COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — On Monday, March 13, the New York State Board of Regents approved a request by the New York State Historical Association to amend its charter and change its legal name to Fenimore Art Museum. The change was sought by the museum to reflect the full range of its activities and to build upon the success of its popular art exhibitions and programs. The change will take effect immediately.

“There are many reasons for this change. First and foremost, we have operated primarily as an art museum for many years and have been known as Fenimore Art Museum since 1996,” said Fenimore Art Museum President and CEO, Dr. Paul S. D’Ambrosio.  “Most people now know us as such, and this name accurately reflects our collections and the visitor experience we offer.”

Fenimore Art Museum has been committed to advancing the study and appreciation of American art for nearly 70 years. The extraordinary folk art collection acquired for the museum by Stephen C. Clark in the 1940s and 1950s and the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art given by Eugene and Clare Thaw in the 1990s are pioneering collections of national scope that have significantly broadened the field of American art history.

The legal entity name change will not affect any aspect of the museum’s season schedule or the functions of the Research Library. In addition, the change will not have any bearing on The Farmers’ Museum, which has a separate charter and governing board.

“The museum is gearing up for what I hope to be another record-breaking season with exhibitions featuring the work of Andrew Wyeth and the art collection of legendary figure skater Dick Button,” D’Ambrosio added. “We will continue to delight and astonish our visitors with the quality and range of the exhibitions and programs we present each season.”

About Fenimore Art Museum

Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprising more than 850 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions.