BY MARY GOW PHOTOS BY ROGER CROWLEY
L
ook out the windows of the Kent Museum, and the bucolic landscape has changed little from the 1830s, when this handsome Georgian-style inn opened in Calais, Vermont, as a stagecoach stop on the Boston to Montreal post road. Inside, its many rooms reveal the structure’s life, history, and completed and suspended restorations. Some walls are stripped bare to the underlying split lath; others still have their horsehair plaster; and others are wallpapered in styles of past eras. In its rare condition, the building transports visitors through time. For a few fleeting autumn weekends, the Kent serves as a gallery, an extraordinary setting for artwork by Vermont artists. The combination of this handsome and exposed building and compelling contemporary art offers viewers an uncommon experience, bringing together timelessness and a sense of the immediacy of time. “There’s a quietude that happens here, an otherworldliness that doesn’t happen in many places,” says Nel Emlen, one of the three co-curators who bring Art at the Kent to life almost magically every year.
A REMARKABLE DYNAMIC BETWEEN BUILDING AND ART This autumn, Art at the Kent presents Refuge: Vermont Artists Respond from Friday, September 8 through Sunday, October 8. The show features a soundscape, outdoor installations, and twoand three-dimensional artwork by more than two dozen Vermont artists, all exploring the concept of refuge. The exhibit, which opens and closes with celebrations of music, is accompanied by workshops and the “Words Out Loud” reading series at the Old West Church. Refuge is the tenth Art at the Kent exhibition and is supported by a collaboration of Historic Kents’ Corner, the Vermont State Curator’s office, and the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. “People have absolutely loved these shows because of the remarkable dynamic between the building and the art. There’s a lot going on here. It’s not merely a display of art. It is the www.bestofcentralvt.com 47