19th Annual LEGO Contest and Exhibit at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center
I have a friend on the Arts Council who knows I’m into LEGO (and regularly trolls me about it) who forwarded to me an ariticle about a museum’s LEGO contest, asking had I seen the story. Of course, I hadn’t, but it intrigued me. So on a gray Sunday in early October, the wife and I hit the road for a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, to investigate.
Brattleboro Museum and Art Center is located on the Connecticut River in what used to be a train station. The interior space is absolutely lovely and the LEGO show is immediately on display in the main gallery as one enters the building. On this day the walls are filled with paintings and drawings by Richard Haynes providing a bright, simple, and colorful backdrop to the LEGO Contest Exhibit.
The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center LEGO show was started 19 years ago, when Danny Lichtenfeld was hired as director of the Brattleboro Museum. He was asked to think about ways that would get more kids and families into the museum. Danny had a 6 year old at the time.
Danny says: “A lot of the things that we tried in my first years at the museum basically came from looking at my son and saying let’s see, you know, thinking about the things that he was interested in and thinking about whether there was some version of them that we could do at the museum that would maybe draw kids and families into the museum. And my son was crazy about LEGO, and still is to this day. So we came up with the idea to have a LEGO contest and an exhibit open to all ages.”
And it was a hit. Danny says there were a lot of things they tried in the early days that were not successful, but this one was a real hit and 19 years later it continues to be a good draw for the museum.
BMAC is a small museum and Danny states that typical daily attendance when the galleries are open to the public is maybe 30 or 40 people. When they have the LEGO show on view for four or five days they triple or quadruple the usual attendance, about 100 or 150 people in the museum each day.
I asked if the LEGO show is the biggest draw that BMAC has.
Danny says it’s up there. They have a number of other things they do that are really popular big draws, but the LEGO show is right up there.
Regarding the contest aspect of the show, BMAC awards 22 prizes which they source. All the entries are divided by age group and prizes are awarded for most creative and best craftsmanship in each group. The winners get gift cards to a toy store in Northampton, Massachussets, called A-to-Z Science and Toys. There are also a few prizes that are not restricted by age group. They include overall winners like best in show, best building, and best vehicle. Those winners get gift cards to the LEGO store.
The show does have sponsors who provide financial support for the show as a whole, providing donations to the museum that just supports the the event in general, but the sponsors are not providing the prizes.
When asked if the museum has a direct association with LEGO, Danny said: “Years ago now, I think we made an attempt to reach out to LEGO about this and they basically said: ‘you know, there are so many different exhibits and contests and things like that all over the place that they’re not going to support it directly, but they'll let us use their the name.’ So we left it alone after that.”
When asked how long it takes to prepare for the show and how long the setup takes, Danny stated: “We've got it down after all these years. The way it typically works is entries get dropped off on a Monday late afternoon. There’s a window there a few hours for people to drop off their entries. There are always some people who can’t come at that time so we make special arrangements for them to drop it off earlier or later. But we try to get all the entries into the building on Monday afternoon. And then we spend all day Tuesday laying everything out. And we continue working on the layout on Wednesday morning. And then we have the judges come through around midday on Wednesday and make their choices.”
There are usually about four judges who make their choices anonymously, going around the room with a sheet of paper listing the various categories and noting their preferences, choosing 2 for each age group, and the overall prizes. They spend a few hours walking around kind of on their own, then later they sit down and talk together to reach a consensus based on the prize categories.
Once that is completed finishing touches are made, putting out the little labels naming all the people who have made submissions. Doors are then opened on Wednesday evening for the award ceremony, then the entries remain on display Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and, if it aligns with a holiday weekend, the show extends through Monday as well.
You can view a gallery of the models here.
Here is a flickr album by Kelly Fletcher covering the show opening.
Scotty Hartshorne Video
Brattleboro Museum and Art Center
My thanks to the staff at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center for being so welcoming and generous with their time providing information for this article.
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