Speaking of art that doesn't connect to the people (and check out my friend Johannah's comment on that post), here's some that does (and the first ever graphic on PlanetAlbany): A "View of the Berks. County Almshouse 1881" by John Rasmussen, from the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown. Rasmussen was a resident of the Pennsylvania facility, and died there. While this is obviously an idealized portrait, it and others from 100-plus years ago in the museum's American Folk Art gallery -- a black girl "Kept In" at school, skilled architectural drawings of Schoharie County by Fritz Vogt, a homeless immigrant who also died in an almshouse -- seem to come from a more hopeful America, like the fine work by obscure painters done in the same period in many churches (e.g. St. Joseph's in Albany, the subject of my prior post).
We stopped by the museum last week during a few days vacation at Otsego Lake (not far from Albany) -- hence the blog hiatus. We also got to Oneonta, where in a city park near I-88 I found a displayed train caboose where eight brakemen founded a railroad union in the early 1880s. "Benevolence -- sobriety -- industry" proclaim the headings of the plaques commemorating that event. Old-fashioned, but not so far from the philosophy of the drug treatment trade I now am learning. It was a drinking problem that apparently landed Rasmussen in the almshouse.
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