Shelburne Museum

Shelburne Museum is a museum of art, design, and Americana located in Shelburne, Vermont, United States. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the museum grounds. It is located on near Lake Champlain. Impressionist paintings, folk art, quilts and textiles, decorative arts, furniture, American paintings, and an array of 17th to 20th century artifacts are on view. Shelburne is home to collections of 19th century American folk art, quilts, 19th and 20th century decoys, and carriages. Electra Havemeyer Webb was a pioneering collector of American folk art, and founded Shelburne Museum in 1947. Shelburne's collections are exhibited in a village like setting of historic New England architecture, accented by a landscape that includes over 400 lilacs, a circular formal garden, herb and heirloom vegetable gardens, and perennial gardens. In 2013, the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education was opened with two galleries, an auditorium, and a classroom, transforming the institution from seasonal (mid May through October) to year round operation. In 2023, the Native American Initiative was announced, aiming to construct a building to display and interpret both the materials already in the museum's stewardship, and the Perry Collection, a 200 piece collection of various works by Plains, Prairie, and Southwest groups.

The museum's collection was begun by Electra Havemeyer Webb, one of the first people to recognize the applied and decorative arts of rural America as collectible. Webb was an avid collector of American folk art and founded the museum in 1947. She took the step of relocating historic buildings from New England and New York to Shelburne in which to display the museum's holdings. The museum has lost money and was said to have had a deficit of more than $300,000 (~$ in ) in 1994. Textiles include 770 bed coverings (including 500 quilts), 400 hooked and sewn rugs, early household textiles (1,800 samplers, laces and linens) and 2,800 costumes and accessories. The decorative arts collection has 6,650 pieces, including glass, ceramics, pewter, metalwork, scrimshaw and one of the country's best regional collections of 18th and 19th century painted furniture. Over 1,000 dolls, 27 dollhouses and 1,200 doll accessories echo in miniature the museum's collections of ceramics, furniture and other household furnishings. A major reinterpretation and related publication of the doll collection was completed in 2004. The collection of American and European toys dates from the beginning of the 19th century. At the museum there are some 3,200 American prints, paintings, drawings and graphics that relate to daily life. American paintings include works by Bierstadt, Cassatt, Chase, Copley, Heade, Homer, Eastman Johnson, Lane, Grandma Moses, Peto and Andrew Wyeth. A significant group of European paintings and pastels from the renowned Havemeyer collection includes works by Corot, Daubigny, Degas, Manet and Monet; they are exhibited in furnished rooms re created from the Webbs' New York apartment, c. 1930, and are the only Impressionism pictures on public view in Vermont. Collections also include 225 horse drawn vehicles (described as one of the best in the nation by Merri Ferrell, formerly curator of vehicles at the Long Island Museum of Art, History and Carriages); 1,000 farming implements; and 5,000 hand tools that document woodworking, metalsmithing, coopering, weaving and spinning, leatherworking and woodcarving trades. Craftspeople staff working exhibits of blacksmithing, printing, spinning and weaving. An apothecary shop/physician's office displays 2,000 patent medicines and turn of the 20th century medical instruments. The collections are exhibited in a setting of 38 exhibition buildings, 25 of which were relocated to the museum; the 1871 Colchester Reef Light; three historic and three replica barns, including a 1901 Vermont round barn; a vintage operating carousel; blacksmith and wheelwright shops; a weaving shop with an operating Jacquard loom; a working exhibit of late 19th century printing equipment; an 1840 one room schoolhouse; an 1890 Vermont slate jail; an 1840 general store; a rare 18th century up and down sawmill; a 19th century covered bridge with two lanes and a footpath; the reconstructed office of noted Vermont physician D. C. Jarvis; an 1890 railroad station; a 1914 steam locomotive and 1890 private rail car; and the 1906 220 feet (67 m) steamboat Ticonderoga, which is a U. S. National Historic Landmark.

In 1996 the museum sold $30 million (~$ in ) of its art to pay expenses. J. Watson Webb Jr., the son of Electra Havemeyer Webb, resigned in protest. Webb believed that the sale violated the code of ethics of the American Alliance of Museums, which forbids the selling of artworks for purposes other than acquiring more art. The funds from the sale were used to establish a Collections Care Endowment which is used to support the ongoing remedial and preventative conservation, storage and management of the museum's collection.