Adirondacks

Adirondack Museums Antiques Show and Sale

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The Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, will host their annual Antiques Show and Sale on August 13 and 14, 2011. Sixty antique dealers from around the United States will be on hand featuring authentic historical furnishings, vintage boats, folk art,
taxidermy, and everything else for camp and cottage.

Rod Lich, Inc. of Georgetown, Indiana will manage the show. The show will be open from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. on August 13, and 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. on August 14, and is included in the price of general museum admission. Porters will be on site to assist with heavy or cumbersome items.

The Antiques Show Preview Benefit will be held on August 13 from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. Guests will enjoy exclusive early access to the show and an elegant brunch with wine. Proceeds from the benefit will support exhibits and programs at the Adirondack Museum. Tickets may be reserved online or call (518) 352-7311, ext. 119.

A complete listing of dealers can be found online.

New Environmental History: The Nature of New York

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David Stradling, Professor and Graduate Studies Director at the University of Cincinnati, is author of The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State. This recent (Fall 2010) survey of over four hundred years of New York’s environmental history has received praise from historians and environmental policy experts.

From the arrival of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon in the estuarial waters of what would come to be called New York Harbor to the 2006 agreement that laid out plans for General Electric to clean up the PCBs it pumped into the river named after Hudson, this work offers a sweeping environmental history of New York State. David Stradling shows how New York’s varied landscape and abundant natural resources have played a fundamental role in shaping the state’s culture and economy. Simultaneously, he underscores the extent to which New Yorkers have, through such projects as the excavation of the Erie Canal and the construction of highways and reservoir systems, changed the landscape of their state.

Surveying all of New York State since first contact between Europeans and the region’s indigenous inhabitants, Stradling finds within its borders an amazing array of environmental features, such as Niagara Falls- human intervention through agriculture, urbanization, and industrialization- and symbols, such as Storm King Mountain, that effectively define the New York identity.

Stradling demonstrates that the history of the state can be charted by means of epochs that represent stages in the development and redefinition of our relationship to our natural surroundings and the built environment- New York State has gone through cycles of deforestation and reforestation, habitat destruction and restoration that track shifts in population distribution, public policy, and the economy. Understanding these patterns, their history, and their future prospects is essential to comprehending the Empire State in all its complexity.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Family Overnight Camping at the Adirondack Museum

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The Adirondack Museum and the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts will host an overnight adventure at the museum on Tuesday, August 16, 2011. The event will include exploring exhibits by lantern, getting dramatic about Adirondack history with the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, hearing songs and stories by the campfire, and having a sleepover in the Woods & Waters exhibit. Dinner, an evening snack and breakfast will be served.

Camp Out for Families is open to children ages 7 &#8211 13, and the museum requests one adult chaperone for every one to four children. The program starts at 5:30 p.m. and ends the following morning at 9:30 a.m.

Spaces are limited- pre-registration required by August 11, 2011. E-mail or call to register: [email protected] or (518) 352 &#8211 7311 ext 115- [email protected] or (518) 352 &#8211 7311 ext 128. The program fee includes dinner, evening snack, light breakfast, and all activity materials. $45 per person for Adirondack Museum members and Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts members- $55 per person for non-members.

The museum is open through October 17, 2011, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., 7 days a week, including holidays. There will be an early closing on August 12, and adjusted hours on August 13- the museum will close for the day on September 9. Visit www.adirondackmuseum.org for more information. All paid admissions are valid for a second visit within a one-week period.

Traveling with Winslow Homer at Adirondack Museum

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Join Robert Demarest for a program entitled &#8220Traveling with Winslow Homer,&#8221 on Monday, August 8, 2011 at the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York. The program is part of the museum’s Monday Evening Lecture series.

Robert Demarest has traveled the world chronicling Homer sites- his destinations have included Cuba, The North Sea Coast, Bermuda, and the North Woods Club in the Adirondacks. He has fished and painted where Homer fished and painted, and has uncovered many new facts about America’s favorite artist.

Demarest recently retired as head of the medical illustration unit and director of the Center for Biocommunications at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY. His work has appeared in numerous medical textbooks, countless research papers, medical journals, and many popular magazines, such as the Reader’s Digest, Life, Newsweek, and Time.

When not painting watercolors Demarest can usually be found fly-fishing on his favorite streams, often in the Adirondacks. His love of watercolor painting and fly-fishing led him to study Winslow Homer and that started him on an odyssey that has consumed him for the past several years. He traveled to all the places that Homer visited throughout the western world, and painted and fished where Homer painted and fished. He has published a book based on his Homer research entitled Traveling with Winslow Homer.

