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SHELBURNE, Vt. (April 17, 2025) — Shelburne Museum opens for the season with Community Day, a free event on Saturday, May 10. This special day kicks off the 2025 season with engaging activities for all ages, five exciting new exhibitions, and the chance to explore the 45-acre campus and its galleries, buildings, and gardens.
Gallery talks, live music, lawn games, and artmaking activities are just a few of the happenings that celebrate a new season at the museum.
“We look forward to welcoming the community to the museum to start the new season,” said Jason Vrooman, Stiller Family Foundation Director of Education. “Community Day offers something for every visitor. With art, activities, music, and beautiful nature to enjoy, we hope that friends old and new will make a day of exploring the museum.”
New exhibitions opening on May 10:
Sound, Art, & Ink: Higher Ground Gig Posters
Celebrates 27 years of collaboration between music venue Higher Ground, design studio Solidarity of Unbridled Labour, and printmakers from Iskra Print Collective. Together, they created gig posters that memorialize Vermont’s vibrant music scene, transforming fleeting moments into enduring works of art that evoke nostalgia and celebrate the interplay of sound, community, and design.
Dahlov Ipcar: The Possibilities of Pattern
Dahlov Ipcar, renowned for her children’s books, brought her whimsical aesthetic to textiles, creating needlepoints, hooked rugs, and soft sculptures. This exhibition celebrates Ipcar’s mastery of pattern, color, and form, offering a rare glimpse into the artist’s lesser-known but equally compelling creative pursuits.
Herd: Karen Petersen’s Bronze Horses
Bronze sculptures that reimagine the horse’s form, distilling it to its essence. Stripped of details such as manes and tails, her works capture the animal’s innate power, grace, and sensitivity. Inspired by ancient mythologies and modern aesthetics, Petersen’s creations transcend representation, evoking timeless beauty and strength.
Blueprint of a Collection: Cyanotype Photography by David Sokosh
Using the cyanotype process, Sokosh reimagines Shelburne Museum objects with striking blue tones. From traditional photographs to experimental compositions on textiles, Sokosh’s work bridges past and present, offering a contemporary interpretation of American material culture through a historic lens.
Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior
Ceramic artist Mara Superior’s work is inspired by many interests, including art history, patriotism, environmentalism, and everyday life at home. These themes come together to create an artistic style that feels both romantic and thoughtful. Each piece is like a love letter from the artist to the world, honoring tradition while expressing a vision uniquely hers.
Community Day highlights:
Create Your Own Gig Posters
Create a concert or band poster, inspired by the exhibition Sound, Art, & Ink: Higher Ground Gig Posters. With a variety of drawing materials, stamps, and stencils available, artists of all ages and skill levels can bring their visions to life.
Gallery Tour: Sound, Art, & Ink: Higher Ground Gig Posters
Curators Kory Rogers and Carolyn Bauer explore 27 years of gig posters memorializing Vermont’s vibrant music scene. See how an artistic collaboration transformed fleeting moments into enduring works of art that evoke nostalgia and celebrate the interplay of sound, community, and design.
Gallery Tour: Dahlov Ipcar: The Possibilities of Pattern
Explore the whimsical creativity of Ipcar’s needlepoints, hooked rugs, soft sculptures, and more with Curator Katie Wood-Kirchoff. This dynamic tour ventures into Ipcar’s fantastical imagination.
Blue & White Explorations
Inspired by the exhibition Blueprint of a Collection: Cyanotype Photography by David Sokosh, this open-ended art experience invites participants to experiment with the endless possibilities just blue and white can create. With support from Shelburne Museum educators, participants of all ages can play, explore, and stretch their creative muscles while exploring with collage, drawing, and pattern.
Gallery Tour: Crazy Quilts
Curious about quilts? Let Curator Katie Wood Kirchoff share knowledge, insight, and artistic and historical context about quilts on view and the museum’s renowned quilt collection.
Full Steam Ahead: Walking Tours of the Ticonderoga
The Ticonderoga arrived at Shelburne Museum 70 years ago. Celebrate with a tour with and learn about life on a 220-foot steamboat. Limited to first 20 participants.
Exploring the Colonial Revival: Prentis and Stencil Houses
Explore how the interiors of these homes, built around the turn of the 19th century, were reinterpreted in the mid-20th-century.
For more information about Community Day and upcoming events at Shelburne Museum, visit shelburnemuseum.org. Join us on May 10 to kick off the season!
High-resolution images are available for download HERE.
Image credit: The Ticonderoga arrived at Shelburne Museum 70 years ago. Celebrate with a tour of this 220-foot steamboat.
Community Day is supported by an anonymous foundation. Shelburne Museum exhibitions are supported by Donna and Marvin Schwartz. Porcelain Love Letters: The Art of Mara Superior is made possible by Merle and Barry Ginsburg. Herd: Karen Petersen’s Bronze Horses is made possible by the Oakland Foundation and Kitty Coppock.
Shelburne Museum exhibitions and programs are also made possible by the generosity of our Members and donors to the Annual Fund.
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. For more information, please visit shelburnemuseum.org.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Leslie Wright
Director of Marketing and Communications
Shelburne Museum
lwright@shelburnemuseum.org
Kristen Levesque
Kristen Levesque Public Relations
kristen@kristenlevesquepr.com
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