Bennington Museum
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With 11 galleries, Grandma Moses Schoolhouse, and wonderful permanent and temporary exhibits, there is so much to explore at the Bennington Museum!
Every year the Bennington Museum takes great pride installing for the public, wonderful temporary exhibits, and this year is no exception. In addition to the permanent exhibits in the Military Gallery, Pottery and Fine Arts Galleries, Wasp Touring Car Gallery, Church Gallery, and the Grandma Moses Gallery, this year you will find the following exhibits on view:
February 2 through May 22 - "Memento Mori" The Art and Commerce of Gravestones in Bennington
March 17 through May 15 - Revealed: A Century of Women’s Underwear (Read More Below)
June 9 through October 30 Rockwell Kent’s ‘Egypt’: Shadow and Light in Vermont (Read More Below)
February 2 through May 22 - "Memento Mori" The Art and Commerce of Gravestones in Bennington
As winter envelops Vermont, with its inevitable blanket of snow, the white marble gravestones in local cemeteries begin to blend into the landscape, evoking a mysterious beauty from the past. Inside the galleries of the Bennington Museum, February 2 through May 22, learn about the artists, aesthetics, and economics involved in the creation of these poignant memorials to lives lost in the exhibition “Memento Mori”: The Art and Commerce of Gravestones in Bennington. The exhibition takes place in two phases: the first phase, opening on February 2, features photographs of gravestones taken by Daniel Farber (1906-1998), while the second phase, opening on March 10, features original gravestones, including the markers (head and foot) created to memorialize Bennington's first minister, Rev. Jedidiah Dewey, and a group of early stones from the Shaftsbury Center Cemetery, on loan from the Shaftsbury Historical Society, plus selections from an archive of manuscripts documenting the Rule family of stonecutters from Arlington during the 1820s.
The gravestones of Rev. Jedidiah Dewey (1714-1778), pictured here,were received as a gift to the Bennington Museum in the fall of 2010. After the headstone tumbled to the ground in the s
pring of 2008, Charles Dewey, a descendant of Jedidiah, and the Bennington Center Cemetery Association, decided to preserve it by a having an exact replica carved and donating the original to the museum. This exceptional act of preservation and goodwill served as the inspiration for this exhibition, that looks at the art and commerce of gravestone carving in Bennington from just before the American Revolution through the first few decades of the nineteenth century.
Gravestones, some of the richest and most beautiful material artifacts from our country's colonial and early national periods that have survived to this day, provide us with profound insights into the beliefs and aspirations of early Americans. Created as memorials to perpetuate the memory of the deceased to generations unknown, gravestones are typically carved from stone selected specifically for its ability to survive the ravages of time. In Bennington this was typically white marble, a stone indigenous to western Vermont that has been quarried locally since at least the mid-1770s. The durability of gravestones make them some of the most common artifacts, especially of a distinctly artistic nature, to survive from early America.
Bennington's earliest gravestones were carved by stonecutters from out of state, as this area had no resident carvers until the late 1770s. Rev. Dewey's stone is signed by Frederick Manning, a member of the most prolific family of gravestone carvers active in eastern Connecticut during the second half of the eighteenth century. An understanding of Bennington's first settlers provides insight into why a half-dozen stones carved by the Mannings can be found in the Bennington Center Cemetery. Bennington's earliest residents were almost exclusively religious Separatists from Massachusetts and Connecticut, who were coming to Bennington to establish their own church, independent from the established Congregationalist order. The Mannings lived and worked in Norwich, Connecticut, which was a hotbed of Separatism and home to many of Bennington's earliest settlers, including Deacon Stephen Story, whose gravestone was carved by the Manning family and will be featured, via a Farber photograph, in the exhibition. Without a well-established resident stonecutter, some of Bennington's early residents looked to connections in their old hometowns when they were in need of a gravestone.
Rounding out the exhibition are selections from an important archive of manuscripts from the Rule family, who were highly productive stonecutters and quarry owners in Arlington, Vermont, beginning in the 1810s. The archive materials document the Rule's savvy business practices and their relations with other Arlington-based carvers and quarry owners, including Moses McKee and Ethan Stone. Much of the archive consists of letters written between Henry Rule, who tended the family business in Arlington, and his brother James, who worked in central and western New York promoting his services as a stonecutter and marble dealer. These letters, written between 1825 and 1828, illustrate the Rule brothers' economic acumen, as they capitalized on an influx of people into these parts of New York after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The letters also provide insight into how their customers ordered gravestones, detailing desired size, stone quality and color, specific design motifs and either individualized or generic inscriptions.
