Archive of Exhibitions at the Foundry School Museum
Traveling the Hudson in the Wake of Robert Fulton:
1,000 Postcards from America's First Working River
October 3 – December 20, 2009
It's a different kind of view of the Hudson River, actually a thousand different views, comprising their own Hudson River School.
Traveling the Hudson in the Wake of Robert Fulton: 1,000 Postcards from America's First Working River contains printed images of the river and its environs from New York Harbor to the headwaters north of Albany. The postcards date from the first third of the 20th century, with most from 1905 to 1911. They are drawn from a collection of some 4,000 cards compiled by Larry Demers, a resident of Cold Spring from 1984 to 1997.
Postcards today usually feature tourist attractions, but a hundred years ago postcards presented all manner of life, including working life, along the river. Mr. Demers's collection includes images of bridges, factories, landscapes, street scenes, boats, lighthouses, hotels, tunnels and historical events. The exhibition is organized geographically so visitors to the PCHS Foundry School Museum can travel the river from its base to its source. More than 20 cities and towns are represented. A special section of the collection – and the exhibition – focuses on postcards from the 1909 centennial of Robert Fulton's historic first commercial steamship voyage from New York to Albany.
Mr. Demers began his collection only six years ago. His interest developed originally from seeing postcards of the Hudson River region in an antiques store in Nelsonville, New York (the village next door to Cold Spring). His first acquisition was a book of postcards of covered bridges in Vermont, where he now lives, but he soon turned back to the Hudson and credits his years in Cold Spring, where he developed an appreciation for the enormous historical significance of the river, for that becoming his focus. He has traveled all around New England and the mid-Atlantic region, and he acquired the postcards from antique stores and postcard dealers in New York State, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Perhaps amazingly in this virtual day and age, only one card was purchased on the Internet.
Mr. Demers's collection is surely one of the largest on the subject of the Hudson River and has never been on public view. Individually the postcards present a thousand snapshots of a bygone age. Collectively they contribute to the understanding of the history of the river over an extended time and in an immediately accessible form.
This exhibition is funded by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities. Additional funds have been provided by Terry & Charles Polhemus, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp., Robert's Total Care Salon, and Mind, Inc.
George Pope Morris: Defining American Culture
April 19 – August 23
Exhibition on Life and Work of Leading Editor, Publisher, Poet, Songwriter and Cold Spring Resident Opens April 19
Patriots Day marks the opening of a major new exhibition at the Putnam County Historical Society’s Foundry School Museum. George Pope Morris: Defining American Culture explores the life and times of one of 19th Century America’s most interesting and influential cultural figures. More here.
The West Point Foundry: Unearthing the Past, Forging a Future
March 30 – December 14, 2008
Michigan Tech student Alicia Valentino confronts a ruin of the blast furnace wall.
The full arc of American industrial history, from thriving manufacturing to malign neglect to rediscovery and restitution is on display at The West Point Foundry: Unearthing the Past, Forging a Future, which tells the story of two centuries of industrial innovation and ecological destruction and renewal at West Point Foundry Preserve. Visitors can take in the exhibition of photographs, schematics, artifacts and interactive displays as well as PCHS’s permanent collection of historical materials from the West Point Foundry. They can then tour the actual foundry site, now owned by environmental group Scenic Hudson and the subject of a multi-year industrial archeological exploration by the Industrial Archaeology Program at Michigan Technological University. (View the West Point Foundry Preserve Trail Map or download the pdf). More here.
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
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