Exhibitions, Programs, and Events
Grounds Open for Free Every Day
Women Reframe American Landscape
Susie Barstow & Her Circle
Contemporary Practices
May 6-Oct 29
Women Reframe American Landscape is a two-part historic and contemporary exhibition illuminating the artistic contributions and perspectives of women.
General Admission
Explore the three historic buildings on campus, including immersive digital installations and the two-part special exhibition Women Reframe American Landscape.
Guided Tours
Wed-Fri at 2 pm
Join a 60- to 75-minute Guided Tour for an in depth discussion on the artist and environmentalist Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and the historic context of his life and work. Includes the special exhibition, Women Reframe American Landscape. Availability is limited. Advance reservations are recommended.
Book Party + Open House
Sat 10/14 from 4-6 pm
The site is featured in a new design book, “Country Life,” by renowned photographer William Abranowicz published by Vendome Press. Please join the photographer and featured home owners architect Alan Wanzenberg and artist Melora Kuhn for a Book Party + Open House at the Thomas Cole Site in partnership with Quittner founders Pippa Biddle and Benjamin Davidson.
Free RSVP to sarah@sarahboydco.com
Black Labor & Legacy Tour
Sat 9/9, 9/23, 10/7, & 10/21 at 2 pm
Join a 45-minute Guided Tour to learn about Black labor and legacy on the historic property. Availability is limited. Advance reservations are recommended.
Women’s History Tour
Sat 9/16, 9/30, 10/14, & 10/28 at 2 pm
Join a 45-minute Women’s History Guided Tour to learn about the women that lived and made art here on the historic property. Availability is limited. Advance reservations are recommended.
Women, Land + Art
The 2023 year-long initiative presented by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site across programs, exhibitions, collections, and interpretation.
Collection Highlights
Browse our online Collection Highlights, a selection from over six hundred objects and two research archives. Many collection items are on view throughout the Cole Site interiors, in historic rooms, as well as within the rotating exhibition Mind Upon Nature: Thomas Cole’s Creative Process.
Thomas Cole Paintings on View
Spectacular original paintings by Thomas Cole are on view in the artist’s home this season.
Digital Immersive Experiences
Discover digital immersive experiences throughout the authentic historic interiors of the artist’s home. Experiences include paintings that come to life, audio soundscapes, letters that appear on desks and 270-degree floor-to-ceiling projections.
Hudson River School Art Trail
Step into a landscape painting with our program, the Hudson River School Art Trail, which provides maps and directions to visit the places in nature that Thomas Cole and other Hudson River School artists painted.
Walk along Catskill Creek
Visit the Mawignack Preserve – Cole’s favorite walking spot – just down the road and discover new outdoor interpretation organized by the Greene Land Trust in partnership with the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Greene County Historical Society, Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, and Scenic Hudson.
Visit Cole’s Gravesite
The gravestones of Thomas Cole, his wife Maria Bartow, and their family are located in the Catskill Village Cemetery, just down the street and walkable from the historic site.
Hudson River Skywalk
See America’s first canvas with a new scenic walkway connecting the Thomas Cole Site with Frederic Church’s Olana across the Hudson River.
Virtual 360 Explore
Virtually tour Thomas Cole’s historic Main House and Old Studio. Discover pop-out videos and find the artist’s original letters.
Perspectives
Digital content presenting new perspectives from curators, artists, and community leaders on Thomas Cole’s life and art from the 19th century to today.
Teacher Resources
Programs, lesson plans and activities for K-12 students that use American art to teach American history.
Virtual Gallery
Explore Thomas Cole’s paintings and writings with scholar analysis on our website explorethomascole.org.
Thomas Cole’s Story
Read Thomas Cole’s Story by the Penguin Random House author and illustrator Hudson Talbott.
Past Exhibitions
The Pollinator Pavilion
by Mark Dion & Dana Sherwood
Aug 7, 2020-May 9, 2023
A site-specific outdoor public artwork designed by internationally renowned artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood. The Pavilion provides a fantastical architectural setting to encounter birds year-round while exploring a nurturing relationship with nature.
MARC SWANSON
A Memorial To Ice At The Dead Deer Disco
Jul 16-Nov 27, 2022
Thomas Cole National Historic Site
A new series of installations by Marc Swanson inspired by the artwork and writings of Thomas Cole (1801-1848). A Memorial to Ice is jointly presented at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and MASS MoCA. The companion exhibitions are curated by Denise Markonish, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions at MASS MoCA.
Thomas Cole’s Studio
Memory & Inspiration
Apr 30-Oct 30, 2022
Thomas Cole National Historic Site
A new exhibition that reassembles many of the significant works that were in Thomas Cole’s studio when he died suddenly at the peak of his artistic talents. The project explores how Cole’s example so powerfully affected the evolution of art in the United States. The exhibition is curated is Franklin Kelly, Senior Curator and Christiane Ellis Valone Curator of American Paintings at the National Gallery of Art.
Cross Pollination
Heade, Cole, Church & Our Contemporary Moment
Jun 12-Oct 31, 2021
Presented across both the Thomas Cole National Historic Site & Frederic Church’s Olana
A collaborative exhibition of 19th-century and contemporary art exploring the theme of “cross pollination” in art and the environment.
Created by Thomas Cole National Historical Site, The Olana Partnership at Olana State Historic Site, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Its tour is organized by Crystal Bridges.
SHI GUORUI:
Ab/Sense-Pre/Sense
Curator: Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole Site Curator
Sep 22-Dec 15, 2019
The exhibition features a new series of large-scale landscape photographs by the international contemporary artist Shi Guorui that pay homage to the landscapes and legacy of Thomas Cole. The exhibition is part of our annual series OPEN HOUSE: Contemporary Art in Conversation with Cole.
