Cayuga Museum Celebrating 75 Years

2011 is the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Cayuga Museum of History and Art. The Museum’s celebration kicks off with a gala dinner dance at the Holiday Inn in Auburn, NY on Saturday, May 7.

The Cayuga Museum opened its doors in the former Willard-Case Mansion on October 16, 1936. It was the culmination of a vision by founding director Walter Long, an art professor at Syracuse University, and representatives of many of the leading families of Auburn, to create a permanent home for the arts in Cayuga County.

The Museum was started with four divisions: Art, History, Industry and Children’s Activities. These four divisions have given rise to other great arts institutions in our community. The Merry-go-Round Playhouse started in the Children’s division of the Cayuga Museum- and the Art division was critical in the founding of the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center. Over the years, the Cayuga Museum has played a vital role in celebrating, preserving, and defining the history and culture of our area. Tens of thousands of people have visited the Museum exhibits- and thousands of families and businesses have donated objects to the Museum collection.

The Museum is coming full circle back to its earliest years, when the mansion’s carriage house was transformed into a community theater through a collaboration between the museum and the Community Players. Known then as the Cayuga Museum Annex, the theater was a popular venue for a variety of programs from the early 40’s through the early 70’s. Used primarily for storage for the past several decades, the carriage house is presently undergoing a major restoration that will return it to life. The second floor sound studio, where Theodore Case filmed some of the world’s first sound movies, will be open to the public for the first time. The main floor theater will be available for shows, concerts, and parties year ‘round, as well as being one of the venues of the summer Musical Theater Festival.

The Museum’s 75th Anniversary Dinner kicks off a celebration of this important milestone. The dinner will be May 7, at the Holiday Inn. Guests can dine on filet mignon, crab-stuffed sole or stuffed Portobello mushroom, and dance to the music of the Soul Traders. Tickets are $75 each and benefit the Museum’s operating fund.

This Fall, the Museum will host an exhibit on its own 75 years in the community, from the earliest discussions about creating a museum to the present, and showcasing treasures from the Museum collection. The Museum is asking the public to share their own memories or photographs of the Museum over the years. To reserve tickets to the dinner, or to share your memories, call the Museum at 253-8051.

Buffalo and Erie Co. Historical Seeks Volunteers

The Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society is seeking docent tour guides, volunteers for community outreach programs, assistants for special events and research team members. Those interested in learning more about the programs can take part in a free orientation and training sessions this spring.

The dates are Saturdays, April 9, 16, 23, or Saturdays, May 7, 14, 21 &#8212- each session starts at 10 am and goes until 2 pm. Attendees should bring a lunch. Each session will provide guided tours of exhibits by museum education staff.

April 9 & May 7: Training in &#8220Fact, Fiction & Spectacle: The Trial of Red Jacket&#8221 exhibit, Native American Gallery

April 16 & May 14: Pioneer Gallery, Street of Shops exhibit, architecture of the museum building

April 23 & May 21: Neighbors, Road to Freedom, Bflo Made exhibits

Volunteers and tour guides may be college students or older- and should have flexible schedules. There is an ongoing need for weekday tour guides.

To register, contact Tara Lyons, Program Manager, at 873-9644 x311 or [email protected]. For more information, see www.buffalohistory.org.

Photo: Buffalo and Erie Volunteers.

Wild Center Wins Staff Development Grants

The Wild Center in Tupper Lake is has received two grants that will aid in the professional development of three staff members.

Assistant Curator, Leah Filo and Animal Care Specialist, Stephanie Hample, were awarded $750 from Museumwise for a “Go!” grant to participate in a specialized animal training program with world-renowned “Natural Encounters, Inc.”. During the training they will work with over 50 different bird and animal species, increasing their knowledge and skills for animal care and the always popular, Animal Encounters.

The Go grants are one of a series of grants offered to help museums and historical societies strengthen and develop their institutions and work with their communities. These grants, from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and administered by Museumwise, are designed to make it easy for organizations to access professional help and improve their institutions. To learn more about these grant programs, eligibility requirements and deadlines, visit www.museumwise.org.

