The Walker Museum

[Editorial foward]
+
Comment by Herbert Brooks Walker
Owner and Director

eye magazine of the Yale Arts Association, Number Two, 1968

Kids love to go to the old school house in Fairlee, Vermont—for that matter so do their parents. The old school has been transformed into a museum of many cultures and eras by interesting and artistic collections of art and artifacts. Visitors entering each old classroom momentarily experience a different culture of era in history. The collections include cultures as diverse as an Early American kitchen and a Persian Bazaar.

The most unique feature of this museum is not the displays, however; it is the attitude of its owners, Herbert Walker and his wife Joan, who are enthusiastic collectors of intelligence and taste. They guests to feel, smell, use and, in some cases, try on the exhibits so they can experience a sense of the culture they represent. Unusual indeed for museum owners who are traditionally known to lurk around nervously with pursed lips, ready to pounce on the first person who steps within three feet of an exhibit encased in glass.

Herbert Walker is a sculptor and painter who graduated from the Yale Art School in 1951. He and his wife have lived and traveled in Europe, South America, and the Near and Far East. Both of their families have collected antiques and art works for years. The Walkers are avid "museum goers".

Eight years ago, after a tour to the Near East, for six months with their two small children, the Walkers returned to this country and settled in the peaceful New England town of Fairlee, where they had a summer home. They acquired the school house and after three months of floor sanding, interior and exterior painting, and repair work, transformed it into a museum and studio. The collections acquired while traveling formed the nucleus of the initial displays. Subsequent acquisitions, gifts and loans helped form the American collections.

In addition to the museum the Walkers have provided a show case which goes to area schools. It is a changing display which is designed to tie in with current studies in the schools. The school librarian provides additional materials and books. The children are encouraged to handle the objects and "get to know them".

The Walkers have found it difficult not to let the museum take over their lives. Herbert Walker is a friendly, gregarious man who can't resist the opportunity to meet new people and share his knowledge, art and treasures with them. But he is also a talented artist who wants to keep up with his sculpting and painting. Last winter he took his family to Italy where he studied the new techniques for casting and molding his sculpture. The Walkers used to stay in Fairlee the year round—now they spend their winters in New York.
[pg 40]

Pages 41 ~ 45, typsetting by HB2

"OUR MUSEUM is working
It teaches in impact
Scents,
taste,
feeling.
Work changes ideas and
develops understanding.
Music
instruments,
alarums,
twangs, tapes.
Smells
cow manure from Vermont,
corn fields,
pine needles,
Persian bazaar,
incense from Indian funerals."
[pg 42]

We are the only attraction that likes the public. We get "museum goers" . . . they stop with one sign on the road. The other half are Vermonters who, after eight years of waiting, are going to spend fifty cents and want something for their money.

With that combination. . .

We have no ice cream drippers, thieves or destructive persons.
I think the nicest sight to our museum staff is the yellow bus—the children waiting until we escort them into the museum. Their interest, questions and stimulus to our work, make any effort in education really well paid! Half the people like the idea of a foreign museum. They like best the sculptured ceiling and the monolithic stone garden outside.

There are carriages for them to climb into and even pull around to give the squeak, creak, and smell of wheels, shafts and leather that belonged to New England's not too distant past. The flap, and whirr of the bean mills, the corn shellers...five or six different kinds whose great cast iron grinding teeth grate and spatter kernels so that children can see the development of manual to mechanized America.

Medicine chest with a fine display of bottles. Collected for both labels and the fine glass. The labels' fascinating reading with the improbable result of a cure from such unusual products. Medical books to leaf through to help appreciate the great strides our modern time offer us. The fine glass, its hand blown shape, its colors and interesting iridescence.

People photograph themselves in different sections so that a short visit to this Vermont Museum gives photos equal to those of a round the world journey. Imagine being a young girl able to slip into a variety of kimonos and in stocking feet sitting in a real Japanese room pouring imaginary tea and passing real soy crackers. Then trying on the wooden clogs and being photographed by mom and dad. A boy with a Japanese helmet and fine samurai sword in hand getting into a judo coat.

