COOPERSTOWN, NY - The New York State Historical Association's Fenimore Art Museum was recently awarded a prestigious grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal agency. The grant supports the Fenimore Art Museum's new outdoor exhibition and interpretive area, Otsego: A Meeting Place.

"This grant is a major vote of confidence in the Fenimore Art Museum," says President and CEO Dr. Paul S. D'Ambrosio. "It says that our museum is a national leader in developing and offering quality educational programming. Visitors are now able to better understand the living culture of the Iroquois; the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people exist in the contemporary world, not just in history books or in art on museum walls."

Otsego: A Meeting Place seeks to explain how geography, landscape, and cultural exchange with European settlers affected the Haudenosaunee people from the late 18th to the early 19th century. Utilizing a 1780s reproduction Mohawk bark house, an actual 19th-century Seneca Log House, their contents, and surrounding gardens, museum interpreters demonstrate the changing world of the Haudenosaunee as a result of economic and cultural exchange, while the preservation of traditions and culture that were crucial to the identity of Haudenosaunee. The preservation of this culture endures to this day.

With the funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Fenimore Art Museum will be developing additional programming. Additional site interpretative signs and a cell phone tour will focus on the history of the individual structures, Iroquois agriculture, medicinal uses of herbs and other topics. Additionally, the Fenimore Art Museum will invite Haudenosaunee artists to the museum as part of a resident Cultural Interpreter program with the Iroquois Indian Museum. These artists will demonstrate storytelling, herbalist practices, basket weaving, beading, embroidery, stone carving, pottery, and painting.

Finally, the Fenimore Art Museum will be creating distance learning programs for K-12 teachers and students. Ranging from web-ready short videos of best teaching practices and classroom content to virtual visits to the museum, these distance learning opportunities will allow the Fenimore Art Museum to expand the reach of its quality educational programming.