All Over Albany

A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America at The Hyde Collection

The oil painting above is "Still Life with Basket of Fruit," by an unidentified artist, 1860-1880, courtesy of the Barbara L. Gordon Collection.

Now is a good time of year to take a drive north, and hey, look, the Hyde Collection has a new exhibit opening: The traveling show A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America opens this weekend. It includes more than 60 works of art created between 1800 and 1925. Blurbage:

A Shared Legacy celebrates art rooted in personal and cultural identity, made by artists who were either self-taught or had received minimal formal training. Created for ordinary people rather than society's upper classes, folk art was the prevalent art form in the United States for more than a century.

A Shared Legacy showcases the extraordinary imagination and powerful design of regional folk artists, some acclaimed in their day and many now unknown. The exhibited works were made primarily in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the Midwest. They include a range of paintings (portraiture, still life, and landscape), sculpture, furniture, and trade signs. Among the paintings are iconic works by Edward Hicks and Ammi Phillips. Exuberantly painted furniture and decorated manuscripts from German-American communities are exhibition highlights.

The exhibit opens to the general public on Sunday, which also happens to be a "second Sunday" free admission day.

While you're in Glens Falls, there are a few other things you might be up for doing.

And, you know, there will probably be some beautiful foliage around there, too.

The Hyde Collection's new Feibes & Schmitt Gallery opens this weekend

"White" by Grace Hartigan, 1951. Oil on canvas, 38 x 44 3/4 in., copyright of the Grace Hartigan Estate.

The Hyde Collection opens its new Feibes & Schmitt Gallery Saturday with an exhibition of modern art works donated by the gallery's namesakes. It's also the museum's annual Community Opening Day, which includes free admission. Blurbage:

The Feibes & Schmitt Gallery is the result of a donation made last year from Werner Feibes and his late partner, James Schmitt, who gave the Museum their Modern and Contemporary art collection valued at more than $10 million, and a $1 million leadership donation to build the 1,500-square-foot exhibition space. The collection establishes the Museum as a regional hub for Modern and Contemporary art, and greatly increases its educational and programming opportunities. ...

The celebration June 10 also marks the opening of the Feibes & Schmitt Gallery's inaugural exhibition, To Distribute and Multiply: The Feibes & Schmitt Gift, which includes more than forty works from the collection, representing some of the twentieth century's most influential artists, such as Jean (Hans) Arp, Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Keith Haring, Grace Hartigan, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Man Ray, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, George Rickey, Bridget Riley, and Andy Warhol, among others.

Feibes and Schmitt had an architecture practice in Schenectady for many years, and they were prominent figures in the effort to preserve the Stockade neighborhood. After many decades together, they married in 2013. Schmitt passed away two months later at age 87. As Werner Feibes told the Times Union in 2015 when discussing the gift to the museum: "You can't own art. It's meant to be seen and enjoyed by people." [TU x2]

The new gallery opens to the public at noon Saturday, and there will be Community Opening Day events from 1-7 pm.

As you know, They Hyde Collection is in Glens Falls. Here are a few ideas for rolling a trip there into a day trip.

Large donation of modern art to The Hyde Collection

A rendering of the planned gallery.

The Hyde Collection formally announced this week that it received a gift of art and cash totaling more than $11 million from Werner Feibes of Schenectady. The museum says it's largest donation since donated her home and artwork to establish the museum in Glens Falls in 1952. And it says it's planning to use the money and art to open a new gallery for modern and contemporary art next summer.

From the press release:

For more than four decades, Werner Feibes and the late James Schmitt built a world-class art collection that aligned with their personal tastes and interest in non-objective art, Pop art, abstract art, and Minimalism. Building on Mr. Feibes' previous donation of 55 Modern and Contemporary works to The Hyde in 2015, the bequest includes the remainder of the collection (105 works). Combined, the Feibes and Schmitt gift more than doubles The Hyde's holdings of Modern and Contemporary art, situating the Museum as a regional hub for Post-war art. ...

Mr. Feibes and Mr. Schmitt began collecting in the 1950s. Their collection of paintings, drawings, prints, mixed media, and sculpture includes work from some of the best known and most respected artists of the twentieth century, including Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Grace Hartigan, Keith Haring, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Robert Motherwell, George Rickey, Louise Nevelson, Bridget Riley, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Smith.

