Daphne Mayer Membership and Volunteer Coordinator, The Olana Partnership Do you want to help Olana?  If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you do.  We need caring and enthusiastic individuals like you to become Olana volunteers.  Fifty years ago, the fight to save Olana was led by volunteers both ...Read More

Mark Prezorski Landscape Curator, The Olana Partnership Jane Smith Exhibition Co-curator, Spacesmith LLP The summer house was a feature in early American design, and examples appeared in both private and public gardens, such as New York’s Central Park. One appears in the 1886 historic “Plan of Olana” and is ...Read More

Valerie A. Balint, Interim Director of Collections and Research “I think it would amuse you . . . to see the medley in the box-for there are rugs-armour-stuffs-curiosities . . . Arab spears-beads from Jerusalem-stones from Petra and 10,000 other things.” Frederic Church to William Henry Osborn, February 4, ...Read More

Amy Hufnagel, Director of Education The contemporary British painter David Hockney says, “people tend to forget that play is serious.” To this notion I add journalist Sydney Harris’s writing “the purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” Then I feel compelled to layer a contraction of the two: ...Read More

Kimberly Flook, Olana Historic Site ManagerI never really grasped the scope of 80,000+ objects until I stood in a room during self-guided touring at Olana. I had worked at Olana for over three years, giving tours and moving through these spaces almost daily, yet, as I stood there, my eye ...Read More

An excerpt from the essay written by Andrea Wulf, author of “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World,” for the “Capturing the Cosmos” exhibition brochure Humboldt insisted that traveling provided the knowledge that was needed to understand the natural world. He urged scientists to leave their desks and ...Read More

“Because I have always enjoyed the juxtaposition of architecture and landscape, I see Olana’s carriage roads as architecture. They function the way the windows in Olana’s house do by arranging your position and relationship to the landscape. What is revealed from each window or turn in the road — ...Read More

Elizabeth Schanz, Education Coordinator with Valerie Balint, Associate Curator “We have delicious things all out of our own gardens . . . and wonderful floating islands and such with Mexican dulces with odd names, forms of guava and nougat.” Guest and author Susan Hale writing from Olana, 1884 We ...Read More

By Paul Banks, Interpretive Program Assistant Photo by Amy Hufnagel Did you take a tour of the house at Olana last year? If so, you’re in good company. Last year nearly 28,000 people toured the house. That’s rather impressive when you consider that’s roughly equal to all the ...Read More

By Sean Sawyer, Washburn and Susan Oberwager President Members of The Olana Partnership Board and National Advisory Committee gather for lunch on Olana’s Ridge Road in May 2015. It’s great to have good friends, especially when they are brilliant, worldly, and well-placed AND willing to share their experience ...Read More