Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 1 INSIDE Volume 40 | Number 1 Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 2 Board of From the Director Trustees Officers Edie Sawitsky, Chair Constance F. West, Vice Chair James J. Williams, Treasurer Marianne Peters, Secretary Trustees Carolyn Blitz Ray Bolton Brian Campion Jon E. Goodrich Power Up Your Membership! Orion Howard Maru León This is an exciting time for Bennington Museum. Great things are happening and Erin McKenny the Museum is growing—both in its capacity, and in its aspirations. As a Museum Laraine Naaktgeboren Member, you are part of this! Katie Hazlett Schmidt I’m thrilled to announce a new level of Bennington Museum membership: the Marc Simpson Monument Society. Members of this newly-formed group enjoy unique access to Donald Trachte the Museum, including exclusive tours hosted by the Curator or Director, and invitations to special Monument Society events and parties. Anne Bugbee, Bennington Historical Society Why should you join? Ex-Officio • You’ll make lifetime connections, meeting people who share an interest in art, culture, and community. Robert Wolterstorff, • You’ll have amazing experiences, like the exclusive tour of MASS MoCA —Executive Director last October, when Monument Society Members were welcomed by MASS MoCA director Joe Thompson. • You’ll enjoy all the benefits of membership, including free access to the Museum and to more than 1,000 other museums in North America. On cover (as detail), above, and on page 4 Emily Mason (b. 1932) Witch Hunt, 1968 Oil on paper, 14 5/8 x 11 7/8 inches Collection of the Artist Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, NY, and LewAllen Galleries, NM © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2 Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 3 What exciting events are in store this year for Please become a member of the Monument Society Monument Society Members? with your annual membership of $1,200, and help us • Cocktails and dinner at the home of a trustee, June 14. reach our goal of 30 members by the end of June. Your • Private tour and cocktails at the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, participation gives important financial support to the Vermont, in October, date TBD. Museum, and increases the depth and vitality of our community. Perhaps the most important reason to become a Monument Society Member: by joining, you’re saying you want to be a leader in helping to create and sustain Bennington’s cultural community. You believe it’s important to support the Museum as one of Bennington’s essential insti- tutions, critical to the cultural, economic, and creative life of the region. You want to make a difference—to your Museum, and to the community! —Robert 3 Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 4 ExhibiTiOnS Summer at bennington Museum is summer Bennington Museum is bringing you art, history, and innovation as never before. In addition to the permanent exhibitions found in many of the fourteen galleries, we are exploring a tumultuous time that changed the nation and helped define Vermont as we know it today, both culturally and socially. The Works on Paper gallery comes ALIVE with exquisitely colorful paintings by Emily Mason in her exhibition titled Color | Gesture: Early Works by Emily Mason. Color Fields: 1960s Bennington Modernism June 29 – December 30 During the 1960s, Bennington College served as a rural epicenter for a group of artists who were pushing the possibilities of abstraction in pared-down, color-based works that have come to be known collectively as Color Field. is exhibition looks at this critical moment when artists connected to Bennington led the way in American art, and expands our understanding of the variety of formal, material, and conceptual approaches that artists took to Color Field painting and related color-based sculpture. Seen in conjunction with Fields of Change: 1960s Vermont, the exhibition situates these artists and their work in the context of the dramatic Paul Feeley (1910-1966), Untitled (Green Eye), 1962. Oil based enamel on canvas, 48 x 6o in. Private Collection cultural and social changes that came to define Vermont during this period, especially the Counterculture and Back-to-the-Land move- ments, with their emphasis on radical experimentation and close relationship to Vermont's storied landscape. Artists on view will include Pat Adams, Anthony Caro, Paul Feeley, Helen Frankenthaler, Ruth Ann Fredenthal, Patricia Johanson, Vincent Longo, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski. Color | Gesture: Early Works by Emily Mason May 11 – September 8 Emily Mason is one of the great abstract painters. For more than sixty years she has been creating lyrical paintings on canvas and paper where strong gestural marks contrast with delicate washes of color and spontaneous splashes and drips. Mason attended Bennington College from 1950 to 1952 before immersing herself in the vibrant art scene of 1950s New York City. Color |Gesture: Early Works by Emily Mason traces the development of the artist’s distinctive style of abstraction through paintings on paper created in the 1950s and 1960s, at once brilliant in color, bold in conception, and intimate in scale. 4 Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 5 ALSO On ExhibiT Closing May 26 Vermont Folk Sculpture: A Recent Acquisition Small yet captivating, this installation highlights the recent acquisition of a fence post sculpture by Russell Risley (1842- 1927). is work is accompanied by other iconic examples of sculpture created by individuals from Vermont who worked in popular vernacular traditions. Closing May 27 e Mind's Eye: Paintings, Sculpture, and Books by Paul Katz is exhibition features a variety of works, including paint- ings, sculpture and drawing books, mainly from Katz's Prelude and Interlock series. e Preludes are paintings and everyday found objects with words painted on them as if on intertwined ribbons. e words are all taken from William Wordsworth's poem “Prelude.” rough June 11 Up Home: Hand-Colored Photographs by Susanne and Neil Rappaport Vietnam Moratorium Rally, Bennington, VT, 1969 (detail). Photograph by Greg Guma Minnie Griswold died in 1952, at which time her sons locked up their mother’s house in Pawlet, Vermont and left her Fields of Change: 1960s Vermont belongings in place, relatively untouched and unaltered. irty years later, Pawlet documentarians Susanne and Neil June 29 – November 3 Rappaport were invited by Charlie, one of Minnie’s sons, now 85 years old, into the home. ey went on to produce a collection of hand-colored photographs of Minnie’s home. Bennington Museum’s major 2019 exhibition Fields of Change: is exhibition brings together the best in documentary work 1960s Vermont explores a complex time that in many ways has and artistic expression. come to define Vermont as we know it today more than any other historic moment. e 1960s were a decade filled with June 1 – September 15 turmoil and revolutionary change in America, and Vermont Village Enlightenment: was no different. is was a period of dramatic, paradigmatic Print Culture in Rural Vermont 1810-1860 shifts in the social, political, and cultural identity of the Green Featured in this exhibition are engravings, maps, and books Mountains: the construction of an interstate highway system published and/or illustrated by a small circle of artisans, brought flatlanders into Vermont in droves; the state’s politics entrepreneurs, and printmaker/publishers from Windsor shifted from a 100+ year Republican reign to one of more County, Vermont. Led by James Wilson, the first globe balance, alternating between Republican and Democratic maker in America, and Isaac Eddy, who established a print representation, and an attendant openness to progressive shop in the tiny hamlet of Greenbush around 1810, the “Greenbush Group” included Oliver Tarbell Eddy, Ebenezer ideologies began to take root; a group of artists in and around Hutchinson, Moody Morse Peabody, Lewis Robinson, and Bennington College led the country in their exploration of the George White. Together these artisan-entrepreneurs served possibilities of color-based abstraction (see Color Fields); and a growing interest in rural New England for printed matter the counterculture movement, including civil rights and that spread scientific, religious, and cultural knowledge. anti-war protests, attempts at educational reform, and an influx of back-to-the-landers, with their emphasis on a direct, June 8 – August 25 respectful relationship to the land, shifted the cultural land- Archaeology of the Bennington Battlefield scape of the state forever. e exhibition explores these ideas, During a professionally supervised metal detection survey at and the relationship, sometimes tense and sometimes quite Bennington Battlefield, hundreds of artifacts were recov- friendly, between traditional Vermonters and the progressive ered. is exhibition presents a selection of these items new arrivals, through photographs, archival documents, works including a variety of musket balls and cannon shot. of art, posters, fashion, hand-made craft objects, and more. for updates and additional information: benningtonmuseum.org Exhibitions made possible in part by the S. Lane Faison Jr. Exhibition Fund. 5 Museum NL 040119.qxp_Layout 1 4/23/19 4:10 PM Page 6 The Art of Acquisitions: Building a Collection by Jamie Franklin, Curator Fall Shadows, 1947 Luigi Lucioni (1900-1988) Watercolor on Paper, 13.5 x 20.25 inches Bennington Museum’s permanent collection is at the core of everything we do. Guided by our regionally focused mission, we collect art, artifacts, and archival documents that tell the story of innovation and creativity in southern Vermont and the surrounding region from the period preceding permanent settlement in the 18th century up to the present day. As the curator of our collection, I work with my colleagues and ous donors allowed us to bring an important object home.