Is Early American art nothing more than a historical curiosity? Vermont's vast repository of Americana, the Shelburne Museum, has set out to prove that it is something more. Through Shelburne's 168-ft. covered bridge came spectators last week to view the impressive evidence in the one-story, colonial-style Webb Gallery of American Art.
On display are 200 paintings by 61 18th and 19th century artists, ranging from John Singleton Copley's John Scollay and Winslow Homer's Milking Time to an anonymous primitive of General George Washington without his teeth. There is no chronological arrangement of the...