The Bundy Modern was built in 1962.  It was designed by Harlow Carpenter(1926-2009), an heir to the founders of IBM, and an original and major investor in Sugarbush ski area & golf course. He was a noted modernist sculptor. The Bundy Center for the Arts was created as an outdoor sculpture garden to house Carpenter's private art collection, as a place to promote the work of younger artists, and as a venue for the Vermont Symphony's summer concerts.  It also served as a progressive primary school from 1970-1980.

 

Strictly modern in design, The Bundy features the clean lines of the International Movement using four materials: glass, brick, wood, and slate.  All structural elements are entirely visible. The building was designed to hide nothing, and to enhance its location on a natural plateau with incredible views of the mountainside, including Lincoln Peak. The Gallery itself consists of a wall of windows 23' high and 30' wide, , fronting a 30' by 40' open room with 360 squares of  2'  native VT bluestone underfoot.

 

The surrounding landscape was designed as a serious sculpture garden.  The landscape architecture provides fascinating rhythm: interesting  waves and mounds cradle and soften the square of the building. A 3/4 acre, man-made, parabolic reflecting pool further enhances the building, providing movement & light to contrast against the stasis of the brick construction.

 

The entire property is hidden from view at the top of a 1/3 mile drive off of Route 100 in Waitsfield. The drive climbs steadily through a dark tunnel of hemlocks and hardwoods and levels out on a 30-acre natural plateau, which had been farmed by the Long family from Revolutionary times till the 1950s when Carpenter bought it from Anna Long.   The drive is lined with magnificent sugarmaples.

 

Over the years, some concessions in the building's interior were made, due the extreme temperatures of Vermont. But the original structure is remarkably intact.

 

The Bundy Modern is ready for its next 50 years, to be a welcoming space meant to shelter, to inspire, to entertain, and provoke thought.

 

Click here for a recent article (8/19/15) by journalist Amy Lilley in 7 Days (the Village Voice of the north country)