The presentation will be held in the Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. The lecture will be offered at no charge to museum members- the fee for non-members is $5.00. For additional information, please visit www.adirondackmuseum.org or call (518) 352-7311.

Jerry Jenkins to Receive Adirondack Museum Award

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The Board of Trustees of the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake, New York has announced the selection of Jerry Jenkins as the recipient of the 2011 Harold K. Hochschild Award.

The Harold K. Hochschild Award is dedicated to the memory of the museum’s founder, whose passion for the Adirondacks, its people, and environment inspired the creation of the Adirondack Museum. Since 1990 the museum has presented the award to a wide range of intellectual and community leaders throughout the Adirondack Park, highlighting their contributions to the region’s culture and quality of life.

The Adirondack Museum will formally present Jerry Jenkins with the Harold K. Hochschild Award on August 4, 2011.

Jerry Jenkins is an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack Program (WCS). An accomplished botanist, naturalist and geographer, he has almost forty years of field experience working in the Northern Forest. Over the course of his career, his work has included conducting biological inventories for The Adirondack Chapter of the Nature
Conservancy, surveying rare plant occurrences for the State of Vermont, chronicling the environmental history of acid rain with the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation, and understanding and interpreting historical changes to boreal lowland areas in the Adirondacks with WCS. His enthusiasm for natural history has also led him to study plant diversity and distribution across various forest types &#8211 from the Champlain Hills to large working forest
easements, and from old growth forests to high elevation alpine communities.

His most recent and notable accomplishments with the Wildlife Conservation Society are his collection of Adirondack publications. Together with Andy Keal, Jerry Jenkins co-authored The The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park, considered one of the most significant Adirondack book in a generation. Some 300 pages in length, the Adirondack Atlas contains 750
maps and graphics, and represents the most comprehensive collection of regional data brought together in a single source. The park’s geology, flora and fauna are featured, as well as the history and the dynamic nature of the park’s human communities. Bill McKibben describes the atlas as a &#8220great gift&#8230-that marks a coming of age.&#8221

In his newest book Climate Change in the Adirondacks the Path to Sustainability, Jenkins demonstrates how climate change is already shifting the region’s culture, biology and economy, and provides a road map towards a more responsible and sustainable future. He provides the first comprehensive look at both the impacts of, and the potential solutions to, climate change across the Adirondack region. This compilation, along with his other regional contributions, prompted Bill McKibben to offer that &#8220Jerry Jenkins has emerged as the information source for our mountains&#8230-and we are all in his debt.&#8221

Photo Courtesy Leslie Karasin, Wildlife Conservation Society.

New Exhibit Honors Theme Park Designer Monaco

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A new exhibit, &#8220IMAGINING MAKEBELIEVE: An Exhibition Honoring Arto Monaco&#8221 will open with a reception at the Tahawus Lodge Center (14234 Rte 9N, Main St, Au Sable Forks, NY) on Friday, July 22, 2011, 6-9pm.

From 1954 to 1979, the Land of Makebelieve captivated visitors young and old. This summer, the Arto Monaco Historical Society invites you to remember the Land of Makebelieve, an enchanting, child-sized theme park, and its creator, Arto Monaco.

Born in Ausable Forks in 1913, Monaco designed not only the Land of Make Believe but Santa’s Workshop and Charley Wood’s Storytown and Gaslight Village. The Arto Monaco Historical Society was created after Monaco’s death in 2003 to preserve his legacy.

The exhibition in Au Sable Forks will feature images and artifacts from the original theme park, formerly located in Upper Jay but now closed to the public. The exhibition will also include plans for a new park that’s under consideration for the former Land of Makebelieve site.

Photo: The Land of Makebelieve in 2006 before volunteers began work on the abandoned theme park.

Collection Storage Tours at Adirondack Museum

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Visitors can see some of the more than 7,000 historic artifacts not currently on exhibit at the Adirondack Museum in a state-of-the-art collections storage facility in Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

The Collections Storage and Study Center holds an amazing array of objects from the Adirondack past. Collections consist of boats, including power boats, canoes, kayaks, guideboats, and unusual boats- traditional and rustic furniture- hand tools and machinery- large vehicles, including horse-drawn carriages and sleighs, snowmobiles, fire trucks, and a Jitterbug- maple
sugaring equipment- ice harvesting tools- and agricultural artifacts.

Adirondack Museum Conservator and Collections Manager Doreen Alessi will lead the tours. Alessi cares for more than 100,000 two and three-dimensional artifacts in the collection of the Adirondack Museum. She is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC).

Tours of the Collections Storage and Study Center will be held each Monday through August from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. The tours are free for museum members and $10 for non-members. Visitors can sign up for a tour on Mondays at the Membership Desk in the Visitor Center. Each tour is limited to thirty people.

