Discipline: Film/Video

Fritz Wetherbee

Discipline: Film/Video
Region: Portsmouth, NH
MacDowell Fellowships: 1972, 1973

Fritz Wetherbee is a writer, filmmaker, and television personality. He has covered New Hampshire news and culture for more than half a century, writing for newspapers and magazines, and producing and voicing programs for radio, film, and television. He has been honored with three Emmy Awards, and has been awarded with the gold medal for Outstanding Achievement for On-Camera Talent for the New England region for his work on “New Hampshire Chronicle.” One of those nationally broadcast programs for Chronicle was MacDowell, an American Artists' Colony.

After serving a stint in the U.S. Army, Wetherbee started in journalism in Peterborough, working for the Monadnock Ledger as a photographer and reporter from 1962-1968. He then worked as a filmmaker at New Hampshire Public Television, served as news director for radio stations WSCV/WSLE-FM in Peterborough from 1975-1984, doubling as a contributing reporter for “All Things Considered” from 1976-1984, and reported for WGBH in Boston for nearly a decade. He started his long association with public television in New Hampshire in 1985 as host and lead producer for “New Hampshire Crossroads,” and became WMUR’s (Manchester) in-house storyteller and historian with his own segment on “New Hampshire Chronicle” beginning in 2000.

In addition to producing, he has lent his voice to numerous groups and associations and appeared in the first episode of Ken Burns’s Baseball and has been awarded numerous awards and honors.

Studios

Veltin

Fritz Wetherbee worked in the Veltin studio.

Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…

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