-round residents of the Adirondack Park to visit free of charge in May, June, and October. Through this offer to friends and neighbors, the museum welcomes visitors from all corners of the Park. Proof of residency is required.

The museum is open daily from May 28 through October 18, 2010. Hours are 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. There will be an early closing on August 13, and extended hours on August 14- the museum will close for the day on September 10. Please visit the web site www.adirondackmuseum.org for exact times and details. All paid admissions are valid for a second visit within a one-week period.

The Adirondack Museum will celebrate food, drink, and the pleasures of eating in the Adirondack Park in a new exhibition, &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions.&#8221 The exhibit shares culinary stories and customs from Native American corn soup to contemporary Farmer’s Markets.

As the museum’s Chief Curator Laura Rice observes, &#8220Everybody eats! It is a biological necessity, a pleasure, and a ritual. The food we eat and the way we eat it reflects our culture, our economic status, and our environment.&#8221

Generations of residents and visitors have left their mark on Adirondack food traditions. From indigenous foods to family recipes brought from the Old World, from church potluck suppers to cooking around a campfire, food has played an important role in Adirondack life.

&#8220Let’s Eat!&#8221 will feature nearly 300 artifacts that reflect what and how Adirondackers, from pre-contact Native peoples to today’s foodies, have eaten. The exhibition draws on the Adirondack Museum’s rich collections, including a 3,000-year-old stone bowl, a cheese press, a raisin seeder, a blue silk evening dress, and a recipe for &#8220Tokay wine&#8221 in which potatoes are the main ingredients.

Interviews with Adirondack cooks, camp workers, guides, vacationers, and residents will provide first-person accounts of elaborate cookouts at Great Camps, maple sugaring, Prohibition, and the daily routine of a lumber camp cook.

Hand-written menus and journals provide an intimate look at food in family life. Posters advertising turkey shoots, dances, and potlucks illustrate the ways that food has served as the center of social life in small hamlets. Historic photographs depict people dining inside and out, in crowded mess halls, on picnic blankets, and seated at elegant tables.

&#8220Let’s Eat!&#8221 will include a &#8220Three Sister’s Garden,&#8221 newly planted on the museum campus. Native peoples throughout North America have traditionally used a wide range of farming techniques. Perhaps the best known is the inter-planting of corn, beans, and squash, a trio often referred to as the &#8220three sisters.&#8221

The exhibit will bring the story of food in the Adirondacks to the present day with an exploration of Farmer’s Markets, organic agriculture, and the rising interest in locally grown produce and meats.

Eating in the Adirondack Park today may be a gourmet-multi-course affair, or a simple hot dog-on-a-stick cooked over a campfire. All Adirondackers, whether year round or seasonal residents, vacationers or day-trippers, have favorite foods. The Adirondack Museum invites one and all to celebrate their favorites in &#8220Let’s Eat!&#8221 in 2010.

&#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions&#8221 has been generously supported by the
New York Council for the Humanities.

In addition, two popular special exhibits will return for a second year. &#8220Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters&#8221 includes historic quilts from the museum’s textile collection as well as contemporary comforters, quilts, and pieced wall hangings. &#8220A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’: Early Reflections of the Adirondacks&#8221 highlights paintings, maps, prints, and photographs that illustrate the untamed Adirondack wilderness discovered by early travelers and explorers.

Families should head for the new Little Log Cabin &#8211 open for exploration and fun this season. The pint-sized log structure is just right for &#8220make-believe&#8221 wilderness adventures. The area surrounding the cabin has been planted with rhubarb, strawberries, horseradish, and herbs as part of &#8220Let’s Eat!&#8221 &#8220Mrs. Merwin’s Kitchen Garden&#8221 is located nearby.

The museum will offer a full schedule of lectures, field trips, family activities, hands-on experiences, and special events to delight and engage visitors of all ages. &#8220Let’s Eat!&#8221 events include &#8220Picnic in the Park&#8221 planned for July 10, &#8220The Adirondacks Are Cookin’ Out!&#8221 &#8211 a tribute to food prepared with smoke and fire &#8211 on July 29, and Harvest Festival, October 2 & 3, 2010.

The Adirondack Museum tells stories of the people &#8211 past and present &#8212- who have lived, worked, and played in the unique place that is the Adirondack Park. History is in our nature. The museum is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. For information about all that the museum has to offer, please call (518) 352-7311, or visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.