March 17 through May 15 - Revealed: A Century of Women’s Underwear
There is a lot more to fashion than what you see on the surface. How did Victorian women create the illusion of such impossibly tiny waists? How did they maintain hoop skirts of such epic proportions on the eve of the Civil War? Why are our whites white? Revealed: A Century of Women's Underwear peeks under the skirt and looks at the number and variety of layers required by Bennington's fashionable females hundreds of years ago.
The ideal shape of the female body changed dramatically and repeatedly between 1800 and 1900. The stiff figure of the 1700s gave way to the lithe Empire style of the early 1800s which transitioned to the wide bottomed Civil War era figure to the wasp waists of the early 1900s to the slim youthful ideal of the 1920s. Of course the natural female body has remained the same over the centuries, but undergarments made these changes in fashion possible. Corsets cinched in the waist, which was further accentuated by a large skirt held out by multiple petticoats. Corsets and stays were well known for their ability to thrust up or keep down the alluring breasts (whether the breasts were up or down depends on the decade).
Underwear served other important functions. At a time when laundry was a backbreaking chore and bathing was infrequent, a chemise, or shift, protected expensive dresses from body odor and sweat. Underwear was usually made of plain white cotton or linen, which could be bleached to remove stains. Unlike the dress, the chemise was changed every day, giving some semblance of freshness to its owner.
Over the course of the nineteenth century clothing manufacturing shifted from the home to the factory, and this shift is reflected in our underwear. In 1800 shifts and stays were either made at home or by specialized artisans in the community. By 1900 corsets and union suits were manufactured in mills. Underwear companies in Bennington included H.E. Bradford, EZ Mills, Cooper Manufacturing Company, George Rockwood & Co., and others. Unlike other New England mill towns that made woven cloth, many of Bennington’s mills specialized in knit underw
ear. It is no coincidence that Charles Cooper’s machine works on East Main Street manufactured the knitting machines and needles used in the town’s factories.
The Industrial Revolution meant that Bennington’s growing middle class had disposable income for the first time. No longer forced to work in the fields, ideal Victorian women were guardians of the home and the moral compass of their families. Restrictive clothing clearly hampered physical exertion, visually asserting her status as a symbolic and decorative figure. Corsets, bustles and hoop skirts might not be comfortable, but comfort was secondary to gentile respectability.
Curated by Callie Stewart, Collections Manager of the Bennington Museum, this rarely seen, and never before exhibited hidden part of our collection includes homemade petticoats and chemise, professionally constructed corsets and crinolines, as well commercially manufactured knit union suits and undershirts from Bennington’s own underwear mills. Many of these pieces are being publicly aired for the first time ever!
June 9 through October 30 Rockwell Kent’s ‘Egypt’: Shadow and Light in Vermont
Rockwell Kent lived and worked in Arlington, Vermont between 1919 and 1925 on a property he called “Egypt”. Despite the fact that the majority of his career has been researched and well documented, his time in Vermont has been vastly overlooked by scholarly studies – until now. This groundbreaking new exhibition reflects on Rockwell Kent’s time in Southwestern Vermont. On view at Bennington Museum June 2012 through October 2012.
Bennington Museum’s major 2012 exhibition, and the accompanying publication will be the first comprehensive documentation of Kent’s life and work during his time in Southern Vermont.
Kent was captivated by the environment and inspired by nature. His work was multifaceted and multidimensional, reflecting both his dynamic character and the intensity of the environment in his art; Kent examined the human connection to the natural world through travel, writing, illustrations, prints, oil paintings, reverse glass paintings, designs for ceramics and textiles, and much more. Kent’s reputation as a professional artist and author became truly solidified during his
Southern Vermont era.
Although Kent’s time in Vermont has gone largely unnoticed by historians, his stay here was instrumental to the success of his career. The lack of proper documentation and previous acknowledgment of this era hardly negate the vitality of this period and its impact on his artistic development; in fact, it was during this period in his career that Kent established himself as one of the premier American artists of his time.
Kent relocated to Southwestern Vermont after spending six months on an isolated island off the coast of Alaska, and it was in Vermont where he transformed his Alaskan journal into the travelogue Wilderness and his sketches into a formidable group of major oil paintings. The commercial success of his Alaskan work catapulted Kent into the limelight, gaining him the attention of wealthy patrons and allowing him to provide well for his wife and five children.
Bennington Museum’s key exhibition will focus on creations from Kent’s Arlington period, such as The Trapper (The Whitney Museum of American Art), Autumn (private collection) pictured here, and Mother and Chicks (private collection) – the later have never been publicly displayed, nor published in at least the last eighty years. This exhibition will shed new light on Rockwell Kent’s life and work. Please join us in realizing this meaningful exhibit and publication.
When planning your group's trip, be sure to include the Bennington Museum and experience for yourself these great exhibits.
