Making Mounts for the Thaw Collection

By: Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

It’s all about the traveling Thaw exhibition for me right now. Spicer Conservation has been here weekly for about 6 months to stabilize and clean the objects (see here and here) and now it is time for the mount makers to work their magic. David and Mar from Benchmark, have been here making mounts for 9 of the traveling objects. The conservation lab has been turned into a mount making workshop complete with tools and all the stuff needed to make safe cradles for the objects. Most of the things that need mounts are masks. We want to be able to install them with out having to affix new hardware to them and we are trying to spare them being handled too much. I have attached a few photos of the lab as it looks right now with objects propped up so that their backsides are available for fitting. Also check out how unobtrusive the mounts are and how nice it is to see the masks set off from the back. This will add to the visual impact of the mask, as well as provide an opportunity to light the masks in a more dramatic way.

Night at Our Museum: Rock Out!

By: John Buchinger, Associate Director of EducationThis week Fenimore Art Museum will be debuting a new program called Night at Our Museum from 7-10 pm. This new program will open our doors for a little after-hours fun for families and kids of all ages in the galleries of the museum. The night will feature family music artist and all around rocker Uncle Rock, who will do two sets during the evening. I was fortunate to find out about UR from a friend who had hired him for a party. She let me borrow some CDs, which I quickly tested on my four- and six-year-olds. They whole-heartedly approved. When from the speakers Uncle Rock yells “Are you Ready?!” Both girls in unison screamed “YEEEEAHHHHH! “ Rock plays off of classic rock sensibilities and merges them with kid and family friendly topics. He covers hard hitting issues like children pretending to be asleep in Playin’ Possum, and lost foot coverings in Shoe Bandit. My favorite is a montage of super hero songs which features several classics such as the Spiderman and Batman themes, and he throws in some contemporary examples such as REM’s I am Superman.

I was surprised at the infectious rootsy sounds that had me singing along. My favorite is Picnic in the Grave Yard. This is about a celebration of El Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Rock sings “We’ll sit in the grass with people from the past and we will not be afraid.” His appeal to parents is strong as he hits topics important to families such as remembering loved ones, and offers us a chance to explore themes with our kids in a different way.

The evening isn’t all rock. Our paintings come to life as our “security guard” takes you on a tour where you will meet the people in the paintings, and characters or artists associated with the work. Some of our featured characters include artist Thomas Cole who will share with us his views on painting, and a Russian explorer will tell us about his meeting with Aleutian peoples in the Thaw gallery.

Local arts groups and businesses who support families and family related programming will be also be on hand to preview some of their holiday wares and provide crafts and activities to visitors.

This is a great chance to expose your family to the rich offerings that are always present at The Fenimore Art Museum, but also the larger community that is rich with cultural groups serving families and their children.

Take Me Out to the (Soft)Ball Game!

By: Doug Kendall, Curator of Collections

When Stephen C. Clark and his old brother Sterling had a falling-out back in the 1920s, I’m fairly certain neither foresaw one result of their quarrel: a couple dozen museum staff members playing softball on a muddy field in Cooperstown on a cold and wet October morning in 2009. The two Clarks were among the heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune, which had been amassed largely through the business acumen of their grandfather, Edward Clark (1811-1882). Their disagreement apparently related to their differing views of how their fortune should be managed.

The details aren’t important at the moment. But Stephen and Sterling refrained from speaking to each other for the next several decades. Both brothers created cultural institutions that have endured into the 21st century. Stephen focused his energies on the Clarks’ hometown of Cooperstown, New York, founding the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and The Farmers’ Museum and inviting the New York State Historical Association to settle in the village, where it soon began to develop what is now the Fenimore Art Museum. Sterling Clark, perhaps because of the old sibling rivalry, founded the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

These institutions have long since forgotten any animosity that existed between their patrons. But several years ago, the Hall of Fame staff decided to challenge the Clark Art Institute staff to a softball game. Staff from the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum were invited to take part as well, and the game has become an annual event, complete with a trophy (the Clark Cup) awarded to the winner.

