Join Us for Community Day – Admission FREE!

On Saturday, May 12 from 10 am to 5 pm admission to the Bennington Museum is free for all visitors.  Join us for a day of Celebrating Bennington Collects.  Among the activities planned for you is a visit by the Vermont Arts Exchange Art Bus where you can become creative with arts and crafts. Stepping into the Museum, art and history are all around, and “creative collisions” can be found around almost every corner.

On view through June 13, Bennington Collects makes its return visit to Bennington Museum.  Collectors are as diverse as the objects they collect. While some people began collecting when they were very young, others took an interest in a particular collection upon retirement. There are so many reasons for collecting and they range from vocational interest to associations with objects that evoke memories of a particular person, place, or event. Oftentimes, it is the sheer interest of the objects themselves and the various “stories” they have to tell, that provide a glimpse into the life and personality of the collector while also telling us about the time, place, and even the people who made the objects. From comic books, matchbox cars, and video games to items one might not think of as a collection, such as antique and vintage outboard motors, microphones, model ocean liners, and Titanic memorabilia, people are constantly gathering objects and classifying them with their own personal system. Bennington Collects brings together an eclectic selection of over a dozen collections that have been compiled by residents of the greater Bennington area.

Explore the newly installed Grandma Moses Gallery with paintings like Thunderstorm, 1948, which has not been at the Museum in over two decades. On loan from a private collector, this iconic painting enhances the walls of the gallery along with Old Oaken Bucket, 1946, which has never been installed at Bennington Museum. “We are thrilled to have such iconic works here at the Museum,” states Jamie Franklin, curator at the Museum. “These are joined by other masterworks from the Museum’s collection as well as Deep Snow, 1959, and A Christmas Gift, 1946, both from the private collection of the Zarnegin family, Beverly Hills, California. Any person who admires Moses’ work and wants to get another perspective on what she created, must be sure to visit in 2018.”

In the Regional Artists Gallery located next to the Moses Gallery, the Museum presents Enthusiasms: Personal Paintings by Jessica Park. This exhibition is on view through May 28 and focuses on a lesser-known aspect of Park’s work, featuring work created during the first decade of her career as well as more recent paintings from the last decade which were created at the artist’s own initiative for herself or as gifts for family and friends. Park is best known for her depictions of architecture, though early in her career she often painted whimsical images of electronic gadgets, signs, logos, and characters from popular culture, all of which still deeply fascinate the artist to this day. These works reflect Park’s personal interests, or “enthusiasms” as she calls them, in popular culture, astronomical phenomenon, and prismatic lights and color, natural or man-made, often configured in tightly controlled grid-like structures.

Jessica Park (b. 1958) sees the world through high definition rainbow-colored glasses. A native of Williamstown, Massachusetts, she is an internationally-acclaimed artist on the autism spectrum.  Her images depict everyday objects with precise attention paid to the most mundane of details, along with scientifically accurate illustrations of rare and unusual astronomical phenomenon, seamlessly brought together into fantastical combinations. This is all done in a brilliant, carefully calculated color palette and intricate patterning that seems to almost vibrate with energy.

In the John T. Harrison, Jr. Orientation Hall paintings by Gayleen Aiken are on view where they are juxtaposed with photographs by Duane Michals in an installation titled Magic and Mystery.

And only steps away in the Museum’s Works on Paper Gallery is A Century of Caring on view through May 6. In celebration of the Southwestern Vermont Health Care’s centennial, this exhibition begins one hundred years ago when Putnam Memorial Hospital opened its doors in Bennington. It features images and objects from the early days of the Hospital up through its most current story. While the facility, practices, and technology have changed dramatically throughout the century, the commitment to delivering exceptional healthcare to the community has remained constant. This retrospective exhibition offers a glimpse of the evolution of care alongside a history of the hospital. It showcases the advancements in care practices that have elevated a humble hospital on the hill to an award-winning healthcare system operating in partnership with Dartmouth-Hitchcock and serving 75,000 residents in the surrounding communities of Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts.

Explore the permanent exhibitions including one of the newest galleries Early Vermont. Opened in the fall 2017, Early Vermont is a permanent installation with rotating textiles, and presents life in Vermont from the time when the earliest European settlers arrived in 1761 with only the bare necessities to the early 1800s when Vermont craftsmen achieved a level of sophistication rivaling Boston and New York. This gallery showcases over 85 major pieces and smaller items from the Museum’s extensive historical collection of over 30,000 objects. “We hope that these objects will serve two distinct purposes. First, to share with the public the deep, rich collection we maintain here at the Museum; Second, to tell fascinating stories of the early life in Vermont.” states Robert Wolterstorff, Executive Director of the Bennington Museum. Housed in the former Decorative Arts Gallery, this 866 square foot space includes beautiful pieces representing the sophistication achieved not long after Vermont was first settled. Visitors are also encouraged to explore Gilded Age Vermont, Bennington Modernism, Battle of Bennington along with the Church Gallery, the original Museum dating to 1855.

Watch for great events such as presentations by the Bennington Historical Society, Music at the Museum and the Living Exhibition of Tattoo Body Art on April 28 from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. (It’s FREE!)   Mark your calendars now so you don’t miss out.