A Fly in the Buttermilk 

Jeanna Penn | Oakland, California, USA 

Jeanna Penn used a photograph of a lone Black woman among a group of white people to explore what it means to be a minority in a community. She writes: “For A Fly in the Buttermilk, I was inspired to work with the photograph of Louise Manning and the Hayden Family because it was such a unique photograph for that period. I was struck by Louise’s poise, confidence, and connection with the others in the picture. She clearly has a close relationship with this family which is further suggested in the inscription on the back that reads ‘The Big 4’. Louise is a part of this community. “’A fly in the buttermilk’ is an old saying used to describe the experience of being the only Black person among a group of White people. A community may be willing to open itself to one or two individuals they see as outsiders while refusing to embrace the group as a whole. One example is the offensive caricatures on the minstrel and advertising broadsides posted in the area and collected by Henry Sheldon. It is possible to include while excluding at the same time. Louise may have found a community for herself, but she in fact goes on to establish a safe space for young Black students from Middlebury College who were not welcome on campus. She thus creates a community within a community.”

Untitled (China Hall) 

Young Shin | San Gabriel, California, USA 

China Hall was a store at the head of Mill Street in the village of Middlebury. An advertisement in the April 27, 1883 issue of the Middlebury Register invites “attention to his line of crockery, plain and decorated French China and Majolica ware, also a splendid line of silver ware, bird cages in great variety, lamps, milk pans, and everything in tin-ware.” 8 The same issue contained an article about villages in China which remarked, “A Chinese village has but little in common with those of this country, either in detail or in general appearance” and after commenting on the domes and minarets of Europe concludes, “China is almost absolutely without any of these striking architectural points. The result is great monotony and dullness of aspect.” 9 The previous year, the United States Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned immigration from China. Merchants, as well as teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats, were excluded from the Act and allowed to travel to the United States. America’s relationship to China was one of intrigue and repulsion. Americans were threatened by the competition Chinese immigrants would present in the labor market, but they also wanted their material goods while simultaneously presenting Chinese culture as inferior. Young Shin struggled to find references to Asians in the Stewart-Swift Research Center archives. The photograph of China Hall got Shin thinking about the material goods available in the town. Click the image to read more…

A Group of Nations Claiming Unity of Purpose

or Common Interests 

Todd Bartel | Watertown, Massachusetts, USA 

Todd Bartel questions Eurocentric notions of community using an 1859 history of Addison County. In doing this, Bartel asks us to consider how a spirit of Manifest Destiny renders invisible those whose land Europeans “settled”. Their collage combines a page from the book with Merriam-Webster’s definition of community, an engraving of Middlebury Falls, a photograph a burl in a tree, and a transfer of “The Hiawatha Wampum Belt” that “records when five warring nations; the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk, buried their weapons of war to live in peace.” Together these elements invite us to consider what a more fully realized community would feel like. The artist writes, “The definition of the word community may be more philosophical and spiritual than the collective North-Western peoples have yet actualized. It has, of course, been white supremacist design to erect structures, laws, and attitudes that prevent the harmonizing of disparate attitudes toward land and political equality for all who dwell upon these ‘United’ lands. I see collage as embodying political potential; collage is a means for ‘studying contrast and balancing differences.’ As a white, male-presenting, colonial settler descendent, an ally to BIPOC, and an Eco artist concerned with the histories of collage and landscape, I embraced the opportunity to work with the Henry Sheldon Museum’s collection. I was particularly interested in locating evidence of Manifest Destiny as a ‘single sto - ry’. What galvanized my inquiry was reading Samuel Swift’s 1859 Statistical and Historical Account of the County of Addison, Vermont, and noticing that the word ‘Iroquois’ does not appear until page 29. The Haudenosaunee or Ongweh’onweh (‘real human beings’) are reduced to ‘it is not our purpose to enter into any learned dissertation on their character, customs or history.’ A Group of Nations Claiming Unity of Purpose or Common Interests juxtaposes selective settler historicism with unrealized potential for cohabitation.

The case displays that accompany the artwork highlight the local presence of people of color, Asian immigrants, and Native Americans, all of whom lived in the Middlebury area in the past. On view were a small but significant cache of papers documenting Asian residents who operated a Chinese Laundry in Middlebury during the late 1800’s; an array of Native American implements from the Museum object collection found on local farmland attesting to the presence of the original indigenous inhabitants; and a newly acquire collection of Louise Manning. an African American woman who spent close to forty years in the Middlebury area.