Shelburne Museum
The closing of one of the Webb's other homes near the polo grounds at Old Westbury unintentionally birthed a museum. In 1947 Webb gathered with her friends to create Shelburne Museum. Located on U.S. Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont, Webb's museum housed various handmade objects including weathervanes, trade signs, portraits carriages, sleighs, and furniture.
Rather than confine her eclectic collections to a single modern gallery, Webb chose to create an institution that would showcase her "collection of collections" in examples of early American homes and public buildings. A general store, meeting house, log cabin, and a steamship occupy the grounds. The entire museum reflects Webb's passion for American art and design, as she treasured a variety of objects. Five rooms from her Park Avenue apartment were installed in a Greek Revival memorial building after her death in 1960, bringing Webb's collection of works by Monet, Manet, and Degas to the museum grounds.
Webb began collecting in 1911, before the founding of Colonial Williamsburg and decades before authentic American antiques returned to the major rooms of the White House. At the time, the National Register of Historic Places did not exist. Webb was a prominent and ambitious collector of Americana. She collaborated with leading antique dealers of the era, including Edith Halpert and Harry Newman, to assemble extensive and unique collections of American material culture. Drawn to the authenticity of everyday objects, Webb used her resources to preserve them, and today the museum’s Americana collection is considered one of the finest in the world.
In 1996 the museum sold $30 million of her artwork, deemed non-essential to the collection, which had been in storage not visible to the public for years to create a collections care endowment, to better preserve and secure the items in the collection. While the board had considered other ways to care for the items, including mergers and loaning out the collection, the final choice received some backlash in the art community. The president of the American Association of Museums refused to endorse the move arguing that the museum was unfairly conflating care for the items with security, while the director at the time argued it set a dangerous precedent for other museums doing the same. Webb's son, James Watson Webb, Jr. went on the record saying that he was disappointed with the move as well. Most buyers were unidentified telephone bidders, but one item was sold to casino mogul Stephen A. Wynn with the intent of displaying it at the Bellagio casino.
