The Wonder Room exhibit is now open at Historic Downtown Woodstock

By Aaron Rubin, Standard correspondent

Visitors to the Woodstock Historic Center can now enjoy a new exhibit, The Wonder Room, which opened to a warm welcome last Friday.

The exhibit, which features a diverse selection of more than 150 artifacts spanning more than two hundred years, was created by artists and artisans with ties to the Woodstock area and includes furniture, glasswork, pottery , sculptures and textiles.

Matthew Powers, executive director, thanked the donors who gave the artifacts to the History Center.

The “Wonder Room” is a contemporary interpretation of the “cabinet of curiosities,” showcasing natural and man-made objects from multiple disciplines popular in early America and often considered a precursor to the modern museum, Powers said. The goal of the exhibit at the History Center is to make its collection specific to the Woodstock area. “Essentially, the idea is to highlight the strengths of your institution,” he said.

The new collections on display highlight the “tremendous” and unique “continuity” of Woodstock’s arts and crafts community over the past two centuries, Powers said.

“I think there’s a very unique connection to Woodstock and it’s something that I think endures, and people are still drawn to the area for that fact,” he said. “There are still things that continue here – places like ShackletonThomas and some of these other craft establishments continue to attract people here. For us, being able to shed some light on this is certainly our mission.

Powers noted how deep the history of painting alone is in the area, as “traveling painters worked in the Woodstock area in the early 1800s.”

The first artifact visitors to the exhibit will see is a 1950 oil painting of Mount Tom behind North Street in Woodstock by Byron Thomas; followed by a colorful quilt created around 1860 by a local seamstress named Mary Ann Williams and a lamp by Nancy Wickham Boyd of Vermont Workshop

Toward the back of the room is a cylindrical music box that plays music from the opera “Robert the Devil” composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which Powers said enhances the experience of viewing the artifacts. Videos on featured artists such as Arthur Wilder, John Nelson Marble and Roswell Bailey are also part of the exhibition.

Another musical feature is a collection of historic photographs of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra (VSO), which was formed at Woodstock and is currently celebrating its 90th anniversary as one of the oldest state-supported orchestras in the United States. These “remarkable photos” include snapshots from the VSO’s early years, “including a broadcast newspaper photo with the original members,” Elise Brunelle, the orchestra’s executive director, told the Standard.

Brunelle claims that early members of the VSO held ordinary jobs as stonemasons, barbers, farmers, teachers and prosecutors. As part of the VSO exhibit, viewers will first see an image of VSO musicians who traveled to perform at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a moment that Brunelle says legitimized the position of the group as representatives of classical music in New England.

“We have a calendar with key dates, such as our five different music director appointments, the creation of the VSO Choir, when the VSO performed with artists like Aaron Copland, Yo-Yo Ma, Sharon Isbin and Tony Bennett, and the memorable activities like Waltz Night, the Summer Festival Tour and Jukebox began,” Brunelle said.

In addition to the photographs, the VSO displayed a gift from painter Rockwell Kent “which inspired the original VSO ‘angel logo’ that is used throughout this 90th season,” Brunelle said.

A notable artifact in the exhibit is the sculpture “America” by Woodstock-born Hiram Powers, one of the most critically acclaimed sculptors of the 19th century. The work, created in 1854, shows the essential qualities of “youth, strength and beauty” of a young United States, according to a video explaining Hiram Powers’ work at the exhibition.

The artist behind the work adds greater historical relevance to the exhibition’s mission, says executive director Matthew Powers. As Woodstock reinvented itself as a tourist destination in the 1890s, Hiram Powers’ birthplace in the town at the time was “a big draw for people who came to Woodstock”, as well as its general reputation for producing artists of similar calibers, Matthew Powers said. .

“Again, that’s what we’re trying to show, is the continuity of over 200 years that people know our name – Woodstock – and a lot of people attribute it to the artists and craftsmen who lived and worked here,” Matthew Powers said.

While the exhibit is on display, the history center will continue research into the origins of the artifacts. Matthew Powers said the most important works that require further study are Native American artifacts, many of which are marked by creators as “unknown artist.” Assigning names to these artifacts, especially for the artists’ ancestors, is a task that requires further research.

“Some of these items deserve more research – they deserve us to continue to look into who made them, because these types of crafts have been passed down from generation to generation through communities. We believe these are important, if not the most important, artifacts in our collection.