EXPLOREFor The Love of Vermont:
The Lyman Orton Collection

The future of the Southern Vermont Arts Center will be shaped by an extraordinary gift to the region: For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection, the world’s largest private collection of 20th-century Vermont art. Comprising more than 300 paintings, prints, and drawings, this remarkable collection has been entrusted to SVAC to preserve, interpret, and share with the public in perpetuity.

More than an art collection, For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection is a visual history of the Green Mountain State. Together, these works capture Vermont’s landscapes, villages, farms, covered bridges, industries, traditions, and people across generations. They tell the story of a place that has inspired artists for more than a century and reveal how Vermont’s identity has evolved while remaining deeply connected to its land and communities.

Following its record-breaking debut exhibition at SVAC in 2023, the collection quickly became one of the institution’s most celebrated attractions, drawing visitors from across Vermont and beyond. As part of SVAC’s campus expansion, the collection will be housed in a dedicated gallery designed specifically for its long-term display—a welcoming, visitor-centered space where guests can gather, linger, and experience both the artwork and the breathtaking mountain views that inspired so many of the artists represented within it.

Lyman Orton, proprietor of the Vermont Country Store, began collecting Vermont art in the 1970s and has spent decades searching for what he affectionately calls “escaped art”—works that had left the state and were at risk of being lost to Vermont’s cultural heritage. His mission has been to bring these pieces home, preserving them for future generations and reconnecting them with the places they depict.

The collection focuses primarily on works created between the late 1800s and the mid-20th century, a period Orton refers to as Vermont’s “Golden Era” of painting. During these years, dozens of talented artists chronicled the state’s changing landscapes and way of life, creating a rich visual record that is unmatched in scope and depth.

As former Yankee Magazine editor Mel Allen observed in 2023:

“For nearly half a century I have written about people and places I have known in New England, and I’ve never met anyone whose life has been defined by a place—as much as Lyman Orton. That place is Vermont.”

Though widely recognized for assembling one of the nation’s most significant regional art collections, Orton rarely describes himself as an art collector. Instead, his passion has always been rooted in place. He seeks out works that have “a there there”—paintings and drawings that capture a specific location, a recognizable landscape, or an authentic aspect of Vermont life.

One of the collection’s most distinctive features is how it is presented. Rather than organizing the works by artist or chronology, Orton curates them by theme, creating visual conversations across generations and artistic styles.

Visitors might encounter a gallery wall devoted to Vermont’s covered bridges, where multiple artists interpret the same landmarks in different seasons and moods. Elsewhere, scenes of rural auctions, village life, mountain vistas, and working farms reveal the rhythms of everyday life in Vermont across decades. Sweeping landscapes of snow-covered peaks, summer birch groves, and brilliant autumn maples stand alongside intimate portraits of communities and traditions that helped shape the state.

Enhanced interpretive signage throughout the gallery will provide stories, historical context, artist biographies, and personal anecdotes, inviting visitors to connect more deeply with both the artwork and the Vermont stories behind it.

The collection offers more than beautiful paintings—it provides a window into Vermont’s social, agricultural, and environmental history. Through these works, visitors can trace the transformation of the landscape from the Merino sheep boom of the mid-1800s to the dairy farming era that defined much of the 20th century. They can see the open hillsides that later became home to some of North America’s earliest ski slopes and witness the villages, roads, and communities that formed the backbone of Vermont life.

As the Boston Globe noted when reviewing the collection’s 2023 exhibitions at SVAC and the Bennington Museum, the works offer “a time-travel trip through Vermont.”

The gift of For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection represents one of the most significant cultural investments in SVAC’s history. By establishing a permanent home for these artworks, SVAC is creating a destination where residents and visitors alike can explore Vermont’s artistic heritage, deepen their understanding of the state’s history, and experience the enduring power of place through art.

For generations to come, this extraordinary collection will inspire discovery, conversation, and a deeper appreciation for the landscapes and communities that make Vermont unique.