Fenimore Art Museum

It’s a gloomy late October afternoon in Cooperstown. The leaves are down, there’s word of blizzards out West and summer vacation is only a distant memory.

It appears that the Blogger polling gadget is working fine, with 20 voted so far and the results viewable at the right. I set the gadget to accept votes until 4 pm today, so by all means give it a try if you are so inclined. ...

Simple, raw emotive power. The ability to form, in a few stark lines, an indelible impression representing a lifetime of experience. While much of the folk art in the Fenimore Art Museum possesses an intricacy ...

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. ...

So, as you’ve probably noticed, for the last few years many of us here in the curatorial department have been organizing a traveling exhibitionof art from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collectionof American Indian Art. ...

The denizens of the Potters Hollow Tavern in Greene County, New York probably scarcely noticed the crudely painted river scene at their feet. Set into a panel about seven feet long, and mounted under the ...

My good friend Jackie Oak came to town this week to give a lecture about the Shelburne Museum and Electra Havemeyer Webb to the graduate students in my American folk art course. Jackie has been a great ...

This 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. ...

Another Yankee triumph. The perfect day to reflect on one of my favorite works by the New York City folk artist Ralph Fasanella. This large painting (60” x 60”) entitled “Night Game – ...

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. ...

I was in New York recently to attend the opening of the new exhibition of American genre painting, “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915” at the Metropolitan and had the ...