News

  Read the November 2019 newsletter and learn about upcoming programs at the Museum, including our New York State History Month programs: https://conta.cc/2Ns2RAA

This fall State Museum scientists will join staff from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and Cornell University to conduct fieldwork into the Ice Age landscape of the Ithaca, NY area. The scientists will...

The museum's curator of historical archaeology, Michael Lucas, and project manager of The Archaeology of Slavery in the Hudson Valley, is featured in the Winter 2018-19 issue of American Archaeology in an article entitled, The End of Slavery in Ne...

Historical archaeology is a multidisciplinary field combining written historical records with archaeological data to study places, objects and issues of the past. In North America, historical archaeology begins with European colonization. One of t...

 “Community and Continuity: Native American Art of New York,” an exhibition at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, featuring selections from the New York State Museum’s collections of contemporary Native American Art and archeo...

In September, NYSM archaeologists completed the 2018 excavations at the OPS Paleoindian site in Madison County, New York. The OPS site has yielded fluted points of the Crowfield "style," indicating an early Native American encampment dating to the...

From the 1930s through the early 1960s, avid avocational archaeologist Dr. James Vieth collected and conducted test excavations on Native American archaeological sites, most often in Rockland County, southeastern New York. His son, James Vieth Jr....

In FY 2016-2017, NYSM acquired eight stunning new artworks by artists previously not represented in the Contemporary Native American Art Collection (part of the Ethnology Collections). The selections, from artists with nascent and well-established...

“Ageswe’gaiyo” (oil on panel), one of the 2016 purchases for the NYSM Contemporary Native American Art Collection arrived today at the museum, which is also International Women's Day 2017 (March 8). This exquisite painting features the artist, Lua...

Dr. John Hart, Director of Research and Collections at the New York State Museum, has received the Society for American Archaeology’s 2017 Award for Excellence in Curation, Collections Management, and Collections-based Research and Education. T...

The Museum's mineralogy collection constitutes the world's largest and most complete array of New York State minerals. However, the collection also contains thousands of non-New York specimens, including minerals from Europe, Africa, Asia, an...

The Museum recently acquired a collection of 19th and 20th century Mahican and Mohawk baskets. The baskets range in size and decoration, from miniature baskets to large gathering baskets, fancy baskets with curlicues, and baskets with stamped and ...

The State Museum recently acquired a fully-restored 1947 Tavern Television made by the United States Television Manufacturing Corporation (USTMC). Made in New York City, this unit is believed to be one of only five known sets left in the United St...

Archaeologists with the New York State Museum are working at Schuyler Flatts in Albany County to learn more about life along the Hudson River hundreds of years ago and how Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans left their marks in the form of a...

New York State Museum Archaeology staff recently received the University at Albany’s President’s Award for Exemplary Public Engagement in recognition of the joint Museum-University archaeological field school at the Pethick Site in Schohaire Count...

In 2014, the State Museum acquired Dr. Howard Reisman's (emeritus professor at Long Island University) personal collection of fish specimens. The collection has over 2,500 individual specimens, including a substantial number of samples...

A liquor chest used by soldiers in the American Revolution and the War of 1812 was recently donated to the New York State Museum. The chest was donated by the descendants of Captain Abraham Swartwout (an officer on General George Washington...

Alyssa FitzGerald is a Ph.D student at SUNY Albany and works at the Museum to conduct research for her doctoral program. Alyssa's research is focused on studying three closely-related species of thrushes. She wants to know why and how these b...

A 20-foot long Cuvier's Beaked Whale skeleton was acquired by the State Museum in 2014. Worldwide, there are less than 250 Cuvier's Beaked Whale specimens in collections. These whales, also known as goose-beaked whales, are known to be one of the ...