Exhibits

Cheval Glass: A Study of Form and Attribution

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Need a reason to go back to Boscobel? In addition to Shakespeare, GAC Sculptures, the Farmers’ Market and a variety of other special events on its calendar this year, Boscobel is presenting a uniquely, specialized house tour this summer with focus on its virtual showcase of furniture from renowned New York cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe. House tours through September 10 will conclude in the gallery with a limited-time exhibition curated by Judith A. Pavelock.

On display will be Boscobel’s own cheval glass – a “looking glass” which has reflected images as far back as 1820 &#8212- as well as a similar piece on loan from the Columbia County Historical Society and other related objects hand-picked from Boscobel’s collection to be showcased for an up-close and intimate inspection. Mirrors have a universal appeal, and this exhibition offers the chance to see an extraordinary piece of furniture – considered a chic, newfangled item in the 1800s – standing separately and spotlighted for all to enjoy.

“This behind-the-scenes exhibition is a rare opportunity to see select objects from Boscobel’s collection apart from our richly decorated period rooms and to see how we determine who made the cheval glass, even though it is not labeled and we do not know the history of its ownership,” says Pavelock.

The invention of the cheval glass, a type of tall dressing glass with a trestle base, was dependent upon technological improvements in glass making during the 16th century and the hundreds of 19th century journeymen and cabinetmakers who were inspired by designs they brought to New York City during a time when the economy was resilient, robust and competitive. In 1991, a cheval glass was donated to Boscobel without a maker’s label or history of ownership. It was attributed to the famous French emigre cabinetmaker of New York, Charles-Honore Lannuier (1779-1819).

This unique exhibition explores the origins and use of this specialized furniture form and how curators go about the process of attributing furniture to specific makers. Who made these looking glasses? Could the renowned New York master cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe have been involved in the production of any of these examples? Can the attribution to the famous Lannuier be sustained?

Boscobel visitors will have the opportunity to reflect upon these thoughts and more during the exhibit, Through the Cheval Glass: A Study of Form and Attribution, at no additional charge as part of their paid house tour admission June 17 – September 10, 2012.

Boscobel is a historic house museum, cultural venue and so much more. Located on scenic Route 9D in Garrison New York just one mile south of Cold Spring, Boscobel is directly across the river from West Point. From April through October, hours are 9:30am to 5pm (first tour at 10am- last at 4pm)- November & December 9:30am to 4pm (last tour at 3pm.) Boscobel is open every day except Tuesdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. For more information, visit www.Boscobel.org or call 845.265.3638.

Photo: Cheval Glass, New York City, 1820-1830, Collection of Boscobel

Iroquois Indian Museum Hosting Early Technology Day

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On July 4, The Iroquois Indian Museum will host its Early Technology Day, billed as a hands-on learning experience about life in early America.

Visitors can watch and participate in the process of flint knapping (the ancient art of making chipped stone tools), Primitive fire making, Atlatl spear throwing and early archery. There will be displays of projectile points, tools, and local archaeological finds from the Museum’s archaeology department. Have you ever found an artifact? Please bring it with you and the Museum’s experts will try to identify it for you.

Currently on display at the Museum is the exhibition, &#8220Birds and Beasts in Beads: 150 Years of Iroquois Beadwork.&#8221 The exhibit features more than 200 beaded objects, largely from the collection of retired archaeologist and Museum trustee, Dolores Elliott.

Early Technology Day takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event is free with paid admission to the Museum.  The Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from 12 Noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. It is closed Monday. Regular admission is $8 for adults, $6.50 for seniors/students and $5 for children ages 5-12. Children under five are free when accompanied by an adult. Special group rates are available by calling the Museum at 518-296-8949.

For more information contact the Iroquois Indian Museum at (518) 296-8949, [email protected] or visit www.iroquoismuseum.org.

Cayuga Museum Opens Newly-Renovated Theater Mack

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The Cayuga Museum has announced that Theater Mack, the carriage house undergoing renovation for the past several years, has reopened. A massive brick building originally constructed around 1850 on the foundation of an earlier wooden barn, the carriage house was turned into a theater in 1941 through a collaboration between the Cayuga Museum and the Auburn Community Players.

