Bennington Museum features new exhibits, student art show
The annual student art show includes students in preschool through high school.
The Bennington Museum has opened for the season. Patrons are invited to explore what’s new, including a student art show and the folk and craft gallery. The museum is also pleased to announce that the Battle Gallery now features a newly available audio tour, offering visitors a fresh way to experience this important part of our regional history.
The student art show is now open and will run through Sunday, May 17. It includes artwork by students in preschool through high school. Grouped by grade, the work demonstrates how art teachers move students through the basic elements of art to more complex principles of design, use famous artworks and works from an array of cultures and time periods, and introduce students to a variety of media and materials.
The folk and craft gallery is directly adjacent to the Grandma Moses gallery and will build upon the themes of American art specific to Vermont, western Massachusetts, and eastern upstate New York, as well as “outsider” artists, i.e., artists who were not formally trained, not typically considered artists or whose works exist outside traditional formats. The exhibit will feature a broad range of Americans, from schoolgirls and housewives to stone quarry workers and eccentric farmers, as well as creative people living and working in this region today. Some pieces are the work of people struggling with addiction or physical or mental disabilities, and many were made by people who did not necessarily see themselves as artists, but who found meaning in creating beautiful objects using the tools available at hand.
The display in the battle gallery, located in the lobby of the museum, will be open through the end of the year. It commemorates the Battle of Bennington, fought on August 16, 1777, which has come to be known as a turning point in the American Revolution and an event that defines the town to many in the popular imagination. This reinstallation of objects and archival materials from the museum’s permanent collection, the first in 25 years, is centered around the museum’s WPA-era mural by Leroy Williams that tells the complex stories of the diverse participants and lives that were touched by the battle. From Joseph and Sarah Rudd’s firsthand accounts of the battle, including taking Loyalist neighbors as prisoners and fleeing to Williamstown on horseback with four children, to a portrait of Lieutenant Jonathan Holton, depicting the scars received from being shot in the face by a musket ball, this exhibition will bring visitors up close and personal with the people who lived through this historic event.
Admission is $17 for adults, $15 for seniors (62+), active/retired military, and students 18 and over, and free for youth aged 17 and under, museum members, NARM members, and SNAP card holders and families. Museum passes, allowing free entry, can be taken out from local libraries.
The museum is open daily except Wednesdays, 10 am to 4 pm, and is open until 7 pm on Fridays in the summer. For more information go to benningtonmuseum.org or call (802) 447-1571.
