Museum to launch fall lineup of lectures, gallery talks and symposium

Beginning this week, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz will launch a lineup of programs for the fall that includes gallery talks, lectures and a Nov. 7 symposium.

The events are all a part of The Dorsky Museum’s “Art & The River” project which began in June and whose headliner exhibition – “The Hudson River to Niagara Falls: 19th Century American Landscape Paintings from the New-York Historical Society” – was recently reviewed by The New York Times as “…perfectly lovely…” and “…stocked with pictures of such variety and interest that you can’t help but be enthralled.”

The museum begins its fall programming at 7 p.m. this Wednesday, Sept. 23, with a lecture by Gil Brenner, professor emeritus of Geology at New Paltz, who will present a talk, titled “The Geology of the Hudson River Valley—An Artist’s Inspiration.” His talk will present a general overview of the geology of the Hudson Valley and the terrain that inspired the 19th-century Hudson River School artists.

Another highlight this fall is a day-long symposium on Nov. 7, “Revisiting the Hudson: Nineteenth-century Landscape Painting in Context,” that has been organized by New Paltz professor Dr. Kerry Dean Carso. The symposium will include guided tours of the exhibit “The Hudson River to Niagara Falls: 19th-century American Landscape Painting from the New-York Historical Society” now on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum through Dec. 13. The program begins at 8:30 a.m. and runs until 5 p.m.

The fall programming concludes at 7 p.m. on Nov. 19, with a gallery talk by Greg Miller, Monroe, N.Y.-based landscape photographer. Miller’s exhibit, “Panorama of the Hudson River” is part of the museum’s “Art & The River” series and is a complete photographic panorama of the Hudson River, including both banks and stretching from Manhattan to Albany.

For more details about this and other programming that continues through November, visit The Samuel Dorsky Museum Web site at www.newpaltz.edu/museum/programs/public_programs.html

All programs are free unless otherwise noted.

The “Hudson River to Niagara Falls” exhibition was made possible with a $143,449 Federal grant from Congressman and New Paltz alumnus Maurice Hinchey (’68, ’70g) and the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums.

Funding for public programs related to “The Hudson River to Niagara Falls” has been provided by the New York Council for the Humanities. Funding for the symposium has been provided by the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area and the National Park Service. Major promotional support for the “Art and The River” exhibitions and programs has been provided by M&T Bank, with additional support from Jacobowitz & Gubits; Timely Signs of Kingston, Inc.; Friends of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art; and the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Suggested admission to The Dorsky Museum is $5. For event details, reservations, accessibility or directions, visit www.newpaltz.edu/museum or call (845) 257-3844. The Dorsky Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed on Monday, Tuesday, national and university holidays.