Zadock Pratt Museum

08/10/2025

07/08/2025

Discover

Uncover

Preserve

Hidden History, Hidden Labor

Join Archivist Melanie Meents, a small-town girl with a big job as Senior Time-based Media Conservator at Harvard University Library’s Preservation Services

As she leads a discussion about preserving historical documents and one-of-a-kind collections.

July 12, 2025

2:00-4:30pm

Zadock Pratt Museum

Main Street

Prattsville NY 12468

zadockprattmuseum.org

For more information contact Anne @ 347-393-3649

07/08/2025

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Zadock Pratt Museum Presents: "Leather and Plastic"
June 29 – August 28, 2025 |Carriage House Gallery

Prattsville, NY — The Zadock Pratt Museum is pleased to announce Leather and Plastic, a new exhibition opening on June 29, 2025, in the museum’s Carriage House. This exhibition explores the trajectory of industrialization in the Catskills—from its 19th-century origins in leather production to today’s global economy dominated by synthetic materials—and reflects on how shifts in materials and labor practices have reshaped commerce and daily life.

In the 1830s, the Catskills were a hub of industrial activity, with tanneries proliferating across the region to meet demand for leather goods. These goods, once handcrafted, were increasingly made in factories, marking a pivotal moment in the rise of mass production, factory labor, and distributed supply chains. Leather and Plastic draw a line from that moment of industrial transformation to our present, where plastic has come to replace many traditional materials and where labor and production remain globalized and fragmented.

The exhibition features work by six contemporary artists: Em Rooney, Hugo Montoya, Pohan, Linnea Gad, Tony Bluestone and Catherine Telford-Keogh. Each artist engages the themes of materiality, labor, and production through a range of practices, offering viewers a meditation on what it means to make—and consume—in a post-industrial world.

A centerpiece of the exhibition is a 19th-century carriage, transformed by Hugo Montoya with plastic car decals—a gesture that connects early transportation infrastructure with modern branding and consumer culture. Pohan evokes the intersection of cars, leather, and memory through a synthetic “new car smell” that slowly infuses the space, offering an olfactory reminder of how industrial materials shape perception and desire.

Em Rooney, Linnea Gad, and Catherine Telford-Keogh contribute more intimate works that investigate the physical and symbolic residue of production, combining historic and contemporary methods to draw attention to how materials encode labor histories.

Staged in the Carriage House, an early site of transportation, underscores how movement—of materials, of labor, of products—has always been central to commerce. Leather and Plastic invites visitors to reflect on the layered history of industry in the Catskills and consider how the legacies of production continue to shape economic, environmental, and aesthetic realities today.

Exhibition Dates: June 29th - August 28th, 2025

Location: Zadock Pratt Museum, Carriage House, 14540 Main Street, Prattsville, NY
Museum Hours: Saturday–Sunday, 12 PM – 5 PM and by appointment

06/20/2025

You're invited ! Free program. Free refreshments. New photography & quilt exhibits. Fossil exhibit. Silent film with only moving pictures of Old Gilboa Village. New Community Room.

06/20/2025

Check it out on Saturday, July 12, 1 pm. Free program, free refreshments.

03/03/2025

If what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, you're going to love us😉

If you have an heirloom quilt you'd like to display in the Pratt Museum's 2025 opening exhibit, "Grandma's uilt," contact Carole Cangelosi at zpmtreasurer.com She'd love to hear from you !

12/01/2024

Thank you, Marlene McTigue and Capitol Region Independent Media for the great article about our great little (historic) town !

Off the Beaten Path: The Zadock Pratt Museum honors the life of Pratt, whose entrepreneurial spirit made him one of the richest men in America for his time.

10/26/2024

APARTMENT FOR RENT-5 Room apartment for rent; on two floors--ground floor has three rooms; second floor has two rooms. Located in the center of the Village of Prattsville, behind-and-attached to the Zadock Pratt Museum. Two private entrances; side porch. Newly painted. New kitchen and "living room" floors. $800 a month plus utilities. For information call 201-388-5103. Ask for Carolyn.

