Tag Archives: Rockwell Museum

Rainy Day Museums

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Rainy summer day? Visit the museum.

Ah, but WHICH museum, you wisely ask. For we have quite a few to choose from!

We recently visited the ROCKWELL MUSEUM in Corning, as we often do when there’s a special exhibit on. Just now there are two complementary photo shows. One is a set of Kodachrome photos from 1975 by Nathan Benn, who was commissioned to take a year shooting film for a “National Geographic” feature on four seasons in the Finger Lakes. I quickly spotted the faces of vintners Walter Taylor and Konstantin Frank, and I loved the view of wine casks in the rising sun. Maybe the most fun picture was the tour boat on Skaneateles Lake, but you could also enjoy Waterloo Memorial Day, Cohocton Fall Festival, or behind-the-scenes at the Glass Works.

The contemporary portrait photo exhibit, by Chris Walters, included Megan Frank (Dr. Konstantin’s great-granddaughter) and Corning Inc. president Wendell Weeks, but particularly aimed to move past the lily-white 1975 collection into non-white and marginalized groups. The photos focused on Asian Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, women Americans, Americans in drag, and Americans protesting or campaigning for a BETTER America. Each exhibit is worth seeing, especially for we who know the region – both together are even better.

We also made a recent visit to GLENN CURTISS MUSEUM in Hammondsport, where “Art at War” is showing through December 31. This exhibit was built from two remarkable collections of fuselage art. Movies and family history have made many people familiar with “nose art” in World War II airplanes, showing pretty girls, menacing monsters, or cartoon characters. These are earlier versions, going back to the Great War, where the art and symbols were painted right onto the fabric covering the airplane’s framework.

Fabric damaged easily, and was routinely replaced, with the old material (including art) often tossed onto the fire without a second thought. For this exhibit we can thank a couple of individuals a hundred years ago, who preserved the art and even the camouflage for us to see today. Of course the museum also includes Curtiss aircraft, early motorcycles, Hammondsport history, and turn-of-the-century life – not to mention the always-popular workshop, where volunteers repair, restore, or reproduce historic aircraft.

Earlier in our summer season we visited SENECA ART & CULTURAL CENTER at GANONDAGON STATE HISTORIC SITE, near Victor on the site of one of the Seneca cities. Besides its captivating museum exhibitry, Ganondagon screens “Iroquois Creation Story,” a remarkable 17-minute film that has won awards from Stuttgart to Los Angeles. It combines animation and live-action, dance and mask. A short walk uphill is a reproduction Seneca longhouse, offering a good chance to get a feel for local life in the 1500s through 1700s.

We actually started our (personal) season at Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, and just last week enjoyed Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro. Locally we also have Finger Lakes Boating Museum and (of course) Corning Museum of Glass. Our region further offers Rochester Museum and Science Center, Memorial Art Gallery, George Eastman Museum, and the Strong National Museum of Play… Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Museum of the Earth, Roberson Museum and Science Center… not to mention small historical museums broadcast through our counties and communities. Enjoy yourself!

“From the Bed to the Wall:” Quilts at the Rockwell

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Rockwell Museum currently has a special exhibit, “From the Bed to the Wall: Quilts from a Private New York Collection.”

Quilts are… what? Prosaic utilitarian objects… interesting folk craft artifacts… revelatory data of history, society, culture, and ethnicity… creations of high art.

The answer is, any of the above… and sometimes more than one at once.

Curiously, it seems that from the 1700s to today, quilts have made a journey from high craft, to common furnishing, to high art.

When cloth was an expensive, hand-made material, quilters were upper-class women, well-skilled in decorative arts. The new “dark, satanic mills” of the industrial revolution flooded the world with millions of acres of cloth, for which price suddenly became almost inconsequential.

Now ordinary women… and it was overwhelmingly women… became quilters. Design and technique became folkways. Since it was women’s work, and since the end result was a domestic product, and since hardly anybody paid money for it, scholarly and cultural types paid it no attention at all.