Exhibit: John Lindsay, The Reinvention New York

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America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention New York, an exhibition on view at the Museum of the City of New York from May 5 through October 3, 2010, will examine the controversial career and dramatic times of New York’s 103rd mayor. The exhibition presents John V. Lindsay’s efforts to govern a city that was undergoing dramatic changes and that was at the center of the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s- it will highlight Mayor Lindsay’s ambitious initiatives to redefine New York’s government, economy, culture, and public life. Through his outspoken championship of urban values, commitment to civil rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war, Lindsay emerged as a national figure in a troubled and exhilarating era- yet the costs of his approach included the alienation of many members of the white working class and an increasingly out-of-control city budget.

America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York will be launched with a symposium moderated by Sam Roberts on May 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm. to be followed by an opening reception. A companion publication of the same title accompanies the exhibition- it is co-published by the Museum and the Columbia University Press and is edited by Sam Roberts.

Exhibition Overview: “City in Crisis”

The exhibition will open with a sketch of the problems facing the city in 1965, the year that Lindsay first ran for mayor, in which a New York Herald Tribune series declared New York to be a “city in crisis.” Problems included poverty, racial tensions, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and questionable accounting practices. Television commercials created by David Garth for the Lindsay campaign will be on view at the beginning of the exhibition- these highlighted his youth and charismatic good looks. He campaigned as a fresh alternative to the Democratic establishment and backroom politics, and as a candidate ready to take on the problems of the city, to embrace minority communities, and to use government to change New York for the better. Lindsay’s bold campaign will be documented through posters, fliers, bumper stickers, buttons, cartoons, and documents including a handwritten schedule showing his speaking schedule in New York’s ethnic neighborhoods.

The exhibition will go on to show that Lindsay’s inauguration as mayor threw him directly into a cauldron of race, class, and political tensions. This section of America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York will open with his first day in office, when the first transit strike against the New York City Transit Authority paralyzed buses and subways for 12 days. The dramatic confrontation between Lindsay and Michael J. Quill of the Transit Workers Union highlighted the risks of Lindsay’s new labor strategy, and ultimately, despite Mayor Lindsay’s tough talk, the settlement led to a victory for the TWU that paved the way for expensive contracts with other municipal workers during both of Lindsay’s two terms.

“Two Cities, Separate and Unequal”

In the years that followed, Lindsay engaged other volatile issues of a city transformed by increasing unrest. A major focus of the exhibition will be his bold initiatives with the black community- through photographs, video, and original documents, the exhibition will show Lindsay’s commitment to reaching out to minority neighborhoods and to addressing the problems of what he called “two cities, separate and unequal.” A particularly dramatic part of this section of the exhibition will be a rare photograph of Lindsay visiting the streets of Harlem on the night of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and video of his press conference the next day. Lindsay’s relations with black New Yorkers are credited with helping to prevent wide scale riots like those that devastated other American cities.

On the other hand, as the exhibition shows, Lindsay’s efforts to aid the black community and to enhance community control led to racially charged controversies such as the fight over civilian review of the police, the Ocean Hill-Brownville school crisis, and white middle-class anger over failure to plow the snow from the streets in the outer boroughs that almost cost him reelection in 1969. Yet at the same time, in the atmosphere of the growing militancy of the late 1960s, as expressed in the movements for women’s rights, gay rights, Latino rights, and against the Vietnam war, Lindsay emerged as a hero to many because of his support of the antiwar movement, his defense of free speech, and his championship of justice for the disempowered. The exhibition showcases pro- and anti-Lindsay picket signs, fliers, buttons, and photographs of demonstrations on a variety of causes.

Another section of the exhibition will explore Lindsay’s ambitious efforts to remake city government for the people and by the people. His approach included expanding the role of government in public welfare, including: increased services, ranging from open enrollment in the city universities to air-conditioning subway cars- ambitious public health initiatives, such as anti-lead poisoning campaigns and drug addiction clinics- pioneering regulatory agencies to protect the public good, such as the nation’s first Environmental Protection agency and the nation’s first Consumer Affairs agency- and groundbreaking focus on urban design in planning, creating special zoning districts and using such tools as incentive zoning and banking air rights to leverage private development dollars to achieve public ends. This section of the exhibition will show striking renderings of built and proposed initiatives such as the proposed Madison Avenue pedestrian mall, Manhattan landing, and the South Street Special District. It will also highlight Lindsay’s emphasis on community participation and decentralization, through tools such as “Little City Halls” in the neighborhoods and community planning boards.

