We started the day with a 3-hour visit to the Shelburne Museum, just south of Burlington, Vermont. This is not like a traditional museum — instead, it is a 45-acre plot of land on which are housed about 40 or so buildings, such as a schoolhouse, a couple of barns, a tavern, a worker’s cottage, and so on. Other buildings have been brought in from places around Vermont, and house various functions, such as a printing house, textile gallery, smokehouse, etc. The centrepiece of the buildings is the imposing structure housing reproduction rooms of the NY home of the benefactor and founder who made this museum possible: Electra Havemeyer Webb.
It’s what’s inside the buildings that makes this museum, and a 3-hour visit could never do it justice. Inside the central building, the walls are lined with priceless paintings by Manet, Monet, Degas, Rembrandt, Andrew Wyeth, and many others. There are bronzes by Remington, and in the most modern gallery there were two current exhibitions — one of Grandma Moses’ paintings and the other of old circus posters.
In other buildings we saw amazing quilts from the 1840s onwards, carriages and sleighs, school furniture and implements, apothecary furniture, bottles and implements, a general store with all sorts of old stuff, kitchens and bedrooms of simple houses, woodworking and farm materials, printing presses, etc. etc.
Added to that we were there in Fall, when the colours were at their finest. It was a cold day, but SOOO worth it to stop there and visit a while. However, I’d recommend a day there at least — I believe you can buy 2-day tickets.
After the Shelburne, we hit the road again for the 4-hour drive to Kingston, down a lot of small state roads through Vermont (22A and 4 in particular), before getting on I-87 and heading south.
Some of my many photos from today:
Degas
Quilt made in the 1800s — half-inch squares!
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
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