Teaching the Hudson Valley Student Writing Contest

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Teaching the Hudson Valley (THV) is looking for student writing about places in the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. Short essays and stories written by K-12 students will be accepted by e-mail until 9 a.m., Monday, November 7.

Beginning in December THV’s blog will publish up to one piece of student writing per week for the next 12 months. They will also share the students’ work with sites written about – they may choose to publish as well. In addition, three students – one each in elementary, middle, and high school – will receive an Explore Award covering trip costs so they can share the place they wrote about with their classmates.

All writing about places in the 11 counties that make up the federally-designated Hudson River Valley Heritage Area will be considered for publication. To be eligible for an Explore Award places must have cultural, historic, or natural significance, be owned or managed by a not-for-profit or government body, and be open to the public regularly.

When reviewing student work, THV will look for evocation of place, the vivacity of the writer’s voice, and use of conventions appropriate to each student’s age and development. Readers will include teachers and staff from Heritage sites throughout the region.

Teachers, youth group leaders, and others can find details, writing prompts, resources, and more at THV’s website.

General Horatio Gates Event in New Windsor

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Saturday, November 5, from 2:00 – 3:00 PM visit this Revolutionary War headquarters and meet General Horatio Gates, who was none too happy to be billeted in this house. This is a cooperative program of the National Temple Hill Association and the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site. Free admission. Edmonston House is located at 1042 Route 94 in New Windsor, New York, just ? mile west of the 5 corner intersection. For more information please call (845) 561-1765 ext. 22.

The home of James Edmonston has stood for over 250 years. Rescued in the 1960’s, by the National Temple Hill Association, the house by that point had become a junkyard showroom, filled with old car parts. Nicely restored, the house serves as the headquarters for this local historic organization.

When General Horatio Gates was assigned the Edmonston home as winter quarters for 1782-83, only the small western section of the house existed. Disgusted with the pitifully small house, he wrote General George Washington: “Your Excellency’s Dog kennel at Mount Vernon, is as good a Quarter as that I am now in”. Eyeing the much larger and far more refined Ellison House, he expected to be billeted at that nearby property. To please Gates, the senior ranking Major General, in the Continental Army, Quartermaster General Colonel Timothy Pickering had to evict Surgeon General John Cochran from the Ellison house. Angered by his removal, Cochran challenged the beleaguered Pickering to a duel.

Despite his utter defeat and shameful flight from the battlefield of Camden, South Carolina, in 1780, he still remained as arrogant as ever. An intriguer and schemer, he used friends in Congress to wrest the command of the Army that would eventually defeat and capture a British Army at Saratoga, in 1777. Many of his contemporaries and later historians, believed that the victory was the result of the efforts of the man he replaced- Philip Schuyler. He was implicated in a plot, with the same Congressional partisans who helped him supersede Schuyler, to supplant Washington as commander-in-chief. While at the Ellison house, he was involved in a conspiracy, in March 1783, which threatened the very freedoms the country had fought to achieve.

Organized in 1933, The National Temple Hill Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic sites related to the last encampment of Washington’s Continental Army. New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site is part of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. The Palisades Interstate Park Commission administers 27 parks, parkways and historic sites for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in New York as well as the Palisades Interstate Park and parkway in New Jersey.

Washington Irving Film Screening, Benefit

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washington irvingKaren Kelleher, a writer and filmmaker currently finishing a documentary about Washington Irving’s literary journey is holding a screening and seeking your support at the Warner Library, in Tarrytown, Thursday November 10th. Kelleher discovered that no film on Washington Irving (1783-1859) existed, the man widely hailed by some as the founding visionary of authorship in the United States. She was inspired by this omission to direct her documentary on Irving and believes that her film will change the impression of Irving as both an author of not just “Sleepy Hollow” but also all of his works especially those works produced in Spain “The Life of Christopher Columbus,” “The Civil Wars of Granada,” and “Tales of the Alhambra.”

The Dutch legacy is one that includes diverse cultures and Irving did not miss the opportunity to explore foreign lands. Irving is the first American writer who authored so many popular storybooks, biographies and historical volumes that bookshops, printers and publishers could establish profitable businesses in New York City and Westchester and thus the industry was partly founded on Irving’s personal genius and creative contributions.

Washington Irving also operated with incredible personal integrity and his long friendship with John Jacob Aster is explored in specific consideration of Irving’s unique appointment as a trustee of Astor’s last will. The current version of the film meets many of the objectives projected thus far. The additional funds are hoped to enable one more shoot date with two authors who agree to read a story from “Tales of the Alhambra” and discuss how this story impacts America’s literary tradition and why it is important include “Tales of the Alhambra” in courses and school programs on Washington Irving. Washington Irving produced more works while living in Spain that any other nation.

Interviews Kelleher has completed so far include Kathleen Eagen Johnson, Curator at Sunnyside and author of Washington Irving’s Sunnyside and Visions of Washington Irving: Selected Works from the Collection of Historic Hudson Valley; Washington “Rip” Irving III, poet and adjunct professor at Salve Regina University – as well as a descendant of the 19th century author Washington Irving; John ‘Jock’ Elliott, who has died aged 84 in 2005, was arguably one of the most significant advertising account managers of the 20th century and an expert on Washington Irving’s literary influence upon the modern Christmas holiday; Andrew Burstein, Charles Phelps Manship Professor, History Professor at Louisiana State University and author of The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving; Maria del Mar Villafranca, Director of the Patronato of the Alhambra. Karen Kelleher has developed and produced feature films and television programs for Paramount Pictures, Miramax Films, A&E Networks and PBS.

Photo: Daguerreotype of Washington Irving.

Historic Saranac Lake to Hold Annual Meeting

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Historic Saranac Lake will hold its Annual Meeting on November 1 at 7:00 PM, in the John Black Room of the Saranac Laboratory Museum in Saranac Lake. The meeting will feature a presentation of historic films by Jim Griebsch, featuring newly digitized footage of the Trudeau Sanitorium in 1929. The Kollecker film footage is shown courtesy of the Adirondack Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library.

An independent film and video director, Jim has spent time digitizing, restoring and editing 16mm spools of film from the 1920’s through the early 60‘s which have been archived in the Saranac Lake Free Library’s Adirondack Room.

Born in Saranac Lake, Jim is an award winning producer, director and director of photography with numerous film, television and interactive credits to his name during his 40+ year career. He co-founded and owned Heliotrope Studios Ltd., in Cambridge, Mass. He worked on the feature film Cold River in Saranac Lake. His work has taken him around the world. Jim and his wife Carol have returned to Saranac Lake to live and as he continues to travel to Boston to work with MediaElectric Inc., on a variety of projects.

Jim Griebsch recently joined the Board of Directors of Historic Saranac Lake. In its 31st year, Historic Saranac Lake is an architectural preservation organization that captures and presents local history from its center at the Saranac Laboratory Museum.

The meeting is open to all members of Historic Saranac Lake and the public at large. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, please contact Historic Saranac Lake at (518) 891-4606.

Rensselaer County Historical Appoints Board Members

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The Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) has announced the appointment of Pegeen Jensen and Frank Sarratori to the Board of Trustees. “The addition of these two new board members strengthens the board in two ways. First, as an elementary school teacher, Mrs. Jensen improves our connection to the classroom. Second, Mr. Sarratori with his legal and financial knowledge brings fiscal expertise to the board. RCHS will benefit from their experiences and opinions” Ilene Frank, Executive Director, said in a prepared statement.

Pegeen Jensen is a first grade teacher at Saddlewood Elementary in the South Colonie District, where she is also involved in organizing the school’s Math Olympiad. Mrs. Jensen is a lifelong resident of Melrose, NY and currently lives there with her husband and two daughters. Mrs. Jensen is a graduate of Hoosic Valley High School and SUNY Potsdam.

Frank Sarratori is the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for Pioneer Bank, where he has worked since 2004. Mr. Sarratori is from Tonawanda, NY and currently lives in Troy. He holds degrees from State University of New York at Albany and the Albany Law School of Union University.

