This spring, our museums are mounting new exhibits that will seriously compete with your urge to get outside. But don't worry, it's time well-spent.   

Ice Ages at the New York State Museum

Glacial retreat created the landscape we see today. To help us learn more about our distant, but ever-present past, the New York State Museum opened a new long-term exhibition about the Ice Ages in New York State. 

Over the last two million years, New York has experienced several Ice Ages interspersed with warm periods. Gigantic glaciers covered the state, and then retreated. Each wiped the landscape nearly clean, creating lakes, widening valleys, and rounding mountaintops. Many large Ice Age mammals-including mastodons, woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths, and musk oxen-are now extinct or gone from New York. 

This exhibition examines the landscape and animals of the Ice Ages in New York and features fossils of Ice Age mammals including mammoths, caribou, moose, and whales. The exhibit will run January 2017 through 2019. 

Brilliant Butterflies

Butterflies are back at miSci! Escape winter's chill and discover brilliantly colored native butterflies at miSci's indoor butterfly house. Watch Butterflies at every stage of life - from egg to the Chrysalis chamber to adulthood. Learn about different species of butterflies from the area, what butterflies eat, and how scientists use butterflies as examples for new technology. The exhibit will run February 18-April 23, 2017. 

Captured Moments

Elephants marching down the street. A happy motorcyclists posing with his brand new bike. A batter stepping up to the plate, waiting for the pitch. A mother and child strolling under the elms in Washington Park. These are just a few of the fleeting moments captured by the click of a camera, moments preserved for posterity on the delicate surface of a photograph. These images and more than one hundred others will highlight the Albany Institute's extensive photography collections in the exhibition Captured Moments: 170 Years of Photography from the Albany Institute.

There are thousands of photographs in the Albany Institute's collections and they portray a remarkable history of Albany and the surrounding region. All photographic processes and forms are represented: daguerreotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, cyanotypes, digital inkjet prints, photo albums, and more. In addition, there are complimentary items, including stunning paintings by Albany's Walter Launt Palmer (1854-1932), who utilized photographs as part of his photographic process. The exhibition is arranged into themes that explore topics such as significant architecture, regional disasters, portraits, landscapes, travel, and artistic technique. The exhibit will run February 1-May 1, 2017. 

39th Annual Photo Regional

The Albany Center Gallery (ACG) will host the 39th Annual Photography Regional, a photography show that rotates between venues. The exhibit will offer contemporary photographers a chance to have their work exhibited. The show will be juried by two local photography stalwarts, and the work will be on view in the gallery's beautiful new space in the Arcade Building.

ACG is located at 488 Broadway in downtown Albany and has been a co-sponsor of the annual juried exhibition since its inception in 1979. The exhibit, formed in response to the lack of a single survey exhibit strictly focused on photography, has become a staple of the local exhibition season, highlighting new and established talents based within 150 miles of Albany. The exhibit will run March 17-April 21, 2017.