Lecture

James Howard Kunstler On Rescuing the American Townscape

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The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) will present a lecture &#8220Rescuing the American Townscape from its Own Recent History&#8221 by author James Howard Kunstler.

James Howard Kunstler is a vocal critic of American architecture and urban planning which he describes as a tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities and ravaged countryside. For two decades, Kunstler has examined the growth of urban and suburban America. Read more →

Durants Adirondack Railroad Company Lecture

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The rails of the Adirondack Company were the first to penetrate the central Adirondack Mountains. Construction began in 1865. The goals of the endeavor were to serve the iron mines at Sanford Lake, and more ambitiously, to connect with Great Lakes shipping at Ogdensburg.

Tomorrow, Monday, August 9th railroad historian and author Dr. Michael Kudish will offer a program entitled &#8220Where Did the Tracks Go? Dr. Durant’s Adirondack Railroad Company&#8221 at the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

Part of the museum’s Monday Evening Lecture series, the presentation will be held in the Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. There is no charge for museum members. Admission is $5.00 for non-members.

The illustrated program will cover the history of Dr. Durant’s railway line to North Creek, N.Y. and its effect on the region.

Dr. Michael Kudish received his PhD at the New York State college of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse, N.Y. As a professor in he Division of Forestry at Paul Smith’s College, he has written four books on the vegetation of the Adirondacks. His railroad books include: Where Did the Tracks Go (1985)- Railroads of the Adirondacks: A History (1996)- as well as four volumes devoted to the mountain railroads of New York State. Dr. Kudish is now retired.

Photo: Dr. Michael Kudish

Hyde Collection Presents Aaron Copland Lecture

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As part of The Hyde Collection’s Celebrating Wyeth’s America event series, the Museum will host a lecture by Dr. Suzanne Forsberg titled Another American Legend: The Music of Aaron Copland on Sunday, July 11, 2010.

Copland was the nation’s first to achieve international fame and produce compositions that sounded distinctly American. His music helped to identify the American landscape of Andrew Wyeth’s time.

Slated for 3 pm in the Helen Froehlich Auditorium, Forsberg’ s presentation will include video clips and CDs that illustrate Copland’s life and representative compositions.

Dr. Suzanne Forsberg, a graduate of Harvard University and New York University, is professor of fine arts at St. Francis College. She has lectured at the New York City Early Music Festival and her scholarly work on the early classical symphony has appeared in encyclopedias and journals, as well as in the series The Symphony, 1720-1840.

This talk is free with paid admission to the Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend exhibition or with a donation to the Museum. The talk is funded by New York Council for the Humanities.

For details on the Andrew Wyeth: An American Legend exhibition, which runs through September 5, 2010, and on all Celebrating Wyeth’s America events, visit www.hydecollection.org.