Travels in the 2nd half

  There are “museum villages” across the country. They can be wonderful places to learn about local history, culture, and lifestyles. The Shelburne Museum , in Shelburne Vermont,  goes a step further than most of its contemporaries, it offers excellent artwork on view for its visitors.   The Shelburne Museum was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960). Webb was the youngest child of Henry Havemeyer, president of the American Sugar Refining Company, and Louisine Elder Havemeyer. Her parents were collectors of impressionist art, filling their apartment in New York City with paintings from that era. As an adult, she began collecting New England furniture and craftwork, which she used to decorate a farmhouse belonging to her in-laws. Electra Havemeyer Webb by Shelburne Museum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons In 1947, Electra Webb decided to form a museum to house her collection of horse-drawn carriages. She quickly realized her potential to create a “collection of ...

Tinglet Whale Hat Sometimes you are in a city with an hour or so to kill. Some people look for a coffee shop to spend that time. Some look for a bar. Me, I look for a good gallery or a small museum. Luckily, New York is filled with great choices. Two of them are on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, The Bard Grad Center Gallery and the American Museum of Folk Art. Bard College is a small liberal arts school, whose main campus is located about 90 miles north of the city. The college has a graduate program, based in New York City, that offers degrees in decorative arts, design studies and the history of material culture. The Bard Grad Center resides in a six-story building on West 86th street. The building houses its classes, research spaces and three floors of gallery space where they present exhibitions that highlight the history of culture through objects. When I visited in June, there were three exhibitions on display. The first was a show on the changes in typography and...