The exhibition in Rockwell’s mezzanine carries us from the end of the 18th century to the dawn of the 21st. Technique is not much touched upon. Part of the emphasis is on design, and part is on the cultural or personal settings of the creators.

“Crows Quilt,” a creation by African American artist Sarah May Taylor (1916-2000) was one of my favorites. Three crows adorn each block, but no two blocks are alike, each varying the color and position of the birds.

My other favorite was “Center Diamond,” made about 1910 by a Pennsylvania Amishwoman. The geometric design fits with traditional Amish wariness about figural art, but it also makes a bold, dramatic assertion that seizes your attention from across the room. It opens the “Amish and Modernism” section of the exhibit, an apt if counterintuitive observation – Amish design… so conservative and traditional… anticipates, and even guides, modern design.

Joyce’s favorite was a highly personal sampler quilt, where many blocks include prayers or meditations, almost as though the whole thing forms a personal or religious journal.

We examined an 1891 redwork pattern quilt, trying in vain to discern whether the artist embroidered her figures freehand, or whether she stitched over a printed pattern. (If she did it freehand, she was DARN good.) We also looked closely at a midwestern Amish Bow Tie quilt (c. 1920), finished with several eye-catching errors – such as one block incomplete, one block rotated 90 degrees, and one block off-color. It’s been a traditional practice in some Amish circles to deliberately make a quilt with visible errors, to emphasize that only God achieves perfection.

There were a couple of doll quilts and a couple of crazy quilts, plus a few “friendship” or “signature” quilts, on which the names of makers, friends, or supporters are embroidered. This included a “tithing quilt” from Brewerton Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1924). The term was utterly new to us, despite a couple of decades of living in southeastern Pennsylvania… it seems it’s a signature quilt, but what it has to do with tithing is beyond us!

(The quilt exhibit runs through January 10. Also on just now are are “Antigravity: Elaine K. Ng,” through February 2022; “Three Generations: Pablita Velarde, Helen Hardin and Margrete Bagshaw,” through January; the Gingerbread Invitational, through December 31; and “Martine Gutierrez: Takeover,” through December 13.)


John James Audubon Comes to the Rockwell

We are very fortunate to have, now on exhibit in Corning’s Rockwell Museum, the work of one of the most significant artists ever to work in America.

*John James Audubon spent decades tramping, riding, or boating across the United States, determined to document his adopted country’s native birds in paint. He hunted with Daniel Boone, and lived among the Indians. He probably knew America better than any man had before… and we can wonder whether anyone has known it so well since.

*Although greeted with considerable skepticism, “Birds of America” was quickly recognized as a staggering achievement in art and in nature study (and in printing techniques, too).

*Audubon then launched upon “Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” – in other words, mammals. It’s from this work that our exhibit comes, in the form of highest quality hand-colored lithographic plates.

*Look at the Canada Otter… look, and keep looking. Look deeper, and deeper again. Notice how much of the fur is painted in as individual hairs, perhaps with a single-bristle brush.

*Many of the names are unfamiliar to us… some have changed names, some have gone extinct, some have been reclassified. Audubon presents us with the black squirrel, which we now consider just an uncommon color morph of the gray squirrel.

*Likewise in his artistic menagerie we find the polar bear, black bear, grizzly bear, and cinnamon bear. We now see the cinnamon as a subspecies of our own black bear.

*Audubon sometime staged his scenes in unlikely or even impossible ways. Five Common Flying Squirrels burst from a single tree, at various stages of age and occupation (resting, coiling, “flying,” etc.). They look like a Tasha Tudor picture.

*The Long-Haired Squirrel skips up and down a maple tree, as we can see from the leaves. The soft-haired squirrel makes its home in an oak.

*Audubon died before the project was finished; one son finished up the figures, while another finished the backgrounds. I don’t know who made the artistic decision, but the “Birds” and the “Quadrupeds” seem to have a telling difference.

