In 1991 artist Ed Levine purchased a property in Vermont as a summer home and weekend respite from teaching at MIT in Cambridge, MA, where he was the Founding Director of the Visual Arts Program from 1989-1998 and Professor of Art from 1998-2002. When Ed died in 2020, his Vermont home, studio, and site-specific work was bestowed to his foundation, the Harpo Foundation. Now, the long engagement Ed had with the Vermont landscape will be extended to other artists through Back River Road Residency Retreat and through public access and education programs about Ed’s longtime project, “Vermont Village: A Conversation between Art, Water and the Land.”
Land Acknowledgement
Back River Road sits on unceded ancestral land of the Abenaki people, the original inhabitants and caretakers of territory now encompassing parts of Quebec and the Maritimes of Canada as well as northern sections of New England including Vermont, New Hampshire, and upstate New York. We recognize that the Abenaki people have had a continuous presence in the region for over 10,000 years despite dispossession and genocide committed by the French, British, and the United States government. As an artist-endowed program working toward equitable representation in the visual arts, we are committed to working against systems of oppression using the power of art and creative expression.
To learn more about the ancestral homeland of the Abenaki visit: https://native-land.ca/maps/