Fenimore Art Museum's 2008 Exhibition Season will Surprise, Inspire and Inform

Cooperstown, N.Y., March 25, 2008-Delve into the Arts & Crafts movement, explore
Otsego County through the lenses of Richard Walker and Smith and Telfer, and discover
the link between Jewish visual culture and the American carousel industry in the 2008
exhibition season at the Fenimore Art Museum.

From April 1 through May 12, the museum will be open Tuesday through Sunday, from
10 am to 4 pm, closed on Mondays.  Summer hours begin on May 13 and continue
through Columbus Day, October 13. During the summer season, the museum is open
seven days a week from 10 am to 5 pm.

Exhibition highlights include:

Gustav Stickley: The Enlightened Home
April 1- August 10, 2008

The Fenimore Art Museum presents an exhibition on the furniture of celebrated turn-of-
the-century designer and manufacturer and leading spokesman for the American Arts
and Crafts movement, Gustav Stickley. Gustav Stickley: The Enlightened Home features
40 pieces of original Stickley furniture and decorative objects drawn from The Stickley
Museum, Fayetteville, N.Y.; Dalton's American Decorative Arts, Syracuse, N.Y.; The
Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, Morris Plains, N.J. and private collections.

The exhibition explores Stickley's well-designed and carefully crafted furniture within the
context of his philosophical contribution to the American Arts and Crafts movement.
Inspired by the ideas of British Arts and Crafts philosopher William Morris, who
advocated a return to fine craftsmanship, honest design, and dignity of labor, Stickley
generated his own "Craftsman" philosophy, which catapulted him to the forefront of the
American Arts and Crafts movement. Rejecting the superfluous ornamentation
characteristic of Victorian homes, Stickley championed functional homes whose beauty
derived from simplicity and harmony.

Gustav Stickley: The Enlightened Home, which includes two period rooms, a 1904 living
room and a 1907 dining room, highlights several pieces from Stickley's rich body of
work and illustrates how Stickley redefined the American home with his Arts and Crafts-
inspired items. Stickley's philosophy of building in harmony with the environment by
using natural materials was fully realized in his home, Craftsman Farms in Morris Plains,
New Jersey. His functional approach to design was a departure from the Victorian era's
dark and overly ornamental interiors. Stickley's unornamented, clean-lined furniture was
exemplified throughout the interior and exterior design of his home. While individual
pieces of furniture used construction as decoration, embodied simplicity, and prioritized
utility, these tenets were also implemented on a much grander scale within the home.

Rural Icons: Photographs by Richard Walker
April 1 - May 11, 2008

This exhibition features nearly 100 compelling portraits, still-lifes and landscapes of
rural upstate New York by local photographer Richard Walker. The exhibition presents
the region's physical beauty, enhanced by its architecture, people and material culture in
the context of a declining agricultural landscape and its architectural legacy.

Richard Walker is a commercial photographer of objects, antiques, sculpture, paintings,
architecture and interiors, and people with their art and collections. He is especially
known for his still-life compositions of products, antiques and collectibles, sports
memorabilia, and historical ephemera.

Bits of Home
April 1 - December 31

Visitors to the Fenimore Art Museum have long enjoyed the extraordinary collections of
fine art, folk art, and American Indian art held by the New York State Historical
Association (NYSHA). Less well known are the thousands of historical artifacts in the
collections storage areas. Bits of Home is a new exhibition that is intended to acquaint
visitors with these historical collections by featuring a selection of more than 30 artifacts
from NYSHA and The Farmers' Museum's extensive collections of domestic life in
nineteenth-century New York. As a theme-based gallery, this exhibition allows the visitor
to explore the function and design of everything from household textiles to toys and
games in a setting evocative of the environment for which they were originally made.

Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel
May 24 - September 1, 2008

From gilded lions to high-stepping horses, the sacred to the secular, and the Old World
to the New, this exhibition traces, for the first time, the journey of Jewish woodcarvers
and paper cut artists from Eastern and Central Europe to America. Gilded Lions and
Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel, organized by the American Folk Art
Museum, New York, highlights the unsung role these artisans played in establishing a
distinct Jewish culture in communities throughout the United States and provides a
surprising revelation of the link that was forged between the immigrant Jewish
woodcarvers and the American carousel industry. The exhibition brings together
extraordinary examples of majestic synagogue carvings-gilded lions, Decalogues,
crowns and eagles as well as intricate paper cuts-juxtaposed against dynamic carousel
figures created for Brooklyn's great amusement park, Coney Island, and others.
Featuring 100 rarely exhibited artworks, drawn from private and public collections in the
United States, Eastern Europe and Israel, the exhibition tells the story of this fascinating
aspect of Jewish and American visual culture. 

