In art, how a landscape looks is often more important than where it actually is. Painters have long depicted their surroundings as mythical grottoes or imagined battlefields, divorcing elements of the terrain from more authentic, humbler stories. For Vermont Country Store proprietor Lyman Orton, by contrast, real places are the whole point. He has spent years collecting and showing works about Vermont that were made there, largely in the early to mid-20th century. The resulting exhibition, “For the Love of Vermont,” has traveled across the state since 2023.
Now, his collection finally has a home of its own: in Manchester, at Southern Vermont Arts Center’s newly opened 12,000-square-foot, two-story wing. Designed by Richmond’s Birdseye and architect Brian Mac, the new wing juts out perpendicular to the center’s main building, historic white clapboard Yester House, contrasting it with rich, rusty brown corten steel siding punctuated by tall, narrow windows.
“The building’s been conceived around the view, with the thought that that’s what has pulled Vermont artists here for generations,” said Amelia Wiggins, the center’s executive director, on a recent tour. A sight line stretches all the way from Yester House’s lobby into the new wing’s airy stairwell and straight through the newly donated collection to floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the Battenkill Valley and Green Mountains.
Outdoor spaces also take full advantage of the vista, including an expanded seating area for the art center’s café and, on the wing’s other side, a rentable 250-seat patio for events. An outdoor walkway mounted on 40-foot piers leads visitors over the hillside to gawk at the scenery from above. At its end, a massive steel rain chain directs water to a trail of boulders below.
From the exterior, the new architecture has at once an Alpine vibe and a rural-industrial one. The rain chains, the metal gratings and especially the silo-like form that contains the center’s new elevator seem to reference a working farm, while the building’s lines and volumes emphasize the surrounding mountain landscape.
The interior is cozy but crisp. Wood extends from the floor to the walls and ceiling of the addition’s lobby; white-and-gray marble stairs glow softly from side lighting as they descend to the lower level. Alternately, visitors can step into the elevator, which also ascends to Yester House’s second-floor galleries, a marked advance toward making the whole facility accessible.
“For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection” is on the main floor, in a space that feels much more like a midcentury-modern living room than a white-box gallery. Paintings and works on paper are displayed on wood-paneled walls, with angled shelves offering space for explanatory text from the collection’s catalog. Visitors can sit in clusters of upholstered chairs and coffee tables in front of those big windows and in the room’s three display areas.
About 90 of the collection’s 300 works are on view at any time and will rotate periodically, Wiggins said. They’re organized by theme, as they were in the traveling exhibition and catalog: “Farms and Barns,” “Country Fairs,” “Churches,” “Auctions,” “Village Life.”
There’s no disputing these are accomplished paintings, some by artists who worked in the area or were founding members of the art center. Rockwell Kent’s almost fantastical views of Mount Equinox in summer and winter seem right at home here, as does Paul Sample’s more modest but quietly beautiful “Vermont Schoolhouse,” in which a viewer can practically feel the stick-season air. Cecil Crosley Bell presents crowds of people — in the park, at the fair — verging on cartoons, as does Kyra Markham with “Family Restaurant,” which gets weirder the more you look at it.
The artistic merits of each work, however, can get lost when one considers them collectively. The overall message is nostalgia for a specific, perhaps even simplistic, version of Vermont based in farming, religion and frequenting the general store.
It’s a different story in the new Van Degna Gallery on the building’s lower level. The expansive space will replace the 26-year-old Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum, which has developed leaks and other problems, in hosting temporary exhibitions and contemporary art at Southern Vermont Arts Center. Its inaugural show, curated by Danny Volk, is “Troubleshooting: Making Photographs With Dona Ann McAdams.”
The Sandgate photographer, who won the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts last year, presents prints from several bodies of work, spanning decades. There are images of AIDS protesters and “Nuclear Survival Kits,” photos of queer activists and homeless shelters. There are works made in collaboration with mental health patients and with performance artists.
Though many of McAdams’ earlier images were shot in New York City, newer ones offer a participatory, inclusive and complicated look at Vermont. She pictures Somali Vermonters in Burlington as well as Sandgate dairy farmers. Her portraits of Norman Rockwell’s models, who gathered for a reunion in Arlington in 2016, show the realities of aging and life in contrast to the original illustrations. Yet Rockwell and McAdams also both capture essential pieces of each person’s character, decades apart.
Shots of racehorses taken at the Saratoga Race Course in New York offer intimate views of how people care for the animals. “Suzy’s Barn” is the only barn pictured, and it’s on fire — a comment on the community-mindedness of firefighters more than on the quaint character of the landscape.
Somehow, the folks at Southern Vermont Arts Center have accomplished several seemingly impossible tasks in one neat, steel-clad package. They’ve pulled off a major museum expansion in only 18 months, without exceeding a $13.5 million construction budget raised entirely from private donations — no mean feat. They’re facilitating public access to an important historical collection and gaining space to accommodate contemporary exhibitions. Finally, they’ve embraced two different visions of how art can define a place or challenge that definition, without contradiction. They might just make everyone happy. ➆
Updated June 18, 2026: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Brian Mac’s current employment.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Pride of Place | A new wing at Southern Vermont Arts Center houses two different visions of Vermont”
This article appears in June 17 • 2026.
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