Good small museum that only shows a fraction of holdings. Eclectic; show we saw was related to…read morecourses and paintings, objects, sculptures related to them. Because it's smaller, don't get "museum fatigue." Good complement to the much bigger Clark nearby!

Nice little college Museum apparently they are building a new museum. Looking forward to seeing…read morewhat they do in the future.

The Capital Concert Series kicked off its summer season on June 24th at Empire State Plaza in…read moreAlbany with performances by the legendary rock band, Kansas. They sounded awesome. Founded in Kansas in the 70's, there are some original members still performing. I remember hearing about the line-up for this season's free Wednesday night concerts but I didn't catch the dates. I happened to be walking my dog that evening and I could hear the music from a distance. So we showed up -- little dog and I -- and it was actually quite wonderful. I didn't know that Kansas was popular with bikers but dozens of motorcycles lined the street outside the Plaza. The crowd of several hundred people was very respectful. They even made room for us. Many people actually stopped to say hello to my dog. The band performed with a lot of energy and great interaction with the crowd. These were songs that I heard on the radio as I was growing up. They brought back many memories but there is no replicating the nuances and sound quality of live music. When they played their big hit, "Carry on Wayward Son," for their encore, the crowd erupted in cheers. Even the State Police who were providing security on the Plaza seemed be to enjoying the music. For anyone who was hungry, there were some food trucks serving up meals and fried dough. I hadn't planned on catching Kansas but I'm glad I did. It was a world class concert and it was free. It was underwritten by several local businesses. Kansas is currently on tour and individual tickets run as high as $200. In previous summers, I've caught other concerts on the Plaza including Pat Benatar and the R & B group, En Vogue, who prove that age is just a number. For more free concert information, search Summer at the Plaza.

We visited this museum after visiting the NY State Museum. The gentleman at the reception was…read morepleasant and friendly. Entrance fee was reasonable. As someone who frequents museums wherever we go, I can only give this one three stars. I guess I was expecting more and better quality paintings especially that it's the state capital's art museum. Not to be nit picky but our museum (City of Portland, Maine) has much more interesting pieces. Still glad we went. Happy to support arts and culture.

Friendly staff. I have been in larger museums that were free (in both smaller towns and in larger…read morecities) , so the $12 price per adult was a bit of a heftier price than we hoped for - along with it being a slightly smaller museum. Also disappointed they didn't provide a map of the building/exhibits (I took a photo to help us navigate a little bit. My spouse did particularly like the Hudson River School paintings.

I have been to Chesterwood before but not in many years. During the pandemic they did a major…read morerenovation of the residence, including creating educational displays in the bedrooms on the second floor. This certainly was a highlight of this trip to Chesterwood! French's studio is remarkable and so interesting. It contains the actual model of the seated Lincoln that was used to created the marble statue we see in DC today! Many thanks to Laura, our tour guide, who was incredibly knowledgeable and an excellent educator. We learned so much! Highly recommend visiting Chesterwood when in the Berkshires - and be sure to take a tour!

Really lovely and understated estate/museum to visit in an area rich in those, Chesterwood is…read moredefinitely worth a visit. Daniel Chester French was the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial, and there's a smaller version of the famous sculpture here in his studio. The house he resided in is well-maintained and is quite lovely. The tour guide was informative and friendly. The house tour is worth the admission but the views of the valley puts it over. The garden where the studio is has a nice fountain. I had to leave just before the end of the tour. With the tour, try to have at least a couple of hours so you can get the full feel of the estate.

What a wonderful museum in Hudson county. So educational and the kids throughly enjoyed. There are…read moretrucks for the kids to explore, tons of interactive displays, an obstacle course and a little center for the littles to explore. The staff working there the day we visited were happy to show the kids around and explore. We visited during the holidays and they had a scavenger hunt and winter displays throughout the museum.

Drove all the way here on a Saturday only to find the museum closed! Their sign says they're open…read moreWednesday through Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. If they closed for the tiny bit of snow, they didn't bother updating their Google listing. Very unprofessional! Would not recommend.

I was researching things to do in the Berkshires while my classmates and I were vacationing. This…read morepeaked our interest as we're all tech-fascinated people, and my husband was an animation major. It's a free museum visit, but because it's privately run, you have to call them and make special arrangements for them to come and open the museum. The pros: you get a private tour, and hours aren't limited to your usual 9-5. The cons: since it's only run by 2 people, you're really at their mercy when you show up and they may or may not be on there way there still. Admittedly it's nothing fancy, but if you're legitimately into animation, it's a really fun casual tour. They go very old school on some animation techniques. They have a gift shop with some animation trinkets you can buy. For extra money if you have time, you can also create your own animation with them. We opted out of that one. If you're in the area anyway, it's a great place to stop by. Otherwise, I wouldn't go out of your way to travel to the area just for this.

