Painted curtain to be restored, returned to Ludlow
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Georgia Brehm, museum director of the Black River Academy Museum, shows the painted curtain that Vermont’s Painted Theater Curtains project is restoring. Benedict Hudson / Rutland Herald |
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By Josh O'Gorman STAFF WRITER - Published: August 6, 2009
LUDLOW — Ninety-one years after its creation, a relic of the town's past has returned home.
During the past week, conservators have come to the Black River Academy Museum to help restore a painted theater curtain that is believed to have hung somewhere in town.
The 8-foot-tall, 16-foot-wide curtain bears the image of the Odd Fellows Building, and according to the signature, dates from 1918.
"We know the painter, William Stuart, painted seven curtains in Townshend and had a studio in Brattleboro," said Christine Hadsel, project director of Vermont's Painted Theater Curtains, which has identified 180 of the curtains around the state and seeks to restore them and return them to their proper places.
The project, an offshoot of the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance, has worked on about 160 curtains so far; most recently, the Odd Fellows curtain, which was found in storage in Brattleboro. Most of the curtains date from 1900 to 1940, Hadsel said, when towns had stages to host traveling vaudeville performers.
"But after World War II, the traveling entertainment life came to an end," she said.
Black River Academy Museum Executive Director Georgia Brehm said neither she nor anyone else is sure where the curtain originally hung. According to museum archives, the Odd Fellows Building was built as a hotel in 1893, near the site of the current Gill Odd Fellows Home, and was used for senior citizen housing from 1895 until 1973.
While the building was quite large — four stories with a wrap-around porch — it is unknown if it contained a theater or if the curtain ever hung in Ludlow in the first place.
While the paint is faded in some places with scattered splotches of black, the pine tree and the cow in the representation of the Great Seal still look vibrant. Just when the public will be allowed to view the artifact is up in the air.
The curtain hangs on the third floor of the museum, which due to fire codes is off-limits to visitors.
"We tried everywhere, measured everywhere, and this was the only place it fits," Brehm said.
The museum is in the middle of a capital campaign to install a tower with an elevator and fire stairs, and while the tower is complete, the project needs about another $200,000 for the elevator and electrical work.
josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com
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