Holding in the palm of your hand a few grains of wheat from the hawk (Horus) mummy brings out educational discussions of religion, primitive agriculture, and present day animal entombment.

For active religions—the pottery from houses of Abraham's time, salt from the time of the great flood, and arrowheads of Alexander's and Darius's legions. . . the actual Islamic chains used for self-abnegation and mutilation. The books of early Christian persecution, the anti-Catholic materials of the 1850's and the Catholic talismans.

Buddhist figurines, whose fine shapes bring into focus the inner sculptural force echoing the intensity of religious vitality that religion has had. Brilliant silken robes from the wardrobe of the Emperor of China. 

The Forbidden Stitch whose work meant blindness forbidden only to the rich, but common business man.

The New Hampshire Klansman's outfit hangs in an unused toilet . . . surrounded with a skull, torch lights and surprise, Hate is everywhere.

I learned from everyone. Our fine violin is played once a week by visitors. . .  sometimes very well.

The printing press is not active . . . should be.

The forge with me making nails . . . an overeducated waste.
[pg 43]

Fine silks, bombazine, faille, beadwork and the tools, the looms and the spinning wheels to make them. Wool was once the major industry of Vermont—its history is outlined and there is an opportunity to spin and feel the fabrics as they were formed from thread into cloth.
Most of our nineteenth century machinery was well exposed, while sex was covered over.
Today designers cover the machinery.
Our machines and gadgets can be handled . . . creaking, crunching, chunking, chopping . . . great sounds.
New Yorkers (city) give us ideas like . . .
Make it into a restaurant—you can't eat well in Vermont.
Use it as a background-start a shoppe.
But Vermonters give you small heartfelt donations—objects or money . . .
A wonderful state because the people are fine.
The trees are new . . . In 1830 Vermont was only 30% forested, today it is 75%.
The hills and people are still the same.
The museum was a good idea. But there was a catch!
The idea was that I go to the studio and while I work I get paid by tourists to look at things we selected.
The catch! liked the tourists and enjoyed taking them around the Museum . . . result—not much art work . . . a three month party of changing persons, admiring and fifty cents.
(What knocked 'em dead was our seven year old son taking them around, telling them about Sung porcelains and pre-Columbian pottery and playing a gamelan.)
[pg 44]

We have collections:
35 apple peelers
8 corn shellers
4 winnowers
50 examples of redware pottery (U.S.A.)
A Japanese household
Sung and Ming porcelains
Chaldean pots from Ur
Arawa pottery
A Persian Bazaar
Lincoln '41 Towncar
17 carriages
1 stagecoach
2 outbuildings with trades
blacksmith
tinsmith
violin maker
printer
weaver
dyer
potter
cook sculptor
welder
jeweler
cobbler
wheelwright
cordwainer
carpenter
cabinet maker
candle dipper etc.
20 musical instruments
1000 books
Paintings
weavings
carpets
baskets
furniture
minerals
cameras
fabrics
paper
calligraphy

From:
U.S.A.
China
Japan
Indonesia
Egypt
Iran
Venezuela
Turkey
Italy
Greece
Canada
France
Spain
Germany
Great Britain
British West Indies
New Guinea
Philippines
Australia
Nepal
Tibet
Somalia
Korea
Afganistan
Iran
Thailand

With craft tools in almost every home, the museum does not have to be a continuous adult art school. It has an important leisure time service. It probably will always have some repository function . . . if just to have the materials to study and compare. But I think the old museum as we know it is on its way out. The culture center is here to stay. Shows brought to the area, no matter how small, enrich and encourage expansion of ideas and direction to any size community. I do not subscribe to the theory that only colleges and cities provide cultural centers. On the contrary, any size group of persons can be the vital force for a museum culture center concept.

Yes, I am of the dying tradition of a wholly owned private museum collection- no state or federal help.
We have ideas and we share them.
[pg 45]