The Rensselaer County Historical Society and Museum is a not-for-profit educational organization established in 1927 to connect local history and heritage with contemporary life. RCHS owns two 19th century townhouse buildings, the National Register listed Hart-Cluett House and its Carriage House, servicing as a historic house museum and the adjacent Carr Building housing a research library, galleries, and meeting spaces. RCHS is located at 57 Second Street, Troy NY 12180.

Frick Art Reference Library Photo Archive Goes Online

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Scholars in multiple disciplines around the world have long heralded the Photoarchive of the Frick Art Reference Library as uniquely valuable to research that relates to object-oriented study of works of art. Without this repository of an estimated 1.2 million images of works created by more than 40,000 artists, curators, art dealers, and authors of monographic catalogs would be hard pressed to find visual documentation of unpublished art and the preparatory studies, versions, copies, or forgeries that relate to those and even to more famous works.

In recent years, the Frick’s Photoarchive has also played a key role in helping researchers compile provenance information about art looted during World War II. Lynn Nicholas, the highly respected author of The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, 1994), recently noted that “to do provenance research, of course, one of the very first places to go is the Frick&#8230-”

Until now, online access to these valuable resources has been limited to searches for the artists’ files, the results of which indicate the amount of material the Photoarchive has for a given artist, but no specific information about individual works of art. For that, researchers had to visit the Library premises, and manually browse the photographs stored on file.

The Frick Art Reference Library and its partners in the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)—the libraries of The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum have announced that through a complex process of data migration, all of the Photoarchive’s research database records created since 1996 (and all future records created both for the existing collection and for new acquisitions) may now be accessed via NYARC’s online catalog Arcade.

These online records in Arcade offer detailed historical documentation for the works of art, including basic information about the artist, title, medium, dimensions, date, and owner of the work, as well as former attributions, provenance, variant titles, records of exhibition and condition history, and biographical information about portrait subjects.

Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian Stephen Bury comments, “For us the incorporation of the Photoarchive records in Arcade means that the richness of all of the Frick’s research collections will be available to scholars everywhere and the image collection will be discoverable as easily as our other special collections of auction catalogues and exhibition ephemera through a single search in Arcade. We know that the road that will take us to full digitization of the archive is long (currently online access is possible to only 125,000 items in the archive, but the Frick is committed to the digital future of this exceptional resource).”

To cite a typical example of the advantages users will gain from the seamless searchabilty across text and image collections that the Frick now makes possible: locating the catalog of the Stroganoff sale at Lepke in 1931 now yields not only the publication, itself, but also the works of art listed documented as sold there by the Photoarchive, one of which was part of the Goudstikker collection that was recently restituted to the heirs.

In addition to global access to the historical documentation for works of art recorded in the Photoarchive, a new interface, the Frick Digital Image Archive has been created to link the images of 15,000 works of art captured during the Frick’s photography expeditions throughout the United States from 1922 to 1967 to the documentation in Arcade.

Researchers can retrieve images by keyword or field searching, display large preview images, download small jpeg image files, and link to the matching Arcade records. This image archive, which may be accessed via the website of The Frick Collection, was made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Henry Luce Foundation.

The NEH also designated the project as part of its “We the People” initiative to encourage and strengthen the teaching study and understanding of American history and culture. Through this two-year project, the Frick digitized 15,000 endangered negatives within the larger collection of 60,000 Library negatives and developed the interface to make the images freely available online. The negatives were the products of photography expeditions during the first half of the twentieth century to Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

In many case Frick Art Reference Library the images record early states of the works of art, prior to restoration or deterioration, and in some instances, they remain the only record of a work that has been subsequently lost or destroyed. Much of the documentation for these works is also uniquely recorded at the Frick because it was obtained from the owners (particularly true of the provenance and portrait subject information) or from scholars who consulted the images years after they were captured by the Library’s photography team.

During the course of the NEH project, Library staff updated the ownership and attribution information for nearly 1,500 works, relying on notations by researchers of the past and on the Inventories of American Paintings and Sculpture online database. Access to these images will complement the collection of 25,000 Frick Library negatives earlier digitized with the support of ARTstor and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation and available through subscription to ARTstor.

