PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS DAY TRIP: AN OUTDOOR MUSEUM

The Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ

Are you a museum person........

the type who can spend hours wandering through a museum,

stopping to look at 

Every.

Single.

Thing?

Not me, nope. 

I'm aware that this admission 

detracts from my uber-hipster-urban-cultural image 😜,   

but I wasn't born with that museum-patience gene.

Don't get me wrong......

I LOVE and appreciate art!
I have enjoyed seeing paintings and sculptures
from some of the world's most famous artists.

It's just that.......

I 
want 
to 
 see 
what 
I 
want 
to 
see 

.......and then head right to the museum gift shop.

When I went to The Louvre in Paris,

I hightailed it straight to the Mona Lisa.

At the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, 

I made a beeline for The David.

In Rome, I had every intention of zooming straightaway to

Michelangelo's Creation Of Adam in the Sistine Chapel,

but was forced to walk through the entire Vatican Museum to get there

(I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it).

That's not to say that I don't enjoy spending time in museums........
I do.

I'm more likely to be "all in" when I head to a museum 

which depicts an historical event

such as Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Tel Aviv,

the 9/11 World Trade Center Museum in NYC,

or the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
And I do want to go back to Washington, DC specifically to go to the 
National Museum of American History,
National Museum of African American History and Culture,
and the Newseum.

Recently, I had the opportunity to go to a museum 
of a totally different caliber near my home. 

It isn't a world-renowned museum housing priceless artwork,

or one commemorating a major historic event. 
It is tiny, in comparison, yet it plays a large role in preserving 

important history of the local area from as early as the 18th Century.
I can never remember the name of it,
so I just call it the Hop and Go Museum.

The Hopper Goetschius Museum in Upper Saddle River, NJ.
is an outdoor museum site that has a collection of 
historic buildings and artifacts from around the north Jersey area.

I'd driven by many times, yet I had never been.

It took a field trip with my photography class

to get me to there.

Hopper Goetschius House C1739 (possibly older).

The main house dates back to at least 1739, 

but it may have been built as early as 1713. 

 

It now serves as a museum, 
preserving household, farming and other assorted artifacts 
from the 1700s through the mid 1900s
and is maintained by the Upper Saddle River Historical Society.

An outhouse and out-kitchen are original structures,
and still sit on the grounds.

Other buildings were moved to the property over the years

from nearby areas, to save them from being demolished.
The VanRiper-Tice barn, 
perhaps the only remaining New World Dutch Barn (c1800),
had particular meaning to me,
as my parents used to take us to the Van Riper and Tice farms 
when we were kids every fall for apple cider and donuts.

VanRiper Tice Barn C1800

Ramsey Sayer Schoolhouse (C1820, left); unidentified building on right

Woodshed (C1896), with the schoolhouse behind it.

The museum wasn't officially open on the day of our trip,
so there was no docent to take us around and explain what we were seeing.
I had to rely my guide named Google, after the fact.

We spent about 2 hours, inside and out,

practicing our photography techniques.......

adjusting ISOs, apertures and shutterspeeds.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing technically,

but it was a lovely setting to work on my composition.

Sometimes the best day trips 

are a stone's throw from your backyard.

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