The Henry Sheldon Museum is embarking on an exciting journey to create a new strategic vision, and we want you to be a part of it! Your voice and ideas are essential as we envision the future of the museum and how we can better serve our community.

This year’s Annual Meeting will include a community listening session. It’s your chance to share feedback, offer suggestions, and help us grow as a resource for learning, connection, and inspiration. Whether you’re a frequent visitor, a history enthusiast, or someone who’s never been to the museum before, we want to hear from you!

Your insights will guide us as we shape our programs, exhibits, and community outreach for years to come. Together, we can ensure that the museum reflects the rich history, diverse perspectives, and vibrant culture of our community.

Light refreshments will be provided. We can’t wait to hear your ideas! To help us plan, please RSVP below.

Join the Henry Sheldon Museum and our Middlebury College Makerspace Educators for our first Cardboard Carnival in our new Makerspace! Kids (and their adults) will use their creative minds to build fun & interactive games, simply from cardboard (and a few other materials)! Build your own skee ball, ring toss, marble maze and anything else you can dream up right here at the Sheldon Museum! 

Free and Open to All. Designed for kids ages 6+ up! Adult supervision required.

The evening will open with a conversation between Megan Mayhew Bergman, Cindy Hill, Caleb Kenna and Jon Mingle, moderated by writer and educator Liza Cochran, about the role of the arts and humanities in shaping our connection to the climate crisis. The second hour will engage participants in what poet Jane Hirshfield calls finding “simple astonishment,” and the curative power of creating art as we face the crisis of our lifetime. In small groups, participants will be guided through a close observation and reflection in response to selected images from the Sheldon’s archives and modern images from photographer Caleb Kenna.

 Free and open to all. Sponsored by Vermont Humanities.

Come to the opening of our new makerspace!

Inspired by the museum’s current innovation exhibit, and in collaboration with Middlebury College Makerspace interns Kurt and Taylor, this new space is designed for play, creation and tinkering.

Try out the Rigamajig set, a magnetic wall marble run, a sewing station, a 3-D printer & graphic design station, a stop-motion animation station, and more. Fun open-ended play and design for all ages!

Beat the Summer doldrums and join experts in a variety of Victorian clothing and fashion accessories in the Sheldon gardens. Bring your vintage hats, dresses, shoes, and other items to learn about. Fashion historians, accessory makers, mending artists, and more will be available to answer your questions. The event will also include fun activities for children and Fairy Tale Farm will be selling their sheep milk gelato. Invite your friends and family and don’t forget to dive into your Grandma’s trunk.

CLOTHING, HATS & SHOES

Costume designers Summer Jack and Aaron P Mastin will share their knowledge of historic fashion. Summer, a faculty at the Theater Department at Middlebury College, designed costumes for over 150 operas, plays, musicals, TV series and motion pictures. Aaron, has worked on major Hollywood movies as a costumer for background actors, including John Adams, 12 Years a Slave, the Underground Railroad, and Manhunt. He is currently on the staff of the Washington Heritage Museums in Fredericksburg, VA

HISTORIC “HAIRDOs”

Ray Lingle will give a demonstration of vintage hairstyling and talk about how to use modern tools to achieve it. Ray has been a hairstylist for 25 years, and enjoys many hand crafts like quilting, and knitting.  He is currently a senior stylist at “The Parlour” in Middlebury. Live Demo @ Noon!

VISIBLE MENDING & SUSTAINABILITY

Sarah Ashe will share her skills on how to creatively mend your clothes and make them unique and lovable. Sarah, a local artist, creates stitched fabric collages. She applies this approach to bring new life to her family wardrobe. 

CROCHETING & KNITTING

Mimi Wlodarczyk, an avid knitter, crocheter, and fiber arts enthusiast will explore traditional knitting techniques and patterns. Mimi has always enjoyed experimenting with creative fiber arts projects such as embroidery, weaving, fabric stamping and Shibori dye techniques.

VERD MONT BUTTON CLUB

Members of the Verd Mont Button Club will share examples of their fabulous collections of vintage and antique buttons, button materials, and the history of buttons. The Verd Mont Button Club is a state-wide organization of button enthusiasts including collectors, craft people and artists."

MAKE A HAT, TRY ON A COSTUME

Join HSM Summer Interns for fun and whimsical hat making for all ages! Go zany with lots of bells and whistles or make a simple hat that does the job—the choice is yours! Suitable for all ages —from 0-105!

The Festival is part of the Sheldon Museum’s Summer exhibit From Homespun to Couture: Fashion in Historic Middlebury, on view until January 4, 2025.

Costume designer Summer Jack and exhibit curator Eva Garcelon-Hart will present an informal tour of the “From Homespun to Couture: Fashion in Historic Middlebury” exhibit. They will discuss how the local 19th-century women dressed, how they learned about fashionable trends, and reveal the intricacies of fashionable dress wearing and making.   

Summer Lee Jack is a faculty member of the Theater Department at Middlebury College. She has been designing costumes for over 20 years and has worked on over 125 productions from operas and new plays to musicals, TV series, motion pictures and short films in the New York City area.

Eva Garcelon Hart is the Stewart-Swift Research Center Archivist. She earned her Master’s Degree in History of Art and MLIS from the University of California at Berkeley. Since the mid-1980s, she has worked for institutional and private archives, including that of Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz and The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. In her work at the Research Center, she is particularly interested in bringing to public attention its overlooked stories and collections through exhibits and public programing.