With this new online access to the Frick Photoarchive research database records and the digital image archive, the Frick is now poised to incorporate a growing number of documented images from its visual resource holdings. These images complement other visual resources contributed by the NYARC partners, thereby ensuring that a broader community of researchers will have access to these unique collections.

Presidents and American Finance Exhibit to Open

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On Tuesday, November 8, the Museum of American Finance will open “Checks & Balances: Presidents and American Finance,” an exhibit on the financial challenges faced by American Presidents both in the Oval Office and in their personal lives.

From its inception as an experiment in a new kind of democratic government, the US has faced a panoply of economic and financial challenges. More often than not, it was the President to whom the nation turned to tackle these problems.

Designed as an ongoing series of rotating exhibitions, the inaugural installment of “Checks & Balances” will focus on the national and personal fiscal policies of five of the most well-known Presidents: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The exhibit will introduce important Treasury secretaries and track significant financial markers, such as GDP, presidential salary and the consumer price index. It will then delve into the personal finances of the Presidents, including their economic backgrounds and their own banking practices.

Financial historian Robert E. Wright, Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College SD, guest curated the exhibit, which was developed and designed by Becky Laughner, Director of Exhibits and Archives, and Maura Ferguson, Director of Exhibits and Educational Programs.

“The exhibition will seek to create a dialogue between the nation’s financial past and the present, presenting the legacy and long-term impact of the Presidents’ financial policies on today,” said Wright.

Exhibit Opening Event: All are welcome to attend a reception to open “Checks & Balances” on Tuesday, November 8, from 5 – 7 pm. The event is open to the public- tickets cost $10 per person and are free for Museum members. For information and reservations, please contact Tempris Small at 212-908-4110 or [email protected]. Working members of the press should contact Kristin Aguilera at 212-908-4695 or [email protected] for media access.

“Checks & Balances: Presidents and American Finance” is sponsored by Con Edison. It will be on display through November 2012.

Tunnel Engineer Charles Watson Murdock

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By most accounts, the Lincoln Tunnel is the world’s busiest vehicular tunnel (the type used by cars and trucks). It actually consists of three tunnels, or tubes, and accommodates about 43 million vehicles per year, or about 120,000 per day. It was opened in 1937, ten years after the Holland Tunnel (about three miles south) began handling traffic. And a North Country man was instrumental to the success of both tunnel systems.

Charles Watson Murdock, a native of Crown Point, New York, worked closely with some of the best engineers in American history, playing a key role in solving a problem unique to tunnels for vehicles with gasoline-powered engines.

Charles was born on February 11, 1889, to Andrew and Mary Murdock. After entering the Sherman Collegiate Institute (a prep school in Moriah), he attended Middlebury College in Vermont, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, and then RPI in Troy, graduating in 1912 as a civil engineer. Following a stint with the New York Telephone Company, he accepted a position with the Public Service Commission, 1st District, New York City in 1913.

During the next several years, a pressing problem developed in Murdock’s field of work. The automobile had taken hold in America, and with the proliferation of cars in New York City, gridlock became routine. There were far too many vehicles on the road, clogging thoroughfares with major traffic jams, particularly at bridges.

Ferries helped, but the wait was long. The solution of adding more bridges and more ferries carried several additional problems. After studying the issues, experts decided that tunnels were the best option.

Plenty of tunnels had been dug in the past to accommodate trains, water pipelines, and subway systems. The advent of the automobile introduced new problems in anything but the shortest of tunnels. The gasoline engine emitted poisonous gases, primarily carbon monoxide. The problem vexing engineers was how to discharge those deadly gases from tunnels to make the air safe.

No method had yet been devised to fill long tunnels (like the planned 1.6-mile Holland) with safe and breathable air. Slow traffic, stalled cars, and accidents could keep citizens within a tunnel for lengthy periods. All the while, every vehicle would be pumping poisonous gas into an enclosed space, with deadly results.

