Hyde Collection
Glens Falls, New York
Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and paper manufacturer on the Hudson River, grew up as a lover of art and collected artwork with the help of experts around the world. Her father built her a small mansion on the banks of the Hudson that Hyde set aside to be used as an art museum after her death.
“She was one of the only people in Glens Falls who had a vision for the arts,” said Alice Grether, director of communications for the Hyde Collection. “In her trust, she said she wanted the museum to ‘promote and cultivate the improvement of the fine arts for the education and benefit of the residents of Glens Falls and the general public,’ and she held true to that.”
As an art lover, Hyde was inspired by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and had her upstate New York home built to mimic its Italianate style. The resulting Hyde home is an Italian Renaissance mansion with a center palazzo courtyard.
Groups that visit the museum see the home much as it looked during the Hyde family’s time there, with many of the original furnishings, decorative arts and clocks that the family used, as well as Mr. Hyde’s extensive library of first-edition books. But perhaps more impressive than the home itself is the collection of artwork that it houses.
“It’s a wide-ranging collection that spans more than 2,000 years of art,” Grether said. “The earliest piece is a Greek statue. We have works by Rembrandt, Degas, Renoir, Monet, El Greco and Winslow Homer. We also have a very large contemporary art collection, and we’re continuing to grow that.”
In addition to the permanent collection, the Hyde Collection has special showings and traveling exhibitions. The highlight for 2015 will be “The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol: 1973-1987,” on exhibit from June 20 to September 27.
