Shelburne Museum

Shelburne Museum is an art, design, and Americana museum in Shelburne, Vermont, USA. Over 150,000 works of art are on display in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and have been relocated to the museum grounds. It sits on 45 acres (18 ha) of land near Lake Champlain.The exhibition includes Impressionist paintings, folk art, quilts and textiles, decorative arts, furniture, American paintings, and a variety of 17th- to 20th-century artefacts. Shelburne houses collections of 19th- and 20th-century American folk art, quilts, decoys, and carriages. Electra Havemeyer Webb, who founded the Shelburne Museum in 1947, was a pioneering collector of American folk art. She was the daughter of Impressionist, European, and Asian art collectors Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Louisine Elder Havemeyer.

History

Electra Havemeyer Webb, one of the first people to recognise the applied and decorative arts of rural America as collectible, started the museum's collection. Webb founded the museum in 1947 after becoming an avid collector of American folk art. She took the bold step of relocating historic structures from New England and New York to Shelburne to house the museum's collections. The museum has lost money, with a reported deficit of more than $300,000 in 1994.

Collections

White Frost Effect by Claude Monet, Grainstack, 1890-91

The collection was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb, a pioneering collector of American folk art and the founder of the Shelburne Museum. Mrs. Webb discussed her ideas with other prominent early collectors,Katherine Prentis Murphy, Henry and Helen Flynnt, and Henry Francis du Pont were among those honoured (who founded the Winterthur Museum and credited Mrs. Webb with inspiring him to collect American decorative arts).

Mrs. Webb died in 1960, and the collections have grown with an emphasis on folk art and contemporary art as it relates to the collection. Artifacts reveal the craftsmanship and artistic quality of objects created and used by three generations of Americans. These objects are experienced by visitors in galleries and period rooms, as well as through interactive exhibitions and demonstrations. Artifacts from transportation, farming, and trade demonstrate America's industrial development from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.As the community's economic base shifts away from farming and small-scale production, these collections are becoming increasingly relevant to regional audiences from a variety of backgrounds.