Thomas Cole’s Refrain:
The Paintings of Catskill Creek
Curator: H. Daniel Peck, John Guy Vassar, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English, Vassar College
May 4-Nov 3, 2019
The exhibition illuminates Thomas Cole’s Catskill Creek paintings, considered for the first time as an integral series.
The Art of Emily Cole
Curator: Amanda Malmstrom, 2019 Cole Fellow
March 2- Aug 11, 2019
The first solo exhibition of Emily Cole’s artwork on both paper and porcelain, revealing her exquisitely painted botanicals. Emily Cole was Thomas Cole’s daughter and the only one of his children to
become an artist.
Emily Cole, Untitled (detail), n.d., watercolor and pencil on paper, 7 5/16? x 10 5/16?.
Landmark
Curators: Kate Menconeri and Kathy Greenwood, Director, Art & Culture Program, Albany International Airport
Sep 29-Feb 25, 2019
The Thomas Cole Site and the Albany International Airport present a new multidisciplinary exhibition that features 10 contemporary visual artists and 7 writers whose works explore our relationship to the natural world, and share common ground with Thomas Cole’s greatest written work, Essay on American Scenery. The gallery is open daily from 7 am to 11 pm.
Lisa Sanditz, Fumigation Tents, 2016, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 54 x 70”, photograph courtesy the artist
SPECTRUM
Curator: Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole Site Curator
Aug 14 – Nov 18, 2018
A contemporary art exhibition installed throughout the historic site as part of the ongoing series OPEN HOUSE: Contemporary Art in Conversation with Cole. The exhibition grew out of conversations between the Cole Site curator Kate Menconeri, the artist Kiki Smith, and exhibiting artists.
Painting: Place (Place), 2017, Jackie Saccoccio. Oil and mica on Linen, 79 x 90 in. Courtesy of the artist and Van Doren Waxter,
Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance
Curators: Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art at Yale, Jennifer Raab, Associate Professor in the History of Art at Yale, Sophie Lynford, Ph.D. candidate at Yale and Nicholas Robbins, Ph.D. candidate at Yale
May 1 – Nov 4, 2018
Photo © Peter Aaron/OTTO
KIKI SMITH / “From the Creek”
Curator: Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole Site Curator
Aug 12 – Nov 19, 2017
“Sanford R. Gifford in the Catskills”
Curator: Kevin J. Avery, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Apr 30 – Oct 29, 2017
Photo © Peter Aaron/OTTO
“Thomas Cole: The Artist as Architect”
Curator: Annette Blaugrund, Ph.D., Independent Scholar, Author and Curator, and former Director of the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts
May 1 – Oct 30, 2016
JASON MIDDLEBROOK: “Nature Builds / We Cover”
Curator: Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole Site Curator
Aug 14 – Oct 30, 2016
“River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home”
Curators: Stephen Hannock, Contemporary Artist and Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., Distinguished Chair and Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College and Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail
May 3-Nov 1, 2015
Photo © Peter Aaron/OTTO
Stanley Maltzman / “Thomas Cole’s Honey”
Curator: Kate Menconeri, Thomas Cole Site Curator
July 26- Oct 2, 2014
“Master, Mentor, master – Thomas Cole & Frederic Church”
Curators: John Wilmerding, Ph.D., Sarofim Professor of American Art, Emeritus, at Princeton University and former Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Art
Apr 30 – Nov 2, 2014
“Albert Bierstadt in New York and New England”
Curator: Annette Blaugrund, Ph.D., Independent Scholar, Author and Curator, and former Director of the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts
May 1 – Nov 3, 2013
“Worlds Between: Landscapes of Louis Rémy Mignot”
Curator: Katherine E. Manthorne, Ph.D., Professor of American and Latin American Art at the CUNY Graduate Center, and former Research Center Head at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Apr 29 – Oct 28, 2012
Robert S. Duncanson “the spiritual striving of the freedman’s sons”
Curator: Joseph D. Ketner II, the Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice at Emerson College, Boston
May 1 – October 30, 2011
“Remember the Ladies”
Curators: Nancy Siegel, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at Towson University and Jennifer Krieger, Managing Partner of Hawthorne Fine Art and Academic Scholar
May 2- Oct 31, 2010
“River Views of the Hudson River School”
Curator: Nancy Siegal, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at Towson University
May 2- Oct 31, 2009
“Thomas Cole’s Sketch Paintings: An Exploration of the Creative Process”
Curator: Elizabeth B. Jacks, Thomas Cole Site Executive Director
May 3 – Oct 26, 2008
“Asher B. Durand: Intimate Observations”
Curator: Lee Vedder, Ph.D., Independent Curator and former Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow in American Art at the New-York Historical Society
May 20 – Oct 28, 2007
“Jasper Cropsey: Interpreting Nature”
Curator: Elizabeth Stevens, former Thomas Cole Site Curator
May 7 – Oct 29, 2006
“George Inness: Paintings”
Curator: Elizabeth Stevens, former Thomas Cole Site Curator
May 1 – Oct 30, 2005
Support for the Thomas Cole Site programs and operations provided by National Park Service, Empire State Development’s I LOVE NEW YORK program under the Market NY initiative, the Warner Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Enoch Foundation, The Manitou Fund, The Educational Foundation of America, The J. M. Kaplan Fund, Tianaderrah Foundation, and the Kindred Spirits Society of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.
The Program Endowment that supports educational programs at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this the programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
