Archive of Exhibitions at the Foundry School Museum

March 24 - July 15, 2007

“A Ramble through the Hudson Highlands:
A History in Pictures and the Writings of Donald H. MacDonald”


Philipstown Historian Donald H. MacDonald is celebrated with our new exhibition that illustrates excerpts from 51 of his articles with more than 100 photographs, prints, postcards, and maps. A 56-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition which includes excerpts from his writings, images from the exhibition, and an appendix listing all of MacDonald’s articles written for the Putnam County News and Recorder.

July 2 – December 15, 2006

"The Gilded Age: High Fashion in the Hudson Highlands, 1865–1914 "

This exhibition features thirty of the finest costumes from the museum’s collection, worn by Philipstown residents from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I. An 80-page, full color exhibition catalog titled The Gilded Age: High Society and High Fashion in the Hudson Highlands, 1865–1914 is available.

Sponsored in part by grants from The New York Council for the Humanities and The Bay and Paul Foundations.

The exhibition is accompanied by an 80 page catalogue. For more information, visit our CATALOGUES.

At right:

Evening dress, c. 1891, plates 40 and 42.
Silk damask, silk satin, and silk velvet embroidered with glass and pearl beads, trimmed with silk satin ribbon.





Traveling Exhibition at Eisenhower Hall, West Point, NY

October 28 - December 17, 2006

America the Beautiful: Women and the Flag

This exhibition featuring popular images of women and the flag includes posters, prints, sheet music covers, postcards, and magazine illustrations taken from four periods of American history, spanning the Civil War through the late twentieth century. The exhibition was first shown at the Putnam County Historical Society & Foundry School Museum in the spring of 2002 and traveled to various museums throughout the country.






Fall 2004


Robert Beckhard, Annie Stapf, Stapf Farm on Old Albany Post Road.
 "From Farms to Film:
Photographs by Robert Beckhard"

The PCHS & FSM will present three series of photographs by Robert Beckhard, a professional photographer since the early 1960s who has worked for major newspapers and magazines, collaborated with Frances Dunwell on the book Highlands of the Hudson (1991), and produced many independent series. A weekend resident of Garrison since 1961, he taught photography on Friday nights at the Garrison Art Center for fifteen years, from the 1970s into the 1980s, Living on Indian Brook Road, Beckhard became interested in the landscapes of Garrison and Cold Spring. Two of his series that will be on view picture Annie Stapf and the Stapf Farm on the Old Albany Post Road and the Reeve Farm on Indian Brook Road. Both series reveal Beckhard’s sensitivity to the weathered textures of old buildings set against the landscape, his excellence in capturing a sense of the past along with the changing elements of nature—the light and sky—and, in the case of Stapf, the way in which the buildings on her property, in his words, “reflected her steadfastness—her look of being weathered but not withering.”


Jan Thacher, Bannerman’s Castle, Bannerman’s Island.
 "Photographs of Cold Spring by Jan Thacher"

The museum will also present a selection of photographs of sites in and near Cold Spring and Nelsonville by Jan Thacher, a Cold Spring resident and photographer who has been influenced by Robert Beckhard. Among the subjects viewed in Thacher’s works are Railroad Avenue, H. D. Champlain Blacksmith Shop, Wood Avenue, St. Mary’s Chapel, and Bannerman’s Island. Carefully composed and with an attention to detail, the photographs appeal on an aesthetic level and have documentary significance.














Spring 2004

The Hudson Highlands Rediscovered:
Photographs (circa 1890-1910)

Putnam County Historical Society Collection

An exhibition of the Museum's glass plate negative collection depicting scenes from Philipstown. Also, an oral history video, Rediscovered Memories.





Fall 2003

SPIRIT MASKS & SPIRITUAL FIGURES
The Mike & Sonja Gilligan Collection

An extraordinary local collection of religious works spanning cultures and centuries.

Spring 2003

Village and Country Scenes,
1920's - 1970's:
Paintings and Drawings by Artists
from Putnam County, NY.


Spring and Fall 2002

America the Beautiful, Women and the Flag



About the Catalogue

Fall 2000

Poetic Joining:
The Hudson River & the Highlands.
Paintings from private and public collections.


Spring and Fall 2001

A Kaleidoscopic View: Treasures and Curiosities

Benjamin West Frasier Memorial Library