In The News

April 26, 2023 | WAMC

Spencertown Academy Arts Center presents “Ellsworth Kelly Centennial: An Exhibition of Historic Posters.” The posters, which date from 1951 to 2018, are from the collection of the Ellsworth Kelly Studio.

Kelly (1923–2015) is widely regarded as one of the most important painters, sculptors, and printmakers of his time. On the occasion of his May 31 centennial, a year-long celebration will showcase the artist’s indelible legacy.

This collaborative event will include exhibitions and installations at the Art Institute of Chicago, Glenstone Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art, among others; new publications; multiple gifts of artworks to museums; grant awards from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation; a scholarly symposium; and new digital initiatives to ensure that Kelly’s legacy endures for another 100 years and beyond.

Mary Anne Lee – Managing Director of the Ellsworth Kelly Studio joins us with more.

Listen to the entire interview.

April 13, 2023 | The Berkshire Eagle

In 1928, German bookbinder Theodor Trampler traveled to the United States to craft his skills in New York City. He left behind his wife and two daughters in Leipzig, and wrote hundreds of lengthy letters to his family about everyday experiences and observations of the bustling metropolis.

He sent money back home with the hopes of bringing them over to join him, but his wife was afraid to travel to a foreign country. Homesick, Trampler returned to Germany in 1929.

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March 2, 2023 | The Berkshire Eagle

When multi-instrumentalists Jerron Paxton and Dennis Lichtman go out into the world together, they look to the past for inspiration.

Growing up on opposite coasts — Paxton in Los Angeles, Lichtman near Boston — each developed a love of music that brought them together in New York City, first as friends and colleagues, then as close collaborators.

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September 2, 2022 | WAMC

Spencertown Academy Arts Center’s 17th annual Festival of Books takes place over Labor Day weekend, September 2 through September 5. The Festival features a giant used book sale, two days of discussions with and readings by esteemed authors, and a children’s program.

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August 30, 2022 | Times Union

When visitors step into the 175-year-old Greek Revival building known as Spencertown Academy, they often sense a certain presence, an echo of all the lives that have passed through this place—musicians who performed in the auditorium where legends like Odetta and Pete Seeger once took the stage, future teachers who studied Greek and Latin in one of the country’s first coed teacher-training programs, and a century’s worth of elementary school students, during the Academy’s years as a public grade school.

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Spencertown Academy | August 26, 2022

SPENCERTOWN, N.Y. — Get your book bags ready! After two years of virtual sales and lectures, bibliophiles will be able to browse, pick up books and buy them in person, and meet authors face-to-face when the Spencertown Academy Arts Center’s 17th annual Festival of Books returns Labor Day weekend.

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The Berkshire Eagle | Sunday, July 3, 2022

SPENCERTOWN, N.Y. — When the 50th anniversary of a beloved cultural institution falls in the same year as the 175th anniversary of the building it occupies, there’s double the reason to celebrate.

On Saturday, July 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Spencertown Academy Arts Center — located atop a hill near the Village Green in the Spencertown hamlet of rural Austerlitz, N.Y. — will host a free, festive Community Day for all ages. Music, performances, art and historical exhibits offering a glimpse at its storied past are scheduled throughout the day.

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The Berkshire Edge | March 22, 2022

It’s an odd thing, writing a biography of someone you know well, yet barely know at all. Judy White Staber has constructed a book about her actress mother, and she has done a great deal of research about her mother’s family background, her mother’s life, and her career. She has had to do the work of a researcher as her mother, Joan White, played a very small role in Staber’s formative years, having placed her in the Actors’ Orphanage when she was just a bit over four years old. In Staber’s first book, “Silverlands: Growing Up at the Actors’ Orphanage,” published in 2010, she recounted those years and experiences in great detail. This book, which discusses her childhood, is more about what happened to her in subsequent times.

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The Berkshire Eagle | October 2, 2021

CHATHAM, N.Y. — Former U.N. staffer Jill Kalotay loves books. So do the 2,000 people and volunteers who attend Spencertown Academy Arts Center’s annual Festival of Books. Too many for the current climate, the 16th festival will spend a second year online.

Kalotay co-chairs the festival, her sixth, with David Highfill, executive editor at HarperCollins imprint William Morrow.

“I’m a reader and book lover,” said Kalotay during a phone interview. “Our family has always been that way. My daughter is a writer and my Hungarian husband is very bookish.”

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TimesUnion.com | October 1, 2021

A few years ago, Barbara Lax Kranz, co-chair of the Spencertown Academy Curatorial Committee, had the idea to create an art show that offered a little break from all the bad news. She had no idea how badly people would need that by the time the exhibition finally went up. 

“Long before the pandemic, I decided to do a show on whimsy to give people an escape,” Lax Kranz said recently. “Times were troubling then—little did I know where we would be a year or so later.” 

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