Poestenkill, NY and The Village Crossroads at The Farmers' Museum

By: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions
Bird's-eye views of burgeoning American cities and towns became a popular promotional tool for town development and an expression of local pride during the mid-19th century. Most were sold in lithographic form to a mass market. Hidley, a house painter, carpenter, taxidermist, and handyman, painted five views of Poestenkill during the 19 years that he lived there from 1853 to 1872. One of these views was made into a lithograph for wider sale. This particular painting is probably his earliest and shows the town from the east viewed from a natural elevation, "Snake Hill." A number of the buildings, such as the Eagle Hotel, Union Hall, and Poestenkill Union Academy, still stand today. Did you know that this painting was the inspiration for the layout of the Village Crossroads at our sister museum, The Farmers’ Museum? Its first-hand account of the organization of a mid-19th century rural New York village was the perfect primary source as The Farmers’ Museum was being created in mid-20th century. Want to learn more? You can check it out here.
Top: Poestenkill, N.Y. by Joseph Henry Hidley. Gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0382.1955

Katsitsionni Fox’s Skywoman series

By: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions
Katsitsionni Fox’s series of paintings based on the story of Skywoman, who plays a central role in the Iroquois Creation Story, are a personal re-telling of the story she has heard her entire life. “As a young girl I remember hearing about the woman who fell from the sky in our Creation Story. The idea that a woman was first here on earth was empowering even on a subconscious level to my young mind,” she said. Fox’s artist statement reveals more:

It has not been until recent years, as I have matured as a mother and now a grandmother, that I have reflected on all that is revealed in the Creation Story. The Sky world, I have been told, is a reflection of the world in which we now live, which is far from perfect. I began to think about Skywoman not as the flowery character of a story but as a courageous and determined woman, mother and grandmother who not only survived but triumphed over every obstacle in her path. She had to leave her family and the world she knew. She was abandoned by the men in her life, her uncle, her husband and then her lover. She was alone and pregnant falling, falling, falling… into darkness and uncertainty. She created a new world for her daughter and cared for her grandsons when their mother passed away. I could relate to many of the issues that she faced, and could feel her fire burning inside me and in all women that I know. She lives on today; her teachings are vital and sometimes heartbreaking. She also resonates with the beauty of life, love, birth, femininity and the power and strength of all women.

Katsitsionni Fox’s paintings are on view in Our Stories Made Visible: Two Mohawk Women Artists. The 7th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial featuring Katsitsionni Fox and Shelley Niro through July 5.

Shelly Niro's Skywoman Series

by: Michelle Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions
In the summer of 2001, Shelley Niro created this series of four paintings based on the story of Skywoman, who plays a central role in the Iroquois Creation Story. She worked in a loghouse on the grounds of the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, New York. Niro had lived in the same loghouse as a child, before it was moved to the museum. She said of her experience, “I had no real intention of making drawings based on the Skywoman Creation Story. I knew I wanted to make something expressing freedom, no boundaries, and I had a real hunger to use the human form as a base for this project.”


Preparing for the Fall is the first in the series. A modern Skywoman falls through the hole in the sky where the Great Tree of Life once stood and makes a hopeful attempt to try to pull herself back up to the surface. Instead she grabs onto tobacco plants and strawberry plants.

Losing My Stuff is the second in the series. As Skywoman continues to fall, piece by piece, the things she carries start to fall away. Her beautiful red blanket gets whisked away and her sunglasses, used to keep out the brilliant rays of the sun, disappear into the cosmos.

Through The Constellations shows Skywoman resigning herself to the journey’s struggle. After months of worrying about her destiny—Where is she going? What will she find there? Does her family in the Skyworld worry for her and wonder where she is?—she starts to think about the future. She is pregnant and now worries for her unborn child. She begins to plan and rest up for the conclusion of her voyage.

Loving It is the final painting in the series. Skywoman is near the end of the expedition and now embraces the adventure of this passage. With the medicinal plants she brings from the Skyworld, to the relationships she will eventually make with the animal world and water world, she becomes the mother and role model for those who follow her.

Shelley Niro’s paintings are on view in Our Stories Made Visible: Two Mohawk Women Artists. The 7th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial featuring Katsitsionni Fox and Shelley Niro through July 5.

