Bread and Puppet Museum
753 Heights Rd
Glover, VT
A vast, dim hay barn crowded floor to rafters with the towering puppets, masks, and banners of one of the world's most famous radical theaters, free to wander in the Northeast Kingdom.
Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in New York City in 1963 by Peter Schumann, a German-born artist who fed his audiences homemade bread and staged enormous, homemade puppet spectacles about war, injustice, and hope. In 1974 the company settled on an old farm in Glover, deep in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, and its hay barn became a museum for the puppets when they were not on the road.
Walking in is unforgettable. The old barn is packed from the dirt floor to the peak of the roof with masks, figures, and banners, some of them towering three stories, many worn and cracked from decades of use in the streets. It is one of the largest collections of puppets under one roof anywhere, and entry is free.
What Guests Love
- Standing among puppets two and three stories tall in a shadowy old barn
- The sheer strangeness and emotional power of the figures up close
- That admission is free, supported by donations
- Catching a live outdoor pageant on a summer weekend
Worth Knowing
- The museum is seasonal, generally open late spring through fall, and closes for the deep winter
- The barn is unheated and dimly lit by design; dress for the weather and let your eyes adjust
- Admission is free, though donations keep the place going
- Summer weekends often bring live shows on the surrounding land; check the performance calendar
Details
Glover, VT
Learn about Bread and Puppet Museum
Theater as bread
Peter Schumann built his theater on a simple idea: that art, like bread, should be cheap, shared, and part of daily life, not a luxury behind a ticket booth. He baked sourdough rye in an outdoor oven and handed it out at performances, a gesture that gave the company its name and its politics.
The work was always engaged, marching against the Vietnam War, standing with labor and civil rights, staging parables of the powerful and the powerless. The puppets, deliberately rough and handmade, were meant to feel like the work of ordinary people rather than professionals.
The barn full of giants
The museum occupies a hundred-year-old dairy barn, left mostly as it was, its stalls and lofts now holding ranks of figures: white-faced Mother figures, garbagemen, washerwomen, devils, and the towering puppets carried in street processions. Papier-mache faces peer from the shadows in every direction.
Nothing is behind glass. The figures wear the scars of real use, sun-faded, rain-warped, patched, which gives the collection a haunting, human presence very different from a polished gallery. Visitors move slowly through the dimness, often in near silence.
A living theater, not a relic
Bread and Puppet is still active, touring internationally and staging shows on its Glover land through the summer. Historically its Domestic Resurrection Circus drew huge crowds to the hillside, and the company continues to mount pageants, circuses, and processions that put the puppets back to work.
Its cheap-art philosophy carries on in the printshop, where hand-pressed posters and pamphlets sell for small change, keeping alive the belief that art belongs to everyone.
Season by season
The museum opens with the warm months and closes for the Northeast Kingdom's long winter, so summer and early fall are the times to visit. Summer weekends are best of all, when live performances often unfold on the surrounding fields.
Autumn brings foliage to one of Vermont's most beautiful and least crowded regions, a fine backdrop for the drive to Glover. In the off-season the barn sleeps under the snow.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Glover
Lake Willoughby
About 15 miles, a 25 minute drive
A deep glacial lake pinched between two mountains, often compared to a fjord, with cliff-side trails and a swimming beach.
Barton and Glover villages
About 5 miles, a 10 minute drive
Small Northeast Kingdom towns with country stores and the surrounding hill-farm landscape.
Willoughby State Forest
About 16 miles, a 28 minute drive
Trails up Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor above the lake, with ledge views and rare arctic plants on the cliffs.