Press

ALBANY, N.Y. - What do Shakers, fish, motorcycles and Berenice Abbott have in common? Usually, absolutely nothing. At the New York State Museum, they are the subjects of new exhibitions that round out the second half of 2000.

This exhibition schedule is subject to change and reporters and editors should verify the dates before publication. Please contact the Communications Office for press kits, digital images or slides. The Museum is on Madison Avenue in downtown Albany. It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

A Shaker Legacy

The Shaker Collection at the New York State Museum

July 29 - October 22, 2000
Exhibition Hall

This exhibition, previously held in November 1999, was so popular, we're bringing it back. The New York State Museum was the first institution to form a comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture, which now includes over 100,000 objects, the largest collection of Shaker artifacts in existence.

This exhibition includes 200 items from that collection, which includes Shaker furniture, clothing, baskets, and the tools that produced them. The only intact Fountain Stone that survives from any Shaker community will be on display. The stone, used for religious rituals, was discovered when the state was building the Craig Developmental Center at the site of the Groveland Shaker community in Livingston County.

The New York State Museum will be updating and reissuing a catalog for this exhibition titled A Shaker Legacy: The Shaker Collection at the New York State Museum.

Additionally, never-before-seen photographs by William F. Winter (1899-1939) will be displayed in a separate gallery. Winter, a Schenectady photographer, documented the Shakers and sparked the interest of the Museum's director in collecting Shaker artifacts.

Front Yards, Backyards and Beneath the Streets

Historic Archaeology at the New York State Museum

Opening July 15

West Gallery

Pieces of dishes, children's toys and medicine bottles -- these are some of the clues that help archaeologists learn more about people who used to live in New York State. Even though these people are not here to tell us their story, the everyday things they left behind provide valuable information on the lives of the household members. Their ages, occupations, health and socio-economic status are all details that can be culled from those objects.

Besides knowledge gained through excavation, archeologists and architectural historians from the New York State Museum also gain valuable information by analyzing and interpreting aboveground remains by documenting historic buildings and bridges.

This exhibition tells the story of the Museum's Cultural Resource Survey Program and its many scientific sleuths who are constantly discovering new information about the New Yorkers who lived long ago.

Some of the fascinating artifacts that will be displayed are from the Pearl Street excavation in Albany that uncovered human remains of early colonists and an excavation from an 1841 fire in Waterford that destroyed a large section of downtown.

Berenice Abbott's Changing New York

November 17 - April 16, 2001

Crossroads Gallery

Renowned photographer Berenice Abbott was employed by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1938 to capture the rapidly changing urban scene.

Thirty-nine of these photographs from this major Depression Era project in New York City will be shown.

Previously Abbott had worked as darkroom assistant to Man Ray in Paris and had become an accomplished portrait photographer of such intellectuals as James Joyce and Jean Cocteau.

While in France, she discovered and was influenced by the work of Eugene Atget, who photographed Paris from the 1880s to the late 1920s. Abbott's absence from New York allowed her to view the city with fresh eyes when she returned in 1929, on the eve of the Depression.

Abbott was struck by "the past jostling the present" as she surveyed New York's cityscapes. In this exhibition, curated by Museum senior historian Christine Kleinegger, viewers may be struck by an even more profound sense of change as they compare the "present" of the 1930s with New York of today.

The Museum acquired the photographs after Museum Director Charles Adams suggested in 1938 that "Changing New York" travel to other cities "to impress local people with the importance of doing similar work in their localities." In that spirit, the current exhibition will be complemented by a student photography show that documents life in Yonkers, Syracuse, Rochester, Watertown and Buffalo.

The Collector As Bookbinder

The Piscatorial Bindings of S.A. Neff Jr.

October 6 - December 31, 2000

Photo Gallery

This exquisite exhibition of the bookbindings and boxes of S.A. Neff Jr., an accomplished angler and "piscatorial bilbliophile," epitomizes an art form rarely found at the beginning of the 21st century. Neff has been exhibiting his bookbindings nationally and internationally since 1986, when he began to create unique sets of angling books for his library. This show features many esoteric works by Neff, who will also be visiting the museum to demonstrate his art.

The Great New York Motorcycle Show

December 9, 2000 - April 10, 2001
Exhibition Hall

In the early days of motor transportation, New York made important contributions to the development and production of motorcycles. This exhibition will recreate the atmosphere of a 1910 period trade show, in which motorcycle makers showed their wares to potential dealers and buyers in arenas fitted with individual display booths. About 35 motorcycles from the 1890s through the 1970s will be displayed. All of the motorcycles are loaned to the museum from private collectors or other museums and were built in New York State.

Concurrently, the Museum plans to publish an encyclopedia of New York motorcycle builders titled The Motorcycle Industry in New York State: A Concise Encyclopedia of Inventors, Builders and Manufacturers.

NYSM