The Hudson Valley is getting ready to commemorate a very early immigrant wave, if you want to call it that, when a certain boat came up the river and Dutch settlers followed.

2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the voyages of Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain. The Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commission (click here for its web site) has a big series of events planned. Peekskill is getting a start by installing a trail of Dutch-style ceramic tiles through town, from the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art down to the river. Local school kids painted tiles that will be alternated with traditional ones.

On Sunday, a representative of the Dutch consulate will be in town to donate $20,000 toward the installation. He will appear during HVCCA’s Free Arts Day from noon to 6.

Also appearing is an artist from Amsterdam, Karen Sargsyan. He is currently the center’s fall artist in residence, and will be part of a 2009 exhibit by Dutch artists. Here are the details on that event, from the art center:

Double Dutch will be sponsored in part by Consulate General of the Netherlands and The Mondrian Foundation and will be featured in the main 12,000 sq ft exhibition space of the HVCCA. In celebration of the Hudson Valley’s Quadricentennial and Peekskill’s Dutch heritage, the exhibition seeks to explore, through the installation of extraordinary work by seven contemporary Dutch artists, the common thread of architecture and structure that resonated in the Dutch works of over 200 artist studios visited by the curators. The fact that there was an early Dutch settlement in this area, an area which parallels the landscape of Holland, challenges viewers of the exhibition to understand the impact of Dutch influence in the region. The exhibition will include emerging Dutch artists such as Karen Sargsyan (Rijksacademie ‘07 and HVCCA 2008 Artist-in-Residence), and Alon Levy (Pris-De-Rome competition at De Apple, 2007), as well as more established artists such as Mark Manders.