Howard E. Woodin ES Colloquium Series

Pieter Broucke, Director of the Arts, Professor of History of Art and Architecture

Public Art and the Environment: Herman de Vries’ Wintergräser at Franklin Environmental Center

Middlebury’s public art program marks 50 Years of Environmental Education and Leadership with a work of art by Herman de Vries, the 83 year old Dutch artist who has been making environmental art for as long as Middlebury’s Environmental Studies Program has been in existence. For Wintergräser (Winter Grasses), his 2013 work that was recently installed in Franklin Environmental Center, the artist collected grass that had been pressed down by snow and set it into 32 frames. The result is a disarmingly straightforward work of art with a strong poetic quality. De Vries represented the Netherlands at the 2015 Venice Biennale.