These new and expanded programs were expensive, however, and the exhibition will explore the spiraling costs of welfare, education, generous labor contracts, and other municipal services, along with the diminution of resources to pay for them, as the national economy entered recession and the support of the federal and state government was scaled back. The exhibition will present the debate over the management of the budget by Lindsay and the city comptroller, Abraham Beame, who would go on to be the 104th mayor of the city and in whose term the financial chicanery involving the city’s budget brought New York to the brink of bankruptcy. The exhibition will conclude with an examination of the evaluation of Lindsay’s effect on the city.

A number of other major initiatives will be taking place in conjunction with the exhibition- these include a PBS documentary, The Lindsay Years, which is scheduled to air on WNET/Channel 13 on May 6th. In addition to public programs organized by the Museum of the City of New York throughout the run of the exhibition, a series of special programs are being organized by the Museum in conjunction with other New York institutions. With John Jay College of Criminal Justice (www.jjay.cuny.edu), the topic of criminal justice and law enforcement will be discussed- with the Paley Center for Media (www.paleycenter.org) Mayor Lindsay’s relationship with the press will be explored and with the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College (the Mayor’s urban management innovations will be reassessed). For information and reservations, visit www.jjay.cuny.edu, www.paleycenter.org, and/or www.zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu.

Photo: John Lindsay. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Adirondack History Center Annouces 2010 Schedule

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The Adirondack History Center Museum, located in the old school building at the corner of Route 9N and Hand Avenue in Elizabethtown, Essex County, has announced it’s 2010 Season of events and exhibits.

In addition to the season’s events, the museum displays artifacts from over two centuries of life in Essex County and the central Adirondacks. The diverse collection includes 18th century artifacts, an 1887 Concord stagecoach, an iron bobsled from the 1932 Olympic Games, a 58 foot Fire Observation Tower to climb, a colonial garden patterned after the gardens of Hampton Court, England and Colonial Williamsburg, and more.

The Museum is open 10am &#8211 5pm, 7 days a week from late May through mid-October. The Brewster Library is open all year by appointment only. Admission: Adults $5, Seniors $4, Students $2. Ages 6 and under are free.

The 2010 Schedule includes:

Exhibits

A Sign of the Times May 29- October 31

Curators have mined the museum’s collection, scoured the region, and called upon the citizens of Essex County to gather SIGNS! The exhibit focuses on SIGNS &#8211 all things that convey ideas, information, commands, designations or directions. Displayed wall to wall and ceiling to floor this exhibit prompts the viewer to discuss and ponder facts, purposes, qualities, and gestures conveyed by signs.

Swan Furniture June 19 – October 31

This exhibit highlights the Swans and their craftsmanship as important symbols of Westport and Wadhams cultural heritage. The furniture places the Swans into historical context as representatives of our human landscape. A unique blend of pieces provides visitors an opportunity to reflect on the furniture as art objects and artifacts in a museum setting.

ACNA Cover Art Show Sept. 20 – October 31

The 23rd year of the Arts Council for the Northern Adirondacks (ACNA) Cover Art Show featuring local artists. Thirty donated artworks for a Silent Auction are included in the exhibition. The winning Cover Art show piece is to be raffled at &#8220Field, Forest and Stream Day&#8221 on September 25th, 2010.

Events

Can History be Reconciled? A Conversation on Compassion & Courage

July 9, 4pm

Whether we’re reading the esoteric histories of others or dealing with our own, some issues are difficult to grasp and process. Don Papson, President of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association, will engage the audience in a discussion on compassion and courage in light of oppression, slavery and liberation.

Lecture: Captain Brown’s Birthday Party by Amy Godine

July 11, 4 pm

From 1922 into the 1960s, black pilgrims from northern cities joined ranks with white Adirondackers to honor the May 9 birthday of the militant abolitionist John Brown with speeches, concerts, sermons and prayers, earning Lake Placid a reputation as an oasis of interracial tranquility in the age of Jim Crow. How was each group able to find common cause in John Brown? How did each group use the other to promote its own agenda? And whose version of John Brown prevails at his home and gravesite in North Elba, a state-managed historic site since 1897? Join us to hear Historian Amy Godine answer these questions and examine the struggle it both enabled and concealed over John Brown’s public image and the meaning of freedom itself.

