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Bennington Museum, Bennington VT | |
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The collection is dominated by Revolutionary and Early American history. Paintings, glass items (molded, blown, and pressed), American-made furniture and carvings, arms, toys, and costumes are all represented. But the greatest treasures are perhaps the simplest: the paintings of Grandma Moses. |
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Located on West Main Street (MA Route 9) just downhill from Old Bennington, the Bennington Battle Monument and the Grave of Robert Frost, the museum has some exceptional exhibits. The Bennington pottery, for instance, is more like china with its gold or colored trim; it was made here for wealthy customers for over 100 years. Of the paintings, the most fascinating are the ones in the Grandma Moses collection. Anna Mary Moses (1860-1961) was a farm girl in nearby New York State, and later as a farmer's wife she did all the heavy, hard work that life on a farm demands, bore 10 children (of whom five lived beyond infancy), yet still found time to paint. After she was 70 years old and could no longer keep up with the heavy farm work, her paintings took on such a charming and primitive character, and such spirit, that one of her paintings now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many others are here in the Bennington Museum. At the age of 100 she was still at work, and she died at 101. You can look back into what life was like for her in the exhibit called "And Life Is What You Make It" in the Grandma Moses Schoolhouse Museum, also in the Bennington Museum. What to See & Do in Bennington Bennington Tourist Information
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