Museum offers unique art show and auction based on snowflakes


Art for the exhibit “Transient Beauty” is based on the photos of “Snowflake” Bentley.

BENNINGTON - On Friday, November 26, Bennington Museum will open the annual winter exhibition and closed-bid auction “Transient Beauty: Responding to ‘Snowflake’ Bentley,” featuring 25 contemporary artists responding to the magical photomicrographs of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley. Completely self-taught, Bentley started creating photomicrographs of snowflakes and frost in 1885 and continued making them, almost obsessively, until his death in 1931, having caught pneumonia while photographing snowflakes in a snowstorm. He captured more than 5,000 images of crystals in his lifetime and proved that, indeed, no two snowflakes are identical.
The contemporary responses will range from subject and formal affinity, including imagery of snowflakes, snow, frost/ice, with their intricate, delicate designs and mandala-like symmetry, to more conceptual links to Bentley’s larger project, including taxonomies, revealing the invisible and capturing the transient or ephemeral. Many of the exhibiting artists are photographers whose work uses historic photographic technologies and/or pushes at the possibilities of the photographic image. The closed-bid auction of exhibited artwork will open at the museum and online at 10 am on Friday, November 26, and close at 4 pm on Monday, December 20. Each bidder must either fill out a bid card, which will be dated and sealed in an envelope and placed in the secure receptacle provided at the entrance to the exhibit, or fill in an online bid form.

The Deerfield Valley News

797 VT Route 100 North
Wilmington, VT 05363

Phone: 802-464-3388
Fax: 802-464-7255

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