It’s been about a year since Bennington College took over the Robert Frost Stone House Museum in Shaftsbury.
As the school gets ready to close up the museum for the winter, administrators are taking stock of their first season and beginning to think about next year’s programs.“We’ve done some writing classes here, and we’ve done course work at Bennington with undergraduates,” said Bennington faculty member and museum director Megan Mayhew Bergman. “We’ve had students put to work here, and then we’ve had community members doing wildlife walks in the back. And so it’s been a real mixture which is what I hope it will continue to be.”
"When it was offered to us our intention never was to put the house under a bell jar. We are looking at this property as an exciting way for Bennington to interface more with the community." — Megan Mayhew Bergman, museum director
Frost lived in the modest two-story house for nine years, from 1920 to 1929, and he wrote “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" here — one of his most well-known poems.
The building remained a private residence for many years. In 2002, a local group raised the money to purchase the property and open it up to the public.
At the end of 2017, the original group of volunteers offered the building to Bennington College, a few miles down the road.
Along with taking advantage of the academic possibilities, Mayhew Bergman says the college wants to make sure it remains available to the public.
“When it was offered to us our intention never was to put the house under a bell jar,” Mayhew Bergman said. “We are looking at this property as an exciting way for Bennington to interface more with the community.”
The museum will close for the season on Nov. 2.
Correction 10/21/2018 8:15 a.m. This post originally had an errant "the" included in the title of Frost's poem. It has been updated.
