On Point: Needlework from the Garthwaite Family Collection emphasizes extraordinary examples of schoolgirl artworks made in Vermont, ranging from samplers, silk-on-silk embroideries, and sewing boxes to memorials, family registers, theorem paintings, and more. The exhibition features highlights from the Garthwaite Family’s collection of more than 100 Vermont schoolgirl artworks, a promised gift to Shelburne Museum, alongside select textiles and related ephemera from Shelburne Museum’s permanent collection.
These small but magnificent artworks emphasize emotion, place, acts of making, and more. Many of the objects invite exploration of materials, like the use of unusually colored background cloth, home-grown and hand-woven linen from local flax fields, or costly, imported silk threads. Others present questions about where young women in Vermont were attending school, who was teaching them, and how the artworks they created continued to be displayed in homes for generations. Special emphasis is placed on new research into women’s education in the state and the Connecticut River Valley at large.
In raising the larger issues of women’s education in the 19th century with a focus on Vermont, this exhibition represents an important contribution to emerging scholarship on schoolgirl artwork.
The Dana-Spencer Textile Galleries at Hat and Fragrance