The University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art has announced their receipt of an extraordinary promised gift of nearly 200 European and American paintings, prints, drawings and photographs from Jericho, Vermont collector, J. Brooks Buxton ‘56. Buxton’s deep and abiding interest in history—global and local—has resulted in a unique and diverse collection.
Throughout his life, Buxton has collected art that represents the locales where his career as an oil executive has taken him: the United Kingdom, North Africa, the Middle East, and Vermont, to which he returned in 2003.
In total, the gift includes 19 European works on paper, 67 American paintings, 69 American works on paper and 39 photographs. This gift represents a $1.5 million contribution to the campaign for the University of Vermont. Fleming Museum director Janie Cohen said, “The depth of Brooks’s knowledge and his acute eye are evident in this culturally rich collection, encompassing significant art historical highlights, as well as indepth explorations of subjects that have personal significance to Brooks, and great relevance to the Fleming’s collection.”
Among the highlights of the gift are 19th-century photographs including vintage albumen prints, silver gelatin prints, and rare prints from dry plate negatives; works on paper by Delacroix, Manet, and Dufy; early Vermont portrait paintings; and an unprecedented collection of Vermont landscape paintings, prints, drawings, watercolors, and photographs. According to museum curator Andrea Rosen, Buxton’s collection mirrors the cultural breadth of the Fleming’s holdings, as well as specific areas of focus within the Fleming’s collection.
“Brooks’s gift will establish the Fleming as a premier collection of early Vermont portraiture, and, above all, his collection of Vermont landscapes establishes at the Museum the most extensive artistic record of the Vermont landscape from the 19th to the 21st century anywhere in the world,” Rosen said.
Buxton’s collection features over 100 important works of Vermont landscapes by artists from the 19th to the 21st century, including James Hope, Charles Louis Heyde, Mary Ann Landon, James Gilman, Thomas Moran, Thomas Cole, John Henry Hopkins, Paul Sample, Asa Cheffetz, John Whorf, Luigi Lucioni, Francis Colburn, and contemporary artists Wolf Kahn, Claire Van Vliet, Curtis Hale, Bunny Harvey, Charlie Hunter, and Edward Burtynsky.
The Museum anticipates that the collection will serve as an attraction to Vermonters and to visitors to the state alike, becoming over time a destination in and of itself. Additionally, its pedagogical role at the University of Vermont will enrich the study of Vermont across disciplines, including geology, geography, architecture, and the environment, among many others.
Cohen ended her remarks by saying, “We are indebted and eternally grateful to Brooks for sharing his remarkable transcultural collection, through this promised gift, with the UVM community, the people of the State of Vermont, and visitors to Vermont from around the world, in perpetuity.”
The Fleming Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Vermont is a gateway for active cultural exchange and critical thinking and has presented diverse artistic traditions for over 80 years. The Museum serves as Vermont’s premier public showplace for exhibitions, education, and scholarship about local and world cultures, both historical and contemporary.