Established in 1871, the Jenks Museum at Brown University once displayed more than 50,000 objects, ranging from walrus and giraffe taxidermy to anthropological specimens from around the world. But within a few decades of its founding, the social and scientific climate around the museum shifted, prompting Brown to dismantle it and truck the bulk of the collection to a riverside dump. More recently, a group at Brown recreated the Jenks Museum through an exhibition, The Lost Museum, that merged the modes of historical display and contemporary art installation. The story of the Jenks Museum illuminates the ways in which past paradigms of knowledge have shaped campus collections -- and offers an example of how we might reconsider these objects today.

Kathrinne Duffy is a historian living in Burlington, Vermont. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University and co-curated The Lost Museum exhibition.

The Sheldon Museum welcomes the community to gather in the Museum garden to honor and celebrate the life of Suzanne Douglas on Friday, June 21st from 4:30-6pm. Light refreshments will be served. 

On display in the Museum will be a large collection of Suzanne’s beautiful hooked rugs, generously donated to the Sheldon by Suzanne’s family and friends, for a silent auction fundraiser that will run through the summer. 

To share a favorite memory or story about Suzanne for the program, please email Pam Pezzulo: pampezzulo@comcast.net

 A special event co-sponsored by the Hawthorne Club and the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History: AN EVENING WITH SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Middlebury.

 Former associates and longtime friends of the Senator, the Hon. Beryl A. Howell (U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C.) and the Hon. William K. Sessions III (U.S. District Court of Vermont) will interview the Senator about his personal life as well as his life-long public career in politics. The public is invited to attend.

The Sheldon is excited to kick off another season of history, art and culture with our community! Join fellow museum lovers on Thursday, May 16th from 4:30-6pm for the Spring 2024 Open House and Reception. Visitors are encouraged to check out our latest exhibits:

From Homespun to Couture: Fashion in Historic Middlebury

Model Boats: The Craftsmanship of Jerry Degraff

Patent Pending: Ingenuity and Innovation in Vermont.

All galleries will be open and light refreshments will be served in the garden! Free and open to all!

The Henry Sheldon Museum invites you to our
2023 Annual Virtual Meeting

Please join staff and current and incoming members of the Board of Trustees to conduct the annual business of the Henry Sheldon Museum.

Annual Meeting materials are below:

2023 Annual Meeting Agenda

2022 Annual Meeting Minutes

2023 Treasurer’s Report

2023 November Balance Sheet

Incoming Board Member Bios

Due to staff illness, the in-person Annual Meeting event has been canceled. The business portion of the meeting will be held virtually. Please be on the look out for an invite to a community in-person gathering in the New Year.

Make your own needlepoint key fob! Learn the basics of needlepoint during this two hour workshop with Pearl Riney. The simple design is based on the border of a sampler from the Sheldon Museum’s collection. The $20 kit includes all supplies needed, blocking and finishing not included. Bring your own small scissors for this workshop.

Admission to the Museum is not included in the kit purchase and can be purchased the day of the event.

Do you own an antique sampler or other school girl embroidery made before 1900?

If so, you have an historical record of the education of girls. Please bring it to Sampler ID Day at the Ilsley Public Library so it can be registered for their online database. In return, you will learn more about your sampler and receive a professionally made photograph of the sampler. Walk-ins are welcome. If you have 3 or more samplers in your collection, please make an appointment. The Vermont Sampler Initiative (VSI) aims to document all American made samplers and related embroideries in Vermont. Their work is supported in part by a grant from the Vermont Humanities Council and donations from supporters.

To make an appointment or learn more contact: samplersvt@gmail.com.

This event is presented by the Henry Sheldon Museum and Rokeby Museum.

Nancy Pecca will demonstrate bobbin lace making and speak about the history of the craft, using examples and antique items. Nancy first encountered this craft form at age 12; however, she did not learn it until 40 years later. Since then, she has spent her time working on bobbin lace, and thus preserving this almost forgotten art. She also loves sharing her passion with others, and teaching.

This public program is in connection with our current exhibition, Variety Sew: A Sampling of Textile Tools and Devices. Included with Museum Admission, free for members and students.

Ellen Thompson, the Team Leader for the Vermont Sampler Initiative, will be using examples of samplers from our collection and others around Vermont. She will focus on what can be learned through studying these examples and how the Initiative works to fill in the gaps in the historical record of this industry. Ellen first became involved in sampler identification about 10 years ago and worked to bring the National Sampler Archive to Vermont.

This public program is in connection with the current exhibition Stellar Stitching: 19th Century Vermont Samplers. Included with Museum Admission, free for members and students, seating is limited.

Fiber Arts Demonstration (Carding, Spinning, and Natural Wool Dying)

Bruce Yelton will be demonstrating hand carding, spinning, and the natural dying process with wool. Bruce comes from a long line of textile workers. His first job was in a textile mill and after college Bruce worked in the craft industry, winning several awards. However, a devastating house fire destroyed his business and for the next twenty-five years Bruce worked as an academic and researcher in education. After his retirement in 2015, he returned to his passion for the fiber arts.

This public program is in connection with our current exhibition, Variety Sew: A Sampling of Textile Tools and Devices. Included with Museum Admission, free for members and students.

Suzanne Douglas, an accomplished local fiber artist, will be demonstrating traditional rug hooking as well as punch needle rug making on Thursday July 27 from 1 – 3 pm. The craft of making hooked rugs dates to the early 19th century when strips of wool were saved and used to create floor coverings in New England homes. Contemporary fiber artists have transformed this traditional craft into an art form. Free with Museum admission and always free for members.

Image: Waldoboro Parrot by Suzanne Douglas