Shelburne Museum plans $12.6M building to house Native American art collection

The Shelburne Museum is planning a new building for its 45-acre campus to house a recently-donated collection of Native American art.

The Perry Center for Native American Art – the 40th building on the museum grounds – will highlight what the museum in a news release calls a “significant collection” of Native American art gathered by Anthony “Tony” Perry and his wife, Teressa “Teri” Perry. The late Tony Perry founded several restaurants in Chittenden County, including the now-closed Sweetwaters, Sirloin Saloon and Perry’s Fish House.

“Tony was always drawn to the multidimensional nature of Native American art,” Teri Perry, who donated the more than 200 items in the collection to the museum, said in a news release. “He appreciated that this material not only surrounds you in beauty and history, but it also invites a sense of contemplation and spirituality.”

The Perry Center will be built on a location to be determined on the south end of the grounds. The south end includes the entrance and the most-recent building added to the museum, the 10-year-old Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education.

Construction on the $12.6-million Perry Center project is tentatively targeted to begin in the fall of 2024. The 9,750-square-foot building could open to the public in 2026.

The project will be overseen by Adjaye Associates, an architectural firm with offices in London, New York and Accra known for its work on the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture that opened in 2016 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Much of the cost of the Perry Center is funded by public and private grants.

Highlighting Native American art

The Shelburne Museum signaled a move toward highlighting its existing and incoming collection of Native American art when it announced this winter the hiring of its first associate curator of Native American art, Victoria Sunnergren.  The museum’s exhibitions for the 2023 season will include “Built from the Earth: Pueblo Pottery from the Anthony and Teressa Perry Collection,” running June 24-Oct. 22. The museum opens for the season Saturday, May 13.

The Perry Center will combine the museum’s existing but rarely-displayed collection of approximately 300 items of Native American art with the newly-donated works, meaning the total collection will represent nearly 80 tribes. The new building will not only house the collection, it will serve as a “national resource for the study and care of Indigenous art,” according to the museum.

“Shelburne Museum has approached this project with an abiding awareness of the responsibility inherent in caring for a collection that represents living cultures,” Thomas Denenberg, the museum’s director and CEO, said in a news release.

The museum is working with a national advisory committee including members of Native American tribes, scholars and curators to “ensure institutional cultural competency,” according to the museum. Those consulted include Don Stevens of Vermont, chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation, who in the news release calls the museum’s approach to stewardship of the Native American collection “commendable.”

The Shelburne Museum was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb in 1947 and includes more than 100,000 objects. The vast majority of the collection consists of American art and crafts.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Shelburne Museum's Native American art to be showcased in new building