Alaska Pratt Museum

1. Name of the museum

Official name of the museum in English: Pratt Museum

2. Contact information

Mailing address: Pratt Museum, 3779 Bartlett Street Homer, AK 99603

Telephone number: + 907 235 8635

Fax : + 907 235 2764

Email: info@prattmuseum.org

URL: http://www.prattmuseum.org/index.html

3. Visitor services

Opened days/Closed days:  Summer Hours(Mid-May through Mid-September Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.)  Winter Hours(Mid-September through Mid-May Tuesday-Sunday, Noon to 5 p.m.)/ Closed Mondays, Closed th month of January, Observed Holidays: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day

Admission fee/Ticket prices: Members(Free), Adults($8.00), Seniors($6.00), Youth 6-18($4.00), Family 2 Adults and children($25.00), Children under 6(Free)

Membership fee:

<Memberships Benefits>

•Free admission to the Museum

•10% discount on purchases in the Museum Store

•Invitations to special events

•Calendar of events

• Newsletter postcards

• Discounts on program

<Membership Categories & Additional Benefits >

Bald Eagle Club $2500 - All benefits above plus two additional tickets to the Ritz

Aurora Club $1000 -  All benefits above plus two tickets to the Ritz

Qayak Club $500 -  All benefits above plus one behind-the-scenes tour (by appointment)

Wild Rose Club $250 - All benefits above plus five free admission passes, annual donor recognition gala and recognition on Museum Donor wall

Octopus Club $100 -  All benefits above plus optional listing/business logo on Museum website and inclusion of rack card at Museum entrance

Kittiwake Club (Basic) $50 -  (not available to businesses) Basic membership includes two adults and the children living in the same household and all benefits above

Pioneers Club (student/senior/artist) $25 -  Discounted membership with valid student ID, 65 & over, or artist

<Business Membership>

Business supporters are invited to join the Museum at the Octopus Club ($100) level and above. Depending on level of membership, the Museum will provide free admission passes for you to share with patrons, customers and employees. In addition, we are pleased to recognize your company's support on our Web site and donor wall, as well as your inclusion of business rack cards at the Museum entrance.

School/Nonprofit/Agency Membership

Schools and other nonprofits and agencies are encouraged to join as members of the Pratt Museum at a contribution level that is appropriate for the institution (suggested annual membership fee $100). Providing free school group tours and partner programs is costly and not fully supported by grants. Annual school membership contributions help sustain this program so students can continue to participate in the Pratt's educational programs for free. Please note that admission to the museum is only waived when tours are scheduled in advance with our education staff. Please see our Student & Group Tours page for more information and a Visit Request Form.

4. Establishment

Date of establishment: 1955

Organizer/Main group of the establishment: Samuel Leon and Vega Anderson Pratt

Patron/Partner(Organization): Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies

•Kachemak Bay Research Reserve

•Lake Clark National Park & Preserve Alaska

• Maritime National Wildlife Refuge

•Alaska Native Heritage Center

•Bunnell Street Gallery

•City of Homer

•Cook Inlet Keeper

•Homer Council on the Arts

•Homer Chamber of Commerce

•Homer Public Library

•Kachemak Bay Campus, KPC - UAA

•Kachemak Heritage Land Trust

•KBBI AM 890 Public Radio

•Seabird and Forage Fish Research in Alaska

•SeeMore Wildlife Systems, Inc.

•Seldovia Native Association

•Smithsonian Institution Arctic Studies Center

• Kenaitze Tribe

•Nanwalek Council IRA

•Port Graham Village Council

•Seldovia Village Tribe

Goals/Mission statement: The Pratt Museum is built on land donated by Sam and Vega Pratt. Sam’s collection helped inspire the founding of the Homer Society of Natural History in 1955, over a decade before the group created the Museum. The Society voted to honor their contribution by naming the Museum for the Pratts.

Sam Pratt was born in Woodland, Illinois on November 15, 1889. He came to Alaska in 1934. After moving to Homer in 1936, he met and married Vega Anderson. Sam worked as a fox farmer and commercial fisherman, then in 1947 Sam and Vega, both artists, began Vega’s Art and Gift Shop. They sold art supplies and a variety of merchandise, much like a miniature department store.

Sam and Vega were active members of the growing community of Homer and when the Museum opened in 1968, Sam served as the first volunteer curator. The Pratt Museum and the Pratt House on Pioneer Avenue between Bartlett Street and the Sterling Highway, where Sam and Vega lived for years, are on her family’s original homestead. Sam died on November 18, 1974, and Vega on September 19, 2002.

In 1967, the Homer community chose to construct the Museum as Homer’s centennial project, celebrating the purchase of Alaska from Russia. A formal agreement was signed between the City of Homer and the Society to construct a Museum facility and to maintain a Museum for the citizens in the event the Society should cease to exist.

•2013 Museums Alaska Award for Excellence in the Museum Profession

•2011 Arts Leadership and Advocacy, from Homer Council on the Arts, for outstanding accomplishments, service and promotion of the arts.

•2009 Award for Excellence, from Museums Alaska, for the exhibit Kachemak Bay: An Exploration of People and Place.

