Contemporary art pops up all over the place these days, from apartment galleries to defunct churches to vacant lots. But what’s known as secondary-market art — art that is owned by collectors, comes from an artist’s estate or was created long ago — tends to stay in a narrow, well-heeled lane: commercial galleries in places like New York City’s Upper East Side.
So it’s a bit of a surprise to find a trove of exquisite historical works, many in gilded frames, hidden away near industrial buildings, doctors’ offices and an assisted living facility in a suburban office park just off Shelburne Road. That’s where J. Kenneth Fine Art, a new commercial gallery, has recently opened its doors.
Gallerist John Kenneth Alexander, 58, grew up in Burlington’s Old North End and recently returned to Vermont from Palm Springs, Calif., where he ran the first iteration of J. Kenneth Fine Art for about 10 years. In Shelburne, he sees a prospective client base — people he views as less likely to buy art in Burlington or Williston. Although he wasn’t able to find a spot in Shelburne Village, the space he found on Pine Haven Shores Road is bright and spacious, with ample parking. “At least here,” he said jokingly, “I have the Shelburne zip code.”
Alexander built his business selling works from the estate of the late Lynne Mapp Drexler, an abstract expressionist whose exuberantly colorful paintings were overlooked by art world institutions when she made them in the 1950s and ’60s but are now becoming sought-after. Because of that experience, he said, “one of my missions became to represent or feature underrepresented female artists of the midcentury.”
In the past five years, he said, museums and auction houses have started to take notice of these artists. A few of the works currently on his walls are by the late Frances Kornbluth, who, like Drexler, spent time on Maine’s Monhegan Island. He’s planning to feature her in a more extensive future exhibition.
For his first show, Alexander thought he should introduce himself to the community with his curatorial take on something more familiar: “The Vermont Landscape.” The works were made all over the state, mostly in the first half of the 20th century, and a number of them are by women.
Alexander said that when he first started doing research for the exhibition, he fell in love with the work of Pownal artist Marion Huse. A pioneer in screen printing and a regional director of Works Progress Administration projects in the 1930s, Huse achieved some success during her lifetime, but, Alexander said, “these days, you don’t really hear about her.” The handful of her works in this show illustrate an evolving style, from a small, detailed screen print of the Pownal valley, done in 1940, to lively paintings of the same landscape from a decade later, full of color and movement.
Burlingtonians may recognize the view in the earliest work in the exhibition, a 4-by-11-inch watercolor from 1893 by Evelyn K. Richmond. It shows Mount Mansfield from the New York side of the lake, with Schuyler Island in the foreground and reflections on the water sketched in white paint. An even smaller 5.5-by-8-inch untitled painting by William Corning Stacey shows a pastel sunset reflected in Shelburne Bay.
Several of the pieces in the show are relatively tiny, with a casual quality that is rarely seen in larger or more formally organized shows of similar works from the same period. A stand of birches in a 1959 monotype by Marion Gray Traver is so wispy it might blow away. A pastel drawing circa 1920 by Arthur Wilder uses violet and ultramarine blue to depict shadows in the snow; the colors are so intense that it looks like it could easily have been sketched yesterday.
Alexander acknowledged that he probably won’t get a lot of foot traffic in this new location — for one thing, there aren’t any sidewalks. But he hopes he’ll attract people interested in overlooked historical art. It’s an unusual gallery and well worth a visit — regardless of the zip code.
The original print version of this article was headlined “New Shelburne Gallery Shows Old — but Overlooked — Favorites”
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2025.
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