History's no mystery at Vt Folk Center Visit Middlebury's own folklife museum and community gem

Author: Andrea Glaessner

Ever wondered what a "kitchen tunk" is? Archivists and folklorists at the Vermont Folklife Center (VFC) have the answer for just about every random question regarding Vermont culture and history. The VFC is a haven for historians, teachers and regular folks with an insatiable curiosity. Packed with folklife materials preserved on many different media formats including more than 3,800 audio taped interviews, approximately 200 video tapes, 15,000 slides and photographs, manuscripts, and other documentation organized into over 100 distinct collections makes the VFC an invaluable resource for Vermont history. More than just an archive collection, the VFC is a museum that offers fun activities and fascinating lectures for the community, such as the current 7th Annual Gingerbread House exhibit - the ultimate cure for the wintertime blues.

According to archivist and folklorist Andy Kolovos, the VFC has as its mission "to document and preserve the voices of Vermont through folk arts and cultural traditions." The center is best known for its extensive archive collection., which is available to the public for residents' repective needs. Kolovos explains that oftentimes people use the research to support a thesis or project that has little or nothing to do with the original intent for research. For example, Kolovos recalls an individual using the archives for research on reptiles, despite the fact that no research had yet been specifically organized for that purpose.

Staff members of the VFC also work outside the museum, conducting their own field research to contribute to the archive. Kolovos describes a current project that staff members are currently working on in conjunction with the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Immigrant and Resettlement Program. The organizations are researching Bhantu people from the states of Somalia, Bosnia, Laos, Russia and Vietnam who have settled near Burlington. Kolovos explains: "Our interest is o look and see what these people bring to this place [Vermont]. One of the intentions behind immigrant and refugee program is to research cultural arts." The VFC exounds its purpose, not simply looking backwards to the past, but also observing how Vermont is evolving from an anthropological perspective.

This contradicts a common and simplistic assumption about the VFC: that the center is all about history and the past. In fact, the VFC is very forward looking, and Kolovos explains, "People generally come to us because they're interested in oral history, but to us the idea of oral history is pretty different from historians. We take an anthropological perspective on culture, which is more fluid, and examines the impact of the past on the present. We rarely use the term oral history." Describing this connection between the past and present, Kolovos uses the example of the "kitchen tunk". He explains that "kitchen tunks" - an old name for a farm party - were just a part of life, "embedded in the system of reciprocity people used to cement social bonds." Now that the world in which kitchen tunks existed is gone, and thus the social behavior has also vanished, a modern Vermont "kitchen tunk" is radically different from its predecessor. According to Kolovos, today's kitchen tunk "is really a revival thing, usually a party among hippie types who are interested in the old agrarian way of life".

Aside from providing extensive research resources, the VFC is an important community center, a museum that rotates exhibitions that range widely in content from "Messages from a Small Town: Photographs Inside Pawlet, Vermont" to the current and seasonal Gingerbread exhibit.

Whether you are an anthropology major, a history major, or simply curious to learn more about Vermont, visit the VFC, an undeniably priceless institution of the Middlebury Community.