Fundraiser: Elizabethtown Historic Slide Show for the Town Hall Stained Glass Window Project

July 18, 4 pm

Back with added photographs and materials, local historian, Margaret Bartley, is offering the Elizabethtown Historic Slide Show for a second year as part of the Elizabethtown Day celebration. Proceeds from this event benefit the restoration of the Elizabethtown Town Hall stained glass windows, a project of Historic Pleasant Valley and the Essex County Historical Society. Any and all donations are welcome.

Museum Benefit: Come as you ART

July 24, 8pm

An evening of dance, delicacies, and expressive dress. Design and create your own clothing. Let your artistic side or a work of art inspire your attire. Music provided by the Chrome Cowboys.

Performance: Bits & Pieces

About a Bridge

Fridays: July 30, Aug 6 & 13, 11am / Sunday August 1, 4pm

This theatrical elegy weaves together voices from the life of the Champlain Bridge.

Lecture: Asanath Nicholson: Adirondack Teacher and World Humanitarian by Maureen Murphy

August 8, 4 pm

Maureen Murphy, Professor of Curriculum and Teaching in the School of Education in Health and Human Services at Hofstra University conveys the history of Asenath Hatch Nicholson, an early 19th century woman, schoolteacher, health reformer, traveler, writer, evangelist, social worker and peace activist. Asenath Hatch Nicholson (1792-1855), born in Chelsea, Vermont, made her way across Lake Champlain to Elizabethtown, New York. At age 21, she started a boarding school on Water Street for students from the town and neighboring farms. While in Elizabethtown, she met her husband Norman Nicholson, a local widower with a young family. The couple moved to New York City where Nicholson became a disciple of the health reformer Sylvester Graham. Nicholson opened a Grahamite boarding house and worked among the poor. After she was widowed, she set out from New York on a fifteen-month visit to Ireland to “investigate the condition of the Irish poor,” reading the Bible to country people, and sharing their hospitality, leaving us with a glimpse of Ireland on the eve of the Great Irish Famine in her book Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger (1847).

Festival: Field, Forest & Stream Sept 25, 10-3:30

A harvest festival sponsored by the Arts Council for the Northern Adirondacks and the Elizabethtown-Lewis Chamber of Commerce featuring demonstrations and exhibits by regional craftspeople, antique dealers, storytellers and musical performances.

Fenimore Art Museum Opens For Season

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The Fenimore Art Museum, in Cooperstown, reopened for the 2010 season with four new exhibitions on Thursday, April 1. These diverse exhibitions include examples of 19th-century fashion, folk art, photography, and contemporary landscape painting.

Starting this year, admission for children 12 and under is free. This price change will allow more families the opportunity to experience the Museum, its acclaimed exhibitions, and its unique educational programs. Adult admission (13-64) is $12.00 and senior admission (65 and up) is $10.50. NYSHA members, active military, and retired career military are always free.

Exhibition highlights include:

Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace: A Century of New York Fashion
(April 1, 2010 – December 31, 2010)

Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace is an exciting exhibition of the Museum’s collection of historic dresses. When viewed in conjunction with the John Singer Sargent exhibition (opening May 29), the show enables visitors to see and experience a broader historical context of men’s and women’s fashion. Even though upstate New York was considered the edge of the western frontier in the 19th century, residents of the area kept up with New York City and the world in terms of fashion. The exhibition includes the oldest known example of a dress with a label, stunning examples of Empire, Romantic and Civil War era dresses and turn-of-the-20th century items. Additionally, visitors will be able to peek at what was worn underneath the dresses which were vital to giving them their distinctive shapes. This exhibition is funded in part by The Coby Foundation.

In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers
(April 1, 2010 – September 6, 2010)

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)- prisoners of war returning home to Vienna, Austria (1947)- Ghandi’s funeral in India (1948)- 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)- a Shriner’s parade in Boston (1974)- 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.

Watermark: Michele Harvey & Glimmerglass
(April 1, 2010 – December 31, 2010)

Michele Harvey spends most of the year in her summer studio in upstate New York. Among her various formats, Harvey’s signature triptych formats often include quiet roads or paths framing a central scene that provides one with the sense of simultaneously entering and leaving her misted landscapes. The union of the darker colors of the trees and the distinct light of the vaporous sky create a calming rhythm that draws the viewer into a mysterious world where time appears to stand still.

