Are you a new parent, grandparent, or caregiver looking for conversations with other adults? Join us on the second Friday of each month with babe-in-arms for a guided gallery chat through our exhibits!

The Grown-Up Gallery Chat is included free with admission to the Arkell Museum. Admission is free for museum members, $9.00 for adults, and $6.50 for students and seniors. A family membership, covering one year, is $85.00.

This program is best for adults accompanied by children two years old or younger, and children must be carried or in a stroller. For more information, please contact Curator of Education & Public Engagement Jenna Peterson Riley at jriley@arkellmuseum.org or (518) 674-2314 x 113.

2017 Dates:
August 11 - Christine Heller
September 8 - Gilbert Stuart
October 13 - James McNeil Whistler
November 10 - Winslow Homer
December 8 - Mary Cassatt

Visit the Canajoharie Library & Arkell Museum for a special Story Hour with your favorite stuffed animal friend. We'll start off by making nametags for each of our friends and getting to know them all a little better, then moving into one of the Museum galleries for Story Hour; this special reading time with your stuffed animal will include carefully selected stories to help them get ready for their big overnight adventure. Then, help us tuck our stuffed animal friends in, and all of the humans will head home for the evening. Don't worry, we have the famous "Night Watch" guard to keep an eye on them overnight!

Don't forget to pick them up on Saturday, August 4 between 12:00-5:00 and hear all the stories of what they did while you were away! Each stuffed animal will go home with a special report card detailing how their overnight went, including some photographs of their late night activities.

This program is free and open for students of all ages. For more information, call 518-673-2314, email Library Director Hannah Stahl, or email Curator of Education & Public Engagement Jenna Peterson Riley.

"Soldier mortals would not survive if they were not blessed with the gift of imagination and the pictures of hope," wrote Confederate Private Henry Graves in the trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia. "The second angel of mercy is the night dream.”

Wanda Burch, historian & writer and John Kenosian, singer/songwriter, received a Saratoga Arts Community Arts individual artist grant for the presentation of performances of HOME VOICES in Montgomery County. We have the privilege of bringing them to the Arkell Museum for their fifth concert of the season at 7:00 pm on November 10th. Admission is free, and donations are always welcome.

Joining Wanda and John will be Gisella Montanez-Case, lead singer with the 77th NY Regimental Balladeers. The program will present excerpts from original letters to and from the Civil War soldier’s loved ones, accompanied by original words and music by John Kenosian. The letters are based on a new book by Wanda Burch: The Home Voices Speak Louder than the Drums: Dreams and the Imagination in Civil War Letters and Memoirs [McFarland Publishers, summer 2017].

Providing fresh perspective on the human side of the Civil War, this book explores the dreams and imaginings of those who fought it, as recorded in their letters, journals, and memoirs. Sometimes published as poems or songs or printed in newspapers, these rarely acknowledged writings reflect the personalities and experiences of their authors. Some expressions of fear, pain, loss, homesickness, and disappointment are related with grim fatalism, some with glimpses of humor.

Doors open at 6:30;
Enjoy the Masterworks exhibits before the performance, including the Winslow Homer watercolor "Contraband."
Audience participation is encouraged on additional traditional songs from the period.

For further information about the event, please contact:
Jenna Peterson Riley, Curator of Education & Public Engagement
phone: 518-673-2314
email: jriley@arkellmuseum.org

For information about the book or the music, please contact:
Wanda Burch
cell: 518-281-4937
home: ronwan@capital.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wanda.burch.1

Saratoga Arts made this program possible with a Community Arts Individual Artist Grant funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislators