Day 3 - Home from the Catskills (4 museums!)

Saturday, May 19, 2018 - Wendy has a conference up in Amesbury, so I decided to DO SOME HIKING. Although there are 46 4000 footers in the Adirondacks (?rent a cabin for a month?), there are only 2 further south in the Catskills: Hunter Mountain (4,040) and Slide Mountain (4,180):

So I made reservations for Thursday and Friday nights at the Super 8 in Montgomery, NY (about an hour south of this area)(much cheaper!).

Because "hiking 4000 footers in the Northeast" is actually why I started my blog dixonheadingnorth, that is where I posted the blogs for the first 2 days click here.



Since this is an "Art Museum" day, I am posting it under dixonheadingwest. It was a wet rainy day as I left the Super 8 in Montgomery, New York a little after 9. I got to The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY) right at 10:

I had been there previously (July 16, 2015 and January 29, 2016), so I made a spreadsheet of "the art I like" and when (and if) I had already taken a picture of it:

This is a good idea - it allows me to identify (and focus on) pieces that I have not seen (while still enjoying works that I have seen). The only one I saw on my to-do list was by Jervis McEntee - Beeches and Ferns:


But other enjoyable pieces include:
Anders Lunde - Marina Piccola, Capri, 1847 oil:

Rembrandt van Rijn - Study from the Nude: Man Sitting on the Ground, 1646 etching:

Grace Robertson - The Connoisseur, Tate Gallery, London, 1952 silver print:


I then headed east to Cornwall, Connecticut, and their Historical Society, to see:
David Johnson - Housatonic River at West Cornwall, 1870s:



From there I went straight north. It was a lovely rainy day to drive through the Connecticut countryside:


Straight up Route 7, and I was up at the Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, Mass.) by 1:45. Favorites there include:
Sanford Robinson Gifford - The Palisades, 1877:

Robert Seldon Duncanson - Title unknown [Meeting by the river], 1864:

George Henry Smillie - Title unknown [Cliffs of Etretat], c. 1884:


Then it was time to head home down Route 2 - I thought Florida had nicer weather!!:


I made it to the Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, Mass.) by 4:30 - plenty of time!:


They have an exhibition that ladies in my family would like - "Leisure Pursuits: The Fashion and Culture of Recreation" (open until March 24, 2019):



Of the 111 paintings in their collection, they decided to put 51 of them on display, all at once, in ONE ROOM:





My two favorites (that I could see) are:
John Frederick Kensett - In the Catskills, ca. 1850

Thomas Hill - Bridal Veil and El Capitan, ca. 1885:

(can you find them in the photos above?)

And then home by 7! Thank you God for these wonderful adventures!

Today, for my listening pleasure, I have been doing Shuffle Songs on my iPod. 17,869 songs! Today I listened to 87 songs, starting with:

#1 - "Don't Drink The Water" - Dave Matthews Band (from the album Listener Supported, 1999 live album)


and ending with #87 - "Sometimes A Great Notion" - John Cougar Mellencamp (from the album Big Daddy, 1989)