Hudson Valley, NY (June, 2011) - Landscape painters who captured the Hudson Valley's scenic beauty in the early 1800's started an arts movement that has turned the region's towns into vibrant communities with galleries, theater, dance, sculpture, and music. Summer is a particularly good time to go art hopping in the region since there are outdoor as well as indoor performances and exhibits.
The soft summer air carries the dulcet tones of actors at The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison. The play's the thing on historic Boscobel mansion's lawn whereHamlet and The Comedy of Errors are just two of the compelling productions fans can see this summer. Theatergoers can bring a picnic dinner before the show to watch the passing river traffic entertain with theater of its own. A cast of a different cast is found in the Fields at Omi in Ghent. Over sixty acres of rolling farmland, wetlands and wooded areas present the works of internationally recognized contemporary and modern artists. Stroll the grounds and experience a wide range of large-scale works in this bucolic outdoor environment.
Famous artists' homes can be found throughout the valley, and a special exhibit calledEdward Hopper Prelude: The Nyack Years is not coincidentally appearing at the Hopper House in Nyack. Hopper was born in this home, now a gallery, and it's the first exhibit to concentrate on the works he created in the very place he lived, some of which have never before been published or exhibited. Paintings from the protégé of another native son are in the exhibit Robert S. Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedmen's Sons. The works of this nineteenth-century landscape painter are shown here on the east coast for the first time at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill. Cole was a major influence on Duncanson, the first African-American landscape painter to gain international renown.
A wonderful view of the region can be found indoors at the Hudson River Museum's show of Susan Wides' photographs in Yonkers. Wides' fascination with the nineteenth-century Hudson River School painters is explored in From Mannahatta to Kaaterskill with fifty large-scale photographs taken up and down the valley. Set in that same scenery is Beacon at Dia: Beacon, Riggio Galleries. With 240,000 square feet of gallery space, it's one of the largest museums to open in the U.S. since the Museum of Modern Art in the1930s. Dia's renowned permanent collection of contemporary art is comprised of major works from the 1960s to the present, all housed in a stunningly renovated box factory on the river.
Further upriver, the Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany houses an important assemblage of Abstract Expressionist art. The collection has strong ties to the Museum of Modern Art whose directors helped assemble the collection of artists, the stars of this school of art. Works by Calder, Pollock, and Nevelson are part of the largest public collection of the New York School of art in the country. Even better, it's free and open to the public seven days a week. Across the river, The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy runs the gamut with pottery, print-making, culinary arts, jewelry, woodworking, painting and drawing, stained glass, and dance studios. Its 36,000 square feet of fully-accessible space also includes a 100-seat performing arts theater as well as three galleries noted for their critically acclaimed exhibits. Wander through this vast space and you'll see something new every time you go.
Arts are for everyone, so come to the Hudson Valley to see what we started two hundred years ago. Summer is a great time to take in our lawn performances, galleries, special collections, and homes of famous artists. The arts are alive and swell in the Hudson Valley!
Gallery maps in hand, urban art lovers take to the sidewalks of Kingston during First Saturday Art Receptions every month. Named by Business Week as one of the nation's Top 10 Art Towns, city-wide galleries host art openings on these Saturdays with established and up-and-coming artists showing their paintings, sculpture, and photography. On the flip side, artists from the Wallkill River School in Montgomery can be seen painting in their field. Literally. Specializing in Plein Air (outdoor) painting, the gallery encourages visitors to view the artists and their canvases as they paint at scenic and historic sites. The finished works can be seen on the walls of the every changing gallery at the Wallkill River School housed in the restored 1800's Patchett House.
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