•2005 National Award for Museum Service

•2004 Governor's Award for the Humanities for Distinguished Cultural Service

•2002 National Leadership Grant, Institute of Museum and Library Services

•2000 Museums Alaska Award for Excellence in the Museum Profession

•1996 First Place Anheuser-Busch “A Pledge and A Promise” Environmental Education Award

•1996 Museums Alaska Award for Excellence in the Museum Profession

5. Exhibition

Themes/Categories of collection:

-Special Exhibits : Current Exhibits, Upcoming, Recent

-Permanent Exhibits : Kachemak Bay: An Exploration of People and Place, Stewardship, The Sea and Its Bounty

-Outdoor Exhibits : Botanical Garden, Harrington Cabin, Forest Trail, Facing the Elements, Outdoor Performance Space

Number of collections: Areas of institutional emphasis are natural science and cultural collections in anthropology, history, art, earth sciences and biology of the Kachemak Bay region. The museum's research collections include over 24,000 objects plus a library and archives. The collections constitute a regionally distinctive resource for research, exhibition, and educational use. For more information, please contact our Collections Manager .

The Anthropology Collections consist of about 4,000 objects. Archaeological artifacts excavated from local sites represent well-documented research collections of our earliest known human inhabitants of Kachemak Bay, from Ocean Bay Culture 4500 years BP through Kachemak Tradition to prehistoric Dena'ina Athabaskans around 1400 AD. Ethnographic artifacts include basketry, dolls, fishing and hunting implements, watercraft, household tools, clothing and ornamental objects representing Dena'ina Athabaskan, Pacific Eskimo and Aleut cultures, the three major regional Native Alaskan coastal cultures. One of the rarest artifacts is a well-preserved, 1000-year-old Kachemak Tradition birch bark basket that miraculously survived in a tide-swept cliff. The museum is recognized by the Kenaitze Indian Tribe of Dena'ina Athabaskans as a regional repository for cultural materials, and cares for its repatriated counting cords and newly excavated archaeological materials from the Upper Russian River.

The History Collection of 4,500 objects features Russian and American influences represented by trapping, whaling, fishing, mining, fox farming and agricultural tools, religious memorabilia, and household items. The historic Harrington cabin is furnished with a homestead collection of hand-tooled equipment, catalog-ordered household goods, and handmade personal items encompassing the most complete time capsule of self-reliant homestead life in Homer from 1920-1960, along with the 1929 Nordby outhouse, the oldest two-seater in town. Other resources such as maps, nautical charts, surveys, correspondence, newspapers, photographs, oral history tapes, and films document regional homesteading and community development. Association with the Kachemak Bay Wooden Boat Society has yielded collaborative restorations of three recently acquired historic boats.

The Earth Sciences Collections of 500 geological and paleontological specimens include a rare fossil imprint of a local perch, bison and woolly mammoth fossils, glacial erratics carried to Homer beaches, and a valuable collection of fossil mollusks representing the diverse, prolific life of our ancient seas. Volcanic ash, pumice, and lava bombs represent active regional volcanic activity.

The Biology Collections consist of 2,500 regional specimens or units. The marine life collection represents a baseline study of marine plants and animals (wet-preserved) and drift/beach materials (dry-preserved) of Kachemak Bay. Thirty mounts of marine and freshwater fish feature common species of Kachemak Bay. Over 250 mounts, study skins, skeletons, and nests of birds represent many of the 487 species documented in Alaska. A collection of 30 salvaged marine mammals, prepared largely as articulated skeletons, is the highlight of a representative collection of over 500 mammal study skins, hides, mounts, and skeletons. One particularly unusual specimen is the  massive rib of an extinct Steller's Sea Cow from Bering Island. A herbarium of 1,200 specimens represents 347 species of plants from around the bay and remote, offshore islands.

The Photo Archives consist of approximately 6,500 historical images documenting community development and Kachemak Bay and approximately 6,000 images of the museum's institutional history and activities. In 1998, ninety-two-year-old Ted Palmer returned briefly to Homer to provide an extraordinary oral history and donate photographs of his homestead life from 1920-1927, the oldest known photographs of family life in this area.

The Quilt Collection includes 20 locally made quilts that can be integrated thematically with museum exhibits. Fifteen of these were created by community quilters as complementary projects to the museum’s annual fundraising raffle quilts. Those in the permanent collection draw on a variety of cultural and natural history themes, such as historic buildings, wildflowers, and the changing of the seasons. They exemplify the vital tradition of community that has been the foundation for the Pratt Museum.

The non-lending Library consists of museological and natural history periodicals, 1,500 books and a vertical file of scholarly papers and pertinent subject information.

The Archives of 275 cubic feet preserve community history, business records and noncurrent collections documentation. The constitution and By-Laws of the King's County Mining Company from 1898 generates much community interest. It is one of the oldest documents in our holdings.

AV/Online exhibits:  Gull Island, Bear Cam

Moving/Traveling exhibits: The Hunter and The Hunted, Darkened Waters

자료/사진 출처:  http://www.prattmuseum.org/index.html