Collections Manager Katie Grant with a statue of Echo sculpted by Larkin Mead at the new Research and Exhibition Gallery at the Vermont History Center in Barre on Wednesday, September 25. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
When a new interactive storage and gallery space opens at the Vermont History Center, it will be the result of a project decades in the making.
The Research and Exhibition Gallery, opening to the public on Tuesday, will bring thousands of items in the center’s collection out of traditional storage space and put them on display in an “open storage” format for visitors to explore.
The open gallery is different from a traditional museum exhibit, where items might be descriptively explained on printed labels. Instead of framing a few items with contextual information, visitors are encouraged to make those connections between objects themselves, Amanda Gustin, the Vermont Historical Society’s director of collections and access, said.
Visitors can scan QR codes next to the displays that link to more information through the center’s digital catalog.
The gallery’s first installation will reflect four themes outlined by the American Association of State and Local History to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The four themes — “The American Experiment,” “Unfinished Revolutions,” “Power of Place” and “We the People” — will be explored through the lens of Vermont and Vermonters’ history.
“When you walk into the space, it is first and foremost a storage gallery,” collections manager Katie Grant said. “You can choose to explore the themes. You can choose just to simply look at the things in front of you.”
That orientation and format is “in step with today’s museum practices: increasing accessibility of collections and objects to allow visitors and scholars to view them,” the Vermont Historical Society said in a blog post called “Changing Collections.”
The new Research and Exhibition Gallery at the Vermont History Center in Barre on Wednesday, September 25,. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
The gallery has shelves with protective glass doors and more than 75 drawers, which visitors can open.
“The interactive part, I think, is something that people are really enjoying,” Grant said.
Items that may be 100 years apart in age are placed next to each other to allow visitors to come to their own conclusions about the themes that tie them together, such as the progress of civil rights in Vermont, another blog post from the Vermont Historical Society said. Visitors are invited to answer a question — “In what ways can we connect with lives lived at the very beginning of the state of Vermont and in the centuries since?” — for themselves, the post said.
“The idea that you can open a drawer and not really know what’s in there, and then all of a sudden it’s a drawer full of political buttons, or a drawer with several ski bibs worn by Vermonters at the Olympics during several different decades, like that’s a really fun thing for people to be able to explore and interact with,” Grant said.
The center has held small previews of the gallery so far, and the response has been positive.
The new Research and Exhibition Gallery at the Vermont History Center in Barre on Wednesday, September 25. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
“Watching people open up a drawer and then go, ‘oh, cool!’” Gustin said. “You don’t know what to expect when you open a drawer.”
One drawer, Gustin said, is filled with 100 years of restaurant menus. Visitors can open it up and see everything from an old menu for a train station in White River Junction to modern restaurants that are still around today.
Menus are the kind of thing we see all the time, but seeing them collected together makes you realize that you too are living and making history every day, Gustin said.
Ideas for the “open storage” space are as old as the center itself.
After a 1992 flood in Montpelier forced the Vermont Historical Society to relocate its headquarters, the society bought the Spaulding school in Barre in 1995, for just $1. The building was renovated and updated into a museum and library facility, which opened in 2002, and for years, the open storage gallery space was used to house exhibits.
“There was a dream of doing something like this,” Gustin said. Open storage was always part of the plan.
With the help of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Vermont Historical Society secured federal funding to build out the gallery space. New shelving, drawers, cabinets and lighting fixtures were installed in 2022 and 2023.
The new Research and Exhibition Gallery at the Vermont History Center in Barre on Wednesday, September 25. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
“That gives it the feel of open storage,” Gustin said. “Really invites people to explore”
The Vermont Historical Society has applied for additional funding to support teacher workshops and outreach to community groups and college history departments, the organization’s blog post said.
“We’re looking forward to having people have better access to these objects and the materials that usually sit in storage, and I’m so excited that we have a chance to really put them on display,” Grant said. “We’ve gotten some really wonderful responses so far for things that people didn’t realize were part of Vermont’s story.”
“Vermont history has something for everyone. And it’s something everyone can feel a connection to,” Gustin said.
The Vermont History Center’s Research and Exhibition Gallery will open to the public on Oct. 1 at 4 p.m.
Read the story on VTDigger here: The Vermont History Center’s new gallery opens up its collection for exploration .