Water’s Great Role in New York to Go on Display

New York state is home to more than 7,600 bodies of fresh water. It also borders two of the Great Lakes, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

In a nod to the role that water has played in the state, six museums around New York will host “Water/Ways,” a traveling Smithsonian exhibition that explores water’s effects on migration and settlement, and the relationship between water and politics, economics and culture.

“As we celebrate the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, the ‘Water/Ways’ exhibition will enable host sites to tell the story of how their communities helped New York become the Empire State,” Erika Sanger, the executive director of the Museum Association of New York, said in a statement about the show, adding that water also connects New York “to other states, and our oceanfront communities connect us to our nation and peoples around the globe.”

The exhibition will tour the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse; the Aurora Masonic Center in Aurora; the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village; the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls; the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston; and the East Hampton Historical Society, from June 2019 to April 2020, as part of the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street. The six institutions will also organize related exhibitions and host public events and educational programs.

Museum on Main Street is designed to share the resources of the Smithsonian with small towns through partnerships with state humanities councils and museum associations.

Since its founding in 1994, the program has visited over 1,400 communities with a median population of less than 10,000.