Program

Public Programs: Historic Places: Planning

Period of Performance

9/1/2020 - 4/30/2023

Funding Totals

$40,000.00 (approved)
$40,000.00 (awarded)


The Retreat Farm Story Paths and Landscape Learning Center

FAIN: BP-271514-20

Retreat Farm, Ltd. (Brattleboro, VT 05301-4801)
Jan Albers (Project Director: January 2020 to January 2022)
Wendy Ferris (Project Director: January 2022 to August 2022)
Alicia Bono (Project Director: August 2022 to present)

Development of five walking path tours and an educational visitor center to interpret the historical relationship between people and the environment in Vermont.

The Retreat Farm, in Brattleboro, Vermont, is developing a new outdoor museum employing a humanities approach to connect, teach and enrich public understanding of Vermont’s iconic landscape as a microcosm of our human place on the earth. Five thematic walking paths will tell stories of landscape change on this ground over time, while a culminating landscape learning center extracts the lessons of environmental degradation and redemption. This historic and strategic site is exceptionally rich in stories of indigenous peoples, international warfare, New England settlement, natural healing, and agricultural history. Our plan is to use the power of the humanities to instill a deeper understanding of the worlds we build around us.