Byrdcliffe:

An American Arts and Crafts Colony

From December 18, 2004 through February 27, 2005, the Albany Institute of History & Art will be hosting Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony, an exhibition that celebrates the rich artistic and social legacy of the artists' colony (still operational) located in Woodstock, New York.

"The many facets of Byrdcliffe's history are compelling and relevant to twenty-first-century audiences, who might yearn for simpler, more centered lives," said Nancy E. Green, the exhibition's organizer and the senior curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.  “The colony produced beautiful objects in a variety of art forms, from painted furniture to glazed ceramics and oil paintings.  Of equal importance were the utopian ideals of its founders and the dynamic creativity of its talented but under-appreciated artists and other colorful personalities.”
 

Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony is the first major traveling exhibition and publication about Byrdcliffe, founded in 1902-03. Celebrating more than one hundred years as a functioning art colony, Byrdcliffe features 190 fine and decorative arts objects, historical materials, architecture, folk music and literature produced during the colony's first 26 years, from its establishment to the death of its founder and chief investor Ralph Whitehead in 1929. The exhibition and catalogue examine the artistic, historical and social significance of the colony.  Artists include Dawson Dawson-Watson, Hermann Dudley Murphy, Zulma Steele, Edna Walker, H. Stuart Michie, Edmund Rolfe, Edward Thatcher, Bertha Thompson, Bolton Brown, Lovell Birge Harrison, Carl Eric Lindin, Jessie Tarbox Beals, Eva Watson-Schütze, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Jane Whitehead, Edith Penman and Elizabeth Hardenberg, Halsey Ricardo, Helen Buttrick, Marie Little, Vivian Bevans, John Ruskin and Elliott Landy.  Many of these artists will be represented by work in multiple media.

The Byrdcliffe exhibition will travel from AIHA to the New-York Historical Society (March 15-May 15, 2005), and the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library (June 11-September 5, 2005).   The 256-page exhibition catalogue is distributed by Cornell University Press.  The exhibition website, featuring resources, a teachers' center and all the works included in the exhibition, can be visited at: www.museum.cornell.edu/byrdcliffe/
 

A complementary exhibition, Albany & Troy Arts and Crafts: 1907 - 1918, will also be on view from January 15 to March 13, 2005. The exhibition will highlight the activities of the Albany School of Fine Arts (1910-1918) and the Troy School of Arts and Crafts (1907-1918) and include works by E. Marguerite Enos, Henry J. Albright, Dorothy P. Lathrop, Samantha L. Huntley, William R. Tyler and Louis M. Potter.

The Albany Institute will host a variety of public programs and special events for adult and family audiences throughout the exhibition, including:

Sunday January 9, 2005; 2:00 pm

Lecture: The Arts and Crafts Movement:  British Roots, American Interpretations

Cheryl Robertson, writer, speaker and advisor on architecture and the decorative arts, will give an overview of the Arts and Crafts Movement and elaborate on her essay in the Byrdcliffe exhibition catalogue.   FREE with museum admission

Sunday, January 23, 2005; 2:00 pm

Annual Marjorie Doyle Rockwell Memorial Lecture:  Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony

Nancy E. Green, senior curator of prints, drawings at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University and organizer of the Byrdcliffe exhibition, will discuss components of the exhibition within the context of the Arts and Crafts Movement.  FREE with museum admission

Sunday, January 23, 2005; 3:00 – 5:00 pm

Special Event: Exhibition Reception in honor of Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony and the opportunity to meet curator Nancy Green.  FREE with museum admission

Sunday, January 30, 2005; 2:30-5:00 pm

Family Art and Gallery Adventures: The Arts and Crafts Movement

Explore the exhibition Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony with a museum educator and join us in the art studio for an art-making activity (for children ages 7-11.) FREE with museum admission

Local support for this exhibition is provided by Omni Development Company, Inc.  and  M.M. Hayes Co., Inc.

The exhibition and catalogue were organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York State Council on the Humanities, the Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and Furthermore: a program of The J. M. Kaplan Fund. 
* Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the exhibition, publications, and programming do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information on the exhibition, visit www.museum.cornell.edu/byrdcliffe/

For more information on The Woodstock Guild and The Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, visit www.woodstockguild.org