Pasquale (Patsy) Santo was a talented self-taught artist who lived, worked, and painted in Bennington for most of his life. Join Bennington Museum’s director of collections and exhibitions and curator of Green Mountain Magic: Uncanny Realism in Vermont, Jamie Franklin, for a guided walking tour of some of the places Santo included in his paintings. By looking closely at Santo’s paintings, created from the early 1940s through the early 1970s, and comparing them to the sites they depict, you will see aspects of Bennington’s built environment that have been lost, and others that have remained largely untouched over the last 50 to 80+ years. Join us for a walk down memory lane, guided by one of Bennington’s most beloved artists.

Tickets are $15/person for Bennington Museum members, $22 for Not-Yet-Members, and can be purchase using the links below.

Pasquale “Patsy” Santo (1893-1975) was catapulted into the national spotlight in the late 1930s. A native of Italy, Santo made his way to Bennington by 1917, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Here, he worked at the Bennington Brush Company, EZ Waist Co., the Holden Leonard Co. and as a house and decorative painter. In 1937 he won first prize for a painting at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland. His work at the fair was seen by Walt Kuhn, an artist who was instrumental in introducing modernism to the American public. Kuhn helped Santo navigate his way through the complexities of the New York art world, where he had a number of successful exhibitions, from 1939 through the 1950s, including MoMA’s 1943 American Realists and Magical Realists. The latter was an inspiration for Bennington Museum’s 2025 exhibition, Green Mountain Magic: Uncanny Realism in Vermont.

Santo, who lived in a house on Dewey Street, did not own a car, and most of his paintings depict locations in and around Bennington.