Harvey is enchanted by the environs of Cooperstown and the opportunity to create works based here. &#8220The lake, its history, the views&#8230- all conspired to take me off the beaten path. I felt the lure of Glimmerglass as it must have felt to James Fenimore Cooper. For the first time I became a tourist, humbled by the scenery.&#8221

Watermark: Michele Harvey & Glimmerglass represents a melding of the two- adding her own style to the venerable history of landscape art already created here.

Virtual Folk: A Blog Readers’ Choice
(April 1, 2010 – December 31, 2010)

Virtual Folk: A Blog Readers’ Choice is an exhibition of exceptional folk art objects from the Fenimore Art Museum’s vast collection, chosen by the readers of our folk art blog &#8211 American Folk Art @ Cooperstown.

Bits of Home
(April 1, 2010 &#8211 December 31, 2010)

Visitors to the Fenimore Art Museum have long enjoyed the extraordinary collections of fine art, folk art, and American Indian art held by the New York State Historical Association. Less well known are the thousands of historical artifacts in the collections storage areas. Bits of Home acquaints visitors with these historical collections by featuring a selection of more than 30 artifacts from NYSHA and The Farmers’ Museum’s extensive collections of domestic life in nineteenth-century New York.

Opening Later in the Season…

John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women
(May 29, 2010 &#8211 December 31, 2010)

The Fenimore Art Museum presents the first major exhibition on the topic of portraits of women by the well-known American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). The exhibition explores Sargent’s range of styles and depth of characterization in his portraits of society women, as well as his fascination with exotic working-class women of Venice and Capri. The paintings and drawings provide an intimate glimpse into the lives of these women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included will be drawings of Madame Gautreau, the mysterious subject of Sargent’s famous portrait Madame X.

Picturing Women: American Art from the Permanent Collections
(July 18, 2009 &#8211 December 31, 2009)

Ongoing Exhibitions…

Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art
Eugene and Clare Thaw Gallery

The Coopers of Cooperstown
Cooper Room

Genre Paintings from the Permanent Collection
Paneled Room

American Memory: Recalling the Past in Folk Art
Main Gallery

From April 1 through May 10, the museum will be open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 am to 4 pm, closed on Mondays. Summer hours begin on May 11 and continue through October 11. During the summer season, the museum is open seven days a week from 10 am to 5 pm. Please visit their website for more information – www.fenimoreartmuseum.org.

Museum of American Finance Exhibit: Scandal!

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On Thursday, April 29, the Museum of American Finance will open “Scandal!: Financial Crime, Chicanery and Corruption that Rocked America,” a richly informative exhibit about the history of financial scandals in America. “Scandal!” will cover several of the major scandals in American finance, from William Duer’s role in the Crash of 1792 through Lehman’s colossal downfall. The Salad Oil and Teapot Dome scandals, Ponzi schemes from Charles Ponzi himself to Bernie Madoff, Credit Mobilier and Enron scandals will also be featured. Artifacts range from historical newspapers and images to original documents and objects from some of history’s most infamous white collar criminals.

According to Leena Akhtar, the Museum’s director of exhibits and archives, “Scandal!” is particularly relevant today in light of the financial schemes and accounting frauds that have occurred over the last decade.

“The purpose of the exhibit is to connect recent events to what has happened in the past, and to educate students, investors, industry professionals and aspiring Wall Street professionals about the history and consequences of dishonesty in government and finance,” Akhtar said.

Marc Hodak, managing director of Hodak Value Advisors and an adjunct associate professor at New York University, served as a guest curator of the exhibit. Hodak teaches a class at the NYU Stern School of Business entitled “A History of Scandal: The Evolution of Corporate Governance.”

All are welcome to attend a reception to open “Scandal!” on Thursday, April 29, from 5 – 7 pm. For information and reservations, please contact Lindsay Seeger at 212-908-4110 or [email protected]. Working members of the press should contact Kristin Aguilera at 212-908-4695 or [email protected]. “Scandal!” will be on display through April 29, 2011.

Exhibition Celebrates Important Literary Couple

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A new exhibit which will run for the next year at the The New York Society Library. &#8220Literary Lives: The World of Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller&#8221 will feature Shirley Hazzard, award-winning author, and Francis Steegmuller, award-winning author, Flaubert expert and translator along with unique images from Hazzard’s private collection.

Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire, unlocks her private collection of personal photographs and books that gives a first-ever look at the life she shared with her husband, Francis Steegmuller, whose pioneering work on Flaubert, Cocteau, and de Maupassant brought him worldwide acclaim.

