Posted By Amy Lilly on Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 2:58 PM

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Courtesy of Bennington Museum

"Beginning of February" by Kathleen Kolb

Looking for an out-of-the-ordinary holiday exhibition, or gift? The Bennington Museum’s current show, “Vermont Utopias: Imagining the Future,” features visual artworks by 25 artists that are available for purchase through an online auction.

The auction is closed-bid, meaning bids are submitted without knowledge of other bids, so you won’t know if you’ve won the piece until bidding closes on December 21. The fundraiser will split proceeds evenly between the artists and the museum.

The museum is open for in-person viewing Fridays through Mondays, 10 a.m. to 4. p.m. But for those who can't get there, or prefer to avoid human contact altogether, simply browsing the exhibition online is a pleasure.

Tags: Bennington Museum , art auction , Kathleen Kolb , Will Kasso Condry , LMNOPI , W. David Powell , Michael Oatman , Vermont Curators Group , Web Only , Image

Posted By Margaret Grayson on Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 8:56 AM

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Courtesy of Lindsay Houpt-Varner

The Rokeby Museum, a historic farm and Underground Railroad stop in Ferrisburgh, recently hired Lindsay Houpt-Varner as its first full-time director. The Rokeby, which was the home of an abolitionist Quaker family called the Robinsons from 1793 to 1961, is dedicated both to preserving the story of the Underground Railroad and exploring modern-day issues of race and social justice.

Houpt-Varner, who is 34 and has a PhD in early modern British history, comes to Vermont from Carlisle, Penn., after four years at the Cumberland County Historical Society. She studied Quakerism and had worked to preserve another site along the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. The Rokeby job, she said, “combined all of the interests that I had been gathering up over the past decades.”

Tags: Rokeby Museum , Underground Railroad , Lindsay Houpt-Varner , abolitionist , social justice , Black Lives Matter , Web Only , Image

Posted By Margaret Grayson on Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 1:00 PM

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File: Sue Higby

"Youth Triumphant" sculpture in Barre

The Vermont Arts Council and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development will distribute $5 million to arts and culture nonprofits, as part of legislation signed by Gov. Phil Scott last week to provide $96 million in emergency economic recovery grants to Vermont businesses.

Applications opened Monday on the ACCD website for all the agency’s Economic Recovery Grants. Arts and culture nonprofits are eligible for up to $50,000 in funding. The arts council will partner with ACCD to review the applications.

“It’s an incredible boost for the nonprofit cultural sector,” said Karen Mittelman, executive director of the arts council. “It’s important as a recognition of the economic stress our sector is experiencing … And we also know it will not be enough. That’s true across the board [in every sector].”

Tags: arts , culture , coronavirus , Vermont Arts Council , Vermont Humanities , Vermont Legislature , grants , Web Only , Image

Posted By Margaret Grayson on Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 3:26 PM

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Courtesy of Alex Perry

'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' at the Weston Playhouse in 2019

Ten Vermont arts and culture organizations received more than $600,000 in direct grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the federal coronavirus relief package.

The NEA awarded $50,000 grants to Kingdom County Productions, Dorset Theatre Festival, the Vermont Folklife Center, the Community Engagement Lab,  the Yellow Barn and the Weston Playhouse Theatre.

The NEH awarded $133,512 to the Vermont Historical Society, $69,263 to the University of Vermont, $29,362 to the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, $53,036 to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and an additional $97,017 to the Folklife Center.

Tags: coronavirus , Vermont Arts Council , arts and culture , theater , performing arts , NEA , NEH , Vermont Humanities , Weston Playhouse , Web Only , Image

Posted By Jordan Adams on Fri, May 1, 2020 at 3:21 PM

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File: Margaret Grayson

The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium

Four Vermont-based science museums have teamed up to create FourScienceVT, an association of likeminded organizations aiming to provide STEM education for homebound students during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The organizations are the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium, the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, the Montshire Museum of Science and the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.

Tags: Montshire Museum of Science , Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium , Vermont Institute of Natural Science , Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain , FourScienceVT , at-home learning , Web Only , Image

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 12:07 PM

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Courtesy of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History

Silhouettes of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant, circa 1805–15

Vermont’s pioneering fight to legalize civil unions in 2000 cemented the state’s place amidst the landscape of American queer and civil rights history. Within just the past several years, the Green Mountain State has emerged as home to another gay cultural landmark: a handmade silhouette considered to be the earliest image of a same-sex couple.

The small, intimate portrait of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, which dates to the early 1800s, is now on view in “Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now” at the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Tags: Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History , Sylvia Drake , Charity Bryant , National Portrait Gallery , Eva Garcelon-Hart , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Tue, May 8, 2018 at 4:57 PM

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Courtesy of Shelburne Museum

A fallen tree at Shelburne Museum

Anybody out there watching "Twin Peaks: The Return?" (It's OK, I'm still working through it, too.) Or maybe you remember that one meteorologically unsettling scene from Magnolia? How about Donnie Darko's plasmatic time-travel portal? Thanks to last Friday's not-actually-a-tornado — it was a "microburst," according to the National Weather Service — a Shelburne Museum presentation on "Sesame Street" took a turn for the absurd, Lynchian and vaguely apocalyptic.

And now this arts writer gets to experientially report on the weather, among other occurrences.

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 3:02 PM

Courtesy of the Museum of Everyday Life

The Museum of Everyday Life in Glover

Each spring since 2011, a humble barn in the Northeast Kingdom comes to life — not with buds and blooms, but with a riot of ordinary things. Under the direction of artist and veteran Bread & Puppet performer Clare Dolan, Glover's experimental Museum of Everyday Life dedicates itself every year to a quirky and spirited exhibition that sprouts from a mundane but thematically potent object.

Last year's exhibit was on bells and whistles; the year before that, mirrors. Other previous exhibits have focused on such prosaic items as pencils and dust. Dolan has just announced the theme for the coming season at MoEL: locks and keys.

Tags: Museum of Everyday Life , Clare Dolan , Glover , Image , Web Only

Posted By Pamela Polston on Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 3:43 PM

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Courtesy of Catherine Brooks

Catherine Brooks (at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan)

The Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh might not be known for festive parties, but that's exactly what took place on November 30. The occasion was to honor outgoing director Jane Williamson for 20 years of tireless devotion to the museum — not to mention achievements that earned the venue national acclaim.

A highlight of the evening was a big surprise: Staffers pulled down a temporary banner to reveal the words "Jane Williamson Gallery" installed in relief over the entrance of said gallery. The room, used for exhibitions and events, is on the first floor of the museum's newest building. The capacious contemporary venue is a far cry from Williamson's tiny, cramped former quarters in the bathroom-less historic former farmhouse.

The event's other surprise, at least to many of the assembled guests, was from Williamson herself: She announced that the new director would be Catherine Brooks, former president of the Rokeby's board of trustees.

Tags: Rokeby Museum , Rowland and Rachel Robinson , Underground Railroad , anti-slavery , Ferrisburgh , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 4:59 PM

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Courtesy of the Hyde Collection

"Liz (F. & S.7)," lithograph by Andy Warhol

The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., announced today that it has received an institutional gift valued at $11 million in funds and artworks. The donation by Schenectady architect and collector Werner Feibes, 86, will be used to open the new Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, named for Feibes and his late husband and business partner, James Schmitt.

Tags: hyde collection , werner feibes , jim schmitt , andy warhol , ellsworth kelly , louise nevelson , al jensen , Image , Web Only