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I like to promote small scale museums as they are like oases in the desert of contemporary life--not that contemporary life is a desert, but that artistic representation of life, when it is good, is a little like getting a reprieve from the hurly-burly of what is the modern world, which I would say has an overload of really dumb stuff. I get caught up in that dumb stuff every once in a while and getting out the door to go do something or see something is a good antidote to inertia. When you get a chance to visit a museum that has a notable and small collection, it is very enjoyable--not too much to look at, not too little. I had this type of experience in Oxford, Mississippi at the University's gallery and WilliamFaulkner's house, Rowan Oak.
You would not think that upstate New York would have much in the way of small museums. I have not been to the museums in Syracuse, Albany, Rochester or Buffalo for which I am remiss, but I have been to the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie and the Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica. I have talked about the MWP before, but not the Arkell which, if you know Canajoharie, you will likely have visited. If, on the other hand, you don't believe there is a town called Canajoharie, you can stop reading and feel certain in the understanding that I have lost my mind--I haven't, there is a Canajoharie. And, not unlike many of the little museums you will find in London townhouses, of which there are a lot, it is a gem.
Canajoharie was the home of James Arkell who was among other things a publisher with a bent towards inventing methods of packaging including the square bottomed package used for packaging flour. His son, Bartlett, saw the value of packaging foodstuffs and the company eventually became Beech-Nut. (The factory in Canajoharie smelled of Beech-Nut gum when I used to get off the NYS Thruway to visit my grandmother on Otsego Lake in the 1970's.) Beech-Nut handled all sorts of packaging jobs and ultimately became a food processing company. Both Arkells believed in advertising and employed artists to create images for their use in selling product and so met illustrators who were often struggling artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Hart Benton whose paintings they purchased. As thrilling as the Mohawk Valley, which cradles the Thruway and the Erie Canal, may be, I strongly recommend a stop in this particular oasis--it is a refreshing break.
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