Let's be clear on a couple of key points regarding the Bellows Falls barn mural.
Yes, it violates Vermont's anti-billboard laws, which govern any signage visible from a limited-access road, period - even an exit ramp.
And yes, the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance should have been more aware before commissioning a $4,000 mural on a barn to promote the village.
When the legislature created the billboard law in 1968 to safeguard Vermont's scenic beauty (and the tourism revenue it brings), it ventured into the realm of aesthetics, however carefully the law's language removes considerations of artistic merit from its requirements and prohibitions.
At the time, barns painted with advertising were among the things the legislation sought to erase from the landscape, but what was then banal commercialism is increasingly seen as nostalgia.
In the case of present-day Bellows Falls, whose citizens have been tirelessly revitalizing their village for some time, something more is at stake than a $4,000 investment.
This historic village offers a mix of galleries, restaurants, and other new enterprises with established institutions like Sam's in the Romanesque Revival buildings by the Connecticut River. By all accounts, this village had a long way to go, and it is still moving forward in its efforts to become a vibrant and viable place to live and work.
Small villages like Bellows Falls are as fragile as they are quaint. Given competition from national chain stores, society's mobility, and the allure of shopping online, any movement forward for a village like Bellows Falls is remarkable.
It takes vision to bring business to town. To keep it there, it takes not only the cooperation, faith, and investment of entrepreneurs and property owners, but also hours of behind-the-scenes volunteer work of business associations, agencies, and other entities that can help rebuild a struggling and fragile district.
So to have an entity from the state slap these efforts down - however legitimately - is demoralizing and deflating.
Ironically, the law was intended in no small part to protect the vision of Vermont that is palatable to tourists: the open vistas of pristine farmland and the glorious beauty of the rolling hills. But after 40 years of living with this law, our visitors are in danger of being stuck with the sanitized official-Interstate-welcome-center-travel-brochure vision of Vermont - the most opposite sort of marketing spin from Bellows Falls' mural, a spin that comes close to caricature.
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The “See Bellows Falls” mural, words and all, will likely be safe, and, with the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance working with the state legislature to come up with a legislative solution that would let the mural comply with the state's strict roadside signage laws, everyone involved in the controversy could end up happy.
The Travel Information Council was not obliged to force the removal of a widely appreciated mural, nor drawn into the murky waters of artistic judgement.
The legislature, by specifically exempting only one noncompliant sign, evaded the tricky business of tampering with a popular and generally beneficial law, and perhaps this single-case exemption is all that is needed.
Then again, if other special cases arise, it may point to a need to revisit the billboard law to reflect changing perceptions of art and advertising.
In Ohio, where painted advertisements on barns was once extremely common, public outcry prevented state efforts to have them painted over, and today, old advertising barns may be repainted, according to Ohio barn painter Scott Hagan, who was since commissioned to paint barn murals in each Ohio county to commemorate the state's bicentennial.
The Green County (New York) Tourist Promotion Agency sees Mail Pouch barns as attractive enough to visitors to feature them on its Web site with photos and locations of each. And at least one coffee table book - Advertising Barns: Vanishing American Landmarks, by William G. Simmons - celebrates the message-bearing barn as an icon of the rural landscape.
What was a commonplace has become a rarity, and with the accelerating disappearance of both barns and handcraft, even a commercial message, painted by hand on old siding, may become a welcome echo of bygone time.