#113 Bennington, VT 6-24-09 Grandma Moses

On Wednesday, we drove to Vermont to go to the Museum that houses some of the Grandma Moses displays. But------Wednesday is the day the museum is closed!!! So I’ve down loaded some information and some pictures because it seems like the younger generation (my daughter, Laurie for instance) doesn’t know about her art. The information below is from Wikipedia.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist. She is most often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age.

Moses began painting in her seventies after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis. Louis J. Caldor, a collector, discovered her paintings in a Hoosick Falls, New York drugstore window in 1938. In 1939, an art dealer, Otto Kallir, exhibited some of her work in his Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York. This brought her to the attention of collectors all over the world, and her paintings became highly sought after. She went on to exhibit her work throughout Europe and in Japan, where her work was particularly well received. She continued her prolific output of paintings, the demand for which never diminished during her lifetime. Grandma Moses painted mostly scenes of rural life. Some of her many paintings were used on the covers of Hallmark cards.

The pictures above are a sample of some of the type of paintings that she did.

Although we didn’t get to see her work and story in the museum we did tour the town and had a good time.

As some kind of fund raiser the town has put painted moose all over. I will put some of the pictures we took of the moose in an album. They were amazing.

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Bennington, VT isn’t just about Grandma Moses and Moose. They have the oldest church in VT.

There is a monument to the battle of Bennington. Of course if you want to climb up to the top and see the view—you have to pay. We didn’t do that!

They have covered bridges, but we only made it through one. Below the bridge was a wonderful New England sight. Two men fishing!

Our favorite Moose was right in front of an English Pub—run by John straight from England. We had “fish and chips,” and Frank had a good English Beer!

How do you like the gold moose? I thought he/she was really neat!

We had a very full and fun day in Vermont even though the museum was closed!