Fenimore Art Museum
The New York State historical Association is a private, non-profit
educational institutional dedicated to collecting, preserving,
and interpreting objects significant to New York history and American
culture. Chartered in 1899, the New York State Historical Association
moved to Cooperstown in 1938 and opened Fenimore Art Museum in
1945. The Historical Association has preserved tens of thousands
of documents, books, works, of art, photographs, and artifacts.
in addition to Fenimore Art Museum, the Association operates a
non-circulating Research Library and offers a membership program
for those who share an appreciation of American culture and New
York State's illustrious past.
Fenimore Art Museum is the showcase museum of the New York State
Historical Association, featuring changing exhibitions that explore
the history and themes of America's finest art. An elegant 1930's
mansion overlooking Otsego Lake, Fenimore Art Museum was built
on the site of novelist James Fenimore Cooper's home. It became
the headquarters of the New York State historical Association
in 1945 at the invitation of philanthropist Stephen C. Clark,
Sr. Over the years, Fenimore Art Museum's collections of fine
art, folk art, and American Indian art have grown to represent
and illuminate our cultural heritage and to celebrate America's
artistic traditions and history. The addition of the American
Indian Wing in 1995 and the renovation of galleries within the
original building has enabled the museum to showcase its extraordinary
collections and to display traveling exhibitions of exceptional
quality.
Fenimore Art Museum's current highlighted exhibition, Heights
of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Foot, features the most
treasured and spectacular shoes following the rise and fall of
the high heel in Western fashion over the past 500 years. Showcasing
a stunning collection, while bringing to life the myriad stories
that each piece has to tell. Heights of Fashion examines several
critically important fashion periods, including the daring days
of the Moulin Rouge, the well-heeled starlets of 1930's Hollywood,
the classic stilettos of the 1950's, glamrock disco platforms
of the 1970's, and today's current styles. Exhibition is on view
presently until December 28, 2003.
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