Upcoming Events
KAATERSKILL CLOVE: WHERE NATURE MET ART
A ZADOCK PRATT MUSEUM EXHIBIT
On Saturday, June 1, at 1pm, Dr. Kevin Avery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art will give a lecture at the Zadock Pratt Museum in Prattsville to kick off an exhibit of cultural significance to the region entitled Kaaterskill Clove: Where Nature Met Art. Dr. Avery’s talk will focus on original Hudson River School artists, such as Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Sanford Gifford, and Jervis McEntee. He will relate those artists’ renderings of Kaaterskill Clove to the literature of Washington Irving, James Fennimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant. He will also take the opportunity of being in Prattsville to highlight Sanford Gifford’s great interest in the Zadock Pratt Tannery.
Kaaterskill Clove: Where Nature Met Art will run through the summer until Columbus Day weekend and feature Clove artwork by contemporary painters Athena Billias, Patti Ferrara, and Carol Slutzky-Tenerowicz, alongside one of the late Thomas Locker's renderings of Kaaterskill Falls. The exhibit is intended to raise awareness about the importance of the Clove and the need for its preservation in the face of the environmental strain it has been under for the past several years as tourists flock to its swimming holes in the summer months, with many leaving garbage behind, polluting the creek, and even spray-painting graffiti across the cavernous rock walls.
Zadock Pratt Museum representatives have reached out to other cultural organizations in what they hope will become a unified effort to increase awareness about the artistic, cultural, environmental, and historic value of the Clove, with the ultimate goal being to submit an application to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to petition the federal government to designate Kaaterskill Clove a national landmark.
Read the full Press Release here.
Our Mission
The Zadock Pratt Museum is dedicated to exhibiting the history and culture of the Northern Catskill Region from the 17th century to the present, with particular interest in the period during Prattsville Town Founder Zadock Pratt’s lifetime, 1790-1871 and the mid-19th century, the heyday of the hemlock based tanning industry in the early-to-mid 19th century, which is best illustrated by reference to the life of Zadock Pratt, the region’s most prominent tanner.
The Museum strives not only to preserve the historic Pratt Homestead and its collections, but also to interpret the above-referenced period of history and to attract to the Museum, through diversified programs, all age and interest levels, using the Historic House Landmark as a backdrop of many educational and cultural programs, events, and exhibits.
The story of the Zadock Pratt Museum is the story of early America from the arrival of Lieut. William Pratt to the shores of Massachusetts in 1632 with Puritan preacher Thomas Hooker to the establishment
of the largest tannery in the world by Colonel Zadock Pratt in the wilderness town of Prattsville, NY with the stories of the War of Independence, Civil War, Transcontinental Railroad, Washington
Monument and Smithsonian Institution as part of the story as well. A huge American story; an important early American family.
Zadock Pratt Museum
518-299-3395
email: prattmuseum@hotmail.com
PO Box 333,
Main Street,
Prattsville, NY 12468
