Exhibition Opening: Indigenous Peoples in Putnam County & Cold Spring Tempestries

At this exhibition opening, explore the ways our local environment has changed around us and learn about the Indigenous peoples who were the first inhabitants of this land. Putnam County is part of the ancestral homelands of the Wappinger, an Indigenous group within the larger cultural umbrella of the Lenape peoples. The Wappinger lived from the banks of the Mahicanituck (Hudson River) in Dutchess and Putnam counties, east into Connecticut, and southward into Westchester County. The Indigenous Peoples in Putnam County exhibition explores Lenape and Wappinger culture in Putnam County, with a special focus on the Woodland period when these cultures flourished in the Hudson Valley. The exhibition will feature artifacts and replicas, including stone tools, projectile points, stone fishing weights, pottery sherds, and a c. 19th century dugout canoe. The exhibition is funded in part by the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, the American Historical Association, and the Cold Spring Lions Club. The Cold Spring Tempestry Collection, a temporary installation organized by the Endless Skein and the larger world-wide Tempestry Project, will display a year's temperature range in the Cold Spring area from 1900 to 2021, through 365 knitted, crocheted, or woven rows of yarn, each color-coded to a standard spectrum of 32 yarn colors. The exhibition combines modern scientific record-keeping with various cultures' historic storytelling through needlework textiles, creating a Tempestry that visualizes climate data in a way that is accurate, personal, tangible, and beautiful. Free | Open to the Public | Registration not required, but appreciated!