Founded in 1791, the Albany Institute of History & Art is one of the oldest museums in the United States. It also is the major repository for the region’s heritage, with nationally significant collections.
The Albany Institute of History & Art museum and library holdings form the best collections in the United States documenting the life and culture of the Upper Hudson Valley region from the late seventeenth century to the present day. Although the Institute is famous for its significant Hudson River school paintings, the broad scope of its collections includes fine arts, furnishings, personal objects, documents, manuscripts, photographs, and personal papers used by people of all ages, social classes, economic conditions, and cultural groups.
Long-term exhibitions include: “Ancient Egypt,” “Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture: Erastus Dow Palmer, Launt Thompson, Charles Calverley,” “Sense of Place: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Sculpture,” and “Traders and Culture: Colonial Albany and the Formation of American Identity.”