Send a message to learn more

10/22/2024

Murder, Mystery and a Ghost Story at the Pratt Museum

PRATTSVILLE—On Sunday, October 27th, 1-3 pm, Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer will thrill and chill his audience with the second in the Pratt Museum’s Second Annual Harvest Lecture & Greene Ghosts Series, “The Murder of Sally Hamilton”.

Sally Hamilton, a vivacious and attractive 20-year-old resident of Athens, NY, daughter of Samuel and Wealthy Beebe Hamilton, was returning home one summer night in 1813 when, within 300 feet of her home, she was accosted, beaten, and killed.

Following a town-wide search, Hamilton’s body was found three days later in Murderer’s Creek.

The reaction of Athens’ residents to Sally Hamilton’s murder marked a social and cultural shift from the eighteenth-to-nineteenth century Catskills when compared to the murder of the lack-of-reaction of local residents to the earlier death of an unnamed poor servant girl at the hands of her “master”, William Salisbury.

Be sure to join Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer on Sunday, October 27th, 1 pm at the Zadock Pratt Museum, 14540 Main Street, Prattsville, 12468 as he narrates the story of Sally Hamilton, one of Greene County’s enduring murder mysteries.

Yes, there’s a ghost in the story.

Admission is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Murder, Mystery and a Ghost Story at the Pratt Museum

PRATTSVILLE—On Sunday, October 27th, 1-3 pm, Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer will thrill and chill his audience with the second in the Pratt Museum’s Second Annual Harvest Lecture & Greene Ghosts Series, “The Murder of Sally Hamilton”.

Sally Hamilton, a vivacious and attractive 20-year-old resident of Athens, NY, daughter of Samuel and Wealthy Beebe Hamilton, was returning home one summer night in 1813 when, within 300 feet of her home, she was accosted, beaten, and killed.

Following a town-wide search, Hamilton’s body was found three days later in Murderer’s Creek.

The reaction of Athens’ residents to Sally Hamilton’s murder marked a social and cultural shift from the eighteenth-to-nineteenth century Catskills when compared to the murder of the lack-of-reaction of local residents to the earlier death of an unnamed poor servant girl at the hands of her “master”, William Salisbury.

Be sure to join Greene County Historian Jonathan Palmer on Sunday, October 27th, 1 pm at the Zadock Pratt Museum, 14540 Main Street, Prattsville, 12468 as he narrates the story of Sally Hamilton, one of Greene County’s enduring murder mysteries.

Yes, there’s a ghost in the story.

Admission is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

10/06/2024

We're posting this flyer about the Gilboa Historical Society's Annual Meeting and featured speakers, two of our favorites, Johanna and Bob Titus on Oct. 19. A lot going on at the Gilboa Museum & Juried History Center ! Be sure to attend and lend support to their exciting new community efforts by becoming a member !

The Pratt Museum loves the Gilboa Historical Society, Gilboa Museum & Nicholas J. Juried History Center as if they were family. Indeed, they are family ! We hope you'll support them.

09/15/2024

Zadock Pratt had a real appreciation for art, especially lithography, and often commissioned artists to record the growth of his namesake with several incredibly detailed "Views" of Prattsville dating 1840 and 1850. He also commissioned a series of finely printed drawings of pre-Prattsville, Pratt's Homestead (now the Museum), and Prattsville's heyday in the 1850's.

So, it was with great pleasure that we visited the studio of Conesville artist and printmaker, Amy Silberkleit on Saturday to watch her in action and to marvel, as we have in the past, at her incredibly detailed, focused, and stunning prints of nature (and other intriguing subjects).

Amy will be demonstrating the disciplined and practiced art of lithography and teaching the medium to others at a FREE workshop at the Gilboa Museum & Nicholas J. Juried History Center on Saturday, Sept. 28, 10 AM-4 PM.

Email [email protected] to register for this FREE workshop. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to create a beautiful print using lithography under Amy Silberkleit's direction.

09/12/2024

We're taking reservations NOW for the Museum's Second Annual Victorian Tea fundraiser on Sat., Sept. 28. Three seatings, Noon, 130 pm and 3 pm, $35 per person.

Please make your reservations early. We count on your support !

Thank you.