Feibes and Schmitt had an architecture practice in Schenectady for many years, and they were prominent figures in the effort to preserve the Stockade neighborhood. And after many decades together, they married in 2013. Schmitt passed away two months later at age 87.

As Werner Feibes told the Times Union last year when discussing the gift to the museum: "You can't own art. It's meant to be seen and enjoyed by people."

Norman Rockwell in the 1960s at Hyde Collection

"The Final Impossibility" by Norman Rockwell, published in LOOK magazine in 1969. From the Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collections.

If you're looking for a prompt for a quick trip: The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls opens new exhibit this weekend -- Norman Rockwell in the 1960s. Blurbage:

In the 1960s, leaving behind the beloved storytelling scenes that appeared on the covers and pages of the nation's prominent periodicals, Rockwell threw himself into a new genre--the documentation of deeply felt social issues.

In 1963, after ending his 47 year association with The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell began work for the reportorial magazine Look with a true sense of purpose. He invited consideration of important social issues including the Space Race, depicting the moon landing before and after it actually happened. His 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, gently presents an assertion on moral decency. This first assignment for Look magazine was an illustration of a six-year-old African-American schoolgirl being escorted by four U.S. marshals to her first day at an all-white school in New Orleans. In 1965, Rockwell illustrated the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and in 1967, he chose children, once again, to illustrate desegregation, this time in the nation's suburbs.

The exhibit includes 21 illustrations and magazine covers created by Rockwell during the decade. It'll be on display through April 3.

You can definitely make a day of trip to Glens Falls and the Hyde Collection. And here are some ideas on where to eat.

Speaking of Norman Rockwell...
As you might know already, the Norman Rockwell Museum is just over the Massachusetts border in Stockbridge. (Rockwell lived in Stockbridge.) It's open year round, seven days a week.

And Rockwell used Troy as inspiration for a handful of his illustrations.Two of them sold at auction a few years back -- "Saying Grace" for $46 million, and "Walking to Church" for $3.25 million.

"The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol" at The Hyde Collection

An exhibit of drawings by Andy Warhol -- The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol: 1973 - 1987 -- opens this weekend at The Hyde Collection. Blurbage (link added):

More than any other medium, drawing was essential to Andy Warhol's creative output. This exhibition, organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, offers works created during on of the most prolific periods of his life employing a confident and fluid contour line to depict some of the same motifs of his iconic paintings: celebrity portraits, flowers, and ads. Many of the drawings in this exhibition are on view to the public for the first time.

Opening night for the exhibit is this Saturday, June 20 from 6:30-8 pm. It's $30 per person and includes hors d'oeurves, wine, and beer.

The exhibit will be open as part of general museum admission on Sunday. It will be on display through September 27.

image: Andy Warhol, Wigs $8.95, ca. 1983. ©AWF

Winslow Homer
Also opening Sunday: Homer's America: Selections from the Permanent Collection, "a selection of approximately two dozen works, including engravings, etchings, and paintings that focus on the artist's chronicling of American life."

Earlier on AOA:
+ Day trip: Glens Falls and The Hyde Collection
+ Eating in Glens Falls: 5-10-15-20

Eating in Glens Falls: 5-10-15-20

Glens Falls seems to be going through a bit of a culinary renaissance, with many new eateries staking out a spot in the last few years. Chefs with regional ties have come back to assert their influence on the dining scene, and longtime favorites continue to flourish with a revitalization of the downtown area.

And with much to be done between meals -- both in town and farther afield in the nearby Adirondacks -- there's no doubt you could spend a full day in and around Glens Falls.

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Day trip: Glens Falls

As the winter drags on, I'm continuing to look for accessible day trips to keep away cabin fever. I recently visited Glens Falls, which was a perfect spot for a little adventure and exploration.

Glens Falls is far enough away that it's not a regular destination for me, but close enough for an impulse day trip.

Plus, the town is filled with arts and culture.

