Island: A Conversation

ADMISSION:
Free
Space is limited. Advance registration required.
To register, click here, or call 802-257-0124 x101

LOCATION:
In person at the Bellows Falls Waypoint Center (17 Depot Street, Bellows Falls, VT 05101)

ACCESSIBILITY QUESTIONS?
Email office@brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124 x101

Join photographer Susan Mikula, curator Charlie Hunter, geologist David Howell, archeologist Gail Golec, and architect Dan Scully for a conversation about the rich history, present, and future of the Island, a 30-acre shelf of bedrock in downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont. Originally a peninsula bounded on three sides by the Connecticut River, it became an Island in 1802, when the construction of a canal bypassing the Great Falls was completed, effectively severing it from the mainland. Once a gathering, ceremonial, and burial place for the Indigenous inhabitants of the region, the Island has been defined by human manipulation for centuries. Railroads, resort hotels, farm machinery, armament manufacturers, paper mills, and busy roadways have all come and gone. Today, the Island quietly awaits its next chapter. Bellows Falls resident and founder of the Rockingham Arts & Museum Project, Robert McBride, will moderate the conversation, which will take place at the Bellows Falls Waypoint Center, fittingly located on the Island itself.

Prior to the event, attendees are encouraged to watch the video of a talk given by Mikula and Hunter at BMAC last November. 

This event is presented in connection with the exhibition Susan Mikula: Island.

Susan Mikula lives and works in New York City and rural western Massachusetts. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and Northampton and Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is in private collections in the United States and Europe, as well as in the permanent collection of the U.S. Embassy, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Charlie Hunter is a painter who lives in Bellows Falls, Vermont. This is the second exhibit he has curated for BMAC, the other being Boxcars: Railroad Imagery in Contemporary Realism. As a painter, Hunter says his goal is “to paint beautifully that which is not traditionally considered beautiful.”