Staten Island Museum

History

The Staten Island Museum was founded in 1881 as a private society of local naturalists and antiquarians who pooled their personal collections to create the public museum in 1908. William T. Davis, along with Nathaniel Lord Britton, Arthur Hollick, Charles W. Leng, are some of the founding fathers who also contributed significantly to the city’s nature preserve, research and education. The museum focused on environmental protection and has participated in the preservation of High Rock Park and the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. Since 1908, the staff has conducted annual bird counts together with the Audubon Society. In 1909, the Section of Art was organized, and in 1919 the Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences was incorporated to reflect the broader mission which also includes local history.

The museum has been called a "Mini Smithsonian" because of the breadth of its collections, and is based on a 19th-century model of creating within one's own community the complete resources for a cultural education. As a general interest museum, it is one of the last intact examples of the first type of public museum in America, and today serves a diverse audience of 80,000 people annually, with the goal of providing cross-disciplinary exhibitions for a wide cross-section of visitors.

As the oldest cultural organization on Staten Island, the museum has been instrumental in the founding of many other cultural organizations in the area. These include the New York Botanical Garden (the institute's co-founder Nathaniel Lord Britton became its first director), the Staten Island Zoo (originally the Staten Island Zoological Society, a Section of the Museum in 1933), the Staten Island Historical Society (running Historic Richmond Town), and the Staten Island Children's Museum. The museum also greatly impacted Staten Island's environment, contributing to the preservation of the Greenbelt and establishment of other environmental organizations.

Current mission

It is the mission of the Staten Island Museum to document, research, preserve, collect, interpret and exhibit significant objects and themes in the areas of natural science, art and local history, with the goal of educating, celebrating and enriching the community of Staten Island in particular, and the New York metropolitan region in general.

Art

The Museum’s art collection ranges from ancient Egyptian sculpture, to Renaissance paintings, to 19th century Hudson River School landscapes of Staten Island and New York Harbor, to 21st century abstract art, photography and new media. It is the only museum actively collecting works by contemporary Staten Island artists. Its collections include American landscape paintings, Old Master prints, historic costume pieces and costume accessories, African sculpture and masks, Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Japanese prints, Pre-Columbian ceramics, ancient and modern Native American artifacts, English and American silver, and both Western and Non-Western objects of vertu, for example collections of Chinese snuff bottles, carved smoking pipes, and pocket watches, the bequests of local benefactor-collectors. It has a group of Samuel H. Kress Italian Renaissance paintings, and several complementary small 19th century Renaissance-revival bronzes. There are important 19th-20th-century paintings featuring Staten Island and New York Harbor, fine 19th and 20th century portraits, and works by prominent local contemporary artists. Examples of traditional representational art in the Staten Island Museum’s permanent collection include prints by Rembrandt, Goya, Piranesi and Audubon, paintings by Cropsey, Moran, Alma-Tadema, Giovanni di Paolo and Pordenone, sculpture by Hiram Powers and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. There are Japanese prints by Hiroshige, Hokusai, Utamaro and Kunisada. The Modern Art collection includes works by John Sloane, Guy Pene du Bois, George Bellows, Chagall, Leger, Maillol, Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Isabel Bishop, Peter Max, Donald Judd and the folk artist Clementine Hunter. Over 150 women artists are represented in the Staten Island Museum’s holdings.

History

The museum has over half a million items in the local History Collection, including authentic land grants with the wax seals of King Charles II (1674) and King William III (1696) as well as a 1776 military document signed by William Howe, Commander in Chief of the British Armies.

Natural Science

The Museum houses a 130-year comprehensive record of the changing biodiversity of the New York metro area, fully documented with specimens, including specimens of birds and mammals, a collection of fish, amphibians and reptiles preserved in alcohol, 500,000 mounted insects, and 25,000 plants preserved in the herbarium.

Beauty Rediscovered: Paintings by Adeline Albright Wigand & Otto Charles

The Wigands studied with important artists of the 19th – early 20th century in New York and Paris, and brought the fruits of their classical training and education to Staten Island where they lived and worked from 1916 until their deaths in 1944. The exhibition contains nearly 50 works, including 4 from the Staten Island Museum’s permanent collection. The remaining pieces are made available courtesy of private collectors, many of which are Wigand family members.

Cicada Collection

A display of the largest cicada collection (approx. 35,000 specimens) in North America, which includes numerous type specimens of species originally described by William T. Davis.

The Wall of Insects

A display of over 150 beetles, cicadas, butterflies and moths from the permanent collection.

Hall of Natural Sciences

Highlights from the museum’s natural sciences collection, displayed in a manner reminiscent of a late 19th-century museum, including mounted birds and mammals, bird’s eggs and nests, rocks, minerals and fossils, seashells, plants, insects, a Victorian shadowbox, and a fluorescent mineral room.

Geology Collection

A display of a wide-ranging Staten Island geology collection, including type specimens of plant fossils first discovered on Staten Island.

The Lenape: The first Staten Islanders

The most comprehensive Lenape exhibit in the New York City metropolitan area, drawn from over 10,000 objects found on Staten Island and dating from 10,000 B.C. to the 17th century.

Staten Island Ferry Exhibition - the only Staten Island Ferry exhibition in the nation

The exhibit pays homage to the history of the Staten Island Ferry through photographs, artwork, ship models and artifacts from ferries' past, now including the over 50-year-old statuesque U.S. Navy Mark V Diving Suit who is affectionately referred to as the Diverman.

Operations at Snug Harbor

In addition to its original building located just two blocks from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, Staten Island’s "hometown" museum is operating its Art Conservation Studio and the Staten Island History Center & Archives at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, an 80-acre (320,000 m²) campus of landmark Greek Revival buildings, joining other cultural institutions at the site. The museum is transforming from the 19th century model of a museum as a "cabinet of curiosities", into a fully realized 21st century institution that is accessible, diverse, technologically advanced, and demonstrates leadership in collections management, exhibitions, education and public programming.

New museum

The new museum, on the Snug Harbor Campus, is the first federal historic landmark on Staten Island designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, including geo-thermal heating. The mainly city-funded ($23 million) renovation of Building A (Art) will be completed in 2013, adding over 25,000 square feet (2,300 m²), with additional space to follow in Building B (Bio-Diversity) three to four years later.

The new museum will open with the anticipated blockbuster 'The Island Scene/Seen', an interpretation of Staten Island across three centuries, including commissioned works by contemporary artists and featuring Hudson River School landscape paintings by Jasper Cropsey and Edward Moran from the museum's collection.

In addition, a life size replica of a mastodon skeleton will greet visitors as they enter the new museum, a creature that once roamed the hills of Staten Island as evidenced by local discoveries held in the museum's fossil collection on display in the new lobby.