The Hudson River Valley is one of the most beautiful, intriguing places in the country. Against a background of changing leaves, crisp days, and magnificent views, our tour will focus on the region’s rich variety of public and private art and architecture. Along the way, we will stop at places of historical interest and will sample locally produced food at well known restaurants and farm stands.

Upon arrival in New York, we will visit the Cloisters in upper Manhattan, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s superb collection of European medieval art. Housed in monastic buildings from southern France, the Cloisters provides a gateway to the valley with a commanding view of the Hudson River.

We will spend the first two nights at Tarrytown House, whose public rooms are situated in two Gilded Age mansions. We will explore such architectural treasures of the lower Hudson River Valley as Lyndhurst, a Gothic Revival mansion designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, and Boscobel, a meticulously restored Federal Period house. We will dine at the renowned Blue Hill at Stone Barns Restaurant and tour the Center for Food and Agriculture, located in the Norman-style barns on the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York.

The Valley is also home to important collections of contemporary art and examples of modern architecture. We will contemplate the relationship between sculpture and nature at the Storm King Art Center, the outdoor site of massive pieces by Mark di Suvero, Louise Nevelson, Alexander Calder, and David Smith, among others. Proceeding up the Hudson, we will tour Dia: Beacon, housed in a masterful renovation of a 1929 Nabisco carton plant, which contains much of the Dia Foundation’s significant large-scale work. The collection includes pieces by Michael Heiser, Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol. Our tour of the Bard College campus will feature the new Hessel Museum of Art and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry. In Hyde Park we will tour the famed Culinary Institute of America and have lunch at the Institute’s Caterina de’ Medici Restaurant.

We will spend three nights in Rhinebeck at Delamater House, whose main building, designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, features fanciful Gothic Revival gingerbread. Our visit will include Olana, a Moorish-style house designed and built by Frederic Church; and Cedar Grove, the house of Thomas Cole. We will visit several private collections, among them the studio of the contemporary artist Martin Kline and the house and collections of Martin Kline and Stephen Mazoh. Traveling north, we will visit Clermont, the home to generations of the Livingston family in Germantown, and the historic town of Hudson, New York, now famous for its many antique shops.

We will travel by luxury motor coach. Special tours and lectures have been arranged at the sites we will visit.

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