Organized by Guest Curator Murray Zimiles and coordinated by the American Folk Art
Museum's Senior Curator Stacy C. Hollander, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully
illustrated 192-page book, Gilded Lions And Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the
Carousel, co-published by the American Folk Art Museum with Brandeis University Press,
an imprint of the University Press of New England. In addition, please visit the exhibition
website at gildedlions.org, which was conceptualized by George Blumenthal and funded
by The Center for Online Judaic Studies, Inc.

Major support for the exhibition and catalogue was provided by Michael Steinhardt;
Kekst and Company; the David Berg Foundation; the Blanche and Irving Laurie
Foundation; the Smart Family Foundation; the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation,
Allentown, Pennsylvania; the Betty and John A. Levin Fund; the Robert Lehman
Foundation; the Nathan Cummings Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the
New York State Council on the Arts; and the New York Council for the Humanities, a
state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art
August 23- December 31, 2008

The images of African Americans at the Fenimore Art Museum offer insights into the
ways that Americans in the past viewed one another; how artistic representations of
black people created and reinforced popular attitudes; and how these attitudes continue
to affect us today. This is not simply a story for African Americans, but for all of us,
because the issues represented in this exhibition- identity, self-portrayal, survival,
resistance, and stereotyping-are issues that relate to each individual who has ever
wondered about their own identity and to every group that has entered this country.

This exhibition is curated by Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, Director of The Cooperstown
Graduate Program and has been made possible by a generous grant from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services, a federal agency.

Earl Cunningham's America
September 27 - December 31, 2008

Earl Cunningham's America examines the paintings of Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), one
of the premier folk artists of the 20th century. This retrospective presents the artist as a
folk modernist who used the flat space and brilliant color typical of Matisse and Van
Gogh to create sophisticated compositions with complex meanings about the nature of
American life. The exhibition features 50 of more than 400 canvasses Cunningham
painted during his life. His imaginary landscapes are marvels of the unexpected and the
unlikely. Pink flamingoes dot the shoreline of the Maine coast, New England cottages sit
at the edge of Florida swamps and Seminole Indians wear feathered headdresses.

Earl Cunningham's America is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The
exhibition will travel to the American Folk Art Museum in New York City (March 4, 2008
- August 31, 2008) and the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Fla. (March 6,
2009 - August 2, 2009).

The exhibition is made possible by generous support from Darden Restaurants
Foundation; the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation; the Arts and Cultural Affairs Office
of Orange County, Florida; CNL Financial Group; Bright House Networks; Lockheed
Martin; and Friends of The Mennello Museum of American Art. The exhibition's tour is
supported in part by the C. F. Foundation, Atlanta.

Remembering Cooperstown: Photographs by Smith and Telfer
April 1 - May 11 & September 20 - December 31

This exhibition, culled from the museum's permanent collection, features familiar and
rarely seen photographs drawn from the Smith and Telfer Photographic Collection. The
spring and fall exhibits will each feature a different selection of photography showcasing
the breadth of the collection. Cooperstown photographers 'Wash" Smith and "Putt" Telfer
compiled an exceptional record of Cooperstown's people and places for almost a century.
The Smith and Telfer Photograph Collection, donated to the museum in 1951, numbers
nearly 55,000 glass plate negatives. Smith and Telfer's legacy is rich, and includes not
only standard studio work, but also a vast number of images of people and activities
recorded outside of the studio. Their familiarity with Cooperstown's people and places
gave their images a natural, unposed quality, which captures the spirit and sensibility of
small town life. Through their lens Cooperstown is remembered as the quintessential
American rural village.

About the Fenimore Art Museum
One of the nation's premier art institutions, the Fenimore Art Museum is home to an
exceptionally rich collection of American folk art and American Indian art as well as
important holdings in American decorative arts, photography, and twentieth-century art.
Founded in 1945 in Cooperstown, New York, the museum is part of the New York State
Historical Association (NYSHA), founded in 1899. The museum's renowned Eugene and
Clare Thaw Collection, housed in the American Indian Wing, is a masterpiece coll
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