Dave's Travel Adventures: Norman Rockwell Exhibit at Sugar Shack & Bennington Museum (Bennington, VT)

PART TWO (4 May 2015): NORMAN ROCKWELL & BENNINGTON MUSEUM

We saw a brochure for this at one of the kiosks where we were, and it sounded like a good place to check out. The name on the flyer called it the “Sugar Shack,” but it was alternately known as “Battenkill Gallery.” This was a small roadside attraction location off of 7A, just north of Arlington. Sugar Shack was a small country store with t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other touristy items, as well as things native to Vermont (like bottles of pure maple syrup). There’s also a small restaurant next door, known as Jonathon’s Table, but we didn’t stop in to eat.

This was a roadside gem because of the number of works by Norman Rockwell which are displayed here. This small gallery displays many of Rockwell’s works from his work on the Saturday Evening Post to paintings done for the Boy Scouts (which were the ones I liked the best due to my years in Scouting).

A short film details the number of years Rockwell spent in Arlington, hence the location of the gallery. This is open between April and December, and the entire exhibit can be viewed in about an hour.

Since we were in the area, my Mum had suggested stopping to the Bennington Museum. I thought about it for a moment, and then had to respond in a sheepish manner all the times I’d driven over this way in the last couple years, I’d never actual been there. I’ve been to the Bennington Battle Monument a couple times, and concluded perhaps the museum had been already closed for the day (or close to it) when I’d been there earlier. And since I’d lived not far from here for years, there really was no excuse for not having gone in the first place.

[I seem to recall back in the 1980’s when we’d make the drive over to Uncle Earl’s place in Deerfield (MA, north of Amherst, where Earl was a professor for U Mass.) for the annual Labor Day picnic, we’d drive past the museum. There’s a Friendly’s in downtown Bennington we’d stop for ice cream either on the way there or back. Going over that way on a future visit, just to get the view from the “hair-pin turn” on the Mohawk Trail (also known as Route 2), would be nice to do.]

The museum is nestled on top of a hill over-looking the city of Bennington, and right next to the graveyard which contains the grave of author Robert Frost. The two story building contains a number of items of local history as permanent exhibits, as well as some changing displays.

There were some interesting pieces of sculpture sitting out front. Mum knew there was something missing from outside of the museum, something she’d seen recently. She mentioned there used to be a catamount standing next to the sign by the road. I think I vaguely remember seeing it. Whatever the situation was, the kitty cat had slinked away.

The showpiece of the museum is the gallery of works by Grandma Moses, which captured aspects of rural life at the end of the 19^th Century. I recall seeing someone of her work before, but it was never something I thought was all that great. Art is to each their own. The style I like is different and a bit more complex, but I was still glad to see the gallery of her simplistic style. While no flash photography was allowed in the museum, this was the only area where no pictures of any kind were permitted.

For me, the most interesting exhibit was the one about the Battle of Bennington. I remember hearing the basics about the engagement (which took place in August 1777), but didn’t recall the full aspects of it. The displays were small, but very thorough, and showed tactical maps of how the battle unfolded. That made some excellent reading for a history buff like me. I chuckled at how the actual battle took place a few miles west in present day Washington County of New York State, as that was considered part of Bennington at that time. Weapons and some other artifacts of the time were also featured.

The museum was designed to have many rooms, each with its own display. Some rooms displayed works from regional artists, pottery, and artifacts from 19^th Century life (in the Church Gallery), I really enjoyed seeing the aspects of the Gilded Age (which included the 1924 Martin-Wasp Touring Car). I would’ve liked to have seen a larger display on this time period, as the post-WW1 pre-Depression Great Gatsby ear is extremely interesting because of how society was changing.

One of the changing exhibits which I thought was very informative was on alcohol in Vermont. This showed the rise of the temperance movement, the effects of Prohibition, and ultimately the lifting of the laws which made the modern craft breweries possible.

I was running low on camera battery, so I didn’t take a lot of pictures here. And I had more fun reading the note cards about the “Stages of Alcoholism” and the “Temperance Pledge,” but that’s because I have twisted humor.

This was a good way to spend the afternoon, and we were able to finish up before it closed. If I hadn’t already done it a couple times already, I would’ve gone over to the Bennington Battle Monument to soak in the view of the landscape. But there was a suggestion Mum had made, so I wanted to do that while I was here too. We went to the old church nearby to visit the grave of Robert Frost.

Inside the Bennington Museum was a picture of the interior of the museum, where instead of pews the congregation sat in cubes with the pastor on a balcony over them. That picture looked familiar, so I wondered if I’d been over here before on a Humanities field trip during my senior year of high school. It seemed like a place we would’ve gone, and now I wanted to locate my journal from that to check it.

The church was closed, so we couldn’t get in. We were able to walk behind the church, and followed the markers to our target destination. The marker had not only the names of Frost and his wife, but a number of their descendants too. There were coins all over the gravestones (which laid horizontal on the ground, instead of standing vertical), and apparently that was a way to honor him. Not sure why, but when in Rome…. I placed a quarter there.

An observation about the graveyard in general here. While Frost’s grave, and some of the newer ones, were in good condition, many of the older gravestones weren’t. I expect weather to wear things down over the decades (or, in some cases, a hundred years or so), but I sadden at the broken markers I saw. It wasn’t vandalism, but things which just broke over time. It made me wonder who, if anyone, maintains the graveyard. Do the families of the interned visit these graves, and would they pay to have the stones refurbished? Or do the people buried there no longer have family living and/or in the area, so these have simply forgotten about? I have no answers, just a topic for conversation as we drove back to New York for the evening.

For more information on the places visited or mentioned:

Sugar Shack (Battenkill Gallery): http://www.sugarshackvt.com/about-the-sugar-shack.php

Norman Rockwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell

Arlington (VT): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Vermont

Bennington Museum: http://www.benningtonmuseum.org/

Bennington Battle Monument: http://benningtonbattlemonument.com/about.html

Mohawk Trail: http://www.mohawktrail.com/

Deerfield (MA): http://www.deerfieldma.us/Pages/index

Amherst (MA): https://www.amherstma.gov/

Grandma Moses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

Battle of Bennington: http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/107bennington/107bennington.htm

Robert Frost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost