The Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake (ADKX), has received $2 million in funding from New York State in support of a new $3 million permanent exhibition, “The African American Experience in the Adirondacks.”
The new funding will be in addition to $750,000 ADKX has already raised. Opening on July 4, 2027, the exhibition will help celebrate the abolition of slavery in New York State.
Planning for the exhibition is already underway. Charles Clark III is serving as Project Curator and will be leading a public collecting initiative to identify documents, photographs, and artifacts in private hands that can help tell the story of the Adirondacks’ Black communities.
A scholarly advisory committee of experts in African American history has been assembled and includes: Amy Godine (Independent Historian), Dr. Clarence Jefferson Hall (Queensborough Community College), Dr. Melissane Shrems (St. Lawrence University), Dr. Gretchen Sorin (SUNY Oneonta), and Dr. Connor Williams (Great Camp Sagamore).
Together, they are expected to shape the content of the 2,200-square-foot exhibition that will be the most comprehensive exploration of the stories of African Americans in the region that any museum in the North Country has ever undertaken.
The exhibition will explore the lives of prominent African Americans who have called the North Country their home as well as everyday people: the miners, loggers, hospitality workers, and others who helped build the local economy.
As is the case with all of ADKX’s exhibition, “The African American Experience in the Adirondacks” will include interactive features to engage 21st century audiences. Related school programming for regional schools will also be developed to complement the new exhibition.
The opening of this exhibition represents another major step forward in ADKX’s on-going initiative to reexamine and expand the narratives that have shaped common understandings of the Adirondacks and to shed new light on the experiences of diverse communities in the region.
This initiative began in earnest with the opening of a major permanent exhibition on the Mohawk and Abenaki communities, “A Peopled Wilderness,” in 2017.
“The African American Experience in the Adirondacks” is one of a number of major permanent exhibitions ADKX is planning to introduce in the future. Other projects will focus on Adirondack forests as well as the hotel and resort industry.
Adirondack Experience (formally the Adirondack Museum) shares the history and culture of the Adirondack region through interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and collections in more than 24 historic and contemporary buildings on a 121-acre campus in the heart of the Adirondacks. For additional information, call (518) 352-7311 or visit www.theADKX.org.
Photo: A Black pioneer in the Adirondacks.
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