Driving most of the 170.2 miles of the Garden State Parkway last week put me in mind of What Exit? an exhibit about the NJ Turnpike created by SallyYerkovich during her tenure at the New Jersey Historical Society still online.
At the top of the Garden State Parkway, we stopped at the Morris Museum, lead for many years by Steve Miller. For almost a century this general museum has been devoted to art, science, history, and theater and its collections support these disciplines. Remarkably, it houses one of the world’s most comprehensive collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata, the Murtogh D. Guinnes Collection.
The museum provides a steady offering of changing exhibitions, including while we were there, Jersey Rocks: A History of Rock and Role in the Garden State, curated and organized by Claudia Orcello. NJ supported a unique mix of performers and places, technology and talent that dominated the airwaves and rocked the nation.
Paul D’Ambrosio recently took the helm at Fenimore Art Museum,Cooperstown. This summer he filled the house with Frida Kahlo, modernism from the Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Syracuse, known to those who love it at the Munstitute. And that is no where near enough: also, early drawings and watercolors by Edward Hopper, NYHSA's own glorious collection of folk art and the stunning Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art.