Coming back from the left coast would have been easier if another 8 feet of snow had arrived in our absence but somehow, returning to what must be about the fifth mud-season so far this year, was harder. I'm starting to think it's a meteorological fifth dimension, with a groovy theme to go with it (sing along, everyone): "When the mud, is all around the house, and furniture is lined with soil."
When mud is all around the house, the yard, the sidewalks and the state, my tendency each weekend is to find fun things to do in places that are, by definition, dirt-free, and what better destination than museums? As mentioned herein last week, Vermont is home to a constellation of intriguing creative institutions filled with far more than just fine art.
There's the American Precision Museum, the Birds of Vermont Museum, the Cornish Colony Museum, the New England Transportation Museum, the Shelburne Museum and even the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Rumor has it there even used to be a Vermont Wax Museum renowned for its revolving Elvis but, alas, he's left the turntable as the place is now closed. The mind boggles at what else might have been in there … a marble-eyed Hetty Green savoring her fortune or an ashen Ethan Allen being charged with treason?
The top of my unconventional museums list, however — the mother of all treasure troves — is the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. Vermont's much-celebrated field-trip favorite boasts more than 160,000 natural science, historical and cultural objects that 19th-century industrialist Franklin Fairbanks collected during extensive travels around the globe. Overflowing with everything from Victorian dolls, Egyptian sarcophagi and rare gemstones to paintings, textiles, farm tools and taxidermy — not to mention a planetarium and weather station — the Fairbanks is an ideal place to take friends and family for a remarkably engaging day steeped in vicarious sightseeing and international geographic illumination.
Soaking up this diverse collection is tantamount to taking a slightly surreal jaunt to other continents, distant cultures and past eras, an experience both abundant and intimate, if not occasionally daunting. During my first visit a while back with my daughter's class to what looks from the outside like a Victorian castle, I entered the massive main room, with its barrel-vaulted oak ceiling, and was instantly transfixed by a startling tableau. Just through the main doors, a towering stuffed polar bear the size of a minivan rears up on his hind legs in frozen, bared-ivories rage, dwarfing a massive grizzly and two black bears nearby.
Taxidermy isn't everyone's cup of tea but there is something profoundly stirring, albeit a tad spine-chilling, about being able to examine such gorgeous, colossal creatures up-close and personal. Watching bears on the Discovery Channel or pacing inside far-off cages surrounded by cement moats affords a modicum of enlightenment, of course, yet this was the first time I'd ever been in such close proximity to a species that's universally feared and revered, and it gave me a whole new perspective on their plight.
When I spoke to the Fairbanks Museum's Anna Rubin, she revealed that my reaction was not uncommon and also offered crucial and informative insights into the singular passion and purpose of Mr. Fairbanks who, I gathered, was something of an amateur Darwin of his milieu.
"The practice of collecting natural specimens in the late 1800s was not perceived in the same way we might look at it today," she explained. "It was really in the cause of science and wanting to preserve these animals so they could be studied and protected. All the pieces in the museum are from that era."
Before establishing the museum in 1891, he regularly invited the public into his home to see his "cabinet of curiosity" in which he displayed his eclectic collection, which contains items of international, national and regional interest. One of my favorite displays was on the second-floor balcony, which is brimming with shelves, cabinets and cases of antique dolls, vintage toys and various household and historical artifacts.
Inside a low vitrine is a group of personal possessions dating from the Civil War. I was particularly moved by a small, lovingly handmade sewing kit, given by a local 15-year-old girl to her sweetheart before he left to fight. One can only assume it was found out on a battleground, and the inclusion of that kind of human iconography in the context of a museum containing more than 3,000 natural specimens reflects Fairbanks' holistic view of the world and its inhabitants.
Fairbanks would come back from his trips with assorted pelts, weapons, insects, photographs, costumes, shells and other discoveries that could help to edify his friends and colleagues back in Vermont. Having inherited great wealth from his uncle, who invented the platform scale and founded the Fairbanks Scale Co., Franklin Fairbanks was committed to giving back to his hometown and integrated his own zeal for travel into this impulse.
"He was like many Victorian civic-minded family members who felt a real love for the community," said Rubin. "He wasn't a scientist or scholar but out of a deep appreciation for nature, he brought to this isolated part of New England these views of animals and visions of other parts of the world."
Working with local, self-taught taxidermist William Balch, Fairbanks eventually built a museum to house his finds, an eccentric landscape unto itself, filled with recreations of the flora and fauna that he'd come to cherish in places he knew most of his friends, family and neighbors would never see.
Balch proved to be an innovator in exhibit design as well, crafting lush, convincing dioramas in which he placed the exotic creatures he'd carefully preserved, deftly utilizing materials of the day, such as linen (this was long before plastic's time) to create the illusion of natural habitats. With the same scientific authenticity and remarkable eye for detail that was being employed in New York City's Natural History Museum right around the same time, Balch was, as Rubin reverently put it, "at the cutting edge of interpreting the natural world."
Together, the two men filled custom-made wood-and-glass cases with meticulously arranged environments, including a truly exquisite display of what is thought to be the world's largest collection of hummingbirds. With 131 shimmering specimens presented on realistic-looking trees, replete with nests, under glass at eye-level, it is yet another of the museum's many breathtaking exhibits.
Everyone at the museum clearly venerates Mr. Fairbanks' pioneering sensibilities and generosity of spirit, and with good reason. Though through our 21st-century lens we might consider a room full of posed animals in ersatz environs to be tacitly un-P.C., everything Rubin taught me about Fairbanks' motivations and expansive thinking as a true animal lover convinced me that, were he alive today, he'd probably be out there picketing for PETA and holding fund-raisers for Greenpeace.
The entire collection of the Fairbanks Museum is a manifestation of its founder's global sensibilities, which were evident in his respect for cultural diversity, an abiding love of nature and a staunch devotion to the stewardship of all the world's creatures. It is sobering and inspiring to realize that his visionary achievements pre-saged the very issues with which the human race now struggles, on so many fronts.
Eloquently summing up the magnitude of Fairbanks' accomplishments, Rubin said it best: "The museum is a timepiece, about the Victorian understanding of the natural world and the awesome beauty of these creatures."
Online: www.fairbanksmuseum.org
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