Pleasantons Museum on Main

Exhibits and Collections: The Museum creates and displays a series of exhibitions annually that cover a wide variety of topics from local history art and collectibles. These exhibits integrate local state and national history along with other disciplines of art and natural history in order to give our guests a more well-rounded approach to the world in which they live. This past year exhibits included: Imagination Expressed 2023 with the Pleasanton Art League a traveling exhibit- She Sang Me a Good Luck Song The California Indian Photographs of Dugan Aguilar a Smithsonian Exhibit about work and two major in-house exhibits celebrating the local high schools 50th and 100th anniversaries. Annual visitors to our exhibits in 2023 is estimated at 18,000. Related to our exhibits work is our collections work. We maintain a collection and archive of over 200,000 artifacts document and images. Every year we provide research opportunities within our collection. In 2023 we served 50 researchers. Another part of collections work is providing a repository for individuals' Pleasanton artifacts. In 2023 we served 28 individuals who needed homes for their Pleasanton Historical artifacts.

Ghost Walk: Ghost Walk is an annual event where the Museum hosts historic walking tours mixed with the haunted legends associated with many of Pleasanton's Historic Buildings. There are 9 haunted locations where groups visit and hear from an actor portraying the spirit. The actor shared the history of the building as well as the ghost stories associated with the building. Some of our stories date back to the 1890s. The event occurs over 4 nights in the month of October and serves 1036 participants annually. In addition to providing historic walking tours to the public the program provides volunteer opportunities for youth actors who fill a majority of the acting spots along the route. The program takes 35 volunteers to put on every night and therefore is a great opportunity for members of the community to get service hours.

Education and Lectures: We see every third-grade student in the Pleasanton Unified School District 1,908 students. Students first engage with a wide variety of artifacts that relate to Pleasanton History in their classrooms and then they come and visit the museum to explore our history gallery and go on a historic walking tour. We also offered specialty school tours scout tours and camp programs which served 76 students in 2023. We also offered a monthly preschool reading and craft program that attracts 20-25 children and caregivers each month. This program is also offered in the afternoon once a month for adults with developmental disabilities 10-15 participants monthly. We do an intergenerational Family Day 4 times a year during the summer months and in 2023 our family days served 1,436 participants. We also offered walking tours museum on wheels lectures an appraisal event and a discussion lecture series for adults and seniors 495 participants in 2023. Finally we provide exhibit-related programming that changes each year depending on the exhibits. We also do programs at other organizations events and festivals reaching 247 individuals. In 2023 our exhibit related programing included artist demos during our Pleasanton Art League show which served 120 participants. One of the largest educational programs done by the museum is our monthly Ed Kinney Lecture Series where presenters portray historical characters in the Chautauqua style of performance. In 2023 Ed Kinney served 3,424.