Windjammer Restaurant & Upper Deck Pub - 1076 Williston Road, South Burlington, VT 05403
The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences will host its 2026 Annual Fellows Luncheon on at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 7, at the Windjammer Restaurant in Burlington, Vermont.
The annual luncheon celebrates and recognizes a distinguished slate of newly elected Fellows whose lifetime achievements have made significant contributions to the advancement of the arts and sciences in Vermont. These individuals have enriched the state's cultural, intellectual, and scientific communities through their dedication, creativity, scholarship, and service.
The event provides an opportunity to honor these outstanding Vermonters, celebrate their accomplishments, and recognize the important role that the arts and sciences play in strengthening communities and enriching life throughout the state.
The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences is proud to recognize the accomplishments of its new Fellows and to celebrate their lasting contributions to Vermont's rich tradition of artistic, scientific, and intellectual achievement.
Please join us as we celebrate our new Fellows, and read more about their contributions to our state below:
Robert Compton of Starksboro is an internationally recognized potter who has been firing kilns since 1972. At the beginning, he produced interesting sculptural pieces, including aquariums and fountains which were usually sold in galleries as far away as Tokyo. Since the 1990s he has focused on functional tableware. The quality of a pot’s surface was important to him, and he discovered that this was achieved using wood fires and salt glazing. Compton’s work is known for its glazing. He has experimented with different techniques for glazing, and he constructed a wide variety of kilns at his studio. For the past thirteen years he has offered workshops on this process to potters from around the world. He has also introduced a long-running series of history mugs that feature biographies and images of important historical figures, proving that there are very tangible links between pottery and history.
Guy Kennedy of Underhill is a Research Engineer who worked at the UVM Instrumentation and Model Facility (IMF) for 40 years. He has a B.A. in Fine Arts from St. Michael’s College, and he has used this perspective to design medical and scientific equipment for the many research laboratories at UVM. He prides himself in being self-taught through experience; international experts reach out to Guy for advice on microscope and optics designs for biology. He has a unique gift for visualizing and then implementing what to many would seem impossible. Guy is a renaissance man who is adept at many art forms. He is a co-author of 16 peer reviewed scientific articles dealing with muscle biology, and he has enjoyed teaching and mentoring junior scientists and undergraduate engineering students. He’s the whole package of arts and science.
Stephen J. Perkins of Williston has been Executive Director of the Vermont Historical Society since 2015. After serving similar roles at the Bennington Museum and Echo Center in Burlington, Steve joined VHS, and since he has been there, he stabilized a budget which was in arrears, and started work on changing the Society into the vibrant, transformative institution it is today. He started working with a local TV station to record a series called “This Place in History.” He travelled around the state highlighting unique places and historical occurrences, and he has expanded the number of exhibits in Montpelier and Barre. Steve has also been active as a trustee and board chair for the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library in Williston.
Jim Sardonis is a sculptor from Randolph. His most iconic work in Vermont was the sculpture “Reverence,” commonly known as the “Whales Tales.” The piece depicts tails of two whales “diving” into a sea of grass, and it is meant to symbolize the fragility of the planet. It was designed and built by Sardonis in 1989, and sat in a field in Randolph near the exit on I89 southbound. It has since been moved to Technology Park in South Burlington, and may be seen from I89 northbound. The sculpture is meant to recall the inland sea in the Champlain Valley over 300 million years ago. Sardonis is also a jewelry maker, but he has done a number of other sculptures in stone and in bronze that are now prominently on display across the country. A donor to the UVM Medical Center commissioned two life-size bronze figures sitting at opposite ends of a green marble bench, each extending an arm; their hands together make a heart, bringing art and medicine together.
Nancy Gallagher of Underhill, Vermont is a Biologist, Teacher, and Writer. Her 1999 book Building Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State brought acclaimed critical focus to a very dark past in the State of Vermont. Nancy brought this secret to light with a deep and penetrating excavation into the archives of Vermont history. As a trained biologist, and a long-time teacher of Biology, Nancy brought her trained eye to this historical topic. Her book has been reviewed with high praise, and it is used extensively to teach new students about the allure and perils of Eugenics. Even recently, Ellen Barry, writing for the Boston Globe in July 2026, writes that:
Before Nancy Gallagher's book appeared in 1999, Vermont's eugenics program was rarely discussed outside academic circles. Kevin Dann had published pioneering articles after discovering the records in the mid-1980s, but Gallagher's work was the first comprehensive book-length study and introduced many Vermonters to a largely forgotten history.