hudson valley

  Fifteen scenic miles in the Catskills between The Thomas Cole National Historic Site (www.thomascole.org) and Olana New York Historic Site (www.olana.org) couldn’t be more beautiful. This stretch of history, known as The Hudson River School Art Trail, leads visitors to the sites that inspired America’s first great landscape painters by mapping the sites that inspired works of art by Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Gifford and other pioneering American artists. For more information about the Hudson River School Art Trail, visit http://www.thomascole.org/trail or call (518) 943-7465. The Art Trail, which is open for walking and hiking through October 31, brings together a series of eight sites where Hudson River School artists created some of their most recognizable works. The trail showcases breathtaking views of the landscapes appearing in Hudson River School works not only from the ...

If your family is wild about puppetry, then you won’t want to miss Puppets! Family Day: Design • Create • Perform at the Katonah Museum of Art on Sunday, May 16 from 12-4pm featuring special guests Theo, the bibliophile puppet of PBS’s Between the Lions and his creator, Peter Linz.  Family Day is free for Museum members, $5 for individual non-members (ages 3 and up), and $15 for non-member families. There is a $2 materials fee for puppet making activities.  For information call 914-232-9555, ext. 0 or visit www.katonahmuseum.org.   Family Day has become a perennial favorite and the Museum will be bustling with performances, art activities, snacks, gallery games, and opportunities to meet prominent professional puppet designers, makers, and performers throughout the afternoon. Children can make their own rod puppets with museum educators who will lead puppet designing, creating, and performing activities.   Join puppeteer Peter Linz and ...

The Katonah Museum of Art (www.katonahmuseum.org) invites you to join artists Dan Hurlin, Roman Paska, and Hanne Tierney and curator Leslee Asch for The Intimate Inanimate, a panel discussion that will provide a revealing look into works featured in the Museum’s current exhibition The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater. Ms. Asch will moderate the conversation at the Museum on Sunday, March 28 at 5:30pm. This event is free for members and $10 for non-members. Reservations are required and can be made by calling (914) 232-9555, ext. 0 or emailing info@katonahmuseum.org.   In “The Intimate Inanimate,” Asch and the artists will explore puppetry’s ability to give form to the unseen. Hurlin, Paska, and Tierney will discuss the processes and the underlying themes emerging in each other’s work as well as puppetry’s relevance as a performance art today.   Leslee Asch is the Executive Director of the National Dance Institute. Before coming to ...

What do you think of when you read the word “puppet”?  The Katonah Museum of Art (www.katonahmuseum.org) will challenge your thoughts and preconceptions with the presentation of The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater opening February 28 and running in all three galleries through June 13, 2010.   In every culture man has created stories and myths to explain the forces surrounding him and the fears, hopes and dreams he carries within. For centuries, masks and puppets have been used to add magic to the storyteller’s art.  The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater will show that puppets are indeed more than children’s dolls, that within them can be found the illusion of life. They are symbolic mirrors in which we are startled and sometimes delighted to see ourselves reflected.   The art of puppetry has been traced back as early as the 5th Century, BC, when figures operated by strings were employed in ancient Egyptian ceremonies. In ...