Apr 18 Thursday
Art After Hours mixes art and entertainment every third Thursday of the month. Visit exhibitions, listen to live music, and socialize with friends! Check the calendar of events for more information and ticketing.
Tour the Venetian Vistas exhibition with a trained tour guide to explore the iconic city landscapes represented by artists from the 18th century to modern day. Tour begins at 5:00pm.
At 6pm, visiting assistant professor of art history at Skidmore College, Erin Giffin, delivers a lecture that explores two Venetian churches, the 17th century construction of a chapel in the Church of San Clemente, and the 18th century construction at San Pantalon, both are modeled after the Holy House or Santa Casa of Loreto.
As a specialist of Global Early Modern art history, Erin Giffin’s research explores cross-cultural relations through artwork production, particularly focusing on the sculpture, architecture, and ephemera that respond to religious practices and express popular devotion. Her classes explore questions of information dissemination and copying across early modern Catholic communities, as well as confrontations of faith and commerce in missionary contexts (specifically in East Asia, and North and South America). Erin’s classes investigate expressions of identity politics through personal and family monuments; prints and other circulating media like ambassadorial gifts; and immersive religious spaces such as the Sacri Monti. Her first monograph, currently entitled Translating Space: Replicas of the Holy House of Loreto, investigates replicas of the purported Holy House of the Virgin Mary at Loreto, Italy, which was recreated extensively across the Catholic world.
Apr 19 Friday
“The Unknown Story of Baseball in the Berkshires” – a weekend-long celebration of the history of Black baseball and Women’s baseball in Berkshire County. Sponsored by the West Stockbridge Historical Society, starting Thursday, April 18th for a sneak preview from 5-8 PM. Opening Reception Friday, April 19th from 5-8 PM with a presentation on the history of Black baseball and Women’s baseball at 6:30 by Larry Moore, director of Baseball in the Berkshires, and special guests. Exhibit continues Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 12-4 PM. Old Town Hall, 9 Main Street, West Stockbridge. www.weststockbridgehistory.org
Apr 24 Wednesday
Catskill Mountain House & Environs: Romantic Poetry of the CatskillsPoetry reading led by Town of Hunter Historian Dede Terns-Thorpe, MTHS Board Member Cyndi LaPierre, & Guests. Wednesday, April 24 at 7:00PM at the MTHS Visitors’ Center, 5132 Route 23A, Haines Falls, NY.
Dede, Cyndi and others will be reading from writings by Thomas Cole, William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and other romantics who are continuing that style into the present time. We are setting this evening program in the Visitors' Center to allow for informal conversation. Please remember to pre-register.
Apr 26 Friday
Join us on Friday, April 26 for a public reading and reception with Mason Currey, author of the Daily Rituals books. This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are required.
In 2007, while procrastinating on a magazine article due the next morning, Mason Currey launched the Daily Routines blog, which, to his surprise, eventually attracted international press attention and thousands of visitors a day. In 2009, Currey shuttered the blog to research a book on the same theme. When it was published in 2013, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work was reviewed by the New Yorker, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and the Believer and named one of NPR’s best books of the year. It has since been translated into 17 languages.
In 2019, Currey published a sequel, Daily Rituals: Women at Work, featuring profiles of the day-to-day working lives of 143 women writers, artists, and performers. Booklist said, “The spectrum of creativity is radiant, and each artist’s rituals of concentration and balancing act between art and life are revelatory and awe-inspiring.”In addition to compiling the Daily Rituals books, Currey was a design-magazine editor for ten years, working as the managing editor of Metropolis, the executive editor of Print, and a senior editor at Core77. His freelance writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and Slate, and he has delivered talks on the creative process to art students, writers’ groups, and the partners of the design consultancy IDEO.
Apr 27 Saturday
The hit public radio and podcast series comes to town bringing three great actors and a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater and comedy. Public Radio International’s wildly popular series and podcast goes live in a unique evening of literature in performance.
May 04 Saturday
Saturday, May 4 from 1 to 4 - Opening Reception for Outside the Box with guest speaker Ian R. Maracle. Ian is Tuscarora Bear Clan from Six Nations. He has been a photographer since 2012, an art form he feels is rooted in storytelling and communication. He was showcased in Photographers Without Borders; has conducted workshops with at risk youth; and been commissioned for behind the scenes and production work by Kaha:wi Dance Theater. Ian’s work is a visually stunning statement of what can happen when one is willing to “stand up to tokenism” and create from “lived experience.”
These events are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; a Humanities NY Action grant; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; a National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America grant; and friends and members of the Iroquois Museum. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information contact: info@iroquoismuseum.org.
May 05 Sunday
The annual Melinda Rosenblatt Lecture will be delivered by Samuel Kassow in conjunction with the publication of his translation of Rohkl Auerbach’s Warsaw Testament (White Goat Press). Auerbach was a journalist, literary critic, and one of only three surviving members of the Oyneg Shabes, historian Emanuel Ringelbum’s top-secret group of archivists in the Warsaw Ghetto. Upon immigrating to Israel in 1950 she founded the witness testimony division Yad Vashem and played a foundational role in the development of Holocaust memory. Warsaw Testament, a memoir based on her wartime writings both in the ghetto and on the Aryan side of the occupied city, provides an unmatched portrait of the last days of Warsaw’s Yiddish literary and cultural community and of Auerbach’s own struggle to survive.
This event will be presented at the Yiddish Book Center and streamed live via Zoom. Space for the in-person event is limited and will be first come, first served; register here for the Zoom live stream.
May 13 Monday
This is a virtual program.
Since 1912, when a young man named George Gray landed an open-cockpit biplane on a farmer’s field, aviation has played an important role in communities located throughout the 6 million-acre Adirondack Park. Through a range of historic images and postcards, Aurora Pfaff tells the story of pilots who linked communities by air, transported goods and people, and the small towns and airfields that they called home. From the novelty of planes landing on skis and daredevil flying circuses to forest fire patrols, exploration of the vast backcountry, and toy deliveries by Santa, airplanes have opened the Adirondack wilderness and made remote communities more easily accessible for tourists and adventurers. Yet this golden age for aviation would not last, for as car travel became easier and more affordable in the mid- to late-20th century, air travel in the Adirondacks would fade in importance and necessity.
Images used in Aviation in the Adirondacks come from the Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, Historic Saranac Lake, Keene Valley Library, Piseco Lake Historical Society, Saranac Lake Free Library Adirondack Research Room, Town of Webb Historical Association, individuals, and other organizations.
About The Speaker:
Aurora Wheeler Pfaff is a freelance writer and content manager based in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She writes passionately about history, natural history, and extraordinary ordinary people.
A lifelong reader, Aurora has a degrees in Liberal Arts from the Harvard Extension School, where she studied Victorian literature and took the world’s coolest astronomy class.
Aurora’s recent projects have included articles on the reading habits of the queens of England, bog plant life, and flying over the Adirondacks. She is currently at work on a memoir about caring for her grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease. Aviation in the Adirondacks is her first book.
May 18 Saturday
Collage & Assemblage: Past & Present
Join artist Joan Hall for an illustrated lecture on the history of collage from 12th century Japan to contemporary photo illustration. Learn how artists recycled everyday items into artwork using such materials as money, spare tires, and even their own blood. This presentation promises to be both educational and entertaining. Hall’s work is featured in the current exhibition Mystery and Wonder: Highlights from the Illustration Collection.
If you plan to visit the galleries, please plan to arrive at least 1 hour prior to the start of the lecture.