Ongoing

Reckonings is an opportunity for the Museum’s staff and student interns to reflect on the past months of 2020 by engaging with objects from the collection. Staff members have written and signed their own labels about the artworks they’ve selected, with responses that are by turns thoughtful, vulnerable, creative, angry, sad, and hopeful—echoing the range of reactions we have all felt in these past months. Sometimes these objects take on new meanings as staff members draw inspired connections to other historic moments of disrupture. In other instances, the artworks are beacons for the kind of attention to care and racial justice that this moment demands of us. Through this process, the staff participated in the work we do with students and faculty when we bring them in conversation with the Fleming’s collection: how we use art to communicate to others what feels urgent to us.

Explore the exhibition: Reckonings: Fleming staff reflect on the collection and our current moment

Image: Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002), Margarita de Bonampak, printed 1977. Photograph on Agfa paper. Gift of Warren H. Bree in honor of Nancy A. Bree ’80 and Benjamin Aibel  1980.20.7

Ongoing

The Atlantic Ocean did not separate Britain and the colonies: it connected them. From forks to flax, the everyday objects in this exhibit showcase the deep connections of empire and the vital importance of transatlantic trade. London held a large sway upon Colonial American society. London fashions traveled across the Atlantic through newspaper articles, letters, and the cloth ordered by merchants, labeled as “superior” English and European goods for sale. Portrait artists celebrated an idealized fashionability to consumers, while English illustrators exposed poverty and imbalances of power through satire and artistic representation. These objects reveal how transatlantic exchange and the consumer revolution were daily woven into the lives of colonists.

Explore the exhibition: Across the Atlantic

Image: John Ramage (American, 1748-1802), Miniature portrait of Pres. George Washington, 1789. Oil paint on ivory. Hall Park McCullough Estate 1970.4.42

Ongoing

The New England Gallery, located on the Marble Court balcony, features paintings by renowned Vermont artists from the Fleming Museum’s collection. The Contemporary Voices of Vermont series provides an opportunity to view the work of current Vermont artists within the historical context of their predecessors. This fall’s Contemporary Voices artist is Wylie Garcia.

Wylie Garcia’s paintings embrace markers of femininity and domesticity, such as pastel color palettes, marks that evoke embroidery stitches, lace-like veils, and flowing curves. Painting is a meditative and cathartic act for Garcia, who processes her emotional state and reactions to current events through her work.

Image: Wylie Garcia (American, born 1980), Toast Can Never Be Bread Again, 2016. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist