Robert Frost Stone House Museum Receives Grants to Support Cultural Relief; David Orr Lecture
The Robert Frost Stone House Museum at Bennington College has received two grants to support its operations in the coming year.
Cultural Relief Grant
The Robert Frost Stone House Museum at Bennington College has received a $5,000 Vermont COVID-19 Cultural Relief Grant from the Vermont Arts Council and Vermont Humanities. The Cultural Relief Grant will support the Robert Frost Stone House Museum’s general operations and humanities programming.
The Vermont COVID-19 Cultural Relief Grant Program is a partnership between the Vermont Arts Council and Vermont Humanities to provide rapid-response funding to arts and humanities organizations facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Grants are made possible with federal funds distributed through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
“We are so thankful to Vermont Humanities for this critical support of the Frost Stone House that will allow us to re-open the Museum later this summer,” said Erin McKenny, Director of the Robert Frost Stone House Museum.
David Orr to Offer Lecture on Robert Frost
Vermont Humanities has also awarded the Robert Frost Stone House Museum a programming grant of $1,000 to present a free public lecture by David Orr, poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review and the author of The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong, a book about Frost’s beloved poem.
This lecture will be presented in partnership with the Bennington Museum as part of a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Frost's move to Vermont. Originally scheduled for 2020, 100th anniversary programming and exhibitions at both the Frost Stone House and the Bennington Museum will now take place in 2021.
“We are thrilled to offer this lecture by David Orr as a way of expanding our understanding of Frost, this iconic poem, and poetry in general.” said McKenny. “Orr’s book provides a fresh way of looking at this classic Frost work, keeping the poem vital and current. Orr’s idea that reading poetry, ‘is more a matter of building a relationship than proceeding systematically through a checklist,’ will offer a new way of engaging with and understanding Frost’s work and poetry in general.”
This lecture, which has been postponed to Fall 2021 due to the pandemic, will coincide with the Bennington Museum’s Frost exhibition “Robert Frost: At Present in Vermont” (also postponed until 2021), and will bring author and award-winning critic David Orr to the Bennington Museum as part of the centennial celebration of Frost’s move to Vermont. Orr will offer a fresh look at Robert Frost’s life and work, demystifying the experience of reading poetry.