Albany Institute of History & Art

The Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, the earliest predecessor organization to today's AIHA, was established in New York City in 1791 as a learned society. At that time the city was both state and national capital, and the Society served as an informal advisor to the state legislature, which later funded it, on ways to improve the state's economy, primarily the agricultural sector, and better the lives of its citizens. Among the 72 founders who met in Federal Hall, 25 had served in the legislature and every sitting member of that body was considered an honorary member of the Society. Robert R. Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was chosen as the Society's first president. Other early members of note included John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States and a future governor of the state, and George Clinton, another later governor who would eventually become Vice President.[3][4]

When Albany was permanently designated as the state capital in 1796, the Society moved with it. It met in the former City Hall at first. In 1804, as its original charter expired, it was renamed the Society for the Promotion of the Useful Arts. Livingston continued to serve as president. Ten years later, it established a Fine Arts Committee. Among its members were architect Philip Hooker and painter Ezra Ames. Its first act was to commission from Ames a portrait of Livingston, who had died in 1813. It was the institute's first arts accession.[3][4]

In 1819, New York became the first state to establish a government agency devoted to agriculture[5] when the legislature created the Board of Agriculture. The state no longer needed the Society, and withdrew its funding. Many of the founding members had grown older or, like Livingston, died, and the Society became less active.[3][4]

It was rejuvenated by a merger with the Albany Lyceum of Natural History, a year after that organization was founded in 1823 with Stephen Van Rensselaer, a former lieutenant governor then serving in Congress. The members of the Lyceum were younger, and focused on the natural sciences, especially geology and mineralogy, paleontology, and astronomy. In accordance with the first three fields, it had devoted itself to preserving mineral and botanical specimens collected on state surveys.[3][4]

The merged organization became known as the Albany Institute, with a membership of over a hundred. At its meetings over the next few years many scholarly papers were presented in advance of their eventual publication. In 1829 Joseph Henry, curator of the Institute's natural-history department, delivered his first paper on electromagnetism, an area in which he went on to make significant contributions. By the following year the Institute's libraries had almost doubled in size when Governor DeWitt Clinton willed most of his books to it.[3][4]

Henry left in 1832 to teach at Princeton; later he would become the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. His departure did not affect the Albany Institute, which recorded over a thousand members the next year. For other reasons, this would nonetheless be a peak year for the Institute as it was in the early 19th century.[3][4]

Between 1834 and 1837, attendance declined at meetings due to the excessive output of the Institute's chief meteorologist, Matthew Henry Webster, who took enthusiastically to the duty of coordinating the state weather surveys for the Board of Regents. He presented many papers on the subject, sometimes three at a single meeting, and attendees became increasingly bored and stopped attending. Financial problems resulting from the Panic of 1837 limited the Institute's publications. During this time it continued to collect scientific specimens, accumulating more than 15,000, and started the state Natural History Survey, both activities that led to the establishment of the New York State Museum.[3][4]

Van Rensselaer's death in 1839 was another setback for the Institute. Its functions were also duplicated by newer institutions, particularly colleges and universities such as Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, that had been established in the Albany area. Throughout the 1840s it remained dormant.[3][4]

John V.L. Pruyn, who revived the Institute as its president in the mid-19th century

The Institute was again revived in 1851, when the new American Association for the Advancement of Science held its third annual meeting at the Albany Academy. As had happened before, the addition of members changed the nature of the organization, making it a learned society interested in many areas besides the natural sciences. John V. L. Pruyn, a Congressman and officer of the New York Central Railroad, became president in 1857 and reoriented the society toward the public rather than the interests of its members. Ten years later, in 1867, the Institute donated its science and natural-history collections to the state Cabinet of Natural History, a predecessor of the state museum. Later it would donate its geological collection.[3][4]

Celebrations of the city's bicentennial in 1886 included an exhibit at the Albany Academy of historical relics and art from the private collections of many socially prominent Albany families. The Albany Historical and Art Society (AHAS) was established afterward to maintain the collection and find a permanent home for it. Its membership approached nearly 1,200.[3]

By 1897 AHAS had raised enough money to buy a State Street building, on which it built an addition to house all its works. The following year it absorbed the collection of the Albany Gallery of Fine Art, which had been opened in 1846 and closed within a decade due to declining subscriptions. James McDougal Hart had worked there before beginning his artistic career. The gallery's holdings had been kept in trust by the city's Young Men's Association ever since.[3][4]

In 1900, the AHAS and the Albany Institute merged,[4] becoming the Albany Institute and Historical and Art Society. Local judge William Learned Shaw became the combined organization's first president. Four years later it bought the property on which the main building stands. In 1907 the cornerstone of the Fuller & Pitcher Company's Renaissance Revival building was laid, and the building was completed the following year. Mayor Charles Henry Gaus described it as "the capstone of educational development in our city". Its first exhibit, in 1909, was devoted to the tricentennial of Henry Hudson's exploration of the river named after him and the centennial of Robert Fulton's inaugural steamboat voyage up it.[3]

Poster for 1938 exhibition of contemporary regional artists sponsored by Federal Art Project

To clear more space for exhibits, the institute donated some of its books a block away to the newly built Harmanus Bleecker Library in 1924. The newspaper and pamphlet collections were donated to the state museum shortyl afterwards. Two years later, it shortened its name to the "more symmetrical" Albany Institute of History & Art." This coincided with the beginning of an effort to make the collections more accessible to the public. Those outreach programs, such as tours, school trips and performances, continued through the Great Depression of the next decade, helping establish the institute as a regional museum. It started the Print Club of Albany, bringing nationally known printmakers to the city for lectures and demonstrations, and hosted an exhibit of contemporary regional art in honor of the 250th anniversary of the city charter in 1936. The latter event led to a continuing commitment in that area.[3]

As the next decade dawned and war began, John Davis Hatch came from the Art Institute of Seattle to take over as AIHA director. He began a series of exhibits of major regional artists. One devoted to Thomas Cole was the first major 20th-century retrospective of his work. In 1945, "The Negro Artist Comes of Age", featured the work of 45 African American artists and drew national attention after it went to the Brooklyn Museum. Behind the scenes, Hatch began the process of modernizing the museum's record-keeping to harmonize with the systems in use at other museums.[3]

Hatch's assistant Robert Wheeler took over in 1948. He instituted a policy that new acquisitions be from the region or have some connection to it. With that in place, he created special exhibitions devoted to regional work and renovated the galleries.[3]

In 1956 he was in turn succeeded by Janet McFarlane, who was at the time one of only seven women serving as a museum director in the U.S. Five years later, the museum's Women's Council, which has since become a major fundraiser and source of volunteers, was founded. A year after curator Norman Rice began a 20-year tenure as director in 1967, the Rice family donated their old house on the corner, expanded sympathetically in 1940, to the museum. It renovated the 1895 Beaux-Arts home designed by Richard Morris Hunt, architect of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and several mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, in the style of a 15th-century Italian palazzo[4] for use both as offices and gallery space. As director, Rice would head an acquisition effort that grew the special collections to over a million items before he stepped down in 1986.[3]

Christine Miles took over from him after having directed the Fraunces Tavern museum in Lower Manhattan. Three years later, AIHA held its first Museum Ball and Contemporary Art Auction to raise money for a new Contemporary Collections Fund. The acquisitions it made possible have more than doubled the museum's collections in that area. That year the museum also began a decade-long project to document and better catalog its holdings in order to make them more accessible for researchers as well as the public, part of Miles' effort to position the museum for the upcoming century. In 1990 the City Neighbors project, designed to promote understanding of the people of Albany, produced its first exhibit, a collection devoted to the black experience in the city.[3]

The museum facilities needed to be redesigned, and in 1994 a local architect, Solomon + Bauer, was commissioned for the work. The following year the museum's trustees voted to raise $10 million, later increased to $12.5 million, toward the effort. Sculptor George Rickey donated one of his works, Etoile Variation V, to be permanently installed in the entrance atrium. The money was raised via public and private grants and the museum closed in 1999, moving to temporary quarters on State Street. It reopened in 2001.[3]