Maritime Museum Has New Longboat, New Exhibit

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s (LCMM) 2011 season has already kicked off and features the newest Champlain Longboat, Maple. Student boat builders, faculty members from the Hannaford Career Center’s Diversified Occupations program, and LCMM boatbuilding staff recently launched the boat at Basin Harbor.

Also new this year is the exhibit &#8220From the Page’s Edge: Water in Literature and Art&#8221 which reveals a wide array of personal connections between art, literature, and the natural world.

In this interdisciplinary exhibit, nineteen contemporary artists from New York City, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey, Maryland, and upstate New York share some of the literary sources and life experiences that inspired them. Their artworks – in diverse media – range from representational to abstract. Their literary selections are as well-known as an African-American spiritual or an essay by Thoreau, and as private as personal poetry. Lake Champlain’s shipwrecks inspired the poetry of UVM Professor Daniel Lusk and a painting by Vergennes artist Eloise Beil.

Exhibit curator Virginia Creighton, a New York City artist with family connections in Ripton, Vermont, recalls childhood adventures in a flooded yard: “My sister and I were tomboys. We went out the side door . . . straight to the flooded low ground next to the garage. . . to wade in amongst the growing stalks of rhubarb.” Creighton’s painting “Kid’s House” was her response to that memory and the poem “in Just” by e. e. cummings, which evokes a youthful spring “when the world was mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful.”

From the Page’s Edge will be on view at LCMM through June 26. A color catalog of the exhibition will be available at LCMM and online.

Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, located at 4472 Basin Harbor Road, seven miles west of Vergennes, is open daily. A world-class nautical archaeological research center with a lakeside campus of eighteen buildings, LCMM operates a fleet of full-sized and operational replica vessels, with a staff including educators, boat builders and curators. The museum’s team of nautical archaeologists has explored the lake’s 300+ historic shipwrecks, transforming their discoveries into hands-on exhibits, films, and programs.

LCMM brings the past of Lake Champlain to the public through special events, exhibits, courses and workshops, summer camps, and traveling replica vessels that encourage historical perspective and cultural connections between communities. More information about new exhibits, special events, and on-water programs, and the itinerary for schooner Lois McClure can be found on the Maritime Museum website.

Photo: Champlain Longboat Maple ready for launch day.

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