Public online portal of Olana collections to launch Monday

HUDSON―The Olana Partnership and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) announced Thursday the largest launch to date of public online collections for Olana State Historic Site.  

Upon its unveiling on August 17, this resource will feature more than 200 records of artwork by the Frederic Church, Olana’s creator, and is an important part of the year-long Frederic Church 200 initiative led by The Olana Partnership to mark the 200th anniversary of Church’s birth.  

“The public launch of Olana’s online collections portal represents a long-awaited milestone in the study and appreciation of the work and career of Frederic Church, who was among the most renowned American artists of his time” said Maggie Dimock, associate curator at The Olana Partnership.  

“The rich collection of Church’s work held by Olana provides unparalleled insight into the artist’s early maturation and development, his working methods, his travels through the Americas, including fifteen trips to Mexico, and the painstaking care with which he designed every ornamental detail of the distinctive Main House at Olana,” Dimock added.

Olana is the most intact artist’s environments in the United States, with a vast collection encompassing over 90,000 objects. The collection contains over 1,300 paintings, oil and graphite sketches, and architectural drawings by Frederic Church; a diverse array of global collections and decorative arts from the Main House at Olana; thousands of photographs collected by Church; and extensive archival material, including correspondence, diaries, and financial and business records. The Olana State Historic Site online collections portal gives public access to explore important objects from the collection not on view at Olana.

Through the support of a generous 2024 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation awarded to The Olana Partnership, the New York State OPRHP was able to start digitizing Church's works―many of which had never been photographed at high-resolution before. The first phase of digitization focused on art works by Church in the Olana collection, including hundreds of previously unseen or rarely published paintings, sketches, oil studies, and sketchbooks.

The grant also included funds to purchase state-of-the art photography equipment and hire a digitization specialist appointed to a two-year term to carry out the initiative.   In celebration of Church on his 200th birthday, the first batch of newly digitized artworks will feature 200 artworks, with additional online records added regularly as digitization efforts continue.

The Olana State Historic Site Collection joins those of 45 other New York State historic sites and state parks now available to the public as part of New York State OPRHP’s online collections portal, which debuted in January 2026. This digital resource is a rapidly growing repository of OPRHP’s permanent museum collections, which include over 3.5 million collections objects, archives, and artifacts that bring New York State’s stories to audiences around the world.

"We have a new tool to help tell New York's rich history," says Greg Smith, director of the Bureau of Historic Sites at OPRHP.

"And it's exciting to see our online resources growing through agency and partner investments like this one. We hope these online collections encourage new research, spark curiosity, and generate interest in the stories of the people of New York―including artistic visionaries like Frederic Church,” Smith said.

To view the Olana Collection online and explore other online collections at New York State historic sites and state parks, visit OLANA.org/collections.