Remember carnival sideshows and the relentless shilling that happens out in front of the midway…read moretent? This is what it feels like to visit AniMagic. The handbill reads, "50% off Make Your Own Animation in our Hands-On Studio," and "$20 workshop includes 2-hr training, materials, and your creation on take-home video (reg. $40). Good for dates! Absolutely not. What we received for $40 instead of a 2-hour, make-your-own-animation workshop was: - a 10-minute tour of all the overpriced optical illusion toys in the dusty gift shop - a 10 minute "free" tour of their "museum," a small room full of sight gags and posters, and an expanding sphere that drops out of nowhere, just barely missing your head. We weren't allowed to linger over the really interesting things - a family tree of all the animators and animation studios in the Berkshires, the actual crab puppets from a food commercial, a technical Oscar - and were instead hustled (pun intended) from one thing to another, with a long, incomprehensible spiel accompanying our visits with long-outdated computer equipment, trompe l'oeil toys, and a mechanical Donald Duck on a high wire. I feared for my eyes during the entire visit. - a bait-and-switch video (really! on VHS!) of claymation (plasticine stop-motion animation), claimed to have been created by the guy's workshop students (we'll get to that in a minute). - 20 minutes of doing exactly what this guy impatiently told us to do, followed by being hustled (again, pun intended) out the front door. In that twenty minute (not two hour!) workshop, we were treated to a machine-gun-fire rapidity of commands by a person who had absolutely no intention of allowing us to make our own animation. We were told to sit at a table in a back workshop and were nonconsensually videotaped as he told us exactly what to do with the plasticine. When the camera was off, he was barking orders at us to make simple stick figures, which were NOTHING like the melting snowmen, dancing flowers, and amazing animals of the teaser video. I felt like I was promised a visit with a unicorn, but when I pulled back the oilcloth tent flap, I was treated to a brief glimpse of a dog with a tree branch secured precariously to its forehead with a necktie. As dreams of a romantic afternoon evaporated in the exact way that my forehead sweat didn't, I noticed his sign, printed in ALL CAPS, which read "THIS IS NOT BURGER KING. YOU DO IT *MY* WAY." No joke, if you have to make a sign to explain to people that they will adhere directly to your totalitarian clay regime, you probably shouldn't be in the business of working with small humans. Any humans. We've both made movies before, and - in the case of my beloved, who's taught classes in animation - brought some measure of competent experience to the table. I had hoped to learn something further about new technology's role in stop-motion animation, and have time to build my character, the backbone of any subject-based creative endeavor. Instead, I was given two minutes to cut legs out of a tube and shove a head onto a trunk with exacting precision, what this guy called "surgery." He had his spiel down pat. When I tried to ask if I could make something else, he said "NO." When I asked if I could make my figure an animal, he said "NO!" He sighed, and growled, and grimaced, and flat-out took our pieces away several times and just built them his damn self. It was as if we weren't there, because every time he noticed we had any selfhood, he seemed supremely annoyed at our very existence. Show's over, folks, keep on moving. The best part of this celluloid turd was when we went back into the main room and were told how to press computer buttons on a 1998 iMac running iMovie 2.0, which apparently required a complex call-and-response system to actuate still photos from a twenty-year-old, 0.5 megapixel webcam in the shape of a giant eye. I prayed that this eye would bear witness to our ordeal. Instead, we were told that we were making different movies (not one, as we at least expected to do), and were told what the movies would be about. We were not allowed to touch the figures more than twice apiece, because we were Doin' It Wrong, so he positioned the figures and told us when to take the pictures and basically used us to fulfill a role he had long before decided needed to be filled with deformed, ugly clay monstrosities. I imagined that a clay horse would run through the set and rescue my poor puppet, or, at the very least, trample it into the earth so it could avoid suffering further. He wouldn't let us do any post-production, forcing us instead to watch as he looped "our" terrible movies, added copyright-infringing music, and tasteless audio effects. We didn't even get a copy - we had to hunt on YouTube for it! When we were led out with a Bye Now after 40 minutes, we knew we'd been had. It's so unfortunate, too, because these people are so very talented (Irena is WAY more talented than he is). Run!!

Ralf was our guide and it was very pleasurable he was very knowledgeable very upbeat and cheerful…read more He kept the tour moving and he answered all our questions intelligently. I was very pleased with the tour and I'm an ex Navy guy so that's saying something !

Only one remains afloat in America [Albany NY]…read more We learned so much from our docent, Caroline.. this is a guided tour inside the World War II destroyer escort. General admission was $10 each and lasted about an hour. There were 563 built during WWII and the USS Slater is the only destroyer escort left in the US. It has been restored to its original 1945 configuration. We were fortunate to learn about this national historic landmark. The first thing we learned was the history behind the name of the USS Slater (DE 766). The destroyer escort was named after Seaman Frank O. Slater. He was assigned to the USS San Francisco at Pearl Harbor and was killed when a Japanese torpedo bomber he had shot down crashed into his gun position. Instead of leaving his gun and trying to find a safe place for cover he stayed at his position continuously firing until the plane crashed his gun mount. The tour took us to the galley, officers and enlisted mess halls (btw, the officer mess hall doubled up as the operating room, there is a medicine cabinet by the wall), we viewed the chart room and the sonar room, captain's cabin, ship's office, signal bridge... we mounted ladders to get up and down between decks. These are steeper than stairs so it could be challenging for some. Overall, a very educational tour and I enjoyed it. A Destroyer Escort's main job is to defend naval task forces from Japanese submarines and Kamikaze air attacks in the Pacific. Review #3014

Excellent Renoir collection. Enjoyed permanent collection as well as special exhibit…read more Dont skip the smaller paintings; theyre fantastic.

I went to see Corot, but also ended up admiring Renoir and George Inness, a Montclair local. The…read moreClark is situated in a bucolic college town whose scenery made me think of Wuthering Heights. Maybe because we went at a time when spring should have been sprouting out, but winter lingered and light snow even showed up, casting a gloomy atmosphere. Haru, enjoyed exploring its surroundings while I shivered. I noticed though that some patrons were chatting disruptively.