SIDEBAR: Long a draw: Revitalizing the arts in Bennington County
Long a draw
Revitalizing the arts in Bennington County
Bennington and Dorset in Southern Vermont have long been a draw for artists who found inspiration in Vermont rural beauty and simple country lifestyle. As early as the 1870s, creative individuals and their families began to drive north during the summer months when travel was easiest. Answering the call for local cultural fare, by the end of the 1920s, the Dorset Players and the Dorset Painters had had their first shows and exhibits.
Today, both groups still exist, though they have morphed into the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester, and the Dorset Theater Festival in Dorset.
Since 1992, Bennington has been home to the Vermont Arts Exchange at the Sage Street Mill, a reclaimed and refurbished mill building that manufactured clothing accessories, as well as buttons, furniture and mirrors. Founding Artistic Director Matthew Perry, working from his own studio to start, wanted a place where artists could find affordable living and working space, a place to exhibit their finished works, and a place in which the community, especially the special needs community, could come to learn by offering artist-taught workshops.
He also wanted the community to take a different view of the empty mills that dot the landscape of Vermont. “The arts served as a catalyst to convert a derelict property into a working community asset,” Perry said.
That same year, the Bennington Center for the Arts was opened by two philanthropists, Bruce Laumeister and Elizabeth Small. The space included a theater and two gallery spaces. During their travels, the couple had collected art and artifacts that included paintings and bronzes of and by Native Americans, kachinas, pots and jewelry, as well as rugs, which are part of the Center’s permanent collection. Today, seven galleries exhibit American wildlife art, works by Eric Sloane, and images of New England, as well as a permanent wind sculpture display visible from the road.