Once known as the Museum Playhouse, the building became the cultural hub of Auburn from the 1940’s through the 1960’s. The building gradually fell into disuse after the Auburn Children’s Theater, the company that became the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, outgrew the space in the 1970’s. Read more →

Hyde Lectures Begin with Tiffany Glass Expert

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On Sunday, June 17, 2012, The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY will present Lindsy R. Parrott, director and curator of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, New York City. Beginning at 2pm in the Froehlich Auditorium, Parrott will speak about The Hyde’s new exhibition, Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light, which was organized by the Neustadt Collection.  

Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light is part of the Museum’s “Summer of Light” which also includes Stephen Knapp: New Light in the Wood Gallery. Both exhibitions open June 17, 2012 and run through September 16, 2012.

Admission to the lecture is free with Museum admission. For this lecture, and others throughout the “Summer of Light” Lecture Series, open captioning for the hearing impaired will be provided, in part, by TDF and TAP Plus, which is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Parrott is a graduate faculty member in the History of Decorative Arts Program offered jointly through the Smithsonian and George Mason University. Prior to joining the Neustadt Collection in 2003, she served as Collections Assistant and Mobile Museum Manager at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida, which boasts the most comprehensive collection of Tiffany works in the world.

Parrott received her M.A. in the History of Decorative Arts from Parsons School of Design/Smithsonian Institution where she focused on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century ceramics and glass, with a specialization in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. She has also studied architecture and decorative arts through the Attingham Summer School in England and the Victorian Society Summer School in Newport.

Among her current projects, Parrott is a co-curator and co-author of the upcoming exhibition and accompanying catalog Louis C. Tiffany and the Art of Devotion. The show, which presents the first scholarly look at Tiffany’s significant artistic contributions to religious interiors, is organized by the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City and opens this October. Parrott has written and lectured extensively on various aspects of Tiffany’s career.

For more information, call 518-792-1761 or go to www.hydecollection.org.

First Exhibit Devoted Solely to William Matthew Prior

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Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed, the first exhibition devoted solely to this American folk artist, has opened at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The exhibition includes over 40 oil paintings spanning his lifelong career from 1824 to 1856 and will be on view through December 31.

“Of the many 19th century folk portrait painters, William Matthew Prior is one of the most accomplished and interesting,” said Fenimore Art Museum President and CEO, Dr. Paul S. D’Ambrosio. “The exhibition, expertly curated by Jacquelyn Oak, explores the blurry line between folk art and academic art in the early 19th century, and the intersection of folk art and the myriad reform and religious movements of the era.”
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N-Y Historical Society Planning WWII & NYC Exhibit

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The most widespread, destructive, and consequential conflict in history will be the subject of WWII & NYC, a major new exhibition planned for the New-York Historical Society from October 5, 2012 through May 27, 2013. The exhibit is expected to feature New York City’s multifaceted role in the war, and commemorate the 800,000 New Yorkers who served in combat while also exploring the many ways in which those who remained on the home front contributed to the war effort.

WWII & NYC will examine a metropolis massively mobilized for war, requiring unprecedented cooperation among government, business leaders, and average working citizens and affecting vast areas of the urban landscape.

A sprawling exhibition, installed throughout all floors of New-York Historical, is expected to include feature more than 300 objects, including artifacts, paintings, maps, models, photographs, posters, and other graphic materials, film footage, music, radio broadcasts, and newly recorded eyewitness accounts. Through these materials, themes ranging from the mobilization of workers to the struggles over civil rights, from the frenzy of rapid shipbuilding to the celebration of V-J Day in Times Square will be explored.

“If the American men and women who fought and won World War II can be described as the Greatest Generation, then New York’s unsurpassed contributions to the war effort can be said to have earned it the title ‘Greatest City,’” stated Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of New-York Historical. “What award-winning WWII & NYC curator Marci Reaven will show in this fascinating, and often astonishing exhibition, is how central the city was to a war whose battles were fought thousands of miles away—a story little known by most people today.”

The exhibition team for WWII & NYC also includes Kenneth T. Jackson, former president of the New-York Historical Society, who is chief historian for the project. The exhibition will draw upon New-York Historical’s extensive collections and on important loans from the U.S. Navy, Smithsonian Institution, the Mariners’ Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other institutions.