America's Rome - Opening Saturday

By: Paul D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Chief Curator
What a month it's been in Curatorial! After nearly two years of planning, more than 100 paintings have arrived on our doorstep to be uncrated and installed in time for Saturday's opening of America's Rome: Artists in the Eternal City, 1800-1900. The pieces look spectacular, especially when placed in their appropriate groupings and hung on the wall. The exhibition will take you through the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, and particularly the Campagna, or countryside. There are great Hudson River School style paintings by Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, George Inness, Jasper Cropsey, and Sanford R. Gifford, among others. All of these painters traveled to Rome to improve their art, and the results showed in the fame they received upon returning and painting American landscapes in the same style. Come see for your self. The public opening is this Saturday, May 23, beginning at 10 am.

NYSHA Library Catalog

By: Wayne Wright, Associate Director, NYSHA Library

The Library of the New York State Historical Association is chock full of materials on the history of our state. Since everything has a history, the collecting scope of the library’s materials is broad. The library contains materials on each period of the state’s history from the age of exploration to the present; its communities - cities, towns and villages; its families; its people. It has a good collection on its arts and crafts, its agriculture, its manufactures, its material culture, its songs, its religions – just about anything you can think of concerning New York’s history and culture. In the past, researchers came to the library knowing its reputation as a great collection of historical materials, confident that the library would have something for them.

In the last few years, there has been a major change at the library. No longer do researchers have to come hoping to find what they want. Now they can check the catalog in advance of their visit to find specific items of interest to them. The library’s catalog, Pathfinder, is on the Library’s website and can be searched from any computer with internet access. Pathfinder takes it name from a character in a James Fenimore Cooper novel and is appropriately named because it can be a researcher’s path to finding just what he’s looking for.

Go to the Library website which is a part of the New York State Historical Association’s website. Click on Pathfinder Online Catalog. A drop down box will appear in which you can choose to search the catalog by author, title or subject. By typing in an appropriate search term, a list of items keyed to that search term can be found. It could be an author’s name (last name – comma – first name, e.g. Jones, Louis C) to determine all books in the collection by a particular author. A title (e.g. Last of the Mohicans: leave off beginning articles “a,” “an,” or “the”) would show all editions of a book or all books with the same title. Typing in a subject (e.g. brooms) will either provide a list of items in the collection on that subject or a list of standard terms from which the exact subject heading can be chosen to come up with a list of items. After finding the bibliographic citation for an item, its call number can be determined. You can then make a visit to the library with the exact title and call number in hand. The library has five online public access computers available in the lobby area for you to consult during your visit as well.

Like most library catalogs, Pathfinder is a work in progress. New materials are being added daily. Not all of the manuscripts in the collection are currently in Pathfinder, but the existing card records are being added in electronic form all the time. The “Keyword” search capability does not work well at this time, so library users are encouraged to use the subject search until the bugs in keyword searching can be worked out.

Give Pathfinder a try on your own computer and then pay an on-ite visit with a list of call numbers. It will save your search time. Of course, library staff members are always willing to help customers find the resources they need.

Cooperstown Students open WPA Exhibit

By: Ansel Laurio, Cooperstown Graduate Program, Class of 2009

Exhibit panels have been printed and final preparations are well underway for the upcoming exhibition at the New York State Historical Association’s Research Library – Doubleday and the WPA: National Relief for a National Pastime – chronicaling Doubleday Field’s rise from sandlot to icon during the early part of the twentieth century. Many are aware of the legend of baseball’s invention by Abner Doubleday on the location of the famous field in 1839. Few know, however, how the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal agency formed during the Great Depression, helped to create the Doubleday Field which we know and enjoy today.
This wintry view from a nearby rooftop shows the skeletal grandstand under construction. WPA projects such as Doubleday Field’s improvements brought hope to people weathering the bleak economy. Winter 1938/1939.

Working along with my fellow Cooperstown Graduate Program classmates, Ashley Domm, Erin Andrews, and Nicholas Wood, we have created an exhibit that explores the transformation of Doubleday Field by the WPA for baseball’s centennial season in 1939. The subsequent celebration was an expression of hope and pride for a community dealing with hard economic times. The research we have done for this exhibit uncovered never before exhibited photographs from the Smith and Telfer Collection, as well as blueprints and broadsides from the NYSHA Research Library. We were fortunate to be able to work closely with and receive loaned objects from The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Crowds gathering in Cooperstown during baseball’s centennial season, 1939.

The exhibit will be open to the public on May 15th, and we hope that you will all stop by to check it out! The Research Library is open Monday through Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm.

Top: Doubleday Field Construction, 1939. NYSHA collection, PH 15,287.

Bottom: Opening Day, Doubleday Field, 1939. Smith and Telfer Collection 5-12198.