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Bennington Museum Marks Year Filled with Acquisitions
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
11:57AM / Thursday, July 23, 2015
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'Horse drawn fire engine at the W.H. Bradford Hook and Ladder 1, Bennington, Vermont,' one of more than a thousand taken by local photographer Robert L. Weichert.

Jules Olitski, 'Wildcatter,' 1963. Collection of Bennington Museum, gift of Kristina Olitski.

Bennington Museum curator Jamie Franklin discusses the collection with Executive Director Robert Wolterstorff, right.


Grandma Moses' painting of the Battle of Bennington includes its future memorialization with the tower in the top right corner. The anachronism led the DAR to reject the painting, which now resides at the Bennington Museum.
BENNINGTON, Vt. — The Bennington Museum offers some things old, some things new and, thanks to the considerable generosity of donors over the last year, a great many more things not borrowed.
 
The museum held a celebration on Tuesday evening to recognize the benefactors who have added a record-setting number of artifacts and artworks to its permanent collection over the last 12 months.
 
"This is something we've never done before because this has been a remarkable year for acquisitions," Executive Director Robert Wolterstorff told the crowd gathered for the after-hours event.
 
"I rely on [curator Jamie Franklin's] memory for this, and he tells me this was the most remarkable year for acquisitions in a decade."
 
The gifts run the artistic spectrum, from a 4-foot tall sculpture by a 19th-century Vermont Civil War veteran to a painting by 1960s Bennington Modernist luminary Jules Olitski to an oil painting by world renown folk artist Grandma Moses.
 
"We're known for our collection of Grandma Moses works with over 40 paintings," Wolterstorff said. "Yet that collection can always been improved."
 
The Main Street venue has the world's largest public collection of works by Anna Mary Robertson Moses, who was born in the Washington County, N.Y., town of Greenwich and died just across the border from Vermont in Hoosick Falls.
 
Carol and Arnold Haynes recently added to that collection with their donation of "The Battle of Bennington," a 1953 Grandma Moses work that stands out from the rest of her paintings for a couple of different reasons.
 
For one thing, it is one of her largest works at just more than 30 inches wide.
 
For another, "It was commissioned by the Daughters of the Revolution," Franklin explained. "She didn't usually work on commission."
 
The DAR wanted an accurate depiction of the Revolutionary War battle — named for Bennington but fought in New York. And Grandma Moses obliged by doing research, some of which the museum believes was done in its very building, Franklin said.
 
"But then when she presented it to the DAR, they didn't want it," Franklin said. "Because she included the Battle Monument here in the upper right. And of course, the the Battle Monument wasn't built until 100 years after the battle."
 
Two years later, Grandma Moses told Edward R. Murrow in an interview for CBS News that she included the monument, "because it looked good."
 
"And it's the idea that she was an artist," Franklin said. "She didn't want to be burdened by historical fact. Even if she wanted to get it right, she also wanted to create a picture that worked and functioned as a picture."
 
"The Battle of Bennington," which is currently on display at the museum, is just one recent Grandma Moses acquisition. Another is a much smaller, untitled depiction of the artist's New York home that she gave to then-7-year-old Diana Korzenik in 1948.
 
Korzenik, who grew up to be an art historian, donated the painting to the Bennington Museum and is writing an essay for the catalog of a Moses show the museum is co-organizing with the Burlington-area Shelburne Museum for next summer.
 
The work, which Franklin calls "Untitled (House in Winter)" for identification purposes, was first publicly displayed at the Bennington Museum in its Moses Gallery.
 
"It's a small but wonderful painting," Franklin said.
 
And, like so much of the Bennington Museum's collection, it is part of the region's story.
 
That story is depicted in number of different media, including the large collection of decorative arts from Bennington Potters and photographic images of the southwestern Vermont town's past.
 
Through both gifts and purchases, the museum has recently acquired more than 1,400 glass-plate negatives from the collection of local photographer Robert L. Weichert.
 
"These were professional photographers who worked in town and documented the history of Bennington from the 1860s to the early 20th century," Franklin said. "It's going to take us many years to start to wrap our minds around [the collection]."
 
Not all of the recently acquired works are two-dimensional. Stephen Chapman Warren's "Memory Tower," a 45-inch sculpture of found objects, putty, glass and metal on wood, provides insight into the kinds of "found objects" the 19th-century Vermonter found to be significant.
 
"This is the most monumental and ambitious work of memory ware that I'm aware of," Franklin said. "It was a way for Warren to survey the memories and associations of his life. I like to also look at it as metaphorical — as an observation tower."
 
Recent visitors to the Bennington Museum are familiar with its Bennington Modernist gallery, which celebrates the 1950s and '60s avant garde painters and sculptors with ties to the town and Bennington College.
 
Most of the works in the gallery are on loan, including some from the college itself. But a prominent exception now is Jules Olitzki's "Wildcatter," a 1963 acrylic on canvas donated to the museum by his daughter Kristina.
 
"We're beginning to develop the [Bennington Modernism] collection to where we hope it will be an anchor point for the museum going forward," Franklin said.
 
And, like the Grandma Moses collection, the modernist works maintain the Bennington Museum's connection to place.
 
"In everything we do, we are working to fulfill our mission to connect visitors to the region's diverse arts, rich history, and deep culture of innovation," Wolterstorff said. "Gifts to the collection like these enhance our ability to do that. They transform not only the museum, but also our visitors and the community."
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