sarah
By Cynthia Ross
The Highland Center for the Arts, rising out of the landscape in Greensboro, is a surprise and delight, hosting an array of cultural offerings, including theater, dance, music, opera, outdoor art installations and events, workshops, lectures, yoga, a winter market, as well as a café and an excellent visual art gallery. The center’s board of directors wanted a professional gallery for visual art, and sought someone to curate it. Enter Maureen O’Connor Burgess.
O’Connor Burgess, a Montpelier resident, was known to many in the graphic design and visual arts fields, especially through her work curating art shows at the Central Vermont Medical Center. She had done design work for the hospital in its outreach materials and, in collaboration with then-president Judy Tarr, had the idea to host an art gallery in the hospital lobby. That was over a decade ago. Visitors, staff members, and patients have benefited from the vitality of art in this healing venue ever since.
In 2019, she was invited to become the curator at the Highland Center and to develop it into a professional gallery. Under O’Connor Burgess, the walls of the light-filled, spacious lobby became dedicated to displaying art, large scale or intimate or both. An artist herself, O’Connor Burgess brings a curiosity and delight in the creativity and variety of perceptions and approaches by artists.
In the beginning, she focused on single artist shows, feeling her way with the gallery space, the venue, and the audiences. She started with artists from Vermont and has gradually expanded to include artists from New England and sometimes further afield.
Since those early days, she has curated shows involving groups with mixed styles, mediums, and approaches. The artists she works with have commented on her acuity in finding the ways to place work on the walls that elucidate meaning, inner relationships, and open viewers to new thoughts and perceptions. Her goal for the exhibitions is to show people what’s out there, to educate, and to share her own delight in the work. She loves when people walk into the gallery and their faces light up as they contemplate the work. These are the “Aha! I’ve never thought of this before” moments.
Each show reveals an underlying theme, whether it be the life journey of an artist in a retrospective with work spanning decades, such as in the recent exhibition of the work of Ed Epstein; or the 2024 October eclipse. In this group show, she says, “Every piece was different. It is fascinating to me what humans are capable of, the originality of their practice and ideas, and how they figure out how to do it.”
Then there was the show of paintings by Heidi Broner and her father, Matt Broner. Matt’s work is abstract whereas Heidi’s is figurative, and yet the way that O’Connor Burgess hung that show revealed the similarity in their color palettes and a deeply shared sensibility.
For several years, she curated a student show, sponsored by the Wildlife Federation.
“Seeing what kids are capable of, what they know about the natural world, blew my mind. They pay attention and they have skill,” she says.
The most recent exhibit, “A Critical Balance,” features six artists whose work depicts endangered birds of Kenya, and involves a collaboration with the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine, providing resource material for deeper understanding of the plight of these creatures.
For each show, O’Connor Burgess hosts a reception, with culinary delights provided by Highland’s chef, Annelise Beach, and an artist’s talk with an introduction by O’Connor Burgess. She looks for opportunities to expand the scope of the content, through lectures, workshops, or fun events such as a high tea and talk with a tarot reader for Delia Robinson’s tarot show.
O’Connor Burgess brings an artistry to her work as curator. “I love it!,” she says. “With every show I learn new things. I do research to introduce artists, and while looking for art, I get to visit ‘pockets of wonder’ all over Vermont. There are people living out there making incredible things. I’ve met incredible people who really inform my life. And what you absorb, you pass on to others.” Indeed, the Highland exhibitions and their associated events provide their own “pockets of wonder,” enriching our communities, inspiring imagination, and affirming our creative humanity.
