The Art Resource Association, a central Vermont arts organization, was officially born on Nov. 17, 1975, when cofounders Patricia de Gogorza and her husband James Gahagan registered the ARA as a nonprofit with the state of Vermont.
De Gogorza and Gahagan moved to Vermont in 1971 from New York City, settling into the house they bought in 1964, on Dog Pond Road in South Woodbury. In the city they had been an active part of a dynamic art community. Gahagan, an abstract expressionist painter, was associate director of the Hans Hofmann School and taught painting at Pratt Institute, while de Gogorza, a printmaker and a sculptor, taught art at Bard College.
The couple soon realized the many artists living and working in the hills of Vermont needed a way to connect.
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“I think of artists in Vermont like raisins in a cookie. They’re separated, may not know about each other’s existence, but still they’re all together in the same cookie, Vermont,” notes de Gogorza.
The ARA would offer education and exhibition opportunities while also providing a source of income for the two cofounders and other artists. They got a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and also secured funding from Comprehensive Employment and Training Act and the Vermont Council on the Arts. Artists paid a yearly two-dollar fee to join the organization.
These days the ARA is more egalitarian — welcoming anyone with an interest in making art. But in its early days, the ARA was more selective about who could join. Prospective members had to submit résumés, slides of their artwork, and a biography. Whereas today, group shows are only occasionally juried, exhibits then were always juried.
A key part of the ARA’s early days was running workshops, taught by both local and visiting artists. The workshops included sessions on glass blowing, printmaking, blacksmithing, casting in bronze, and painting murals.
The ARA made certain to pay instructors. “We made it a rule that you can’t have artists working for nothing,” says de Gogorza. Thanks to the NEA funding, the ARA was able to pay instructors 10 dollars an hour and assistants five dollars — respectable sums in the mid-1970s.
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Along with grants from the VCA and NEA, the ARA raised money during the late 1970s and early 1980s by holding an Art and Zucchini Auction every August. Dick Hathaway, a history professor at Goddard College, served as the auctioneer. Hathaway was well known for his clever auctioneering repartee, and the auctions did well, raising nearly a thousand dollars from artwork donated by members.
Jim Gahagan and Pat de Gogorza sitting in front of their house in Woodbury, Vt., October 1973. Photo courtesy of the ARA.
For a time the ARA’s address was that of de Gogorza and Gahagan’s house in South Woodbury. Classes and some of the workshops were held there, affectionately called “Crazy Acres,” but often they had to be held elsewhere, such as artists’ studios. Work was exhibited wherever the ARA could find space; favored places were the Wood Art Gallery (now known as the T.W. Wood Museum), the Mad River Barn, and the Pyralisk Gallery.
Members dreamed of a building of their own, where the ARA could hold workshops and exhibitions in one central location. In 1978, the dream seemed about to come true with the purchase of an old schoolhouse in Maple Corner. It was a big disappointment when the purchase fell through, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. De Gogorza notes today that the ARA would likely have not survived had it been saddled with the overhead of a bricks-and-mortar location.
In 1982, de Gogorza stepped away from her role as president, which she had held for seven years. A succession of presidents soon followed. Funding from the NEA having dried up, the organization became all volunteer.
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Among the many ARA presidents, Jane Pincus is a standout, having led the ARA for nearly 11 years (2000–2011) with, she says, “all my heart and soul.” The organization is currently helmed by Linda Hogan, who has been president since 2015. The ARA continues its mission of hosting workshops and providing artists with opportunities to exhibit their work.
Through the years scores of local artists have been members of the ARA at one time or another, many of them well known to the community. Among them are (in no particular order): Robert Fisher, Delia Robinson, Frank Woods, Bill Brauer, Sarah Munro, Eddie Epstein, Mary Admasian, Sam Thurston, Janet Van Fleet, Fred Varney, Marie La-Pre Grabon, David Smith, Jill Waxman, Lois Eby, Ed Levin, Regis Cummings, Nicholas Hecht, Marilyn Ruseckas, Jim Sardonis, Janet MacLeod, Phil Osgatharp … and the list goes on.
This lean and flexible organization with no fixed physical address is much valued and loved by the central Vermont arts community and has continued to this day thanks to the devoted efforts of its artist members.
A more complete history can be found at the ARA website, aravt.space, where you can also find information about the organization and becoming a member.
Kate Mueller serves on the board of the Art Resource Association. Mueller, a visual artist, freelance editor, and graphic designer, lives in Montpelier.
A person holds a giant penny at a mock funeral for the coin, which was discontinued in 2025, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
What good is a penny at this point? Penny candy is a thing of the past, and a modern-day penny-pincher wouldn’t get very far if this were their get-rich strategy.
(This newsletter, though, costs you less than a penny. Chip in if you can.)
U.S. mints no longer make pennies, a decision that saves taxpayers an estimated $56 million annually. When the U.S. Treasury Department announced the country would stop minting them, it marked the end of an era — sorta.
Though those pesky copper-colored coins remain in circulation, some businesses, both in Vermont and nationwide, have begun experiencing penny shortages.
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Enter H.837. The bill outlines a plan that could allow retailers to phase out the penny by rounding up or down cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Other states, including Arizona and Indiana, have passed rounding legislation, and a handful of others are considering it. As written, Vermont’s bill wouldn’t require rounding, a similar approach favored in other jurisdictions.
