Human-powered political puppets, a hilltop chapel for dogs, the only library in the U.S. with no books, and the only opera house with no stage.
10 Unexpected Delights of Vermont's Arts and Culture Scene

Tucked away in the hills of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, Glover is home to a storied theater company that has been using large-scale puppets to deliver powerful political messages for over half a century.  

What started as a scrappy Lower East Side performance troupe in the early 1960s—helmed by  Peter Schumann and his wife Elka—eventually grew into the Bread and Puppet Theater. Rooted in the avant-garde movements of the time as well as folkloric traditions, the Schumanns fused dance and sculpture to create a radical collective, with gigantic paper-mache puppets helping to address the issues of the day including capitalism, nuclear war, and climate change.

Weekly performances take place on the former dairy farm turned performance space throughout the summer, with apprentices and volunteers coming from all over the world to help build puppets. A four-story hay barn houses the museum, where you’ll find paintings, woodcut prints, and veteran puppets, many of which are repurposed for new productions.

To walk into the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum is to walk right into the 19th century. Though there might be new novels and recent Rolling Stone issues on display, the building itself—with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases and exquisite craftsmanship in every floorboard, door frame, and spiral staircase—is a perfectly preserved vestige of the Victorian era.

The Atheneum is the gift and legacy of the Fairbanks Family—the inventors and manufacturers of the world’s first platform scale—and houses the town’s public library and a small gem of an art gallery. Filled salon style, the latter features many paintings of the Hudson River School and works collected from former Governor Horace Fairbanks’s travels through Europe. At the center of it all is “The Domes of Yosemite,” an enormous panorama by German-American artist Albert Bierstadt that takes up the entire back wall. Indeed, the gallery was designed and built to showcase the painting, which features Yosemite Falls and the surrounding landscape in stunning realism.    

Today, both the library and gallery draw visitors from around the world, fulfilling the founding mission to make the Atheneum a center for art and culture.   

A near-death experience in 1998 made the late folk artist Stephen Huneck reevaluate everything: he came to understand the healing powers of nature, art, love, and dogs. As he recovered from his illness, he dreamed up a ritual space to help lessen the pain of losing a beloved dog. Two years and many wood carvings later, the Dog Chapel was born and the Huneck family’s hilltop farm was lovingly renamed Dog Mountain.       

You’re greeted at the chapel by a pack of friendly dogs and a sign that reads: “Welcome all creeds, all breeds. No dogmas allowed.” Inside the chapel, golden light pours through the stained-glass windows—with images of dogs pieced into them—and every inch of wallspace is covered in handwritten notes and photographs of pooches that have passed on. Even if you’re not a diehard dog lover, you’d be hard-pressed not to be moved by the outpouring of love.

The property on Dog Mountain is always free and open to the public and includes hiking trails, ponds for dogs to swim in, and an agility course for them to play on.

Built deliberately on the boundary separating Canada and the United States, the Haskell was conceived in the early 1900s as a way to provide both border towns—Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec—with a shared center for enrichment and entertainment. Even though increasing national security has meant the towns aren’t as united as they once were, it is still one of the few public places in the world where you can walk from one country to the other within the same building. 

Serving both English and French patrons, the library entrance is on the U.S. side, but you must cross the Canadian line to check out a book. Upstairs in the 400-seat opera house—where the Borderline Players are the in-residence theater company—a stage sits in Quebec, but most of the seats are in Vermont. With the way the building is laid out, it is considered to be the only library in the U.S. with no books and the only opera house with no stage.

French Impressionist paintings, American folk art, Vermont-made firearms – this just scratches the surface of Electra Havemeyer Webb’s accumulations. A copious collector, Webb founded the Shelburne Museum in 1947 as a haven for handmade and historic objects—everything from duck decoys and dollhouses to weathervanes and whirligigs. 

The museum is arranged like a 19th-century village, with many of Webb’s collections housed in historic buildings that she found throughout New England and New York and relocated to the property. Among lush gardens and winding walkways, 39 distinct structures—including a one-room schoolhouse, a general store, a lighthouse, and a covered bridge—sit on 45 idyllic acres.

