Arkell Museum

The Arkell Museum is a museum in Canajoharie, New York that has an extensive collection of American paintings, primarily from 1860 to 1940, as well as historical exhibits about the history of the Mohawk River Valley and of the Beech-Nut babyfood company. The Canajoharie Library was founded in 1924, and a gallery was added in 1927. The museum was originally built to house copies of European masterpieces and original 19th-century American paintings collected by Bartlett Arkell, then the town's leading industrialist. Susan Finch has written of the museum, "The institution has evolved into more than just an art gallery with a library attached, but an art gallery with a small town attached. The roster of American painters exhibited here is astounding and completely out of scale with what you would expect from a Thruway exit between Albany and Utica."