Fenimore Art Museum Reopens April 1 with New Exhibitions

An exhibition featuring Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, two influential women artists of the Impressionist movement, highlights the summer season.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Opening for the season on April 1, Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, presents eleven exhibitions in 2025 alongside its world-renowned collections of fine art, folk art, and Native American art, which includes The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art. New exhibitions this spring include Snapshot: Highlights of the PlowlineCollection and Emily Pettigrew: Painting in the Catskills 2021–2025. Continuing exhibitions, Boundless Spirit: American Folk Art at the Fenimore Art Museum and American Masterworks, will be on view throughout the year.

The summer is highlighted by the exhibition Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism (May 24 – September 1, 2025). Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, two artists thrust together due to their involvement in the Impressionist circle, have always served as an interesting comparison for art historians. Morisot proved to the Parisian art scene a woman could have both a family and a successful career while Cassatt held the belief a woman only needed her independence to be fulfilled. This exhibition showcases these two strong women artists as allies, working off one another and growing, improving their artistic output through their longstanding friendship documented in correspondences. The exhibition highlights the influence these two artists had on one another and their overarching impact on the Impressionist movement.

Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism is sponsored in part by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, The Clark Foundation, and Nellie and Robert Gipson. The exhibition catalog is made possible through a generous gift from Denise Littlefield Sobel.

Also this summer, The Power of Photography: 19th-20th Century Original Master Prints (May 24 – September 1, 2025) featuring a selection of 120 iconic images by 120 different photographers, which celebrate the photograph’s unique capacity for relatability. In the fall, Exploring Calvin and Hobbes (September 13 – December 31, 2025), featuring original Calvin and Hobbes daily and Sunday strips as well as specialty pieces by cartoonist Bill Watterson from his collection of more than 3,000 originals housed at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University.

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.

HOURS: Fenimore Art Museum is open April 1–December 31, 2025. Spring hours (April 1–May 23): 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays). Summer hours begin May 24: open daily 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

2025 EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS:

Boundless Spirit: American Folk Art at the Fenimore Art Museum
April 1 – December 31, 2025

American Masterworks
April 1 – December 31, 2025

Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism
May 24 – September 1, 2025

The Power of Photography: 19th-20th Century Original Master Prints
May 24 – September 1, 2025

Exploring Calvin and Hobbes
September 13 – December 31, 2025

ADDITIONAL EXHIBITIONS IN  2025:

The Art of the Everyday: American Genre Paintings
April 1 – May 4, 2025

Snapshot: Highlights of the Plowline Collection
April 1 – September 21, 2025

Emily Pettigrew: Painting in the Catskills 2021–2025
April 1 – August 24, 2025

Young at Art! Timeless Tales, Vibrant Visions
April 1 – May 7, 2025

Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary
September 27 – December 31, 2025

Looking Back: Fritz Vogt’s Drawings at 125
October 4 – December 31, 2025

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS:

The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

American Memory: Recalling the Past in Folk Art

About Fenimore Art Museum

Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, presents changing exhibitions each season. Past shows have featured artists such as Keith Haring, Ansel Adams, Banksy, M.C. Escher, and many others. The museum features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings from artists including Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Robert Henri, George Inness, Eastman Johnson, Joshua Johnson, Thomas Moran, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, Max Weber, and James McNeill Whistler; 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.