arkell museum

I visited the Arkell for the first time this weekend. It is a nice small museum with some nice pieces and a good history of the Beechnut plant. We spend about 1 1/2 hours there and enjoyed it.

This is a small museum in a town that defines the rust belt. That said, this is a hidden gem from when times were better in Canajoharie. Absolutely excellent museum with some works that you wouldn't expect to find in a town in the middle of nowhere. Make it a stop.

this museum and library are just a wonderful afternoon. We live locally and we always take our friends who visit here. The paintings rival the Met in NYC, given to the museum from past collectors. When we moved here, it was hard to believe that this gym was situated in a little town called Canajoharie. But we are very happy it is. Worth a visit.

My husband and I stopped to visit after driving past this little museum many times on the New York State ThruwAy at Exit 29. It includes an interesting history of the Beech-Nut Company and it's founders' commitment to bring culture and the arts to its employees. Also how the pastorale locale was used to market their goods. A far cry from todAy's treatment of workers! The collection includes a dozen works by Winslow Homer as well as Wyeths and Inness and Remington. Worth a short stop on a drive across the state.

It is in our back yard, so to speak, but we never have been. What a pleasant surprise. $6.00 senior admission. Fantastic collection and facility. Permanent collection includes works by : Winslow Homer, George Inness, Edward Sargent & many more.Will be closed during Winter : January & February.

YFor the past four years, about once a month I've driven by the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, NY always promising myself that one day I would stop and see what's there. The museum occupies the same site as the town library as an addition with a beautiful garden. I was wowed. How did this little town that, like most of the towns along the Erie Canal, has seen better days, end up with such a wonderful permanent collection and attract exhibits from other, much better endowed museums? I walked into a dark exhibit and the sensors tripped the lights. I was alone with Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt! Sargent, Grandma Moses, Homer, actually many Homers!The original founder of the Beechnut Company, Bartlett Arkell had some pretty modern ideas! He gave his factory workers piped in classical music, and filled spaces with art, many of the pieces specially commissioned copies of European Masters. ( He was convinced to stop that practice by an art dealer and began buying original work.). If you have any reason to drive the New York Thruway between Albany and Rome, NY, this beautiful museum is well worth the stop. Maybe on your way to Cooperstown to see two other good museums - the Fennimore and the Baseball Hall of Fame.I stood inches from one of Remington's gorgeous bronzes and actually returned to the permanent collection of upstate New York pastoral, farm and Mohawk River Valley paintings to just drink in the beautiful work and I was the only person in the room! The collection of marketing art work and products that Beechnut manufactured is also interesting and fun to see. Wish I'd stopped there earlier. It's a good break on the drive between Boston and Syracuse - especially when the weather is bad and you want a rest and a coffee or lunch! Thanks to the Arkell family for such a wonderful contribution.

We enjoyed the beautifully curated Winslow Homer exhibition at the Arkell Museum, with early lithographs and some oil paintings as well as great watercolors. Lovely!

This museum was recommended by a friend in Florida when he learned of our trip to this part of the country. We were not disappointed. We have been to bigger museums with many more pieces but the art work in the Arkell is marvelous and the story behind the museum is well worth learning about. We spent a delightful couple of hours here and left feeling good about it. George Inness and Winslow Homer are featured artists with a number of pieces of both. It is not the Metropolitan Museum of Art but it is a true treasure. If you find yourself on I-90 about halfway between Boston and Rochester do yourself a favor and stop in Canajoharie, NY and relax a bit. You will be glad you did.

This is the second time that I have visited the Arkell Museum. The first time I was surprised that it was part of the town's library, and that it had such a variety of amazing paintings. It was nice to learn how Mr. Arkell wanted to make the lives of his employees better by providing music, art, a good school, etc. I really enjoyed that visit, and hoped to return. I came back on October 4, 2014, for a special all day program on Winslow Homer, to go with the exhibit that had just returned from the Fenimore Museum, (another great museum.) Several experts from the art community spoke about Homer and his work. I learned so many interesting things, and enjoyed the day so much. It was very well organized and presented.

