By Barbara Brewer La Mere
Fifty years ago, just three months after the passing of Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, the home she had shared with her husband, Louis Fiske Hyde, at 161 Warren St., opened to the public as an art museum, according to the terms of a trust established in 1952.
That happened in 1963.
The Hydes had been art collectors throughout their marriage. Charlotte’s vision was “to promote and cultivate the study and improvement of the fine arts, for the education and benefit of the residents of the city of Glens Falls and vicinity and the general public.”
It has been a hugely popular museum for many years, and a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary will take place, guided by the staff.
Hyde House itself, with its examples of fine decorative arts and antique furnishings, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Charlotte’s sisters’ homes which adjoin Hyde House–Cunningham House, which houses the museum’s administrative offices, and Hoopes House–are also part of the museum complex.
Hoopes House is the more recent acquisition. As the Hyde Collection currently finds itself between directors, it serves a variety of purposes, awaiting the vision of a new director to shape the role that that structure will ultimately play in the museum’s future.
Chief Curator and Interim Co-Director Erin Coe said most of the Hyde Collection’s acquisitions followed the museum’s 1989 addition. Coe herself, with the museum since 1999, has stewarded many of these acquisitions.
Given the impact of the acquisitions of the Hyde in the last 50 years, the theme, “50 at 50, Five Decades of Collecting at The Hyde,” has been chosen for an anniversary exhibition curated by Coe and Associate Curator Jayne Stokes.
The exhibition, which runs from Jan. 26 to April 16, is co-sponsored by Finch Paper and The Chronicle. The 50 selected works span in time from an engraving by Albrecht Durer from the 1520s to a work created in 2011 by Pooh Kaye on DVD called “Spring Cleaning.” The artistic media used in run the gamut from silver and gold to Sharpie. Locales of subject or artist are as close as Chapel Pond, Lake George, and the Finch, Pruyn & Co. paper mill, and as far away as Germany, Spain, France, or Russia. There will be special tours for the exhibition led by Coe and Stokes, along with a special tour on April 7 led by former director Frederick Fisher.
Additionally, for this exhibition The Hyde has introduced a “guide by cell” tour, a system used by many museums across the country. Participants dial the tour’s number into a cellphone. By punching in the a number from the exhibition’s souvenir checklist, they can hear a recording giving information about the artwork. Beyond the description of the piece itself may be information about how that work may have inspired exhibition or why it was included.
The black-and-white theme generated by the “50 at 50” logo designating works acquired since 1963 will carry through other aspects of the anniversary celebration, including a family program in March called “Discovery Day: Shades of Black and White”, as well as The Hyde’s gala, scheduled for April 13 at The Inn at Erlowest. Musical aspects of the celebration are still in the planning stages.
In 50 years, The Hyde has had a total of five directors who officially bore that title: Frederick Fisher, 1978-1989; Ceilia Esposito, 1990-1993; Kathleen Monaghan, 1994-1999; Randall Suffolk,1999-2077; and David Setford, 2008 until April, 2012. S. Douglas Crockwell, A. Morton Raych, and Henry Musser, Jr., served as acting directors for varying durations in the museum’s first 15 years. Marijo Dougherty was acting director from 2007 to 2008. Currently, Coe and Financial Officer Lynne Mason share interim director duties.
In 1989, the Hyde Collection’s 12,000-square-foot education wing opened, transforming the museum, providing space to add to the collection, care for it, and exhibit it, along with providing room for classes for children and adults, and an auditorium which provides space for lectures as well as concerts. (A series of six deBlasiis Chamber Music Concerts is presented in the Hyde’s auditorium every year.)
Coe sees the Hyde as being at “the heart of the cultural community of Glens Falls,” a “bedrock” or an “armature” upon which other organizations–Crandall Library, LARAC, and the World Awareness Children’s Museum, among others–can build and an organization with whom they can partner in support of their own particular cultural contributions.
For example, this year marks the Hyde Collection’s 22nd annual High School Juried Regional Art Exhibition, another way that the Hyde interacts particularly with some of the younger members of the community.
In the Hyde’s updated mission statement adopted in 2012, the museum describes itself in the greater world as “unique between Manhattan and Montreal, committed to developing a collection of international importance, creating exhibitions of regional and national significance.”
In addition to the “50 at 50” exhibition, running concurrently will be an exhibit of the works of Dorothy Dehner, an American modernist artist. Dehner lived in Bolton Landing from 1940 to 1950.
The Hyde received exciting news earlier this month of being selected as the recipient of a $200,000 grant from the Luce Foundation to fund the museum’s major summer exhibition, Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keefe and Lake George, opening June 13. The exhibition includes 60 works from public and private collections, covering the expanse of time from 1918 to the mid-1930’s. It is organized in association with the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.
Coe is curating the exhibition, which will leave the Hyde after Sept. 15 to be shown at the museum in Santa Fe. “Modern Nature will” be presented at the de Young Museum of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco from February to May of 2014. In addition to being an exhibition highlighting O’ Keefe’s local connections, this represents the first time that the Hyde Collection has launched a nationally-touring exhibition.
The Hyde will finish out its golden anniversary year hosting the 2013 Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region from Oct.12 to Dec. 29.
For additional information on the events of the Hyde Collection’s 50th anniversary year, consult the Hyde’s website, www.hydecollection.org. For other information, call 792-1761.