The Adirondack Museum, accredited by the American Association of Museums, 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. The museum is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. For information about the museum call (518) 352-7311 or visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.

New S. R. Stoddard Exhibit: New York Harbor

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The Chapman Historical Museum in Glens Falls (Warren County) has opened a new exhibit of Seneca Ray Stoddard photographs featuring views of New York Harbor. Taken in the 1880s on his visits to New York City, the fifteen photographs include images of sailboats and steamers in the harbor, people bathing on the beach at Coney Island, the Brooklyn Bridge and other landmarks. A highlight is Stoddard’s famous night-time photo of the Statue of Liberty, captured using magnesium flash powder. The exhibit, planned to coincide with The Hyde Collection’s exhibit, &#8220NY, NY,&#8221 will be on view through September 4th.

The Chapman Historical Museum is located at 348 Glen Street, Glens Falls, NY. Hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, and Sunday, noon to 4 pm. For more information call (518) 793-2826.

Photo: Coney Island bathers by Seneca Ray Stoddard, ca. 1880

John Brown Lives! Concert Promotes Cultural Exchange

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On Wednesday, July 20, 2011, John Brown Lives! (JBL!) is presenting “desert blues” musician, Bombino, live and in concert, at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for a 7:30 p.m. performance. Omara “Bombino” Moctar is a young Tuareg singer from Niger, Africa, on his first North American tour. He has received advance praise as a “guitar wizard” likened to Jimi Hendrix (KCRW), who plays “some of the most sublime guitar licks you’ll hear in 2011” (NPR).

The concert is an outgrowth of JBL!’s Dreaming of Timbuctoo Exhibition detailing a black settlement effort in the Adirondacks in the mid-1800s. It is also inaugurates the Timbuktu Sahara * Timbuctoo Adirondack Project, a cultural exchange initiative John Brown Lives! is developing to link schoolchildren and communities in the Adirondacks with a Tuareg village on the outskirts of Timbuktu, Mali. A share of proceeds from this concert will benefit the Scarab School in the desert village of Tinghassane.

The Tuareg, often called the “Blue Men of the Desert” by outsiders, are a nomadic people descended from the Berbers of North Africa. In his short life, Bombino, and many Tuareg, have endured drought, rebellion, tyranny, and exile. Fusing traditional rhythms of nomadic peoples of the Sahara and the Sahel with the drive of rock and roll and songs about peace, Bombino plays an influential role today in educating the Tuareg about the importance of the fragile democracy in Niger while maintaining their rich cultural heritage.

John Brown Lives! (JBL) is a freedom education project founded in 1999 to promote social justice through the exploration of issues, social movements and events, rooted mainly in Adirondack history, and their connection to today’s struggles for human rights.

Individual tickets are $18 in advance or $20 at the door. Children under 12 are admitted for $5. Sponsor tickets are also available at $160 for a book of 10 tickets. Tickets are available at the LPCA Box Office 518-523-2512. For sponsor tickets, please call 518-962-4758 or 518-576-9755.

For more general information, contact John Brown Lives! at [email protected] or 518-962-4758. To learn more about Bombino and the Tuareg, check out these links (1, 2).

Saranac Laboratory Focus of Tour, Book Event

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Historic Saranac Lake is preparing for the visit of Patricia Reiss Brooks on July 20th. Brooks, the author of Mountain Shadows, will head a walking tour starting at the Saranac Laboratory Museum, 89 Church Street, Saranac Lake at 10:30 am. The free event includes an inside look of the Morse Cure Cottage on Shepard St. that is just like the cottage where the characters in Mountain Shadows play out their lives. The walk will continue on to the Cure Cottage Museum on Helen Hill.

The walk will be followed by a brown bag lunch at the Saranac Laboratory, where Brooks will talk about gathering information for the creation of Mountain Shadows and will include glimpses into the life in the area in the twenties. Brooks will entertain questions and autograph copies of Mountain Shadows. A portion of all sales will benefit Historic Saranac Lake.

Mountain Shadows is an historic love story that portrays the Cure Cottage life for TB patients as well as the Prohibition era rum-running, the Lake Placid Club, the Adirondack area at the time, and the early treatment of tuberculosis in Saranac Lake.

Brooks is a native of Lake Placid and a graduate of St. Bernards and Lake Placid Central. Her father, Julian Reiss came to the area in the twenties to “take the cure.” He stayed to raise his family, never leaving the mountains that gave him back his health.

Historic Saranac Lake, the event’s sponsor, is a not for profit architectural preservation organization that captures and presents local history from their center at the Saranac Laboratory Museum. In case of rain, just the chat with the author and booking signing will start at noon at the Saranac Laboratory, 89 Church St.