Museum gets big early 20th century Woodstock art collection

ALBANY, N.Y. – The New York State Museum is getting a large collection of artwork from the Woodstock Art Colony of the early 20th century.

Officials at the downtown Albany museum announced Tuesday that 1,500 paintings, sculptures and archival material were donated by collector Arthur Anderson, who lives in the Woodstock area.

A year-round artists’ colony known as Brydcliffe was established in 1902 in Woodstock, a small Catskill Mountains town 90 miles (145 kilometres) north of New York City. Artists and artisans flocked to the village, soon to be followed by the summer school of the Art Students League of New York.

Woodstock has been a centre for the arts ever since.

The collection donated by Anderson includes the works of more than 170 Woodstock artists from the early 20th century, including Robert Henri and George Bellows.