An Exhibition Featuring the Works of Photographer Elliott Erwitt Headlines Fenimore Art Museum’s Fall Lineup

Four new exhibitions this fall—with two opening September 17 and two others just days later.

Free admission for young people—ages 19 and under.

Elliott Erwitt (American, Born 1928); France, Paris, 1989; Gelatin Silver Print.

Elliott Erwitt (American, Born 1928); France, Paris, 1989; Gelatin Silver Print.

Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, presents a new exhibition, The Art of Observation: The Best of Photographer Elliott Erwitt, on view September 17 – December 31, 2022.

This exhibition offers an enticing window into Erwitt’s collection of work. It showcases the impressive results of a remarkable career that coincides with two of the most significant developments in photography in the second half of the twentieth century: the rise of mass-circulation picture magazines; and the occasionally contentious relationship between personal work and commercial photography. This exhibition shows both the miracle of Erwitt’s balance between commercial and personal photography, and the memorable flavor that he brings to his work. Museum admission is free for visitors 19 and under.

The exhibition was organized by Photographic Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

Also opening September 17: Tales from the Rockabout Hills: Paintings by D. Michael Price. D. Michael Price is a fantasy artist whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Well-respected as a successful fine artist as well as a published children’s book author/illustrator, Price’s works of fantasy art are created in acrylic and oil mediums on canvas. His love of the magical beauty to be found in the hills, valleys, forests, and streams of his Upstate New York home in the “Rockabout Hills” provides him with constant inspiration. The exhibition includes artwork from four of his books, which transport the viewer through magical settings with humor and originality.

Other upcoming exhibitions include Mary Michael Shelley – Art of the Everyday, opening September 21, and Jonathan Kirk – Abstract Sculpture: Fables, Foibles, and other Machinations, opening October 1. Mary Michael Shelley’s artwork has been described as primitive, traditional, untrained, Americana, whimsical, naïve, eccentric, outsider, visionary, or carved craft. The carved wooden reliefs featured in this exhibition by this Ithaca based artist are a sort of “picture diary” or “picture story” in which Shelley documents life events, emotions, and places important to her life. Jonathan Kirk’s sculptures, while abstract, are evocative of a wide range of sources, from the natural and organic world, to forms of industrial and naval architecture. The work illuminates the ways in which the forms of the artist as well as the engineer still embody the mysterious intelligence of their natural models and points to the idea that making is, in a sense, the invention of what might be called ‘cultural machinery.’

Fenimore Art Museum presents its new fall exhibitions alongside its world-renowned collections of fine art, folk art, and Native American art, which includes The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art. Visit FenimoreArt.org for a complete list of current and upcoming exhibitions.

Museum Admission: Adults (20-64) $15.00; Seniors (65+) $12.50. FREE for ages 19 and under, museum members, and active military and retired career military personnel. FREE museum admission is also available for those receiving SNAP benefits (up to 4 people) with the presentation of a SNAP Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card.  Discounted two-way tickets are available if you’d also like to visit The Farmers’ Museum across the street. For more information on our “Free Admission” offerings, visit FenimoreArtMuseum.org/free.

Fenimore Art Museum, nestled on the shore of picturesque Otsego Lake, offers visitors to the village of Cooperstown an opportunity to experience a wide variety of world-class art in an idyllic, small-town setting.

About Fenimore Art Museum

Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org.