“The Hands of the Glaciers”
Hosted by Robert and Johanna Titus
Listen to our new podcast on the science of the Hudson River School Art Trail with self-dubbed “time-traveling” geologists, Robert and Johanna Titus
You see, the landscape wears the scars of its recent geological past and a geologist’s mind’s eye can perceive that chapter of time. Around here, that recent past was a time of a great Ice Age. I cannot go anywhere without seeing the scars of the Ice Age… I look at landscape and what my imagination sees are advancing glaciers or, sometimes, great masses of melting ice. It is a wonder to behold. Robert Titus
Hardie Truesdale. View from Sunset Rock Today. Photograph. Photograph © Hardie Truesdale.
Episode 1: The View from the Porch
Thomas Cole National Historic Site
In the first episode of “The Hands of the Glaciers,” Dr. Robert Titus, professor of geology at Hartwick College, and Johanna Titus, professor of biology at Dutchess Community College, take you along on a journey to see Glacial Lake Albany at the Thomas Cole Site.
Download the recording here
Transcription of the audio available here
Photo: Rachel Stults
Episode 2: Catskill Creek
Robert and Johanna will be back on Wednesday, September 2, to take in the view from the Catskill Creek.
Download the recording here
Transcription of the audio available here
Thomas Cole. View on the Catskill, Early Autumn. Oil on canvas, 1836-37, 39 x 63 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift in memory of Jonathan Sturges by his children, 1895, 95.13.3.
Episode 3: North-South Lake
Check back on Wednesday, September 9, to hear Robert and Johanna talk about not one, but two gorgeous lakes.
Download the recording here
Transcription of the audio available here
Thomas Cole. Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill). Oil on canvas, 1825, 27 x 33 ¾ in. Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. Gift of Charles F. Olney, 1904.1183.
Episode 4: Catskill Mountain House
Check back on Wednesday, September 16, to hear Robert and Johanna talk discuss the site of the famous Catskill Mountain House.
Download the recording here
Transcription of the audio available here
Frederic Edwin Church. Above the Clouds at Sunrise. Oil on canvas, 1849, 27 ¼ x 40 ¼ in. The Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa, AL.
About the Hudson River School Art Trail
The Hudson River School Art Trail connects you with the places in nature that Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School artists made famous in their 19th-century landscape paintings. Cole founded this nation’s first major art movement, now known as the Hudson River School, and advocated for the preservation of the American landscape as a national treasure.
Today, you can visit these magnificent views thanks to extensive preservation efforts.
The Hudson River School Art Trail is a project of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, presented in partnership with Olana, the home and workplace of Frederic Church, and with the National Park Service Rivers & Trails program, with assistance from the Greene County Tourism Promotion Department. The Trail project is funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Arts & Business Council of New York, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.
