Research & Collections

This set of child-sized furniture was a birthday gift to the donor, Mary Alice Cole, from her parents, in the 1960s. She recalled many families in Watervliet, NY, having play houses in the back yard, where “playing house” was a popular activity fo...

Staff from the Museum’s Cultural Resource Survey Program (CRSP) recently hosted staff and six student interns from the NYS Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) at the historic period DeGraff archaeological site in the Mohawk Valley of Central New...

Dr. Bernard Means, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of the Virtual Curation Lab, has returned to the NYSM to help digitize our collections. From fossils and skeletons to artwork, historic furniture, and even rare books, t...

This impressive stoneware water cooler is incised and impressed with decorations that depict the celebration of the Great National Jubilee of the Order of the Sons of Temperance, an organization founded in New York City in 1842. Temperance icon...

This screen-printed linen handkerchief was designed by Marion Weeber (1905-2000) in honor of King George VI’s coronation in England on March 8, 1937. It was manufactured by Burmel and sold at finer department stores. The handkerchief was framed an...

A gift to the NYSM last year, Charles Clough's monumental painting—an awe-inspiring 9 x 16 feet—has just been installed in New York Hall. To create it, Clough invited visitors to Art Omi, a contemporary art gallery and sculpture park in Ghent, New...

How old are the oldest archaeological sites in New York? Put another way, when did Native Americans first people the region that we now call New York? These questions are difficult to answer because there are no radiocarbon-dated sites of these ea...

In August 2021, the New York State Museum acquired 200 artifacts from the LAMAR Institute in Savannah, Georgia. These artifacts are the result of the only systematic archaeological study of three Revolutionary War battlefield sites on the north sh...

Zebra and quagga mussels can be aggressive invaders of waterbodies and, when they reach high densities, can be devastating to native mussel populations (among other impacts).  Many lakes and rivers that once supported abundant and diverse com...

Since 1996, Adam Weitsman has donated over 500 pieces of decorated stoneware to the New York State Museum.  While only a portion of these are on view in the galleries, this collection receives lots of attention from researchers and other muse...

Ball clay tobacco pipe fragments are one of the most common artifacts found on archaeological sites from the 17th through the 19th centuries. There are many reasons for this including the fact that most people smoked, tobacco pipes were relatively...

In March of 2015, archaeologists excavated 3 wells, 3 cisterns, and one possible privy at 420 Albee Square in Brooklyn, New York. The New York State Museum acquired the resulting collection in 2020. The artifacts recovered from the excavations ill...

Get the official buzz about the emergence of periodical cicadas this summer! In a recent interview with WAMC’s Lucas Willard, Dr. Timothy McCabe, New York’s State Entomologist, discusses the impending appearance of Brood X (10) cicadas after 17 ye...

The NYSM History Collection recently acquired a collection of paintings by Ken Rush (b.1948). Rush divides his time between Vermont and Brooklyn producing rural and urban subjects that move between the realistic and the abstract.  In thi...

The layers of rock and sediment on the Earth's surface represent both a time capsule and vessel of stored resources. Geologist at the New York State Museum recently completed deep drilling exploration investigations near Ithaca, New York, to inves...

The NYSM Historical Archaeology Collection recently acquired the Pierce House Collection containing a wide variety of mid-nineteenth century household artifacts from a farmstead located in the town of Lewis, Essex County, New York. Documenting&nbs...

Many of the Historical Archaeology Collections at the New York State Museum were recovered during compliance work prior to the construction of roads, buildings, and other structures. Larger compliance projects can result in the recovery of 100,000...

Since 2017, LinkNYC Wi-Fi stations have been used to display the work of local artists on digital billboards across New York City. Hudson Valley comic artist Emily Ree’s work was one of 40 submissions chosen for the “Visualize the Vote” campaign i...

In late Fall 2020, the Museum’s Cultural Resource Survey Program (CRSP) conducted a Phase 2 site examination of a historic period archaeological site in Central New York (see the NYSM Science Tuesday post from 11/24/2020).  Among the goals of...

Please join the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation for a Facebook Live 1-hour presentation entitled, “Clan Mothers, Spinners, Attorneys and Stateswomen: Mohican Women in New Stockbridge,” on Wednesday, February 10, 2021 at 3 pm Eastern Standard Tim...