The most unusual of the town's new residents is the Main Street Museum. Though no longer on Main Street, and not a museum in the usual sense, it typifies the creative iconoclasm that is turning this town into an original. A taxidermied llama guards the front window, and in the back, the glazed eyes of mounted beasts look out onto rows of glass cases enclosing everything from Elvis Presley's gallstones to the preserved carcass of a monster said to have been dragged from the depths of the Connecticut River. There is MACBA (modern art created by accident), jars of murky-looking detritus, and gifts too laughable to categorize. Walking through, it slowly dawns on you that founder David Fairbanks Ford is placing the whole notion of curating under scrutiny, with two parts satire, three parts silliness.
Crossing over, creatively
Artists are reviving White River Junction, Vt.
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Walk the labyrinthine hallways of the Tip Top Building, a commercial bakery turned art center, and more surprises appear: a photography exhibit, a wall of masterful prints, and a giant wooden sculpture, all the work of individuals recently drawn to this previously overlooked town.
''The intricate life of a small city in central eastern Vermont is too interesting to be ignored," Ford says. ''Our present is continuously, and sometimes rambunctiously, transforming into our history."
Diane E. Foulds is a writer in Burlington, Vt.
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