On view at The New York Society Library, this FREE exhibition will also display photographs of European landmarks taken by Steegmuller, a gifted photographer whose work behind the lens has not been seen before. A 44-page catalogue accompanies the exhibit which will run from March 24, 2010 to January 31, 2011 at the New York Society Library’s, Peluso Family Exhibition Gallery, 53 East 79th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, New York, NY. Admission is free.

Celebrating Women of the Hudson River School

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The Thomas Cole National Historic Site will present “Remember the Ladies: Women Artists of the Hudson River School”, believed to be the first exhibition ever to focus solely on women artists associated with the 19th century landscape painting movement. The exhibition, which opens on May 8, 2010 is co-curated by Jennifer C. Krieger, of Hawthorne Fine Art in Manhattan and Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History at Towson University, Towson, MD.

“Remember the Ladies: Women Artists of the Hudson River School” will feature approximately 25 works including paintings, embroidered landscapes, photography, and drawing manuals by artists, such as Julia Hart Beers (sister to William and James Hart), Evelina Mount (niece to William Sidney Mount), Susie Barstow, Eliza Greatorex, Harriet Cany Peale, and Josephine Walters among others. The paintings of Thomas Cole’s sister, Sara Cole, and her daughter Emily Cole will also be on view.

By the turn of the 19th century, schools, seminaries, and private instructors were already providing artistic education for young women, particularly in the art of landscape painting. Women traveled in increasing numbers to experience the American landscape and wrote of their adventures poetically. “Remember the Ladies” seeks to increase awareness of a previously little-celebrated but highly-talented and accomplished group of women artists associated with the well-known Hudson River School.

Following its stay at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site the exhibition will travel to Hawthorne Fine Art in the fall of 2010. Plans are underway by Siegel and Krieger to develop a more extensive version of the exhibition to travel nationally.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a printed catalogue with full-color illustrations co-written by Krieger and Dr. Siegel. The title of the exhibition is taken from a letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams in 1776: “I desire you would Remember the Ladies… if particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion.”

The Thomas Cole Historic Site is located at 218 Spring Street in Catskill, New York. For information regarding the exhibition and directions, call 518-943-7465 or visit www.thomascole.org.

Illustration: Mary Blood Mellen (1817-1882) &#8220Field Beach, c1850s&#8221 Oil on canvas on board, 24 x 33 15/16 in. Cape Ann Museum, Gift of Jean Stanley Dise, 1970.2019-2

NY Folklore – Textured Stories: The Works of Denise Allen

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The New York Folklore Society will be presenting &#8220Textured Stories: The Works of Denise Allen&#8221 at its gallery at 113 Jay Street, Schenectady through March 26th. I asked the Folklore Society to describe Lisa’s work for us and this is what they sent:

She lived for many years in Bedford-Stuyvesant (in Brooklyn), her hometown. Her mother was a seamstress in the sense that she made a lot of the family cloths, etc. Denise, however, was not a trained seamstress. She worked as a legal secretary, and had no intention of becoming an artist. After her mother died, however, she became very depressed. She walked into a Woolworth’s store one day, saw the embroidery kits there, which reminded her of her mother, and felt &#8220called&#8221 to take that up to feel a connection with her mother. She has been doing needlework ever since.She does a unique kind of textured embroidery, not only involving needlework, but layering and adding material onto the fabric, such as wood, cardboard, wire, etc. She also creates dolls from the original design to the finishing touches. Her signatures pieces are her story cloths, textured artwork that often tells specific stories from her own life, as well as fictional stories that otherwise capture an expressive truth.

Her work focuses on themes of African-American life, particularly in the colonial period in America, and country living. She addresses themes of slavery, traditional life, life in the country, and so on.

After her son was killed in 9-11 (he worked in Tower 1), and her husband barely escaped (he worked on the 97th floor as a drafter for the Port Authority), she became extremely despondent. Because she had always been fascinated with country life after seeing a county fair event that had come to Brooklyn when she was a little girl, she and her husband decided to move up to upstate NY and live on a farm. She moved up to Palatine Bridge, and has been living there among the Amish for the past several years. She has a wonderful relationship with her neighbors, some of whom contribute wooden frames for her art. She has been working on a 9-11 story cloth, and recently completed it. It is now under consideration to be placed at the 9-11 Museum that is scheduled to be completed in 2012.