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Ansel Adams: Early Works at The Hyde Collection

"Clearing Winter Storm," by Ansel Adams / The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Opening this weekend at The Hyde Collection: Ansel Adams: Early Works, which include 40 of the famous landscape photographer's works. From the exhibit blurbage:

For much of his early adulthood, Adams was torn between a career as a concert pianist versus one in photography; later, he famously likened the photographic negative to a musical score, and the print to the performance. Yet most museum goers are only familiar with the heroic, high- gloss, high-contrast prints that Adams manufactured to order in the 1970s-80s, coinciding with the emergence of the first retail galleries devoted to photography; as performances, these later prints were akin to "brass bands." Much less familiar are the intimate prints, rich in the middle tones - the "chamber music" - that Adams crafted earlier in his career. The present show focuses on the masterful small-scale prints made by Adams from the 1920s into the 1950s. Already in this time period there is quite an evolution of printing style, from the soft-focus, warm-toned, painterly "Parmelian prints" of the 1920s; through the f/64 school of sharp-focused photography that he co-founded with Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s; and, after the War, towards a cooler, higher-contrast printmaking approach.

The Adams exhibit opens Saturday (January 25) The Hyde Collection and runs through April 20.

A visit to the Hyde + a stop at the new Rare Earth Wine Bar in Glens Falls could be a nice day trip.

(Thanks, Paul.)

Phish at Glens Falls Civic Center

Phish announced its fall 2013 tour today and it's making return stop in the greater Capital Region -- this time at the Glens Falls Civic Center October 23. Tickets go on sale August 9 -- they're $65 (there's also a presale).

The band played three nights at SPAC earlier this month. The Civic Center is smaller -- it has room for 4,806-7,562 people depending on configuration.

photo: Danny Clinch / Phish FB

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George at the Hyde Collection

Georgia O'Keeffe's "Petunias" (1925). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Opening this weekend at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls: Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George, an exhibit of the painter's work during her time staying at Lake George. Blurbage:

The Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, is organizing a first-of-its-kind exhibition that will closely examine the extraordinary body of work created by O'Keeffe of and at Lake George. From 1918 until the mid 1930s, O'Keeffe (1887-1986) spent part of the year at Alfred Stieglitz's family estate, a thirty-six acre property situated just north of Lake George village in the southern basin of the lake. The exhibition will present a selection of fifty-eight paintings from both public and private collections.

Stieglitz, himself a famous photographer, organized O'Keeffe's first solo exhibition at a gallery in New York City. Their relationship -- which included a prodigious exchange of letters -- eventually led to marriage. And O'Keeffe became a frequent subject of Stieglitz's photos.

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George is said to include "full range of works by the artist" -- from "magnified botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables, to a group of remarkable still lifes of apples and pears" to architectural subjects and Lake George panoramas.

The exhibit will be at the Hyde Collection June 15-September 15. The museum is expecting crowds -- so it's offering advance tickets. They're $12.

Post-Star is starting a pay wall

The Post-Star announced today that it will start charging readers for online content this week.

The paper is using a model similar to the one used by the New York Times. Readers will get 15 free "page views" (we wonder if that's page views or stories) per month. After that, you'll need a paid subscription -- "non-subscribers will not be able to click on headlines to view stories." The paper is charging print subscribers $1.95 per month for online access -- it will be $6.50 per month readers for everyone else.

The Post-Star is owned by Lee Enterprises, which is switching most of its papers over to a paywall. Lee filed for bankruptcy last year (the re-organization kind) in order to re-finance $1 billion in debt. The chain's CEO just got a $500k bonus for pulling off the re-fi. [St. Louis Post-Disptach] [Thomson Reuters] [Romenesko]

The Post-Star recently laid off a trio of reporters, and appears to be pulling back from covering Saratoga Springs. [Adirondack Almanack]

The highest profile pay wall experiment has been New York Times, which appears to be doing OK with it. The Boston Globe has been experimenting with one. The Wall Street Journal has charged for access for what seems like forever now. And, of course, locally the Daily Gazette also has a pay wall (yes, we know, you don't like it when we link to their stories). [CJR]

Why's this happening?

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Laura Hajek, Miss Glens Falls

Laura Hajek -- playing the role of Laura Hajek?

Update: We talked with Laura after the pageant.