April 1, 2011 - August 14, 2011

Rufus Grider (1817-1900) and Fritz Vogt (1842-1900) sketched the farms, homes, stores and churches found in the Mohawk Valley. These two remarkable vernacular artists, whose personal stories and motivations could not have been more different, documented buildings and landscapes in the same rural New York region during 1890-1900. They were both German-speakers who came to the Mohawk Valley as adults. Grider, a Canajoharie schoolteacher, studied early accounts of the Mohawk Valley in an effort to reconstruct the past and document his interest in the fast-changing landscape. Vogt was an itinerant handyman and artist who produced his portraits of farms and homes as a way to earn a living. While they created their sketches for different reasons, their works viewed together provide us with a clear picture of of the past.

Exhibition funded, in part, by the New York Council for the Humanities, and by the Iroquois Gas Transmission System.