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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Gunnar Schonbeck Exhibit (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For years, students at Bennington College snuck into a locked room for a glimpse of strange and magical instruments created by professor Gunnar Schonbeck. Today, we join his orchestra.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I went to school in a small college in Vermont called Bennington, just about 600 and some people

0:08.1

in the middle of the woods, at least when I was there. And because of this, there was not always a ton

0:13.7

to do. So as a young, mischievous person, you were occasionally looking for, I don't know, things to get into,

0:22.9

little adventures to have on this small college campus.

0:27.5

I had heard a story.

0:29.9

On the very top of the main campus dining hall, there was an attic, a locked third floor.

0:38.0

But I had heard, if you could get in there, there was something fantastical inside.

0:45.3

And so one evening, after everyone was gone and it was quiet, I went up and found a way into a room that had a little transom window open into that

0:58.5

that attic space.

1:01.2

And I climbed on in.

1:05.0

I saw these crazy looking contraptions.

1:08.8

I didn't know what they were at first until I went over and tapped them

1:12.5

or started pulling a string.

1:14.8

I realized they were instruments.

1:18.3

As it turns out, this was not a completely

1:20.5

unique experience. For years,

1:23.3

students at Bennington had been

1:24.7

whispering about this locked room,

1:26.9

occasionally breaking in,

1:28.3

and getting a glimpse of these pretty magical creations.

1:33.3

These strange objects were all created by a Bennington professor named Gunner Schoenbeck,

1:40.3

and he expanded the very idea of what an instrument could be.

...

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