New Exhibit Opening: Sunday April 7, 2024, 1-4 pm

From Farm to Ferry:

The Art of Charles Keller in Newburgh,1951-1961

The Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands is proud to present these works by Charles Keller, generously bequeathed to the Society by his family in 2020 and 2023 and displayed in Newburgh for the first time since the decade when the Kellers made their home just north at Danskammer Farm, in Roseton.

The apple and cherry farm, an early co-op on the property of the Armstrong family, was a Hudson Valley locus of farm labor and leftist political organizing, involving not only Keller but also other activists including Pete Seeger. Keller sketched and painted these scenes of friends, farmers, and pickers, occurring around and inside of the family’s farm cottage.

In the City of Newburgh, he sketched, painted, and even created a children’s book, with his then wife Judith, centered on the Newburgh-Beacon ferries, three of which crossed the Hudson regularly until the opening of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in 1963.

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Charles Keller (b. 1914, d. 2006) was a New York-born artist trained at Cornell and the Art Students League in the depression years of the 1930s through 1941. The employment hardships and labor activism of those years inspired an increase in membership to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA); Keller himself joined in 1940, remaining a committed member all his life. His politics influenced his life’s work as a political draughtsman, cartoonist, printmaker, painter, and editor for several significant socialist publications. Keller’s political activism made him a target during the McCarthy era and his passport was revoked by the State Department until 1961 after which the family decamped from Newburgh to Rome, where they remained for the next twelve years. Back in America in 1973, Keller taught at Vassar, Hofstra, and Parsons, while remaining very active in CPUSA and the People’s Daily World. His works are included in the collections of the Library of Congress, the British Museum, and the New York Public Library, among many others.

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With gratitude to the Keller Family and especially to Marthe Keller and Tracy Zungola for their generosity of time and spirit and entrusting these works to HSNBH and Newburgh.