Some Vermont businesses have already adopted rounding. But lobbyists for Vermont businesses say some of their members fear the practice — without explicit state blessing — could open a business up to a lawsuit over alleged unfair and deceptive practices.
Worried or not, rounding will likely become more necessary as pennies get harder to find, Maggie Lenz, a lobbyist for the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, told the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday. She encouraged the state to create a rounding framework, but discouraged lawmakers from making such a program mandatory.
Rep. Tony Micklus, R-Milton, agreed that rounding should be optional, but said the state should mandate a specific rounding framework for the businesses that choose to round.
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H.837’s approach, which would round down totals ending in 1,2,6 and 7 cents, and round up totals ending in 3, 4, 8 and 9 cents, would seem to be the fairest to consumers and businesses, those who testified agreed.
But the change is likely not net neutral. Zachary Tomanelli, a consumer protection advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, cited a Federal Reserve study that indicated rounding could cost consumers $6 million annually nationwide. That’s because businesses price goods in ways that tend to lead to rounding up.
He called the cost modest and said he generally supported the bill.
Despite H.837 not making it past the crossover deadlines, there’s still hope that pennies might make it into Vermont’s currency cemetery. Rep. Michael Marcotte, R-Coventry, the commerce committee’s chair, said his committee could stick the rounding legislation in the Senate’s economic development bill.
That said, you might not want to ditch your pennies quite yet.
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In the know
Here are some numbers for you: Between 2012 and 2022, Vermont’s primary care workforce declined by 13%. In that same time period, the specialist workforce grew by 23%. That’s according to testimony Jessa Barnard, with the Vermont Medical Society, gave to lawmakers in the House Health Care Committee Tuesday. She said the numbers are reflective of a trend in medicine nationwide, attributed to the fact that primary care docs often make less but pay the same high cost for medical school as their peers in more specialized roles.
In Vermont, Barnard said that this widening gap is leading to a particularly acute shortage. According to a report her organization put out in 2022, the state needs 115 primary care providers to meet the national benchmark for our population size. That figure includes OBGYNs, pediatricians and family medicine docs. By 2030, as our state’s population grows even older, the Vermont Medical Society expects the state to need 370 more primary care physicians to meet the national benchmark.
— Olivia Gieger
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, spoke with members of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon about S.327, an economic development bill that supports a number of public resources for business owners across the state.
The bill has had a tough go of it so far.
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Clarkson handed out copies of what she referred to as “the actual bill,” which meant the package voted out by her own Senate Economic Development Committee before being “pretty much fully gutted” on its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In a tight budget year, she said, this bill’s focus was on “supporting what works really well” for Vermont businesses. For Clarkson, that means continuing to invest in the initiatives like the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive program, a set of grants to help businesses expand in the state, which is scheduled to end in January. The Senate, she pointed out, has voted to extend the program for several years in a row, most recently through S.327.
“I am charging the House with doing the same thing,” she said.
Clarkson is also in favor of deepening the state’s relationships with outside investors by funding state delegates abroad. Vermont, she argued, should have more well-placed representation in areas like Québec — which this bill would provide for — and in the future Taiwan, which recently pledged to invest heavily in U.S. tech industries.
“We need somebody whose hand is up saying ‘yes, over here!’” Clarkson said.
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House commerce members met informally with a delegation from Taipei later Tuesday.
— Theo Wells-Spackman
On the move
The Senate advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow parents in Essex County to pay tuition to send pre-K students to New Hampshire schools.
In Vermont’s most rural county, families struggle to access pre-K programs, at least on this side of the border.
But S.214, legislation originally proposed by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, would allow for a handful of families near the New Hampshire border in Essex County to tuition their pre-K-aged children to New Hampshire schools, Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, said on the Senate floor.
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Kindergarten through grade 12 are already able to tuition to New Hampshire schools.
The Senate will need to vote on the bill once more before sending it to the House.
Vermont and the federal government faced off Monday over the state’s first-in-the nation law aimed at forcing polluters to pay for the effects of climate change with the Trump administration warning it would spur “the type of chaos that the Constitution is designed to prevent.”
The hearing before Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont comes as the administration has unleashed a broad assault on state-based climate efforts, including suing to invalidate the Vermont law establishing a “climate superfund” to recoup money from the oil and gas industry.
The Biden appointee did not tip her hand, pressing attorneys for the state and the federal government over whether the state is within its rights or stepping on federal authority. The administration is challenging a similar law in New York, and a ruling against Vermont would likely jeopardize that law and chill efforts in other states to adopt climate superfunds.
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Vermont argued the law — “a modest action” — was passed by state lawmakers in 2024 to help raise money to deal with climate change.
RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Attorneys defended Vermont’s landmark climate superfund law on Monday, as it faces a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.
Vermont lawmakers passed the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 after devastating flooding in 2023 and other extreme weather events.
The law requires certain large fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damage linked to their emissions between 1995 and 2024.
It is being challenged by the federal government, along with the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states.
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They argue Vermont is overstepping and that climate policy should be handled at the federal level.
Attorneys for Vermont and environmental groups asked a federal judge in Rutland to dismiss those challenges, arguing the state has the right to hold companies accountable.
“It was an intense and technical day of legal arguments over whether the Climate Superfund Act passes muster under federal law, and whether it is appropriate under our Constitution and other doctrines, and is going to survive this series of lawsuits that have been filed against it,” said Christophe Courchesne of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this. New York followed, and more than 10 other states are considering similar measures.
This case could help decide whether those laws move forward.
