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THE HYDE COLLECTION
Historic House and Art Museum Complex

161 Warren Street, Glens Falls, NY, USA

The Hyde Collection website

Mission
Charlotte Pruyn Hyde, art collector and patron, established a trust in 1952 that dedicated her home and her extensive art collection to community service. The Trust Agreement also set forth the future mission of the Museum. Charlotte Hyde’s vision, as stated in the Trust, was for the trustees "to establish and maintain a museum for the exhibition of art objects…and to promote and cultivate the study and improvement of the fine arts, for the education and benefit of the residents of Glens Falls and vicinity and the general public." The board of trustees and The Hyde Collection’s professional staff embraced the challenge put forth by Charlotte Pruyn Hyde in 1952 and, in fact, have been successful in transforming Charlotte Hyde’s vision into a reality—making The Hyde Collection one of the most exciting and celebrated art museums in the region.

Essentially, The Hyde Collection is a product of the golden age of the private art collector (c. 1890 to 1940) and exemplifies a rare genre of American museums. These museums are the legacy of serious art collectors who acquired significant objects of art, progressively amassed distinct collections of worldwide importance, and then left them to the public to be experienced within a unique ambiance created for their display.

Museum Focus
In 1952 Charlotte Pruyn Hyde established a trust dedicating her home, its furnishings and art collection to the community’s service. She was a serious and passionate collector who acquired objects of artistic significance, progressively amassed a distinct collection of worldwide importance, and with great foresight, bequeathed it to countless future generations.

Mrs. Hyde (1867-1963) was born in Glens Falls, NY into one of the leading industrialist families of the Adirondack region. Her father, Samuel Pruyn, co-founded Finch, Pruyn & Company, Inc. – a paper manufacturing business – in 1865. Pruyn soon became the sole owner, and thus established the foundation of the family’s wealth.

Samuel’s oldest daughter Charlotte met the young Harvard law student Louis Hyde (1866-1934) while attending finishing school in Boston. They married in 1901 and in 1906 Charlotte’s father encouraged his son-in-law to leave his practice in Massachusetts and join the family business. Consequently, the couple returned to Charlotte’s hometown and Louis became vice president of the paper mill.

Between 1904 and 1912 Charlotte and her sisters, Nell Cunningham and Mary Hoopes, built homes on adjoining property overlooking the Hudson River. Boston architect Henry Forbes Bigelow was commissioned to design all three residences. Each embraced the American Renaissance propensity to adapt European architectural traditions to American taste. Hyde House, however, completed in 1912 in the style of a Florentine Renaissance palazzo, stands as the most impressive and significant example of this practice.

With Hyde House complete, the couple began to acquire the furnishings and art works that best suited the scale and environment of their new home. Throughout the decades that followed, they thoughtfully continued to acquire pieces during summer sojourns to Europe, and more often, from their favorite New York City dealers

By 1930, their collection was widely recognized and had garnered its hallmark – a combination of quality, intimacy and elegance without excess. When Mr. Hyde died in 1934, approximately one-third of the core collection had been assembled. During the next thirty years, Mrs. Hyde continued to expand its scope, ultimately including representative objects from the span of western art history. Hence, interspersed among outstanding examples of Italian Renaissance and eighteenth century French antiques, are works by such noted Old Masters as Botticelli, El Greco, van Dyck, Ingres, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Tintoretto; as well as paintings by modern masters Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, and van Gogh. In addition, work by important American artists including Eakins, Hassam, Homer, Ryder, and Whistler is also present.

Mrs. Hyde died on August 28, 1963. Three months later, The Hyde Collection opened to the general public. In 1984 Hyde House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1989, an expansion designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes connected Hyde House and the recently acquired Cunningham House. Overnight, this addition of four galleries, an auditorium, art storage, classrooms and a museum shop, consciously broadened the Museum’s scope of purpose.

Today this expansion supports an ambitious schedule of special exhibitions that embraces a diversity of styles, periods, and media. From monographic shows of artists like Winslow Homer and Auguste Rodin, to more broadly defined projects, each is intended to serve as an important foil or complement to the semi-permanent installation within Hyde House.

In May 2004 The Hyde celebrated another milestone with the successful conclusion of its Preserving the Legacy campaign. During 18 months of expansion, restoration and renovation the Museum employed the finest combination of tradition and innovation and set the course for future service. First, a 7000 square feet addition of capacity building space was realized. Then the complete restoration of historic Hyde House unfolded. Its stucco exterior was completely replaced and restored; while inside, the implementation of a historic furnishing plan effectively captured a once fading past and returned a heightened degree of integrity to the visitor’s experience.

The Hyde Collection is a wonderful hybrid – at once encompassing the authenticity and charm of a historic house museum as well as the cutting edge found in a modern museum complex. This invaluable combination has enabled the Museum to take the lead as an essential and exceptional participant in the artistic and educational life of its community and New York’s Capital Region.