*In the bird paintings, as far as I know, all of the backgrounds are natural settings. But the quadrupeds book shows a background filled with fences, farms, and towns. In some cases, the human presence intrudes still farther. The Tawny Weasel seizes a chicken in the yard of a large, well-kept barn. The Red Fox and the Canada Otter each snarl at the viewer, one paw caught in a trap. The Black-Tailed Deer staggers away, streaming blood, after being shot by a hunter at port arms in the background. Anerica had changed dramatically… more than dramatically… in Audubon’s adult lifetime.

*The book was originally issued in two oversize editions, one of them huge, and three subjects are on oversize sheets, pushing a yard in width. The Canada Otter, the Little American Brown Weasel, and the Caribou, or American Rein Deer are here in that detailed glory.

*The exhibit runs through January 6, and you may never get a chance to see another such gathering. Also of interest right now: the invitational gingerbread house competition, and “Your Place, Your Space,” an exhibition from Mrs. Marla Goldwyn’s 8th-grade digital art class at Corning-Painted Post Middle School. Take them in, and enjoy the permanent galleries. But don’t miss Audubon.

Out of the House, and in From the Cold — Check Out Our Museums!

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Last week we looked at places to get out of the house, while still keeping warm, and we put the spotlight on our wonderful public libraries. For more great places to get out of the house but in from the cold, try our region’s many museums.

*The huge CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS is rightly world-renowned. If you haven’t been for a while, stop in again. It’s constantly growing, constantly changing. It’s art, industry, science, local history, and pop culture. (Look for your Mom’s Pyrex, Corelle, and CorningWare.) EXTRA SPECIAL: the hot glass show, where glass artists create while you watch.

*Corning’s “other” museum sometimes gets unjustly overshadowed by the Glass Museum. But the ROCKWELL MUSEUM is worth repeat visits all on its own… to be honest, we’re at the Rockwell more than we are at the Glass Museum. It’s a worthy memorial to Mr. and Mrs. Rockwell… I knew him, and he was always a pleasure to visit. The Rockwell has had a history of groping for its own identity, but is now a Smithsonian Affiliate, focusing on art of the American experience. EXTRA SPECIAL: contemporary art by Native American and Latin American artists.

*I used to be director of the GLENN CURTISS MUSEUM, and I’m always amazed at the number of local folks who haven’t been, or who think it’s still in the old 1860 academy building. Curtiss Museum tells a triple-barreled tale… the Curtiss story, the early aviation story, and the story of a typical small town experiencing the flood of change in the early 20th century. EXTRA SPECIAL: the workshop, where volunteers restore of reproduce flying aircraft.

*Curtiss Museum’s sister institution is the NATIONAL SOARING MUSEUM atop Harris Hill, overlooking Big Flats. Snowy windy days are not the best for driving up that hill, but otherwise make a stop if you haven’t done so. Maybe you think you’re not especially interested in “the silent grace of motorless flight” – but soaring, gliders, and sailplanes have been an important part of our region’s economy and heritage. Why not learn something new? EXTRA SPECIAL: a large guest exhibit of dollhouses and miniatures.

*The OLIVER AND UNDERWOOD MUSEUMS in Penn Yan center on life in the Yates County area, from pre-contact Native times onward. EXTRA SPECIAL: Jemima Wilkinson’s coachee (a cut-down carriage) and other memorabilia. To her 18th-century followers Jemima’s word was not law… it was Divine Law. Eccentric she may have been, but she’s one of the founding figures of our region.

*CHEMUNG VALLEY HISTORY MUSEUM focuses on life in and around Elmira, including Mark Twain and the “big horn” (a mammoth tusk) which gives Chemung its name. EXTRA SPECIAL: this is the original home of Chemung Canal Bank, so you can still see the vault.

*Where would we be without our lakes? Check out the still-new (and ever-growing) FINGER LAKES BOATING MUSEUM near Hammondsport. Besides seeing the boats (and getting a whiff of summer), you can often watch restoration work, just as you can at nearby Curtiss. EXTRA SPECIAL: FLBM’s main building is the old Taylor (originally Columbia) winery, with its lovely 19th-century stone vaults and dark woodwork.