From among several options, the method proposed by Clifford Holland was chosen. On his team of engineers was Charles Murdock, who was then employed by the New York State Bridge and Tunnel Commission and the New Jersey Interstate Bridge and Tunnel Commission. (Clifford Holland died just two days before the two tunnels from east and west were joined. The project was renamed in his honor.)

Several dozen structures requiring innovative and exceptional engineering skills have been called “the Eighth Wonder of the World.” Among them is the Holland Tunnel, “the world’s first mechanically ventilated underwater vehicular tunnel.” That long-winded description is very important—the Holland’s machine-powered air-handling system became the standard blueprint for automobile tunnels the world over for the next seven decades.

Charles Murdock was deeply involved in its design, development, and implementation. In 1921, he conducted subway ventilation tests at the University of Illinois. Further work—highly detailed, exhaustive experimentation—was done in a test tunnel created in an old mine near Bruceton, Pennsylvania, duplicating the Holland site. The data from those testing facilities formed a basis for the creation of the Holland Tunnel’s ventilation system.

In the process, the engineering team also developed and used the first reliable automated carbon monoxide detector (with kudos from miners and canaries alike, no doubt).

The giant tubes that formed the highway tunnels were separated into three horizontal layers. The middle layer handled traffic- the bottom layer conducted fresh air throughout the tunnel- and the top layer pulled the poisonous gases upward for removal.

The system was driven by four 10-story ventilation towers, two on each side of the river. Together they housed 84 fans of 8 feet in diameter—half provided fresh air, which flowed through slits in the tunnel floor, and the other half expelled “dirty” air and gases skyward. The system provided a complete change in the tunnel’s air every 90 seconds.

Should it ever fail, thousands of lives were at risk. For that reason, extreme safety measures were built into the system. Power to the fans was supplied from six independent sources, three on each side of the river, and each capable of powering the entire tunnel on its own.

Due to Murdock’s great expertise, he was later chosen to oversee the installation of the ventilation system on the Lincoln Tunnel. Fifty-six fans performed the air-handling duties, and twenty men covered three shifts around the clock, monitoring the carbon monoxide instruments. Motorists commented that the air they breathed in the Lincoln Tunnel was far cleaner than what they breathed daily in the city.

In 1938, the year after the Lincoln Tunnel opened, Murdock’s presentation, “Ventilating the Lincoln Vehicular Tunnel” was made before the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers, setting the standard for similar tunnels around the world.

By 1947, ten years after the Lincoln Tunnel opened, Murdock’s work was praised as a modern wonder. It had operated perfectly for a full decade—none of the backup systems were called into use during that time.

Though he was known principally for his work on the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels from the 1920s through the 1960s, Murdock’s skills were called upon for many other large projects. He was a consulting mechanical engineer on the addition of second tunnels to four sites on the Pennsylvania Turnpike—the Allegheny, Blue Mountain, Kittatinny, and Tascarora tunnels.

Among jobs in other states, Murdock consulted on the East River Mountain Tunnel in West Virginia- Big Walker Mountain Tunnel in Virginia- and the Baltimore Tunnel (Outer Tunnel) in Maryland. He also worked on the Riverfront & Elysian Fields Expressway in Louisiana, and Route I-695’s Connector D in Boston.

Charles Murdock remained with the Port Authority of New York for more than 25 years. The Crown Point native is linked to some of the most important engineering work of the twentieth century. He died in Volusia, Florida in 1970 at the age of 81.

Photo Top: Charles Watson Murdock.

Photo Middle: The three layers in the Lincoln Tunnel tubes.

Photo Bottom: A Lincoln Tunnel ventilation tower in Manhattan.

Lawrence Gooley has authored ten books and dozens of articles on the North Country’s past. He and his partner, Jill McKee, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004. Expanding their services in 2008, they have produced 19 titles to date, and are now offering web design. For information on book publishing, visit Bloated Toe Publishing.

