The Newington-Cropsey Foundation (NCF) is a nonprofit private organization based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The foundation's aim is to maintain and preserve the works of Jasper Cropsey and the art movement he was a part of, the Hudson River School. The foundation also promotes representational painting and sculpture.
The organization was founded in 1977 by Barbara and John Newington to collect and promote works of Barbara's great-grandfather Jasper Cropsey, as well as other non-abstract art.
The NCF offers free tours of its properties: Ever Rest, the last home and studio of Jasper Cropsey, and the Gallery of Art Building, a museum dedicated to the works of Cropsey. The properties are adjacent to each other in the village of Hastings-on-Hudson.
Organization
The foundation's stated aim is to preserve the moral, artistic and religious values of Jasper Cropsey and the Hudson River School, as well as to "recapture a little sense of stability, security and beauty that was so much a part of the 19th century". The foundation also promotes representational painting and sculpture. The foundation does not seek publicity, intending to stay less noticed by the general public. Other than including listings in local guidebooks, the NCF has no marketing.
The nonprofit organization is privately owned. The current chairman is Barbara Newington, the executive director is Adelia C. Rasines, and the foundation's director is Anthony Speiser; all three also act as trustees. The organization provides grants to representational artists and classes to sculptors of classical works; it also publishes American Arts Quarterly, a journal for non-abstract art.
The NCF maintains a large collection of Cropsey's paintings: about 100 oil and 30 watercolor paintings. It is seen as the leading authority on Cropsey paintings.
History
Establishment
After Jasper Cropsey's death in 1900, his wife Maria Cropsey still lived in Ever Rest, until her death in 1906. Jasper Cropsey's granddaughter Isabel subsequently inherited the property and began buying back some of Cropsey's paintings. Isabel and her husband William Steinschneider lived there, raising their daughter Barbara in the house. William was a six-term mayor of Hastings. Isabel died in 1958 and William in 1970, making William the last to live in the house; Barbara inherited it. Their daughter, married as Barbara Newington, aggressively pursued Cropsey's paintings alongside her husband John until about the 1980s, while Cropsey paintings were still inexpensive. Barbara and John Newington created the Newington-Cropsey Foundation and its properties in 1977 with concern over the state of modern art and "the way culture was going".
Newington, today the foundation's chairman, is a philanthropist living in Greenwich, Connecticut and is the great-granddaughter of Cropsey.
Around 1977, the foundation traded land with the village of Hastings, giving the village land and $400,000 for a garage for its department of public works. In turn, the NCF acquired a parcel of land and the village's existing public works garage, on a site that was formerly the town dump for decades, and was called Frog Hollow around Cropsey's time. The NCF's initial plans were to renovate the garage, landscape the property, restore the pond, and construct steps to connect the property to Ever Rest, in total "to make [the property] look like a Cropsey painting".
In 1979, the NCF was among several museums and private collectors that lent items to "An Unprejudiced Eye", an exhibit of Cropsey's works. The exhibit was at the Hudson River Museum and was created by the village of Hastings, marking its association with Cropsey and its 100th anniversary. NCF art historian Kenneth Maddox organized and curated the exhibit.
In April 1988, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation cleaned up oil from Sugar Pond, a small pond on the property. The department approved the project and its environmental assessment report.
Beginning in the late 1980s, the NCF contracted the construction of an intricately landscaped 19th-century arts complex with three buildings, a pond, and a garden, designed by Peter Gisolfi Associates of Hastings. The first building, the New Studio, opened in 1990 with an exhibition of paintings by Hudson River School artist Worthington Whittredge. The site was also slated to include a gatekeeper's cottage, a library and administration center, an outdoor amphitheater, as well as a museum, which was to be completed in 1992.