This year I volunteered to play for the first time. Mind you, though I have coached Little League baseball for the past five years, the last time I played “competitive” softball was about 30 years ago. So I was quite happy to find that most of the others on the Clark Stephens were younger and considerably more spry than me.

Curator Trying to Turn Two, October 7, 2009

Despite intermittent rain and gusty winds, we played the planned six innings. After one batter, our pitcher retired only to be replaced by a surprise ringer: Hall of Fame knuckleballer Phil Niekro. Phil held the Clark Sterlings at bay (more or less), our offense took off and Cooperstown prevailed 22-19. As for me, I got my softball swing timed right by my third at-bat and singled to left, got my uniform all dirty diving back into first on a line out and later forced a runner on a ground out (though we didn’t get the double play). It was great fun, overall—especially getting to play behind Phil Niekro, who seemed to be having a great time, too.

Phil Niekro on the mound, October 7. 2009

The soreness wore off after a few days, so I guess I’ll have to consider playing in next year’s game, which will be in Williamstown. Now back to normal curatorial activities…

The Clark Stephens with Phil Niekro, October 7, 2009

All photography by Zachary Winnie.

The Bones of Cooperstown

This is the first in a series of posts by guest blogger, Michele Harvey. Fenimore Art Museum will exhibit new work by Harvey in the exhibition Watermark: Michele Harvey & Glimmerglass, beginning April 1, 2010.


I needed to see the bones of Cooperstown.

The Fenimore Art Museum had requested I put together a landscape show with a sense of place. I had been to Cooperstown many, many times, but wanted to dig deeper. The scenery and history are unique. This presented an opportunity to explore and enlarge my understanding of this historic town. I turned into a tourist of the out-of-the-way. It is a place to capture the imagination. Each foray would present a different understanding, which would feed my creative vision.

As fate would have it, one of the first things to catch my eye was a Candlelight Ghost Tour of Cooperstown. Being open but skeptical, I waited on the corner of Pioneer Street and Main, for my host. The night was chilly and misty and I was the only soul to brave the weather. Bruce Markusen (a docent at Fenimore Art Museum by day) was my dauntless guide and led me through an interesting, eerie romp of the town. An excellent storyteller, Mr. Markusen captured my attention from the first footstep. Being a historic tour, I was free to satisfy my interest with a side of a Cooperstown rarely seen. I will not give away the punch line, but Cooperstown will never seem the same in broad daylight again. I did walk the same route, the next morning. There it was. The town was decidedly different.
This led me to my next stop. A park oddly named Indian Grave. From the street it appears an unremarkable greensward, dotted with old trees. But the roadside plaque tells the tale and invites invitation. Inside an iron gate, the landscape alters. Looking back upslope, to the street, one clearly sees the sharp outline of a large burial mound. Here the bones of an Indian had been discovered, disinterred and reburied with honor in 1874. It's very close to the Susquehanna River. Near where other Native American graves were known to exist. One may only guess, it being a choice location, that there was some reason behind such a regal tomb for the remains. After all, it was only a block away from the busiest part of the Ghost Tour and it's spectral sightings.

In my next post, I hope to enchant you with a tale of Fairy Springs and it's surrounding haunts.

The Big Crate

By: Christine Olsen, Registrar

As any registrar can attest, sometimes we have to get creative in our line of work. Case in point: When a painting for our current exhibit America’s Rome came to us from the Spanierman Gallery in New York City last spring the crate was larger than I expected and I had to think fast on my feet. The painting, Effect Near Noon – The Appian Way by George Loring Brown, is only 81” high x 110” wide but its crate measures 92 ½” high x 118” wide. Below is a picture of the painting on display in the gallery (it really is a beautiful piece, due much in part to its scale).

By crating standards it really isn’t that large, but this is the largest crate that has come into Fenimore Art Museum during my time here as Registrar. Despite receiving measurements from the crate fabricator and checking the maximum door height of our loading dock prior to shipment, upon delivery I discovered that the crate simply wasn’t going to make it through our loading dock doors and down the winding halls to the Great Hall Gallery.