NYC Landmarks of Labor Films, Lectures, Discussions

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The Historic Districts Council has announced a series of Films, lectures and discussions on NYC’s sites Associated with the Labor Movement. The series of programs will explore New York City’s 19th and 20th century buildings where laborers and organizers lived, worked, and staged notable events related to the labor movement. Participants will learn about the history and future of New York’s labor buildings – including homes, factories, and public squares – and discover the preservation efforts currently underway to save some of these spaces.

Tickets for the entire series are available for $55/$35 for Friends, seniors & students. Advance reservations are required. Tickets can be ordered by visiting or contacting www.hdc.org, 212-614-9107 or [email protected].

Remembering the Spatial History of Labor: Where Are Our Landmarks?
Wednesday, November 2, 6:30pm, Seafarers and International House, 123 East 15th Street, 2nd Floor, Manhattan

Fee: $15 for general public/$10 for Friends, seniors & students

This panel will examine the built environment of the labor movement, discussing how and why to preserve significant buildings and sites associated with labor history. Panelists will delve into both cultural and social history such as waterfront laborers and the labor movement among different immigrant groups. Speakers include historians Joyce Mendelsohn and Richard A. Greenwald- and novelist and essayist Peter Quinn, chronicler of Irish-America.

Resistance in Film: Screening of On the Waterfront with discussion

Tuesday, November 8, 6:30pm, Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, Manhattan

Fee: $15 for general public/$10 for Friends, seniors & students

The industrial history of New York City dominated the city’s commerce for more than three centuries. Elia Kazan’s acclaimed film, On the Waterfront, depicts midcentury working conditions along the mob-controlled piers of the Hudson River. The film is based on a 24-part Pulitzer prize-winning series in the New York Sun exposing corruption and racketeering characterizing operations on the water. Noted architectural historian Francis Morrone will speak after the film about its significance in New York City history and culture.

Greenwich Village: Labor History in Bohemia Walking Tour

Sunday, November 13, 10:30am, the exact location for the tour will be announced upon registration.Tour lasts approximately two hours.

Fee: $35 for general public/$25 for Friends, seniors & students
Greenwich Village has a long and distinguished involvement in American Labor History. This walking tour will address the 10,000 marchers in the first Labor Day Parade (1882), the Socialist-led Rand School of Social Science, the founding site of the ILGWU, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Uprising of 20,000, the Catholic Worker, Cooper Union, and sites associated with Emma Goldman, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Clara Lemlich, and Samuel Gompers. Come learn from Justin Ferate, one of New York City’s foremost tour guides, about these significant sites.

Landmarks of Labor is sponsored in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts. HDC also wishes to thank New York City Council Members Inez Dickens, Daniel Garodnick, Stephen Levin and Rosie Mendez for their support of this series.

State Museum Exhibits Burns Archives Photos

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A new exhibition &#8211 Shadow and Substance: African American Images from The Burns Archive &#8211 has opened at the New York State Museum, showcasing rarely-seen photographs from one of the largest private photography collections in the world.

Open through March 31, 2012 in the Photography Gallery, the exhibition allows the viewer to perceive how African-Americans were seen by others and how they wished to be seen. These images do not tell a complete story of the past, but their eloquent shadows provide unique glimpses into the lives of African-Americans over the past 160 years.

The 113 images in Shadow and Substance include portraits, snapshots and photographs of celebration, tragedy and quiet joy, work and family, strength and perseverance. From early images of slaves and Civil War soldiers to new voters and political activists, the exhibition is filled with illustrations of achievement and shocking evidence of intolerance. Some images may not be suitable for young children.

The images were culled from the comprehensive Burns Archive of Historic Vintage Photographs that include specializations in medical and health care, death and dying, sports and recreation, in addition to images of African-Americans. The collection was amassed by Dr. Stanley B. Burns, an ophthalmologist, collector and curator in New York City who was the founding donor for several photography collections, including those of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Burns has authored several books including “A Morning’s Work: Medical Photographs from the Burns Archive & Collection, 1843-1939”- “Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America” and “Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype and Decorative Frame, 1860-1910.”

The traveling exhibition is organized by the Indiana State Museum and curated by Dr. Modupe Labode, assistant professor of history and public scholar of African-American History and Museum Studies at Indiana University.

The State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.