I'll just join in the praise on TripAdvisor for this nice little surprise. I know from reading about the Iroquois and colonial days, that Canajoharie has a long, interesting history, but driving by on the Thruway, the town looks pretty beat-up, and mostly seemed memorable for a hulking, rusty, defunct baby food factory. But the Arkell Museum is charming. It is small but extremely worthwhile and literally minutes off the Thruway. The family that donated this museum created Beech-Nut food, and seems to have been a genuinely altruistic lot, installing a pianist, plants, etc. in the factory to entertain the workers. We actually enjoyed the permanent exhibit about the company and its town, and their wonderful advertising campaigns. The Winslow Homer collection, which is what got our attention, is often in storage, but apparently will be on display this fall. In any case, we were delighted with the small, but lovely gallery of American artists, especially Childe Hassam. Wonderful scenes of the Mohawk Valley. And they have some N.C.Wyeths, a Mary Cassatt, and at least one Eakins (if I remember all this correctly) . And paintings by George Inness (spelling?), whose stuff always looked pretty bland in the books, are really lovely when you see the real things.They have a huge, and what looks, to a very non-expert eye, like a really good reproduction of Rembrandt's "Night Watch," and a funky old scene from Gulliver's Travels that was just fun. A couple of minutes worth of local history exhibits, and you're done. This may be the most satisfying experience we've had in an art museum this size.

Years ago I often stopped in this former Beech-Nut town to marvel at the insane art collection housed in its public library. The artwork was collected by the owner of the Beech-Nut Company, who used some of it in the company's promotional materials.This is no everyday collection, however. Represented are many leading artists, most notably Winslow Homer. The Arkell's Homer canvases, which are currently on display at the Fenimore in Cooperstown, offer an amazing survey of the artist's lifetime work.The Arkell's structure is interesting on its own. Parts of the original library structure which housed the collection have been preserved and incorporated into the museum design, and there are pleasant outdoor spaces for relaxing and resting the eyes.It's too easy to breeze past this little gem while on the Thruway. The curious art lover is rewarded, however, with delights and surprises in a nicely scaled and accessible facility. The Arkell is just big enough to be a "just right" museum experience.

Arkell Museum has rotating art exhibits throughout the year. In addition it houses a large collection of art treasures, such as several of Winslow Homer's paintings. It offers an excellent portrayal of the Mohawk Valley on the floor of the gathering room, surrounded by artifacts from this area. In addition the history of the Beech Nut Company and the Arkell family are offered in a permanent exhibit. For the local people, the museum provides many programs of interest to all ages. We consider it one of the greatest assets of our home town.

Traveling eastbound on the Thruway over the years, we have seen this sign at Canajoharie saying Arkell. We said, we ought to visit one day. Well today was the day! We had a nice scenic Sunday drive from Saratoga to Canajoharie NOT on the Thruway and back. The Arkell is small but very well laid out. The exhibits we saw focused on the Mohawk Valley in art from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Some of the art work is on loan and some is from the collections of the Arkell family. The Arkell family founded Beech Nut and used their positions and wealth to collect art to share with the Canajoharie community. It would probably be better to visit in the summer so that you can visit many of the other sites of interest in the Mohawk Valley. But, even on a winter Sunday, it was a great trip and a wonderful experience.

Literally for decades I drove by Canajoharie on the NYS Thruway on the way to business meetings a couple of times a month, and repeatedly wondered what that building with the Arkell sign was, across the street from the very ugly old Beech Nut factory. Well, I finally found out and paid it a visit. I wasn't disappointed.This museum contains some very fine art collected by a president of Beech Nut, who believed in sharing cultural treasures with his employees and community. The museum has an exhibit area which explains this and provides a little bit of Beech Nut history, very tastefully and without making it seem like a big commercial advertisement. My only gripe was that part of the display area was along a row of windows, and the displays themselves were not well designed for this type of lighting. The glare from the windows made the interesting information hard to read. This could be remedied with some shades or blinds, or by use of nonreflective display glass. The fine artwork is all in interior, windowless rooms, and does not suffer from this display flaw.There are both permanent exhibit areas with excellent works by famous artists, and temporary display areas for traveling exhibits. We went through them all at a very leisurely pace, and spent a few minutes relaxing in the garden along the way. Even so, we were done in well less than two hours. So think of this as a very nice, but small art museum that will not occupy a full day but might make for a great part of a day that includes other activities. (In our case, we drove from here to Herkimer for the Erie Canal Cruise, and that made for a great combination.)Note that like many art museums, most young children will not especially enjoy this unless they have an unusual interest in art.

A very pleasant surprise in the Catskills. A wonderful collection of American painters assembled originally by Bartlett Arkell, founder of Beechnut products. Here you will find Hudson River School painters, Winslow Homer, (The 3rd largest collection of his works in the country.), as well as Edward Hopper and even Grandma Moses. This art museum is part of the Canajoharie Library. There is a small admission fee but definitely worth it. It won't take long to visit the museum which would make it a nice stop for families with children who have an interest in art.