Poughkeepsie Post Office Murals Tour and Barrett Art Center Tour for Barrett Art Center Members

Description

The tour begins at Barrett Art Center with a closer look at “Perspective and Place: Thomas W. Barrett, Jr.’s Hudson River Valley,” an exhibition curated by Martin W. Mahoney, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Norman Rockwell Museum.  We will view sketches and other archival works selected specifically for this special tour with Executive Director Joanna Frang. 

Patricia Phagan, curator of the Celebrating Heroes exhibition at the Francis Lehman Loeb Museum and a specialist in early twentieth century American art, will then lead a tour of the Poughkeepsie Post Office murals for this small group of Art Center members. The five murals were completed in 1938 and 1940 as part of a nationwide federal project to decorate new post offices. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived in nearby Hyde Park, had become keenly interested in murals for the new post office in Poughkeepsie. He proposed the themes one sees in the paintings, along with the aid of local historian Helen Reynolds. 

The tours are free but space is limited and reservations are required. For reservations, details, or information on how to become a Barrett Art Center member, contact Joanna Frang at 845-471-2550 or director@barrettartcenter.org.