Help expand access for visitors to Olana’s renowned collections and historic landscape. Through your support, we can accomplish critical projects that will make Olana more accessible and inclusive to diverse audiences. Projects include:
Obtaining another electric vehicle to increase our carriage tour capacity. These vehicles are key to allow all visitors to experience Frederic Church’s 250-acre designed landscape.
Funding transportation and teaching costs for underserved schools so children and families of all levels can be inspired by Olana to care for art, history, and the environment for years to come.
Installing lights to Olana’s historic interiors to increase visual access to the one-of-a-kind artworks on display.
Reproducing replicas of the original carpeting in Olana’s Main House to allow visitors more space and access to the collections.
Restoring the two-tiered lawn terrace after two years of unprecedented and record-breaking visitation.
More about this year’s honorees
Meredith J. Kane, Leader
One of the country’s leading real estate lawyers, Meredith Kane has served as a trustee of The Olana Partnership since 2012 and as chair for an extraordinary five years, since 2017. She has guided the dramatic expansion of our public-private partnership with NYS Parks, championed the implementation of Olana’s Strategic Landscape Design Plan, and steered us through the COVID pandemic. In her four-decade-long legal career at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, Meredith has been instrumental in the major commercial and cultural development projects of our generation, including Hudson Yards and Atlantic Yards and the restoration of Grand Central Terminal, the Park Avenue Amory, New York Public Library, and transformed nine historic theaters as part of the 42nd Street Development Project. She also has a distinguished record of public and non-profit service, serving as a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner from 1995 to 2004 and on the World Trade Center Memorial Advisory Committee.
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Curator
The Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser is one of the country’s leading specialists and curators of American art. At the Met since 2010 and at the Wadsworth Athenaeum for nearly three decades, she has organized major exhibitions on Thomas Hart Benton, George Caleb Bingham, Ralph Earl, Marsden Hartley, John Singer Sargeant, and the ground-breaking 2018 exhibition Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings. She has led the field in bringing American art into an international perspective, including organizing touring exhibitions of American 19th Century Landscape Paintings to Australia and Germany, and in embracing the art and culture of indigenous peoples.
Jean Shin, Artist
Artist Jean Shin transforms everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community engagement that reflect the personal as well as collective issues we face as a society. In “FALLEN,” her major site-specific installation at Olana this season, she memorializes an individual hemlock tree planted by Frederic Church but also confronts us with the large-scale environmental impact of human demand for leather, speaking to the cultural history of our region. Jean’s work has been exhibited nationally, from MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Art and Design to Boston’s MFA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum. She has completed numerous public art commissions, including Elevated in the 63rd Street station of the Second Avenue Subway.
