2010
Oyster Bay Historical Society Holiday Open House
Saturday, December 11, 2010
4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Program of Gospel and Seasonal Music
Hood A.M.E. Zion Church
137 South Street, Oyster Bay
5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Holiday Reception
Oyster Bay Historical Society
20 Summit Street, Oyster Bay
4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Program of Gospel and Seasonal Music
Hood A.M.E. Zion Church
137 South Street, Oyster Bay
5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Holiday Reception
Oyster Bay Historical Society
20 Summit Street, Oyster Bay
Boat Life on the Sound
An 1858 Yachting Party
November 7 -- December 19, 2010
Curated by Yvonne Noonan-Cifarelli
Boat Life on the Sound is a sketchbook of pencil drawings by James W. Alexander, who captured scenes of an 1858 yachting party aboard the schooner Seadrift, owned by Thomas Underhill Smith of Oyster Bay. His daughter, Mary Frances Smith, was a member of the party and received the sketches as a gift of the artist on 1 June 1858. She in turn left them to her daughter, Frances Irvin, who donated them to the Oyster Bay Historical Society in 1963. Her letter accompanying her donation, addressed to the Society’s founder Carolyn Hill, appears later in the exhibition. Three years earlier, Frances Irvin had donated her unpublished manuscript Oyster Bay in History (which she called “my Sketch”). Copies of the manuscript were later bound for the Society’s research library, before Society Librarian Jane Soames Nickerson edited an edition for publication in 1987.
In addition to James Alexander’s boat-life drawings, the sketchbook contains pencil caricatures, landscapes, and studies, some in a hand or hands other than Mr. Alexander’s and on a paper stock noticeably different from the main body of the book. One of these drawings was at some time actually mounted to a blank page in the boat-life series. The book as a whole, disbound and consisting of individual sheets in a disturbed order, has been restored to its original arrangement. The book’s cloth-covered boards, serving more as a portfolio than an actual cover, appear in the corner cupboard at the end of the exhibition.
Boat Life on the Sound is an Archives Month exhibition.
Curated by Yvonne Noonan-Cifarelli
Boat Life on the Sound is a sketchbook of pencil drawings by James W. Alexander, who captured scenes of an 1858 yachting party aboard the schooner Seadrift, owned by Thomas Underhill Smith of Oyster Bay. His daughter, Mary Frances Smith, was a member of the party and received the sketches as a gift of the artist on 1 June 1858. She in turn left them to her daughter, Frances Irvin, who donated them to the Oyster Bay Historical Society in 1963. Her letter accompanying her donation, addressed to the Society’s founder Carolyn Hill, appears later in the exhibition. Three years earlier, Frances Irvin had donated her unpublished manuscript Oyster Bay in History (which she called “my Sketch”). Copies of the manuscript were later bound for the Society’s research library, before Society Librarian Jane Soames Nickerson edited an edition for publication in 1987.
In addition to James Alexander’s boat-life drawings, the sketchbook contains pencil caricatures, landscapes, and studies, some in a hand or hands other than Mr. Alexander’s and on a paper stock noticeably different from the main body of the book. One of these drawings was at some time actually mounted to a blank page in the boat-life series. The book as a whole, disbound and consisting of individual sheets in a disturbed order, has been restored to its original arrangement. The book’s cloth-covered boards, serving more as a portfolio than an actual cover, appear in the corner cupboard at the end of the exhibition.
Boat Life on the Sound is an Archives Month exhibition.
The past is our future
Fifty Fabulous Years at the Oyster Bay Historical Society
On exhibit August 1-- September 1, 2010
Curated by George Wallace
Earle-Wightman House (c 1720), headquarters of the Oyster Bay Historical Society on 20 Summit Street
| 50th_anniversary_catalog.pdf |