Store Manager, Josh Pratt, received a $700 Sam Greenberg scholarship from the Museum Store Association to attend the MSA Retail Conference and Expo to learn more about the trade and strengthen skills.

Samuel Julius Greenberg was director of museum shops for the Smithsonian Institution from 1982 – 89. He felt that the MSA Retail Conference & Expo was one of the best learning opportunities for museum store managers.

In his memory, MSA founded the Sam Greenberg Scholarship Fund to provide assistance to museum store personnel who have never had an opportunity to attend the annual MSA Conference. Since the scholarship fund began in 1991, more than 100 members have received awards.

Brooklyn Museum Great Hall Renovation Complete

The Brooklyn Museum has completed an extensive renovation of its historic Great Hall at the center of its ground floor and has reclaimed additional space for a new gallery. This project, which is the initial phase of a major redesign of the first floor, marks the most transformative change to the floor since that portion of the Museum was constructed in the early twentieth century. The renovated space has been redesigned by the award-winning studio Ennead Architects, formerly known as Polshek Partnership. Ennead has been the architectural firm responsible for the transformation of the Museum over the past twenty-five years.

According to Arnold L. Lehman, Museum Director, &#8220This major rethinking of the nineteenth-century McKim, Mead & White architecture will completely alter and enhance the experience of every visitor in a way that makes for a more exciting and logical introduction to the Museum. Because only one-sixth of the original design for the building was completed, circulation on the first floor has always presented a navigational challenge for our visitors. Through this exciting and engaging new design by Ennead Architects, these issues have been resolved in a manner that will completely transform the visitor experience.&#8221

The initial phase of renovation features the expansive, two-story-high colonnaded space with its original coffered glass-block ceiling. For many years, this room served to display the Museum’s holdings of pre-Columbian, Native American, and Oceanic art. Now to be known as the Great Hall, it is a rare example in New York City of a hypostyle hall, with a dense grid of columns. Designed to form the core of a series of galleries, the space now features four monumental freestanding walls, which define a central gallery. The renovation has also created a new South Gallery, restoring to public use an area previously used for back-of-house functions.

&#8220The goal in this first phase of renovation has been to create a grand central gallery that gives focus to this tremendous space,&#8221 states Susan T. Rodriquez, a partner of Ennead Architects who led the design effort for the transformation. &#8220The entire project, when completed, will provide a more porous, transparent, and accessible experience. It reimagines the Great Hall as layers of galleries surrounding the central space and provides a dramatic visitor sequence that will showcase the Museum’s collections.&#8221

The new freestanding walls allow for the display of art while concealing climate-control systems within. Their crisp, diagonal edges facilitate and reinforce movement from the Lobby into the Great Hall. The central gallery features a new terrazzo floor. The entire gallery volume has been technically upgraded to become a state-of-the-art museum environment, complete with new sprinkler and lighting systems.

The lighting, designed by the Renfro Design Group, features a flexible track system integrated into the historic coffered ceiling, with LED lighting in the central bay. Natural light filters down to the Great Hall through McKim, Mead & White’s glass-block ceiling, which forms the floor of the Beaux-Arts Court. A new glass floor was introduced over the existing glass-block floor in the Court renovation by Ennead Architects in 2009. The Gilbane Building Company was the construction manager for that project.

Funding has been provided by the City of New York, the State of New York, and the Brooklyn Museum.

The renovated space will be inaugurated on March 4 with a site-specific architectural installation, reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio, which will engage the existing monumental columns with a series of suspended fabric canopies and furniture that relate to the details of the McKim, Mead & White structure. It will be on view through January 15, 2012, after which the space will become an introductory gallery to the entire permanent collection.

The first exhibition to be presented in the new South Gallery will be Thinking Big: Recent Design Acquisitions, also opening on March 4 and on view through May 29, 2011, after which it will be given over to a new installation of selections from the Museum’s holdings of African Art. Current plans for additional enhancements to the Hall and the first floor are anticipated to begin in the fall of 2011 and be completed in 2013.

The next phase of the first-floor transformation will include a Museum Cafe, a bar, and an outdoor dining terrace located directly off the lobby. The design will include the Williamsburg murals, on long-term loan from the New York City Housing Authority. The cafe will feature a formal dining room that can be used for special functions and a casual dining area overlooking the Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden. There will be direct access to the dining areas from adjacent parking.

The Museum Shop will be relocated to the area currently occupied by the Robert E. Blum Gallery near the main lobby. The new shop will be redesigned by Visbeen Associates, Inc., an award-winning architectural firm based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose projects include several of the Metropolitan Museum of Art satellite stores, as well as the Peabody Essex Museum shop. Important new features to enhance the visitor’s experience will be a wider entrance that will open onto the Grand Lobby, providing greater visual access to the galleries in the Great Hall and assisting with circulation patterns, as well as a new signage system.

The space that has been occupied for decades by the Museum Cafe, as well as offices and art-storage areas, will be reclaimed as a special exhibition gallery, which will replace the existing Robert E. Blum Gallery. The final phase of the first-floor transformation will include the renovation of gallery space currently occupied by the African galleries, which will be deinstalled on June 26, 2011, and will reopen in the South Gallery on August 12, 2011.

At the completion of the renovation of the first floor, all gallery space will be climate controlled, and non-exhibition spaces will be air-conditioned.

The Brooklyn Museum, as designed by McKim, Mead & White in the late nineteenth century, was built in many stages, and only one-sixth of the original design was completed. It has undergone several subsequent changes. In 1897 the West Wing (now known as the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing) was completed. Construction continued through the early twentieth century, and the large first-floor hall that housed the Museum’s non-European art collections opened in 1925, serving as the focal point of a series of galleries dedicated to various cultures of the world. Until the staircase in front of the Museum was removed in 1934, a large portion of the first floor contained an auditorium. Another major change took place in 1965, when four massive case structures were constructed and the space, showcasing North Central and South American collections, was renamed the Hall of the Americas (now to be called the Great Hall). The addition of the glass Rubin Pavilion on Eastern Parkway in 2004 reenergized visitor circulation on the first floor.

The current first-floor renovation continues a major redesign of the Museum’s ground level that began in 2004 with the opening of the Rubin Pavilion, the Ennead-designed, critically acclaimed front entrance, as well as the renovated lobby, redesigned front plaza, new South Entrance, and expanded parking facilities. It continues a Master Plan created in 1986 by the partnership of Polshek Partnership (now Ennead architects) and Arata Isozaki & Associates to improve and expand the Museum building, with a strong emphasis on making all gallery spaces climate controlled. Subsequently, they affected
a number of significant changes to the building, including the 1993 renovation of the entire Schapiro Wing, as well as the creation of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium and new art-storage facilities in the early 1990s. Ennead also designed the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which opened in 2007. The recently completed Service Extension building for the reception and processing of art and the complete renovation of the entire basement for staff and support spaces were both designed by Ewing Cole.

Image: Rendering Courtesy Ennead Architects.

State Museum, Library to Close Saturday, Reopen Mon

The New York State Museum, State Library and State Archives will be closed to the public on Saturday, March 5 due to an annually scheduled power shutdown to test the emergency power system in the Cultural Education Center building.

The Office of Cultural Education (OCE) building is closed on Sundays. The State Museum, Library and Archives will reopen on Monday, March 7.

The State Museum, State Archives and State Library are cultural programs of the New York State Education Department. They are located on Madison Avenue in Albany. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the OCE website at www.oce.nysed.gov.

Hyde After Dark Networking Event Tonight

The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls announces that the first Hyde after Dark event of 2011 will be held at the Museum tonight, Thursday, March 3 from 5:30 to 8 pm.

The Hyde after Dark program, which brings approximately 100 individuals to The Hyde on each occasion, was designed to make it as convenient as possible for potential visitors to come directly after work and socialize with friends while enjoying the art on display.

March’s Hyde after Dark showcases Objects of Wonder & Delight: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art – the Museum’s current exhibition which includes works by such artists as Matisse, Chagall, O’Keeffe, and Mapplethorpe.

The evening will feature live music by Mark Rabin, light appetizers, beer, wine, and access to the exhibition.

Davidson Brothers Brewery and Restaurant is the Event Partner and this Hyde after Dark is being held in association with the Adirondack Regional Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals Organization and the Saratoga County chamber of Commerce Young Professional Network.