After weighing my options, one of which was to uncrate the painting on the loading dock thereby exposing it to a rapid shift in temperature and humidity as well as a long hand-carry to the gallery, I opted to take a more creative, and believe it or not, safer route. After triple checking the door measurements and carefully discussing the logistics, the crate was driven over the lawn of the museum and brought directly in through the back, emergency entrance of the Great Hall Gallery whose door frames are extra tall.

The next day, after acclimating to the environment of the gallery, the painting was unpacked and hung and the crate moved to my office for storage; the only storage room in which it would fit. Below is a picture of the crate in my office to give some perspective; it will feel really empty in here once it is gone.

Needless to say this will all have to be done in reverse in January when it is time for the loan to go back to Spanierman Gallery. By then there will be snow to contend with on the back lawn of the museum…but that is another blog.

Hansi Durlach’s Photographs of Sharon Springs, N.Y.

By: Michelle L. Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions

We all know the feeling. You’re driving along, maybe exploring a new route leading you to a familiar place, when you discover something new. Or you happen to notice something – really notice something – for the first time. Several years ago I had this experience driving through Sharon Springs, New York, a few miles east of Cooperstown. Most folks only know the Sharon Springs that sits right on Route 20, a major East-West thoroughfare through central New York. But just a very short way off of 20, north on Route 10, is one of the most haunted places I’ve been. Not Halloween-haunted, just resounding with the murmurs of a life (two lives, in fact) long gone. I knew there had to be more to this place.
The second of those two lives was captured on film by the photographer Hansi Durlach who was born in 1930 in Vienna, Austria. From 1968 to 1972, she shot the majority of the Sharon Springs photographs and they were eventually published in the 1980 book The Short Season of Sharon Springs: Portrait of Another New York. Stuart Blumin, professor of history at Cornell University, wrote the text of the book. In October 2001, Durlach gave the Fenimore Art Museum a collection of over 300 of her photographs and negatives of this small town. After having just fell in love with Sharon Springs, I was so excited for the museum to receive this collection.

In the 1960s while Durlach was studying photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Minor White, she applied for a Radcliffe Institute grant to conduct a socio-photographic documentary of Sharon Springs. Her interest in the village initially stemmed from her husband’s family, who had summered there beginning in the late 1800s, and grew based on her own ethnic heritage, the variety of people in the community, the architecture, and the natural environment of the rural village. Her goals as outlined in the grant narrative were to create a permanent visual record of the people and environment of Sharon Springs that conveyed a sense of place, and to position the unique qualities of the village into a larger context.
Sharon Springs began its history as a spa resort in 1825 when a David Eldredge set up a boardinghouse there, almost a quarter century after Saratoga Springs, 60 miles northeast of Sharon Springs, became a resort town. Eldredge’s investment was meant to attract visitors to the natural mineral springs located in the village. During the heyday of Sharon Springs’ popularity, the majority of the visiting population was Protestant. Also included, however, was a population of upper-class German Jews from Manhattan who were accepted into the Protestant society. When spa-going fell into disfavor, the Jewish population chose to continue visiting Sharon Springs and by 1900, they comprised the majority of the summer population. After World War I, less prosperous Eastern and Central European Jews from Brooklyn replaced the wealthy Manhattan Jews. More specifically, the Sharon Springs Jewish population was Hasidic Jews of the Satmar sect. In the late 1950s, a Satmar Rabbi from Brooklyn, Yoel Teitelbaum, began visiting the village and many of his followers followed suit. Even after his death in 1979, a few Satmar continued to visit the baths, sustaining Sharon Springs’ status as a resort for a few more decades. They found the new solitude of Sharon Springs a welcome change from the hectic pace of life in the city – a place where they could enjoy the health aspects of the town without the social pressures of the previous era. At the time of Durlach’s project, Sharon Springs’ visiting population was a largely older group of Hasidic Satmar Jews who had been coming since the days of Rabbi Teitelbaum. There is no question of her success in achieving her goals. Durlach’s photographs are infused with the strength, spirit and passion of a people committed to the memory of the past, the distinction of the present, and the optimism of the future.

All photography is from the collection of Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY.