Current Exhibits
Building St. Peter’s Church
Summer 2024
The Building St. Peter’s Exhibit celebrates the 150th anniversary of St. Peter’s Church in Vergennes. Learn about the community effort to construct the local catholic church through antique photographs, newspaper clippings, handmade maps, and artifacts including a brick from the Ferrisburgh Brickyard and an antique organ pipe. This exhibit, found in the Half-round Room, connects with our ongoing display in the Bixby Hall about Josephine Meneely, whose husband, William Meneely, President of the Meneely Bell Foundry of Troy NY, gave two bells to the church.
Thank you to Susan Ferland, President of the Vergennes Historical Society, for researching and creating this wonderful new exhibit.
Ken Corey’s A Panoply of Landscapes
Spring-Summer 2024
From pastels, paintings, and prints, much of local artist Ken Corey’s work was done en plein air. His work features limited palettes which capture the dreamy, airy quality of summer in Vermont.
Corey’s work will be on display for the Bixby’s Celestial Soirée Fundraiser on Friday, May 31st and through early summer. The exhibit features a painting of a planetary nebula inspired by Corey’s love of Astronomy. Past work has explored the analytical and conceptual, conveying concepts such as growth and decay, random order, and no thingness. His new painting the Helix Nebula (a.k.a. ‘The Eye of God’), depicts a dying star shedding its outer layers, leaving a white dwarf star in the center. This painting is hung on point to compose the nebula and pay tribute to the amazing work done by the hundreds of people on the Hubble Space Telescope team.
You can view Ken Corey’s collection in the Bixby Library’s Community Room anytime during open hours. A portion of the proceeds of artworks sold will benefit the Bixby Library.
Making Music in Vermont
Ongoing throughout 2024
Did you know a band in Vermont claims to be the third oldest, continually playing band in the country? Do you know why fife, drum, and bugle bands were originally part of the military?
These questions and more are answered in the Bixby’s newest exhibit: Making Music in Vermont. Thank you to our curator and chair of the Historical Collections Committee, Nancy Remsen, for creating this joyful exhibit! Visit the Bixby’s Kerr Room and discover the music.
Josephine A. Meneely Paperweight Collection
Ongoing throughout 2024
The Josephine A. Meneely Paperweight Collection is now on display in the Half Round Room. Josephine Meneely was an art enthusiast and Ferrisburgh resident, and her gorgeous collection spans regions and years. Thank you to our Historical Collections Volunteers, Nancy Remsen, and Jamie Edwards-Orr, for curating this stunning physical and digital exhibit.
Check out our online database or visit the Bixby Library to see the complete paperweight collection.
Stone Tools Collection
Ongoing throughout 2024
Back in the ‘70s, the Bixby Library was a hotbed of ground-breaking archeological undertakings. Folks now known as luminaries in the field met here to form a highly active Vergennes Chapter of the Vermont Archeological Society. They stored and exhibited renowned collections of stone tools created by people thousands of years ago.
You can view an initial selection of these collections, along with 200-year-old objects unearthed on a dig at the homestead of Vergennes’ first European settlers, the McIntosh family, in the Half Round Room on the second floor. Please let us know if you are interested in this topic as we explore how best to bring our collections to life for the community and beyond. The Vermont Archaeological Society Papers, which document the early operations of the Society during the 1970s, are open for research in the Bixby’s archives. Please call or email us to make a research appointment.