Chautauqua School of Art
June 26 - August 14, 2010
Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Drawing, Printmaking
Near Chautauqua
Albright-Knox Art GalleryMost students make the hour or so drive to Buffalo to visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where important works by Courbet, Bonnard, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Roualt, Picasso and many others are displayed alongside more recent major works by de Kooning (Gotham News), Gorky (Liver and the Cockscomb), Pollock, Giacometti, Still, Krasner, and dozens of others in a museum that is one of America’s cultural gems. This museum also has outstanding works by many of the most important post-1950s artists, and there are always temporary exhibitions by contemporary artists.
Across the street from the Albright-Knox is the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, an important center for temporary contemporary exhibitions. It is also the home of many of the works of Western New York artist Charles Burchfield. Niagara Falls is a 20-minute drive from the Albright-Knox and Buffalo museums.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is a day trip made every summer by students and faculty together. Cleveland hosts what is arguably the greatest collection of non-western sculpture in North America. It also has a world-class collection including everyone from Poussin to Chardin, from medieval carvings to Rubens, from Cezanne and Roualt to Kiefer and Rothenberg — and nearly everything in between.
For those who want to make a longer trip on their own, the Carnegie Institute, the Warhol Museum, The Mattress Factory Museum and the Scaife Museum in Pittsburgh are a morning’s drive away.
Closer to Chautauqua are small museums at places such as Corning, Alfred, The Butler Institute and others.
Veterans Park, Avon Lake, OHThe terrain near Chautauqua is fascinating. Lake Erie is eight miles from the School of Art. Students interested in landscape often go there to paint. So do students interested in an evening bonfire along the beach. As a result of cleanup efforts and the decline of industry, Lake Erie is amazingly clear, with pristine and minimally inhabited shorelines in this part of the state. In addition to vineyards, an important industry along the shoreline now is sport fishing. During the 18th century the eight-mile portage from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake was a significant North American trade thoroughfare. With that portage it was possible to move by water from New Brunswick down the St. Lawrence River,
into lakes Ontario and Erie, across Chautauqua Lake, and onto the Chadakoin, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.
Even closer landscape features are Panama Rocks, an extraordinary series of sedimentary eruptions and rock formations left from when the Great Lakes were a single ocean, as well as the Chautauqua Gorge, a crystal clear waterway with slate rock formations, waterfalls and swimming holes. While Chautauqua itself is essentially a small town, only a very short distance away from the lake are miles and miles of rolling farmland and forests. Of course the most notable nearby natural feature is Chautauqua Lake, a hundred yards down the front lawn from the School of Art. The Seneca, of the Iroquois nation, named this lake “Jahdawgweh” — Chautauqua — said to mean, “bag tied in the middle.” This is because the lake is over a mile wide for most of its 18-mile length, except in the middle, where the east and west shores are only a few hundred yards apart. There are several swimming beaches very close to the School of Art.
