Shelburne Museum presents On Point: Needlework from the Garthwaite Family Collection, a richly detailed exhibition exploring the artistry, education, and lived experiences of young women in 19th-century Vermont. On view in The Dana-Spencer Galleries at Hat & Fragrance from May 9 through October 25, the exhibition brings together exceptional examples of schoolgirl needlework and related decorative arts, offering new insight into a deeply personal and historically significant creative tradition.
 
Drawn from a major 2026 gift of more than 100 Vermont schoolgirl needleworks from the Garthwaite Family Collection, the exhibition features a carefully selected group of objects alongside complementary textiles from the museum’s permanent holdings. Together, these works illuminate a vibrant material culture shaped by education, community, and the expressive possibilities of needle and thread.
 
The exhibition includes a wide range of forms, from intricately stitched samplers and silk embroideries to memorial pieces, family registers, and decorative objects. While modest in scale, these works reveal remarkable technical skill and emotional depth, often reflecting themes of home, loss, identity, and aspiration. Many were created by girls in structured learning environments, where needlework functioned as both an educational tool and a means of cultivating discipline, refinement, and artistic expression.
 
“These works are extraordinary not only for their beauty and precision, but for what they reveal about the lives of the young women who made them,” said Katie Wood Kirchhoff, Shelburne Museum’s Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen Curator of American Decorative Arts. “They speak to education, family, and community, while also reflecting moments of personal expression and creativity that have endured for generations.”
 
On Point also highlights the materials and techniques that defined this tradition. Visitors will encounter examples made with handwoven linen, naturally dyed fibers, and fine silk thread, materials that speak to both the resourcefulness of rural households and the broader networks of trade and craft. The exhibition underscores how these objects were not only exercises in skill but also enduring family heirlooms, carefully preserved and displayed across generations.

In addition to stitched works, the exhibition expands the definition of schoolgirl art to include related forms such as decorated sewing boxes, painted textiles, and ornamental compositions. These objects provide a broader context for understanding the creative expectations placed on young women and the ways in which they expressed personal and cultural identity through making.
 
Grounded in new research on women’s education in Vermont and the Connecticut River Valley, On Point contributes to emerging scholarship that reexamines the role of schoolgirl needlework in American art history. By focusing on Vermont-made objects, the exhibition offers a regionally specific perspective that deepens understanding of both local traditions and national narratives.
 
Click here to hear a recent webinar with Curator Katie Wood Kirchhoff and Vermont Sampler Initiative’s Project Manager Ellen Thompson, who explore extraordinary examples of schoolgirl artworks made in Vermont, previewing some of the remarkable items that will be on display as part of On Point: Needlework from the Garthwaite Family Collection. 
 
Image caption: Unidentified maker, Pictorial Sampler, ca. 1815. Silk and watercolor on silk ground, 14 1/2 x 12 1/8 in. Garthwaite Family Collection. Photography by And Duback.
 
High-resolution images available HERE.
 
About Shelburne Museum
Founded in 1947 by trailblazing folk art collector Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960), Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, is the largest art and history museum in northern New England and Vermont’s foremost public resource for visual art and material culture. The Museum’s 45-acre campus is comprised of 39 buildings including the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education and Webb Gallery featuring important American paintings by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, John Singleton Copley and many more. Construction is underway for the Perry Center for Native American Art, designed in partnership with Indigenous voices and devoted to the stewardship and exhibition of the Native American art in the museum’s care, scheduled to open in 2027. For more information, please visit shelburnemuseum.org.   
                                                                            
For media inquiries, please contact: 
Leslie Wright
Director of Marketing and Communications
Shelburne Museum
lwright@shelburnemuseum.org
802-985-0880
 
Kristen Levesque
Kristen Levesque Public Relations
kristen@kristenlevesquepr.com
207-329-3090