Plan of the Exhibition

WWII & NYC begins in the years before Pearl Harbor, when New York had already become the most important industrial metropolis on earth, the busiest port anywhere, the center of the world’s financial markets and the largest, richest city on the planet. As a result, New York was also at the center of both isolationist and interventionist sentiment as Americans debated whether to enter the war.

Among the materials in the exhibition bringing these debates to life are a 1941 “Wanted” poster produced by Fight for Freedom, Inc., an interventionist group, depicting Adolf Hitler as a criminal, and an October 1941 editorial cartoon in the leftist New York newspaper PM by Theodore Seuss Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss—criticizing the isolationists.

Following the passage of the Lend-Lease bill in 1941, which enabled the United States to supply the Allies, New York became one of the chief ports for war materiel shipments to Europe. A photograph from September 9, 1941 shows more than 100 British, Dutch, and Norwegian merchant ships passing through the Narrows to start their voyages across the Atlantic.

When the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor at last propelled the U.S. into the war, New York City’s maritime, industrial and transportation infrastructures would be entirely mobilized. The urban landscape took on a martial air, as defenses in the harbor were strengthened, old forts were updated and docks became high security zones. A painting by Thomas Hart Benton, Embarkation—Prelude to Death (Year of Peril, 1941-1942), was based on sketches the artist made in Brooklyn in August 1942, as the first American troops prepared to depart for Africa.

The presence of troops, refugees, and the wartime industries gave New York’s creative and commercial bustle a military tone. A photograph of Pennsylvania Station in August 1942 shows the concourse crowded with soldiers arriving from points across the United States, on their way to embark for North Africa and Europe. Also on view is Irving Boyer’s painting Prospect Park (ca. 1942-1944), which captures the raucous, sensual mood of the wartime city through a scene of soldiers and sailors enjoying a night on the town, which the artist glimpsed from a subway train at the Prospect Park BMT station.

The publishing and advertising industries instilled a sense of national purpose among Americans during wartime, convincing them to stay the course. Target No. 1 New York City, a 1942 poster designed by the influential graphic artist E. McKnight Kauffer, evokes the atmosphere of fear and urgency in the city after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Macy’s suspended its Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1942, consigning the balloon materials to a salvage yard to be used in the war effort, and a Macy’s advertising poster expresses confidence that the balloons will return in the future. A 1943 advertisement for Maidenform bras, created in reaction to threatened government restrictions on fabric and metal supplies, emphasizes that women workers are essential to the war effort and that brassieres are “a vital necessity to women at work.”

As husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers left their homes to serve, their wives, mothers and sisters mobilized for the war effort on the home front. Among other materials illustrating this theme, the exhibition will include recruiting posters, a dress uniform and photographs of the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), established in June 1942 as the female branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve, its members serving on shore duty to free men for duty at sea. The WAVES’s training headquarters was at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College), where more than 90,000 WAVES were trained from 1943 to 1945.

Jobs stemming from the wartime economy helped many New Yorkers escape from poverty, offered new opportunities for minority groups, and inspired movements for fair employment and civil rights. An exhibition highlight is Jacob Lawrence’s painting No. 2, Main Control Panel, Nerve Center of a Ship (1944), one of a series of paintings inspired by his service on the USS Sea Cloud as part of the first racially integrated Coast Guard unit in the U.S. armed forces. The exhibition also will feature a dozen profiles of individuals from various backgrounds in the Armed Forces, representing the nearly 800,000 New Yorkers who served in World War II.

Public Programs and Publications

In conjunction with WWII & NYC, New-York Historical will present a range of evening lectures and conversations that illustrate the dramatic effect of the war on all facets of American life. Among the speakers who will be participating in the series are Madeleine Albright, on her new memoir of growing up in Europe during WWII- Ken Follett, on his new historical fiction novel about the experiences of five families during the war- and Robert Morgenthau, in conversation with Tom Brokaw, on his WWII experience.

In addition, the lectures and conversations series will be supplemented by musical performances and New-York Historical’s inaugural film series. Among the special guests who will deliver opening remarks before the film screenings are Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker- Ron Simon, Curator of Television and Radio at the Paley Center for Media- and Catherine Wyler, Producer of the film Memphis Belle.

An 80-page essay with the
same title as the exhibition, will be written by Kenneth T. Jackson and published by Scala Publishers Ltd (October, 2012).

Photo: Massed infantry units march up Fifth Avenue in June 1942.

New Crowd-Sourced Exhibition at Brooklyn Museum

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The Brooklyn Museum is launching a borough-wide initiative in which Brooklyn-based artists will be invited to open their studios, allowing community members to visit and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to be held at the Museum.

Brooklyn Museum curators will visit the studios of top nominated artists to select works for the exhibition. The open studio weekend for GO: a community-curated open studio project will be held September 8 and 9. The exhibition will open during First Saturday on December 1, 2012, and will be on view through February 24, 2013.
Web and mobile technology will be a central component bringing artists and community together to share information and perspectives on art. All participants (artists, voters, and volunteers) will be able to create a personal online profile at the project’s website, www.gobrooklynart.org. Artist profiles will include photos of each artist and their studio, along with images and descriptions of their work. Volunteers will be connected with their respective neighborhoods online, and voters will have profiles that track their activity during the open studio weekend and provide a platform on which to share their perspectives.

&#8220GO is a wide-ranging and unique project that will transform how Brooklyn communities engage in the arts by providing everyone with the chance to discover artistic talent and to be involved in the exhibition process on a grassroots level. Through the use of innovative technology, GO provides every Brooklyn resident with an extraordinary opportunity to participate in the visual arts in an unprecedented way,&#8221 says Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman.

The project launched on May 18th with volunteer registration. Volunteers will identify and work with local groups and businesses within specific neighborhoods to engage artists and potential studio visitors. The Brooklyn Museum will also partner with the Brooklyn Arts Council, open studio organizations, the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office, and Heart of Brooklyn to promote participation in GO. The New York City Housing Authority will also play an important role in engaging residents living in public housing developments in Brooklyn.

Artists will have an opportunity to register their studios at www.gobrooklynart.org in June. Artist registration will be followed by voter registration in August and early September. In October, Sharon Matt Atkins and Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, will make studio visits to the top nominated artists to select the work for the exhibition. Curators and community members will engage in a public dialogue about the selection of work.

GO continues the Brooklyn Museum’s long tradition of highlighting the borough’s community of artists. Since its 2004 exhibition, Open House: Working in Brooklyn, the largest survey to date of artists working in Brooklyn, the Museum has continued its commitment to Brooklyn artists with exhibitions by Fred Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and an upcoming exhibition by Mickalene Thomas, among others, and the current Raw/Cooked series of five exhibitions by under-the-radar Brooklyn artists.

A pioneer in crowd-sourced exhibitions, the Brooklyn Museum also presented Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition (2008), a photography show in which nearly 3,500 community members evaluated the work of 389 local photographers. More recently, Split Second: Indian Paintings (2011) invited the Museum’s online community to participate in the selection of works to be shown in an installation of Indian paintings.

The project organizers are Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project is inspired by two predecessors: ArtPrize, an annual publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio events that take place each year throughout Brooklyn.

The project’s website will be updated throughout the process until the exhibition’s opening in December 2012.

New Fort Ticonderoga Exhibit Features Weapons Collections

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Fort Ticonderoga has unveiled its newest exhibit, Bullets & Blades: The Weapons of America’s Colonial Wars and Revolution. The exhibit highlights over 150 of the museum’s most important weapons and is a comprehensive and expanded reinterpretation of its world renowned historic arms collection.

Divided into seven sections and including a wide variety of muskets, pistols, swords and powder horns (some of which are one of only two or three of their types known), the exhibit explores the weapons used in America from the early 1600s through the end of the American Revolution. The exhibit is included in Fort Ticonderoga’s general admission price and will be on display throughout the 2012 season.

“This is the first major new weapons exhibit the museum has undertaken in over half a century. The creation of this exhibit is an important step in a process to improve Fort Ticonderoga’s exhibits and make them more engaging and informative for the public,” said Chris Fox, Fort Ticonderoga Curator of Collections.

Bullets & Blades: The Weapons of America’s Colonial Wars and Revolution features important, never before seen, pieces from the Grafton H. and Barbara W. Cook Collection of historic weapons donated to Fort Ticonderoga in 2009. Highlights in the collection include numerous rare and important examples of British cavalry swords and pistols and the massive basket-hilted swords carried by Scottish Highland troops.

Additional important highlights from the Cook Collection include an extremely rare British military pistol used during the reign of England’s King James II and a fine example of the important Ferguson patent breech loading rifle whose technological innovations resulted in the British army’s first breech loading firearm adopted in 1776. The oldest weapons in the exhibit were donated by Mr. and Mrs. Cook including a rare early 17th century matchlock musket similar to the type used by Samuel de Champlain during his brief engagement with the Iroquois Indians on the Ticonderoga peninsula in 1609.

For more details visit www.fortticonderoga.org or call 518-585-2821.

Wildersteins Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit

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Wilderstein Historic Site will host a second exhibition of contemporary outdoor sculptures by emerging Hudson Valley artists beginning June 3. A preview party will be held on Saturday, June2, from 5 to 7 pm.

Participating artists include: Jan Abt, Benjamin Ayers, John Belardo, Andy Fennell, Sarah Haviland, Richard Heinrich, Jeremy Holmes, Steve Keltner, Malcolm MacDougall, J. Pindyck Miller and Craig Usher.

Wilderstein is a historic house museum in Rhinebeck, New York. The estate, with its exquisite Queen Anne mansion and Calvert Vaux designed landscape, is widely regarded as the Hudson Valley’s most important example of Victorian architecture. The last person to reside at Wilderstein was Margaret (Daisy) Suckley, whose relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been well-chronicled and is the subject of much interest. Gift shop, hiking trails, and spectacular Hudson River views.

The exhibition will be open daily between 9 am and 4 pm through the end of October. Sponsored by Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.

Tickets for the preview party are $25 and reservations are encouraged. RSVP to 845.876.4818 or [email protected]

Holstein History, Milk Bottles and Milking Machines

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The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark will hold its third annual Holstein Heritage event at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 3, the third day of Dairy Month, at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro.

Milton C. Sernett PhD will present Peterboro: Cradle of the Holstein Breed! Sernett’s interest in the history behind the New York State Holstein Association monument on Oxbow Road just north of Peterboro gave impetus to this annual event recognizing the important role that Peterboro played in the agricultural industry.

In his illustrated talk Sernett will use his research to relate the history of Gerrit Smith Miller’s importation to Peterboro of the first registered Holstein-Fresian herd in America. Sernett published the book Cradle of the Breed: Gerrit Smith Miller and the Kriemhild Herd, for the first Holstein Heritage event, and followed that publication with another in 2011 Say Cheese! The Story of the Era When New York State Cheese was King. Both books will be available at the program, at the Peterboro Mercantile, and are online at mercantile.gerritsmith.org

Returning directly from the National Association of Milk Bottle Collectors (NAMBC), Peter Bleiberg will share information on milk bottles and their collection. Bleiberg, a resident of New Hartford and the next editor of The Milk Route, the official newsletter of the NAMBC, has been collecting milk bottles for twenty-four years. He focuses his collection on the variety of pictures and slogans that began to appear on painted milk bottles in the mid-1930’s.

To promote the use of their milk and other dairy products, dairies used images of cows, barns, babies, families, ice cream, butter, nursery rhymes, war-related scenes, and many other subjects on the backs of the colorful bottles. Peter’s presentation, entitled Marketing of Milk in the 1940s, includes pictures of hundreds of bottles and traces the advertising themes on the bottles that sat in our refrigerators and on our kitchen tables every morning.

Mike Gleason will return to the annual event with his antique milking machines and, hopefully, with copies of his book on milking machines that is in publication at this time.

The public is encouraged to attend this heritage session which broadens understanding of the rich history of Gerrit Smith and his family. The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark at 5304 Oxbow Road in Peterboro has been designated by both the state and national park services as a site on the Underground Railroad.

 Exhibits on freedom seekers and abolitionists are in the three buildings on the estate that are open to the public. The site is open in 2012 on weekends from 1 -5 pm through September 23, for special events, and by appointment. Admission is $3 and free for students. For more information: 315-280-8828, [email protected] or www.gerritsmith.org.

Illustration: A Holstein from an 1898 print.