Bread & Puppets Museum: Glover, Vermont
The Bread & Puppets Museum in the “Northeast Kingdom” of Vermont is one of my favorite places anywhere, for several reasons. First and most obviously, it's just superb folk art, a strange and wonderfui collection of tiny (a couple of inches?) and huge (over 7 feet) used in productions by the Bread & Puppets troop since the mid-1960s. But equally, Bread and Puppets – meaning not only the museum, but the performances, the flower power anti-capitalist themes, the art (especially prints and posters), and the wonderful aura of all the people I've met who are associated with any part of this organization and this justice-centered institution founded by Peter Schumann in 1963.
Originally founded in New York City in 1963, Bread and Puppets moved into a large old 4-level barn in Glover, Vermont. This is really, really, an out of the way corner for the United States … just a few miles from Canada, surrounded by vast expanses of almost uninhabited mountains. The “museum” is two floors of the barn, very rustic, cracks between the floorboards. No admission, but you can make a donation or buy some “cheap art” if you like (this time I bought a $10 book about some of the troop's productions). There's no plumbing or heat. There is lighting … but it's only on when visitors, in accordance with the simple directions on posters, turn them on when the arrive, then turn them off when they leave. The first time I was there, a couple years ago, I was the only patron in the entire barn gallery. This time, Mary and I were the only two patrons (although there were a number of museum workers on the grounds, along with Peter Schumann himself, who was helping to direct a large class of students from Concordia College in Montreal).
There are many hundreds, probably thousands of puppets in the exhibit. By design, they all transmit a very progressive political message that despite being addressed to the acute issues of a particular era … the Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust, Vietnam, mass murders in Guatemala and El Salvador, the environment, whatever. Many of them also presenting a profound religious interpretation of scriptural or liturgical message about the crucifixion of Jesus or church shallowness and hypocrisy. But all of them are integrally connected to human virtue and evil … with warnings of impending cataclysm while expressing hope for the future. Like the characters from Greek Tragedies, the tableaus and arrangements of the puppeter trasmit a timeless portrayal of human suffering and hope for redemption.
This is papier-mâché raised to the level of whimsical sublime. I may get around to posting more photos, taken my first visit in 2021, and last Friday, 26 May 2023. But for now, here are four images that speak to me.
