Programs

Family Programs
School Programs
Tours

All Programs

Upcoming Events

The Explorers Gallery is temporarily closed September 2–13, 2026 for reinstallation. Reopening Wednesday, September 16, the new space is inspired by AIHA's upcoming exhibition, Albany, c. 1776—we look forward to welcoming families to explore, imagine, and create!

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create an interactive landscape collage inspired by The Hudson River School: Landscape Paintings from the Albany Institute. Participants will cut and glue various media on paper to create a pop-up multi-media landscape.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create an interactive landscape collage inspired by The Hudson River School: Landscape Paintings from the Albany Institute. Participants will cut and glue various media on paper to create a pop-up multi-media landscape.

2:00pm Free with admission In this lively, illustrated talk, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Victoria Johnson shares the dramatic and consequential life of artist Frederic Church, whose footsteps she followed around the globe for her “absorbing” (Ron Chernow) and “superb” (Wall Street Journal) new biography of Church, Glorious Country. Church’s curiosity, bravery, and passion for nature drove him to explore the world, but it was his astonishing talent that allowed him to bring the world to America at a time when landscape photography was in its infancy and most of his countrymen and countrywomen would never see a different country or continent. Exhibited to acclaim abroad, Church’s blockbuster paintings persuaded skeptical critics that the so-called “New World” could, in fact, give birth to towering artists and furnish the subject matter for great art. At Olana, his estate on the Hudson, he forged an enduring masterpiece of architectural, interior, and landscape design. A master artist and citizen, Church brought the world to America, and America to the world. Presented in Frederic Church’s bicentennial year. Program support is provided by Donald and Ann Eberle.  

2:00pm–3:00pm The docent tour on Sunday, September 13 is cancelled; we apologize for the inconvenience. Please join us for the next regularly scheduled docent tour on Sunday, September 20.

10:30am–12:00pm Please join us for Meet Me at the Institute, a program designed for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Held on select Mondays February–December 2026, sessions occur when the museum is closed to the public—minimizing distractions and providing a relaxing environment. Sessions are led by trained educators who facilitate open-ended discussions about the Albany Institute's exhibitions and collections. The program is developed based on Meet Me at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art's Alzheimer's Project. Meet Me at the Institute is free; advanced registration is required. Contact Natalie Oliver, Education Associate, at 518-463-4478 ext. 405 to register and for more information.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm Free with museum admission. Combining geographical accuracy with romantic vision, nineteenth-century landscape painters Susie Barstow, Julie Hart Beers, and Eliza Greatorex captured on canvas and paper the beauty and awe they experienced in the American landscape. Painting in the style of the Hudson River School, they favored sites that were well-known destinations for travelers, hikers, and tourists, and exhibited their work in academic venues alongside male colleagues. These acute businesswomen maintained their own financial assets and held careers as professional artists, yet until recently, have largely been omitted from the art historical canon. Dr. Nancy Siegel’s lecture examines the lives and careers of Barstow, Beers, and Greatorex while celebrating recent gifts and acquisitions of their work into the Albany Institute's collection. Support for this program is provided by Larry and Judy White.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create an interactive landscape collage inspired by The Hudson River School: Landscape Paintings from the Albany Institute. Participants will cut and glue various media on paper to create a pop-up multi-media landscape.

2:00pm Free with museum admission. In this demonstration, artist Lauren Sansaricq will show and explain the painting practices of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School painters. She will discuss the artists' process from sketching outdoors to creating epic, large paintings in the studio. She will also touch on the Hudson River School's unique compositional and philosophical ideas in painting. Sansaricq has spent more than 20 years studying the techniques of the Hudson River School and has taught at several prestigious institutions. This program is open to all who may be interested in the Hudson River School and is not exclusive to artists and craftspeople. The program creates an open dialogue and invites questions along the way. Program support is provided by Donald and Ann Eberle. Additional support is provided by Jennifer Krieger and Eric Siegel.

2:00pm–3:00pm The docent tour on Sunday, September 27 is cancelled; we apologize for the inconvenience. Please join us for the next regularly scheduled docent tour on Sunday, October 11.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

2:00pm–3:00pm The docent tour on Sunday, October 4 is cancelled; we apologize for the inconvenience. Please join us for the next regularly scheduled docent tour on Sunday, October 11.

2:00pm–3:30pm Free with museum admission Working from his Albany studio, Erastus Dow Palmer (1817–1904) catapulted to fame as a leading American sculptor in the 1850s and 60s. Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Thayer Tolles will trace his rise to success in an illustrated talk focusing on how New York was central to advancing his career. Relying on the Empire City to display, market, and sell his marbles, Palmer set American sculpture on a new course and inspired a younger generation of artists. This program is presented in conjunction with the current exhibition, Your Friend, Frederic E. Church, which investigates the long friendship between Palmer and eminent landscape painter Church through letters, paintings, and sculptures.   Program support is provided by Donald and Ann Eberle.  

10:30am–12:00pm Please join us for Meet Me at the Institute, a program designed for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Held on select Mondays February–December 2026, sessions occur when the museum is closed to the public—minimizing distractions and providing a relaxing environment. Sessions are led by trained educators who facilitate open-ended discussions about the Albany Institute's exhibitions and collections. The program is developed based on Meet Me at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art's Alzheimer's Project. Meet Me at the Institute is free; advanced registration is required. Contact Natalie Oliver, Education Associate, at 518-463-4478 ext. 405 to register and for more information.

6:30pm–8:00pm Free with museum admission; a public reception will follow the lecture. David Smith (1906–1965) welded together images that are impossible to forget. He thought deeply about sculpture and change, sculpture and memory, sculpture and play, and art and society, imagining sculpture as its own material field in which, as much as with painting, viewers could always see more, find more, learn more. Smith's astonishing sculpture stream helped to define the transformational potential of sculpture. Focusing on Australia and Hudson River Landscape, the most canonical of the 1951 drawings in space, Smith biographer Michael Brenson explores Smith’s transformational energy and imagination. By connecting them to Smith’s belief in the magical image, Brenson reveals why Smith’s sculpture remains inexhaustible sixty years after his death.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

10:00am–5:00pm Enjoy free admission and free activities for visitors of all ages this Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples' Day! Bring the whole family to enjoy hands-on artmaking, guided gallery tours, live music, and interactive activities themed around our current exhibitions: Inspired Landscapes: Women of the Hudson River School and Mexico Masks / Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Don't forget to visit our featured Community Partners: New York Folklore, the Mesoamerican Institute, and Herencia Cultural!  

6:00pm–8:30pm AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND is the untold story of the first organized interracial civil rights protest in U.S. history. When 5 Howard University students sat on a Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the white community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, an extraordinary history-making partnership was born. The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressman, and a press avalanche. Picketing together over the sweltering summer led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. Ten 1961Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were incubated on the Glen Echo picket line, and the carousel arrests were challenged in the Supreme Court case. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman (Praying with Lior, Black in Latin America, The Pursuit), four living protesters rescue this forgotten history, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND includes voiceover by noted actors Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner and Tracie Thom.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

2:00pm–3:00pm The docent tour on Sunday, October 18 is cancelled; we apologize for the inconvenience. Please join us for the next regularly scheduled docent tour on Sunday, October 25.

2:00pm–3:00pm Free with museum admission. Join photographer Phyllis Galembo for an artist talk exploring her decades-long practice documenting ceremonial dress and masquerade traditions in communities throughout Africa and the Americas. Galembo will discuss the travels, encounters, and process behind Mexico Masks / Rituals, offering insight into the people, traditions, and extraordinary artistry represented in the exhibition. Following the talk, Galembo's book Mexico Masks / Rituals will be available for purchase and signing. Phyllis Galembo is an American photographer whose remarkable career photographing ritual dress and masquerade from around the globe expresses a phenomenal range of political, artistic, theatrical, social, and religious meanings. She is renowned for her six photographic monographs from Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Galembo’s interest in performative masking can be viewed as a conceptual project with contemporary appeal throughout the art world, as well as in the specialized fields of fashion and textiles, performance, and anthropology, among others. Phyllis Galembo has had solo exhibitions at the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., the Boca Rotan Museum of Art, Florida, the Tang Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York, among others. In 2013, a series of her photographs was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, curated by Massimilliano Gioni and Cindy Sherman. Her exhibition Dressed for Thrills, organized by The Museum of FIT, toured at the Albany Institute of History and Art in 2004. Her photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center for Photography (ICP), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University Art Gallery, Library of Congress, and the Albany Institute, among others. Her work has been widely reviewed and published in print and other media. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, received a Senior Fulbright Research Award for her work in Nigeria, and has also received awards from the New York Council for the Arts (NYSCA), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), most recently in 2016. Phyllis Galembo is a Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, State Univ. of New York, department of Art and Art History. She is represented by Axis Gallery, NY & NJ.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

10:00am–5:00pm The Albany Institute of History & Art is open this Veterans Day and visitors of all ages are invited to Family Free Day! Themed around our current exhibition—Albany, c. 1776—join us for activities inspired by what's on view, including hands-on artmaking, gallery tours, live music, and more.  

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

10:30am–12:00pm Please join us for Meet Me at the Institute, a program designed for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Held on select Mondays February–December 2026, sessions occur when the museum is closed to the public—minimizing distractions and providing a relaxing environment. Sessions are led by trained educators who facilitate open-ended discussions about the Albany Institute's exhibitions and collections. The program is developed based on Meet Me at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art's Alzheimer's Project. Meet Me at the Institute is free; advanced registration is required. Contact Natalie Oliver, Education Associate, at 518-463-4478 ext. 405 to register and for more information.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

2:00pm–3:00pm Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.