Gallery Learning
Spring exhibitions are supported in part by the Maslow Family Foundation. Hospitality sponsor, Lake Champlain Chocolates. Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts.
BCA Gallery Learning
Burlington City Arts at the BCA Center offers innovative exhibitions of contemporary art, each accompanied by new exhibition-based learning programs for youth and adults. The gallery is located on Church Street at the heart of the city.
Our BCA Center Gallery Learning program guides school and community groups for visits, pairing tours with art-making activities centered on our exhibitions. We also offer a variety of public programs such as panel discussions, artist talks, readings, and more.
BCA recognizes that visual thinking is part of everyday life, and that the arts enrich our community. Bringing students to the BCA Center’s exhibitions raises their awareness of the essential role of arts in our society.
Our philosophy is that no artwork is “complete” without the reflections, questions, and observations of viewers.
Spring Exhibitions
Bunny Harvey: Worlds Within Worlds
FEBRUARY 14 – MAY 24, 2025
First Floor, BCA Center
Bunny Harvey’s semi-abstract landscape paintings exist as distinct places and as extensions of an inner world. Inspired by the rural landscape of central Vermont and the urban environs of New York or Rome, Harvey is intensely engaged with the natural world. The artist interprets her visual and sensory observations of the landscape— the sound of birds, scent of mown hay, or noise of the city—through the rhythm and gesture of her expressive brushwork. Worlds Within Worlds features immersive, large-scale paintings and more intimate works on paper, as well as her video, Walking with Water.
Spring Voices, oil on canvas, 2019
Bunny Harvey: Worlds Within Worlds and Stéphanie Morissette: Speculative Future is supported in part by the Maslow Family Foundation. Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts
Stéphanie Morissette: Speculative Future
FEBRUARY 14 – MAY 24, 2025
Second Floor, BCA Center
Montréal artist Stéphanie Morissette explores the conflicting relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Using insightful observation and dark humor, the artist imagines a future where biological specimens and mechanical technology have merged to create a new, hybrid species of birds. Through a selection of works on paper from her Birds of Prey series and mixed-media bird-drone sculptures, the artist questions the troubling realities underlying scientific research in synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and military technology.
Stéphanie Morissette is represented by JANO Gallery, Montréal, Canada.
Bird/Drone, mixed media, 2023
Exhibitions Downstairs, Art Studio Upstairs
Where do you make art in BCA Center?
With our Gallery Learning program, we say, “Everywhere.”
BCA exhibitions prompt conversation and thought about contemporary art by exhibiting artists.
Our gallery educators welcome groups to investigate those new ideas in our ON-SITE ART STUDIO, where you can join the fun.
School Visits
BCA gallery educators lead groups through lively discussions of art in our current exhibitions. These inquiry-driven experiences encourage close looking, critical thinking, and thought-provoking conversation. Next, we link the conversation to hands-on art activities, where students create their own works of art exploring exhibition themes, materials, and artistic processes.
These activities address multiple categories highlighted in National Core Arts Standards for the visual arts, especially responding, connecting, and creating. We encourage collaboration from teachers, to connect BCA visual thinking strategies to your own classroom goals. Because the topics of our exhibitions vary, individual shows may allow you to integrate visual art with other subject areas. Please feel free to discuss a tour structure with us.
Classroom tours at the BCA Center are offered on Mondays through Fridays between 9 am and Noon. Visits last approximately 90 minutes (custom-scheduled days and times are based on availability). We suggest one chaperone for every five to seven students.
Program fee is $15 per student for tours with a related art-making activity. Groups are invited to apply for a partial or full scholarship.
Visit burlingtoncityarts.org/gallery-learning for additional information. To schedule a visit with your group, contact Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at hferrell@burlingtoncityarts.org.
Upcoming Dates:
February 22, March 22, April 26, and May 24, 2025
Fourth Saturday of the Month
Our popular, intergenerational drop-in program welcomes children and caregivers to join fun, hands-on activities at BCA Center. Our gallery educators design projects for a wide variety of ages and abilities, connecting those projects to an idea, medium, or topic explored by an artist from a current exhibition. There is no fee for this program.