where natural history meets art
What happens when you mix art, playfulness, and insights from birds? Creativity influenced by feather color and pattern, frills and function! From bower birds to city pigeons, feathers come in thousands of sizes and colors, fantastic shapes, in different seasons, and for many reasons. Which of these emerge in your art? We want to know!
Continue reading “Call to Artists: Fine Feathers”
“The Gift of Art” is our off-season art exhibit. This changing collection displays varied works. Most are visual works, but we love art in all its forms. Some pieces are donations from previous shows, others may be be selections from our gift shop. What’s present in March may be quite different from what we share in November…
Explore previous themes, find a gift for someone, and see how art can weave together myriad media, styles, and visions.
Open when the Museum is : From Nov 1 – April 30, that’s by appointment and for special events.
2021: Expanding Voices: perspectives on birding
2020: Borders: illusions that constrain us
2019: Pollinate This!
2018: Common Grounds
2017: B1rding by the Numb3rs
2016: In Layers: the art of the egg
2015: Birds of a Fiber
2014: Perilous Passages
Our 2021 art show, Expanding Voices, explores and reflects the past year. Visual arts, poetry, 3D, and prose pieces capture the variety of solitudes, connections, race issues, changes and changelessness, new skills, and understandings we experienced in 2020.
Forty artists, photographers, writers, and poets had their work selected for this year’s show. They range from under 10 to over 80 and speak from their varied experiences of birding, the pandemic, faith, and social issues.
Visitors are invited to explore the visual and written art at their own pace, to be inspired, to ask questions, and to browse through the book of artists’ statements.
Show runs through October • Included with Museum admission
Many of the originals are for sale, and several artists have prints, cards, and other items available in our gift shop.
Continue reading “Expanding Voices: perspectives on birding | 2021 community art show”
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
The year 2020 asked a lot of us—and taught us even more. As our habitual systems hit rock bottom under the weight of the pandemic, economic hardship, and social injustice, voices rose, and long-time institutions were loudly questioned. New ways of experiencing and perceiving our world opened our minds to new comprehension. How could our art, our creativity, our practices remain unaffected? Our perspectives inevitably changed.
We are a museum about and for birds and conservation. We are part of a community of birders, artists, conservationists, and learners. Your experience and perspective may be unseen or unknown to someone else, even in the same community. For 2021, we’d like to hear and share your artistic voice.
What perspectives exist for birds, birding, and conservation, and the possibilities these offer? We seek works that explore many viewpoints for our 2021 art exhibit, Expanding Voices: perspectives on birding. Continue reading “Call to Artists: Expanding Voices”
Borders: illusions than constrain us is our 2020 art show, where we invite creators and viewers to ask (and even answer) “What do borders mean for birds and which of these are constructs of our imagination?”
Thirty-six artists, photographers, and poets had their work selected for this year’s show. Creators include beginners and established professionals of all ages. Visitors are invited to explore the visual and written art at their own pace, to be inspired, to ask questions, and to browse through the book of artists’ statements.
Show is open through October • Included with Museum admission
Some originals are for sale, and some artists have prints, cards, and other items for sale in our gift shop as well.
Continue reading “Borders: illusions that constrain us | 2020 community art show”
As you likely know, the Museum had to remain closed due to Covid-19. This was the first spring in 32 years where we didn’t open our doors on May 1. This was the first time since we started Early Birder Morning Walks (more than a decade ago!) that we couldn’t gather for to walk and watch spring migration together.
We have missed you! Although we were saddened to hear of people who were ill or lost their lives; we also are hugely grateful that, by all of us working together, we kept the numbers lower than they could have been. As the number of Vermont cases continues to be encouragingly small, the state is allowing some businesses to open (with restrictions in place).
We are happy to tell you that the Museum opened on Wednesday, June 3! Continue reading “Open for 2020, finally”
![Borders: illusions that constrain us [a call to artists]](https://birdsofvermont.org/wpsite2017/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/paintbrushes-banner.jpg)
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
What borders do birds encounter? Our maps do not typically reflect the territories they perceive, the ranges they travel, or the barriers they comes across. How do birds’ boundaries connect to human borders? To those of other species? Edges of things—physically, spatially, temporally— raise questions, not least of which is “Is it really there?”
We ponder this, wondering, how do and will these encounters and connections alter us, birds, and the borders themselves?
We seek works that share visions of birds, borders, and boundaries, now and into the future, for our 2020 art exhibit, Borders.
Pollinate This! is our art show asking and sometimes answering “How can art explore, examine, and express pollination—metaphorically and otherwise?”
Thirty-four artists and photographers had their work selected for this year’s show. Creators range in age from child to senior, with experience from just starting to established professional. The works are displayed in thematically-linked groupings, and visitors are invited to explore at their own pace, to be inspired, to engage with the images, and to browse through the book of artists’ statements.
Show is open from May 1 to October 31, 2019 • Included with Museum admission