*And all that’s just for starters! Watch this space – more to come!

Two Fine Photo Shows at the Rockwell

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*Is photography an art form? Yes, as we can see from two exhibits at the Rockwell Museum.

*Some people might not be sure. After all, with a painting or a sculpture you have to start with a blank canvas, or a chunk of rock, and create something out of nothing. While with photography, you just point at what’s already there, and snap the lever – right?

*Unsurprisingly, there’s a good deal more to it than that, as John Doddato and Peter McBride show us. Even without getting into the technical stuff, selecting the right sight TO photograph… then stalking that fugitive blend of subject, angle, shadow, and light… sometimes takes hours of waiting for two or three seconds of opportunity.

*A staggering example is McBride’s photo taken in the region of the headwaters of the Colorado River. As I approached from across the room, it puzzled me. It looked almost like silhouette figures on a southwestern vase – though if that’s what it was, it was a contemporary piece. Even standing before it, I still didn’t get it… then finally my mind’s eye clicked everything into place. What had seemed like the elongated silhouettes of horses were actually the SHADOWS of horses, as seen from directly overhead, at an altitude of 600 feet.

*With help from his pilot father, McBride had crystallized a single instant from an incredible viewpoint, creating an outstanding image of one man and 21 horses in a split-rail corral.

*This huge color photo is part of the exhibition “The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict” in the Rockwell’s Temporary Exhibition Gallery. The huge Colorado is so heavily used that it actually peters out into sand long before it reaches the sea. McBride and his collaborator Jonathan Waterman demonstrated that fact after following the flow for hundreds of miles, and then walking 90 miles to salt water along the theoretical bed of America’s seventh-largest river.

*The journey and the photos are a celebration of the river. A gorgeous view of two anglers fishing in the Roaring Fork tributary captivates even non-fishermen. (Study the two men in the river – see how the blur of their movements adds to the scene.)

*A scene of Marble Canyon in the upper Grand Canyon turns our world upside down. The walls of the canyon rise straight on either side, and in between, down at the floor of the canyon is – the sky, white clouds captured perfectly in reflected blue.

*But the photos are also a disturbing record of how we use and misuse the mighty stream. A Las Vegas swimming pool is one of thousands of pools and water features that gulp water from the river and throw it off as evaporation, largely just for the sake of spectacle. An aerial view of Phoenix shows a mighty metropolis, complete with palm trees, country clubs, and water features, in land that’s naturally desert. Westerners often like to vaunt themselves as self-reliant rugged individualists, but in fact their life is made possible only by gigantic government projects, and massive consumption of other people’s water – in the case of Phoenix, one-third of it from the distant Colorado, another third from that river’s tributaries, and a third from nearby underground aquifers.

*For all that, residents are following an ancient tradition. Ancient Hohokam people created 1200 miles of canals to support themselves on the same site.

*While the McBride exhibit shines in eye-squinting color, John Doddato’s “In Pursuit of the American Landscape” show in the Members Gallery is understated grayscale using an old silver-gelatin process. Doddato was born in Sayre and lived in Big Flats, but he takes us on a photo journey of the American West.

*Some of the images here, such as the mitten rocks in Monument Valley, and the dunes at sunrise in Death Valley, are views of well-known, well-traveled scenes. But here also is a streamside scene of Castle Creek outside Aspen, centered on a dead and fallen spruce. Another photo records a grove of Aspens, quietly glowing.

*I find myself repeatedly gazing at the ancient Flame House under the overhang on Cedar Mesa. The large blocks of which the structure is built are impressive, but what captivates me are the four utterly black doorways. In one sense, they lead to that empty and long-lost world of the original inhabitants. In another sense, they open to every possibility that imagination might devise.

*I keep on saying this, but I’ve always got good reasons: go to the Rockwell Museum. The McBride show runs through February 7, and Doddato through March 10.