PUBLIC PROGRAMS AND SPECIAL EVENTS PLANNED FOR

SCENES OF AMERICAN LIFE  AT AIHA

The Albany Institute of History & Art has planned a variety of public programs and events for visitors of all ages to accompany its major fall exhibition, SCENES OF AMERICAN LIFE: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, will be on view at the museum from October 13 through December 9, 2001.  

SCENES OF AMERICAN LIFE includes 62 important paintings and sculptures celebrating American life in the first half of the twentieth century.  Organized around six themes -- rural life, the great Depression, industry, leisure, post-war alienation, and urban life -- the exhibition reveals reveal life in what has been called the “American Century.”

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Thursday, October 11, 2001; 5:30 – 7:30 pm; $10 non-members, FREE members

Opening Reception -- Sneak preview of exhibition and cocktail party

Sunday, October 14, 2001; 2:00 – 4:00 pm; FREE with admission

Museum Explorers Day -- An interactive learning experience focusing on SCENES OF AMERICAN LIFE that includes gallery activities, art making, performances, films, intended for adults and children to share. Featured activities include:  swing dance lessons by Patricia Rumore, folk songs by Mark Rust, film shorts from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, a mural project in the spirit of WPA and all-American refreshments. 

Wednesday, October 17, 2001; 6:30 pm; $5 adults; $4 seniors/students; FREE members

Lecture – “Art and Life in 1930s America” Dr. Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, will discuss the art, the people and the politics that shaped American life in the 1930s.  Framed by the Stock market Crash in 1929 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the 1930s is one of the most fascinating and conflicted decades in our history.  Newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt launched social welfare programs that were unprecedented in scope and funding, as unemployed Americans waited in breadlines and farmers throughout the Midwest abandoned their drought-stricken lands.  Against this bleak economic backdrop, the country’s artists found much to celebrate.

This program is part of State Humanities Month, October 2001, an annual celebration sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities. 

Sunday, October 21, 2001; 2:30 pm; FREE with admission

Exhibition Tour -- Tour of Scenes of American Life conducted by a Museum Educator

Wednesday, October 24, 2001; 12:10 pm; FREE with admission

Exhibition Tour -- Tour of Scenes of American Life conducted by a Museum Educator

Wednesday, October 24, 2001; 6:30 pm; $5 adults; $4 seniors/students; FREE members

Lecture – “George Tooker: Cold War Warrior” Katherine Hauser, Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.  As a Communist and gay man in the '40s, artist George Tooker would have been especially sensitive to the development of a surveillance society.  This lecture places his art in the culture of the Cold War, dramatically revising our understanding of its meaning and pervasive power.
 

Sunday, October 28, 2001; 2:30pm; FREE with admission

Exhibition Tour -- Tour of Scenes of American Life conducted by a Museum Educator

Sunday, November 4, 2001; 2:30pm; FREE with admission

Exhibition Tour -- Tour of Scenes of American Life conducted by a Museum Educator