New season at Adirondack Museum to feature new exhibits and activities for families

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE — The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake will opened for its 52nd season on Friday.

The regional museum of history and art will introduce two distinctive new exhibits as well as a variety of family-friendly activities and special events this year.

The museum again extends an invitation to year-round residents of the Adirondack Park to visit free of charge in May, June, and October. Proof of residency is required.

The Adirondack Museum will be open daily May 22 through Oct. 18 from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Fridays, Sept. 4 and 18 are exceptions to the schedule, as the museum will be closed to prepare for special events. All paid admissions are valid for a second visit within a one-week period.

The museum store will host a book signing from 3 to 5 p.m. May 23, as part of the opening weekend festivities. Elizabeth Folwell, creative director of "Adirondack Life" will sign copies of her new book "Short Carries — Essays from Adirondack Life."

The 22 exhibits, historic buildings, collections, gardens, and views that are the Adirondack Museum tell stories of life, work, and play in a special place — the Adirondack Park of Northern New York.

"Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts & Comforters" is one of two exhibits to debut in 2009. The exhibition will include historic quilts from the Adirondack Museum's textile collection, as well as contemporary quilts, comforters, and pieced wall hangings on loan from quilters in communities throughout the region.

The exhibit illustrates a pieced-textile tradition nurtured by the Adirondack region for more than a century and a half. From bedcovers, plain or fancy, meant to keep families warm through long Adirondack winters, to stunning art quilts of the 21st century, the quilts and comforters of the north country mirror national trends and also tell a unique story of life in the mountains.

'WILD COUNTRY'

The second new exhibit, "A 'Wild, Unsettled Country': Early Reflections of the Adirondacks" will include paintings, maps, prints, and photographs that illuminate the untamed Adirondack wilderness discovered by early cartographers, artists, and photographers. The exhibit will showcase more than 40 paintings from the museum's collection, including works by Thomas Cole, John Frederick Kensett, William Havell, and James David Smillie.

Also featured are 50 of the engravings and lithographs of Adirondack landscape paintings that brought these images to a wider audience and provided many Americans with their first glimpse of the howling wilds that were the Adirondack Mountains. The exhibit will feature photographs sold as tourist souvenirs and to armchair travelers. The first photographic landscape studies made in the Adirondacks by William James Stillman in 1859 have never been exhibited before. Photos by Seneca Ray Stoddard will also be included.

The exhibit will include special labels and text just for children in addition to the traditional presentation.

PHOTOBELT EXHIBITION, NEW BOATS

The Adirondack Museum's 2009 Photobelt exhibition will feature rarely-seen images from the extensive postcard collection. "Wish Your Were Here" will showcase Adirondack views of hotels, campsites, tally-ho rides, scenery, boat trips, restaurants, and roadside attractions — sent home to friends and relatives from 1900 to 1960.

Five newly acquired boats will be displayed in the exhibition, Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks. These include a very rare 1918 Moxley launch, a Hickman Sea Sled (forerunner of the Boston Whaler), a Grumman canoe, a Theodore Hanmer guideboat, a Grant Raider, and a 1910 William Vassar guideboat.

The Adirondack Museum will offer a full schedule of lectures, demonstrations, field trips, and hands-on activities for people of all ages.