Tickets for Hyde after Dark are $12 for members and $15 general admission. Those interested can save $2 per ticket by purchasing at least one day in advance of the event at the Museum Store or by phone via credit card. Admission to the exhibition during Hyde after Dark is included in the ticket price.

Contact the Museum at 518-792-1761, ext. 46 for additional information, to add your name to the Hyde after Dark electronic invitation list, or to purchase advance tickets. Individuals purchasing a new Museum membership at Hyde after Dark are admitted to that evening’s event free of charge.

Rochester Businessman Joins Boating Museum Board

Rochester businessman Allyn E. Hetzke Sr. has joined the Board of Directors of the Finger Lakes Boating Museum. Hetzke, who is active in the Antique and Classic Boat Society in Clayton on the St. Lawrence River, is married with four children and 13 grandchildren and lives in Spencerport.

The boating museum reached agreement with the City of Geneva in the fall of 2009 to establish a permanent home on the Geneva waterfront in association with a Visitor Center. The building, which will be located on the current Geneva Chamber of Commerce site, is being enabled by a $2 million grant provided to the city by state Sen. Michael Nozzolio. Construction is expected to start this spring.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of this project,” said Hetzke. “If the site is correctly developed it should be a world class museum. It should be spectacular for the City of Geneva.”

Hetzke started his company, Unitrac, in 1974 as a metal brokerage company and in the mid-‘80s formed Unitrac Energy Management Systems specializing in energy efficient lighting applications. IlluminFx, a division of Unitrac, provided the color-changing LED system used to light the Cradle of Champions sculpture unveiled during Super Bowl Week near the site of the game. The unveiling was covered on ESPN.

The Rochester Business Journal recently reported that the steel statue in Fort Worth, Texas, weight seven tons and is 16 feet high. It is shaped like the state of Texas and honors the strength and legacy of high school football in the state and those who later played in the National Football League.

Before starting his own business, Hetzke worked for Eastman Kodak Co., Community Savings Bank and Home Life Insurance Co. He former First Rochester Co. in 1971 and incorporated the company into First Rochester Security Corp. in 1972.

Hetzke purchased Burke Steel Serviceenters, Inc. in 1973 and sold the company to Mallard Lakes in 1977. He formed Unitrac in 1974.

He is a 1960 graduate of SUNY at Delhi with an AAS degree in business management. His hobby is restoring old boats and he is a member of the Rochester Curling Club as well as the Rochester Business Alliance.

The boating museum has assembled a collection of more than 100 wooden boats built in the Finger Lakes over the past 100 years, as well as numerous related artifacts and extensive reference material. The collection is stored in the Geneva Enterprise Development Center on North Genesee Street arranged by the Geneva IDA and in Yates County.

Portions of the collection will be displayed on a rotating basis within the new facility, but President Bill Oben emphasized that there will be a lot more to the museum than viewing boats because education, restoration and preservation are the key elements of the museum’s mission.

Also featured will be boat rides on Seneca Lake, active on-water programs including sailing and small boat handling, interactive workshops and displays to engage visitors in the design and construction of boats and boating history materials and programs.

The boating museum is a 501c3 not-for-profit corporation and was chartered by the New York State Department of Education in 1997 to “research, document, preserve and share the boating history of the Finger Lakes region.”

Additional information about the boating museum may be found on its website.

Split Second: A Unique Exhibition Experience

Split Second: Indian Paintings, a small installation of ten rarely seen works from the Brooklyn Museum collection, on view July 13 through December 31, 2011, will result from a unique online experiment that was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s critically acclaimed book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

The project is designed to explore how a viewer’s initial reaction to the work is affected by what they know, what they are asked, and what they have been told about the object in question. Just launched on the Museum website, the experiment consists of three steps.

The first phase consists of a timed trial. To gauge a person’s split-second reaction to a work of art, participants are given a four second countdown clock and asked to select which painting they prefer from a randomly generated pair of images from a pool of 167 works. Next, they are asked to write about a painting in their own words and then rate its appeal on a scale. In the final step, participants are asked to rate a work of art after being given unlimited time to view it alongside a typical interpretive text. Each part of the exercise aims to examine how a different type of information-or lack thereof-affects a viewer’s reaction to a work of art.

