Vermont Curators Group
The Vermont Curators Group was founded in 2016 to bring curators from across the state together to connect and collaborate. Membership now includes more than 100 cultural institutions and independent curators specializing in art, design, history, science, and craft from every corner of the state. It is governed by a volunteer steering committee. Learn about the group’s origin story at SevenDaysVT.com.
The mission of the Vermont Curators Group is to provide opportunities for the state’s curators to connect, collaborate, and learn from one another, in order to strengthen the state’s culture sector and increase its visibility.
VISION STATEMENT: The Vermont Curators Group envisions what is possible when the state’s curators connect and collaborate rather than compete. When knowledge and resources can be shared, all of our institutions and content creators can rise together. Vermont’s audiences for cultural activities will benefit from learning about the richness of the state’s offerings at not just the bigger institutions in the more populous areas, but the smaller organizations off the beaten track, offering direct service to their communities. By combining our marketing efforts and supporting each other, we can make Vermont a destination for both culture workers and for culture-loving audiences.
VALUES STATEMENT: We aspire to be an inclusive group, to create inclusive space in our meetings and gatherings. This means continuing to seek opportunities to diversify our membership and leadership and sharing opportunities for continued learning. We encourage our members to combat systems of oppression–including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism–and aim to support our members in spurring action in their own work, institutions, and/or communities.
Credit to Amy Lilly and Seven Days for the group photo above.
2020 Vision Initiative
In the year 2020, the Vermont Curators Group undertook its first statewide project with 36 cultural institutions participating in a suite of exhibitions on the theme 2020 Vision: Seeing the World Through Technology.
Those plans were upended, and the theme gained new meaning, as the global pandemic forced the
closure of cultural institutions, and stay-home orders forced us to see the world through technology in drastically new ways. Vermont’s museums and galleries rapidly shifted to presenting content and engaging audiences online, through VermontArtOnline.org and more.
The pandemic and other events of 2020 caused Vermont’s cultural institutions to rethink their priorities and rearrange their schedules around the demands of our moment, reflecting on the world-changing events that have impacted us all in 2020.
In the fall of 2020, Vermont Curators Group relaunched the 2020 Vision project as 2020 Vision: Reflecting on a World-Changing Year with 50 participating institutions, and an expanded theme that encompassed in-person and online exhibitions and events, on themes of technology, projects that respond to the pandemic, the racial justice movement, the political climate, and more. The 2020 Vision project ended in July 2021, having presented over 100 exhibitions and events and bringing visibility to Vermont’s culture sector at a critical time. Read our Impact Report below for a full synopsis of our activities and takeaways.
Vermont Curators Group 