Perhaps most impressive is the 220-foot steamboat, considered the museum’s crown jewel. Serving Lake Champlain ports during the height of steam travel, Webb saved the Ticonderoga from the scrapyard and all 892 tons of her were lugged two miles to a new home at the center of the property. Perfectly restored, it’s the last walking beam side-wheel passenger steamer in existence.

On a cross-country cycling trip in 1970, David Stromeyer—a recent graduate of Dartmouth College—had a moment of clarity: the film career he had been pursuing wasn’t what he wanted after all. He realized his passion was creating powerful sculptures that pursue a union between art and land. He eventually found property on a farm near the Cold Hollow Mountains and got to work.

Over 50 years later, the hills here are dotted with David’s brightly-colored sculptures, rising effortlessly from the rolling hayfields. Fabricated on-site from iron, stone, and steel, the pieces explore spatial and color relationships and are often playful, seeming to be in a state of constant motion.

David and his wife, Sarah, began sharing their land—and over 70 of David’s pieces—with visitors when Cold Hollow Sculpture Park opened in 2014. You can easily spend a whole day wandering the paths that lead from piece to piece. And when you need to take a break, the Stromeyers invite you to sit by the pond for a picnic. Or better yet, under the shade of one of David’s creations.

At the foot of the Taconic Mountains, Manchester has been an inspiration for Vermont artists for over a century. And since they opened in 1922, the Southern Vermont Arts Center has been at the center of it all, showing rotating exhibitions across its campus of New England-style buildings and offering myriad educational and creative opportunities—everything from cartooning camps for kids to advanced watercolor painting courses.

On any given day at SVAC, you can meander through sprawling galleries full of both member and visiting exhibitions and find oil paintings depicting pastoral Vermont scenes and pieces from local ceramicists. Musicians have also been performing here since the 1950s—Louis Armstrong and his band even made it a stop on their tour—and the 400-seat Arkell Pavilion hosts events that range from ballet to live theater to film festivals.  

SVAC sits on 100 acres of woodland and boasts the largest sculpture park in the state, an extensive trail system, and even weekly aerial yoga in the pine trees. 

During the industrial boom times of the 19th century, Rutland County was one of the world’s largest marble producers. With growing railroad activity and new jobs being created, a downtown quickly materialized and Rutland became a cultural center for music, literature, and theater. But as marble quarries closed in the 1980s, the jobs went with them and the area faced an economic downturn.    

Downtown Rutland has been on the upswing in recent years, thanks in part to a reinvestment in the arts: the 1912 Paramount Theatre has been beautifully restored, a children’s museum keeps kids engaged, and new galleries and artisan markets are popping with frequency. Vibrant murals throughout town adorn storefronts, street corners, and alleyways. Painted by local and international muralists—including Peruvian artist Persi Narvaez—they depict wildlife, Vermont’s agricultural heritage, and messages of hope. There are also several marble sculptures, a nod to the area's industrial past.

The Stone Church sits on the quieter end of Brattleboro’s Main Street. The Victorian Gothic church was renovated to be a live music venue where local and internationally touring acts regularly play.

Formerly the All Souls Unitarian Church, the building is nearly 150 years old and retains much of the Gothic Revival design and Scandinavian Celtic folk elements of the original congregation. The owners have worked tirelessly to preserve that character since they opened in 2016, especially in updating the building with modern technology. But in maintaining its unique beauty—with the stage built from old pews and original stained-glass windows—the Stone Church has become a beloved performance space and a critical part of the music scene in Brattleboro, as well as the larger southern Vermont arts community.     

Inspired by a Japanese-style garden in Kildare, Ireland that symbolized the Life of Man, Terry McDonnell—a child and family therapist from Norwich, Vermont—began working on his own version of the idea on his 14-acre field along the Connecticut River in Windsor. He started in 1997 by planting 30 red oak trees and every year new features were added until 18 unique pieces of art depicted the journey from birth to death and beyond.

The epic circle of life is experienced while following the garden’s path, where sculptures of varying sizes and materials—including a hedge maze made up of 800 hemlock trees meant to signify the childhood period of adventure—and natural beauty provide a space for contemplation. With camping in the garden available and the river nearby, you can add relaxation to that list as well.