Windham College Preservation Assessment Project

FAIN: PG-233625-16

Landmark College (Putney, VT 05346)
Mary Jane MacGuire (Project Director: May 2015 to September 2017)

A preservation assessment and the purchase of preservation supplies to rehouse a collection of primary sources pertaining to Windham College, which operated from 1951 to 1978 in Putney, Vermont, on the present-day site of Landmark College.  The project would also entail training in preservation practices for staff of the Landmark College archives and nearby Putney Historical Society.  The collection comprises 30 linear feet of student newspapers, scrapbooks, photographs, school yearbooks, and administrative records documenting Windham College’s instructional focus on modern art and the involvement of its faculty and students in counterculture movements of the 1960s and 70s.  Among the short-lived school’s faculty and trustees were authors John Irving and Pearl S. Buck.

Landmark College and the Putney Historical Society hold collections from Windham College, a liberal arts college which operated in Putney, Vermont from 1951-78. The Windham College Preservation Project supports a collection-level assessment to conserve, organize and store materials at one site, the Landmark College Archives. This will allow for better intellectual and physical control of materials and better access for researchers. Windham College played an important role in creating Vermont's unique artistic character. Talented faculty artists, who would later become well-known names in the art world, used the campus to highlight changes in their artistic vision through exhibits and festivals that embraced not only the arts, but also the cultural movements of the day such as Back to the Land and later, the Anti-War Movement. Primary sources like yearbooks and student newspapers provide researchers a unique window into this creative and important era and deserve preservation.