The resulting installation will include the Indian paintings that generated the most controversial and dynamic responses during the evaluation process. Each painting will be accompanied by an analysis of the data collected and a visualization of the data that explores the public’s response during the online evaluation.

The Brooklyn Museum collection of Indian paintings is considered among the finest in the United States. Rarely on public view because of their extreme sensitivity to light, Split Second: Indian Paintings provides a rare opportunity to view these seldom seen works of art.

The installation is organized by Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology, in consultation with Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Bernstein was also the organizer of the landmark exhibition Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008.

Illustration: Dhanashri Ragini. Page from an illustrated Ragamala series. Northern India (Punjab Hills, Kangra), ca. 1790 or earlier. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Overall: 10 x 6 15/16 in. (25.4 x 17.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum.

Humanities Council: Action Needed on Humanities Funding!

Note: What follows is an open letter by Sara Ogger, Executive Director of the New York Council for the Humanities.

Dear Friend of the Humanities,

Congress will be voting on [today] on a proposed $22.5 million cut to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which will directly affect the New York Council for the Humanities, starting with cuts to the current year of funding.

This cut is not minor, or a drop in the bucket. The loss of state funding and the economic downturn have already impacted the availability of our programs in every region of New York State. On the flipside, though, the savings from eliminating the cultural endowments would be tiny—about 1/21,000th of the overall U.S. budget, or the cost of two postage stamps per citizen.

If this seems unnecessarily destructive to you, please say so now! The House will debate these cuts this coming Monday and Tuesday, February 14th-15th.

And while you are telling your story to Congress, please do tell it to Albany as well! The entire Council team will be in the Capitol and Legislative Office Building for Humanities Advocacy Day next week. Loss of this support this year was a 25% blow to our budget. So take an extra minute to ask Albany to restore its funding—also extremely modest in the scheme of things—to the humanities in New York State.

Click on this link ASAP to register your support for the Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Thank you for your help. It will, I hope, yield dividends for our communities.

Sincerely,

Sara Ogger
Executive Director

Recent Acquisitions Exhibits Opens Brooklyn Museum Space

The Brooklyn Museum will present the special exhibition Thinking Big: Recent Design Acquisitions from March 4 through May 29, 2011. The installation of forty-five twentieth- and twenty-first-century objects from the Museum’s permanent collection of decorative arts that have been acquired since 2000 will include a number of large-scale objects that will be exhibited for the first time.

Several important themes that have guided these acquisitions will be highlighted, including Brooklyn-designed objects- young designers- unusual materials and innovative methods of production- designs for children- and mid-twentieth century modernism.

The Brooklyn Museum has been actively acquiring twentieth- and twenty-first-century objects since the 1970s. Among the works featured in the exhibition are &#8220Cinderella&#8221 Table by Jeroen Verhoeven, 2005- Chest of Drawers, Model #45, &#8220You Can’t Lay Down Your Memories&#8221 by Tejo Remy, for Droog, 1991- &#8220Nirvana&#8221 Armchair by Wendell Castle, 2007- Spacelander Bicycle by Benjamin Bowden, 1946- and Womb Chair by Eero Saarinen, 1947-48. Objects by Charles Eames, Cindy Sherman, Konstantin Grcic, Francois Jourdain, and Harry Allen will also be included.

Thinking Big will be the first exhibition in a gallery that has been reclaimed from nonpublic space. The gallery is part of a renovation that is the first phase in a program that will redesign and transform much of the Museum’s first floor beyond the Rubin Pavilion and Lobby, which opened in 2004.

The exhibition is organized by Barry R. Harwood, Curator of Decorative Arts, Brooklyn Museum.

Illustration: Designer and Maker: Wendell Castle (American, born 1932). &#8220Nirvana&#8221 Armchair, 2007. Place made: Scottsville, New York, U.S.A. Fiberglass, 62 3/8 x 33 5/8 x 33 3/4 in. (158.4 x 85.4 x 85.7 cm). Gift of the artist, Brooklyn Museum.