Fenimore Art Museum

The Fenimore Art Museum sits on the north shore of Otsego Lake in a handsome 1930s Colonial Revival building, overlooking the water and surrounded by formal gardens. Its collection spans American folk art, Hudson River School paintings, and one of the most significant collections of American Indian art in the northeastern United States — the result of decades of acquisition by the New York State Historical Association.

The American Indian wing is the strongest part of the collection, with Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) beadwork, Ojibwe bags, Pacific Northwest masks, and Great Plains regalia representing a wide range of Indigenous traditions. The folk art collection includes portraits, weather vanes, trade signs, and furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Hudson River School paintings are fewer in number but of good quality. The museum is pleasantly uncrowded compared to the Baseball Hall of Fame and well worth the 10-minute drive north from the village.

things to do museum
A story
The museum sits on the site of Fenimore Farm, where James Fenimore Cooper wrote several of his Leatherstocking novels. The farm burned down in 1853; a second house built on the site was later acquired by the New York State Historical Association and became the museum in 1945. The view across Otsego Lake from the museum terrace is the same view Cooper described as "Glimmerglass" in The Deerslayer — the most beautiful lake in the Catskills, he thought.