“I was drawn to working on Beyond Red Barns as a means of gaining hands-on experience and learning what really goes into the curation of exhibitions…seeing what roles the Fleming’s staff played in the creation of the exhibition helped me narrow my focus on what area of museum work I would like to pursue (collections I am looking at you)!,” said Lee LeMay ’25, the Fleming Museum of Art’s 2025 Summer Exhibition Assistant.

Beyond Red Barns: Visions of Gathering and Community by Northern Vermont Artists is a juried exhibition highlighting works which underscore our shared belief in the power of art to bring people together and nurture community. Once the call for submissions went out, Lee assisted our Exhibitions team in assessing the works, communicating with artists, and working with the team to finalize layout. Beyond Red Barns is on view through May 16th, 2026. 

Q: What made you want to work on Beyond Red Barns? 

A: I was drawn to working on Beyond Red Barns as a means of gaining hands-on experience and learning what really goes into the curation of exhibitions…seeing what roles the Fleming’s staff played in the creation of the exhibition helped me narrow my focus on what area of museum work I would like to pursue (collections I am looking at you)!

Q:  What was the framework for deciding which paintings were placed in the beyond red barns exhibit (why were those specific paintings picked?) 

A: In order to decide which paintings to include in Beyond Red Barns, I worked with Kristan Hanson [former Curator of Collections and Exhibitions] and Margaret Tamulonis [Manager of Collections and Exhibitions], to create a selection rubric. We decided to choose works based on their visual strength, pertinence to the themes of the exhibition, and the Fleming's overarching theme of Art for Everyone, as well as their sense of place. It was important that the works selected hit each of these marks so that we could build a cohesive show in which hopefully everyone who came to see it would find a representation of community and gathering that they identified with.

Q: As an exhibitions intern, was there anything about working behind the scenes of a museum that surprised you? 

A: There were more moving parts than I initially expected going into the project, but getting to work closely with the team helped me to understand the process of putting together an exhibition and how everything ultimately fits together. It is also one thing to see photos of the works that will be included in an exhibition and another thing to see how they interact with each other and the space in real life. Even if you have the dimensions of the pieces and you see them in a mock-up beforehand, you might realize that you need to adjust the layout once you see it in person. Working on a project like this where we had a lot of control over how we wanted to display the pieces made me realize that there is actually a lot of creativity that goes into physically putting together an exhibition, and I thought that was really neat!

Sam Hansen, is a sophomore English major at the University of Vermont. She is a 2026 Content and Communications Assistant at the Fleming Museum of Art, avid skier, and chicken pot pie enthusiast.