MASS MoCA Programming
Through December
By: MoCA - Aug 13, 2025
MASS MoCA announces new programming through December 2025, including the opening of exhibitions Jimena Sarno: Rhapsody and Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE, concerts by Chuwi and Harold López-Nussa and plenty of opportunities to experience the museum for free including a celebration of Día de los Muertos, Open Studios, and an after-hours Family Night. FreshGrass | North Adams, the campus-wide festival of roots and bluegrass music, kicks it all off with the best in the genre.
MASS MoCA visitors this season can not only experience world-class works of art and performance, but also learn how new works come to be from the artists themselves. Be one of the first to experience multi-disciplinary, in-progress residency performances from composer Samora Pinderhughes, groundbreaking choreographer Deborah Hay, The Plastic Bag Store creator Robin Frohardt, and a historic restaging of Richard Foreman’s What to wear, the rock-opera's first re-mount in 20 years.
Join Jimena Sarno in conversation on her first solo museum exhibition with guest curator Alexandra Foradas as the two discuss Sarno’s use of craft artforms in Rhapsody, Ohan Breiding as they explore the context of their exhibition Belly of a Glacier with author Lisa E. Bloom, and artist Zora J Murff when he discusses his exhibition RACE/HUSTLE during an evening with authors and educational philosophers Joy James and Lucius Outlaw, moderated by RACE/HUSTLE curator Terence Washington. Visitors will also have the opportunity to join poet, artist, and professor Anaïs Duplan in our galleries for a seminar-style series exploring power and privilege in contemporary art.
In addition, celebrate this season’s Studios at MASS MoCA artists-in-residence with Open Studios, and gain inspiration from visiting writers and exhibiting artist editions in the Research & Development Store.
New ticketed events go on sale to MASS MoCA members beginning Wednesday, August 13, at 12pm EST. Tickets to the general public go on sale beginning Friday, August 15 at 10am EST.
MASS MoCA is open six days a week, 10am–5pm, closed only on Tuesdays; timed entry reservations are encouraged for select exhibitions; For more information about upcoming programs, visit massmoca.org.
EXHIBITIONS OPENING
Jimena Sarno: Rhapsody | On view beginning Saturday, October 18, 2025
Jimena Sarno engages craft traditions to imagine a future built on values of collectivity, reconfiguration, and repair. For Rhapsody, the title of the exhibition and the installation at its core, Sarno collaborated with artists, teachers, and makers, many of whom are from the Global South, combining filmmaking, sound, and sculpture with contemporary and traditional craft practices. Within a global context of extreme violence, fragmentation, and destruction, the artists share time, space, and resources to deepen solidarity through making, repairing, and the collective production of alternative forms of knowledge. Sarno’s project is framed as an alternative to Modernism’s utilization of cultural production as a tool to imagine utopian futures while reinforcing global systems of coloniality. The central installation features a group of objects made using techniques — including weaving, felting, woodworking, and pottery — that rely on bodies of knowledge passed from maker to maker. These objects are tools — at once utilitarian and utopian — designed for a hoped-for, not-so-distant future built on solidarity and mutual care.
- Opening Celebration: Jimena Sarno: Rhapsody | Saturday, October 18, 2025, 5:30pm
Celebrate the opening at MASS MoCA of Jimena Sarno’s Rhapsody, the artist’s first major solo exhibition. Be among the first to view Sarno’s latest work in our galleries while spending an evening with fellow MASS MoCA members, donors, and patrons while sipping cocktails and enjoying refreshments.
Tickets: Free for members, $20 for non-members - In Conversation: Jimena Sarno & Alexandra Foradas | Saturday, October 18, 4pm
Artist Jimena Sarno speaks with guest curator Alexandra Foradas about her first solo museum exhibition, Rhapsody. They will discuss how Sarno engages contemporary and traditional craft practices and over 20 collaborators to illuminate how sharing time, space, and resources can deepen solidarity within a global context of extreme violence, fragmentation, and destruction.
$10 Advance & Day-of, free for members and students, free with museum admission
Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE | On view beginning December 6, 2025
Zora J Murff makes photographs, assemblages, videos, and text works that examine fast and slow violence, the rhythms and resonances of oppression throughout history and into our present, and the desire we are indoctrinated to cultivate for what ultimately hurts us. He is attentive to the structures of state violence in the U.S. and abroad and how they interlock with the mechanisms that make the effects of systems of domination invisible in everyday life. Murff’s photographs alternately capture poignant portraits, shots of playful light, the movement of cities, or signs of quiet life despite the odds. His collages combine text and images from a myriad of sources. For Murff, no issue is a single issue when the havoc created abroad is paid for, dearly, at home. Curated by Terence Washington, MASS MoCA Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow.
- In Conversation: Joy James & Lucius Outlaw with Zora J Murff & Terence Washington | Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 5:30pm
Political philosopher Joy James speaks with Lucius Outlaw, a philosopher concerned with matters of social and political life. Together with Zora J Murff and Terence Washington, they inform and discuss Murff's artistic examination of the overarching structures that shape Black Americans' desires and aspirations for the things that only appear to be liberatory. This subject matter is further explored in Murff's forthcoming MASS MoCA exhibition RACE/HUSTLE, curated by Terence Washington, Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow.
Tickets: $10 Advance & Day-of, free for members and students, free with museum admission
IN-PROGRESS RESIDENCY PERFORMANCES
Samora Pinderhughes: I Hope This Finds You Well | Saturday, November 1, 2025, 7pm
I Hope This Finds You Well is a new in-progress multidisciplinary work by artist Samora Pinderhughes that responds to the testimonials of those harmed by incarceration, policing, and detention.
In moving between story and song, Pinderhughes and his ensemble imagine a world that supports vulnerability — an artistic celebration of resilience and repair. I Hope This Finds You Well envisions a portal into a society not built on perpetuating cruelty, domination, and punishment. It answers the questions: How do we survive in America? How do we support each other? What if we built a world around community care?
Produced by Pomegranate Arts Tickets: $34 for students, $44 advance, $54 week-of, $74 preferred; members receive 10% off
Robin Frohardt: Shopping Center of the Universe | Saturday, November 15, 2025, 7pm
Herb Alpert Award-winner Robin Frohardt — whose immersive, multimedia experience The Plastic Bag Store captivated audiences at MASS MoCA in 2024 — returns to the museum for a preview of Shopping Center of the UniverseParking Lot, a theatrical work of speculative nonfiction. This new work in development, grounded in reality yet deeply reflective, offers a poetic meditation on our relationship with the natural world. Blending puppetry, prose, live music, and intricate handmade sets, Frohardt gives shape to the cultural and personal curiosity she has experienced growing up surrounded by big box stores. Frohardt reframes the parking lot as part of the ecosystem, rather than separate from it: tree roots break through asphalt, condensation from an air conditioner wears a hole in a sidewalk, and a flock of birds crash-lands, mistaking the lights on the pavement for the surface of water. Frohardt’s genre-defying, live-cinema project is her innovative attempt to reconcile the predicament of being born a soul in a body raised in Walmart.
Produced by Pomegranate Arts Tickets: $34 for students, $44 advance, $54 week-of, $74 preferred; members receive 10% off
Short-sighted | Thursday, December 11, 2025, 7pm
Short-sighted is a new dance work by groundbreaking choreographer Deborah Hay and performed by three of Hay’s long-standing dancers: Jeanine Durning, Scott Heron and Ros Warby. Each performer offers a unique and deep understanding of Hay’s work across four decades. Hay’s singular, revolutionary approach to choreography and the practice of performance, centering on undoing the body’s reliance on learned behavior, has been influential to the field of dance, nationally and internationally.
Short-sighted is a trio that plays with the unexpected and absurd — with humor and precision. In performance, each dancer is responding to a written score based on Hay’s long history with language that enlarges the field of perception and movement possibility.
Tickets: $34 for students, $44 advance, $54 week-of, $74 preferred; members receive 10% off
What to wear | Sunday, December 21, 2025, 7pm
The centerpiece of the PROTOTYPE 2026 festival will be the New York premiere of What to wear, a comedic post-rock opera by composer Michael Gordon and the late downtown theater renegade icon Richard Foreman, who penned over 50 plays and nine operas across five decades. This work-in-progress production – the opera's first re-mount in 20 years – will bring back to life Foreman's original staging and production, with creative direction by Big Dance Theater co-founders Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar. The opera offers a commentary on the superficial pressures of society, at a moment when our contemporary world of Instagram, fast fashion, and influencer culture renders Foreman and Gordon's critiques more cutting and relevant than ever. A collaboration between the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Beth Morrison Projects, PROTOTYPE, and Bang on a Can, this historic re-staging honors Foreman's legacy after his passing earlier this year, and confirms Gordon as one of contemporary music's singular voices.
Tickets: $34 for students, $44 advance, $54 week-of, $74 preferred; members receive 10% off
Open Studios | Thursday, December 4, 2025, 5–7pm
The Studios at MASS MoCA has hosted over 1,000 artists and writers at all career stages, income levels, and geographic locations on its North Adams campus. The Studios residency primarily seeks applications from visual artists (painters, sculptors, installation artists, photographers, video/new media artists, fiber artists, printmakers, etc.) and writers in all literary disciplines. The Studios at MASS MoCA runs year-round and hosts up to 10 artists at a time for stays of 2 or 4 weeks.
The Studios at MASS MoCA opens up its spaces for one night only during the fall season’s residency. Get to know the current artists-in-residence over snacks and conversation in Building 13 + Building 34. Free to all.
CONCERTS & FESTIVALS
FreshGrass | September 19–September 21, 2025
Co-presented with FreshGrass Foundation
Set against the foothills of the beautiful Berkshire mountains, FreshGrass is a family-friendly festival with the best in bluegrass and roots music filling the fields, courtyards, and galleries of MASS MoCA (gallery admission included with all tickets). Along with world premieres, emerging artist competitions, farm-fresh food, local brews, and pop-up jam sessions, this is three days of festival magic produced in partnership by MASS MoCA, the FreshGrass Foundation, and No Depression.
Tickets: $514 VIP FreshPass, $213 3-Day Adult, $157 3-Day Student, $83 3-Day Child 6–16, $101 Friday, $121 Saturday, $101 Sunday, free for kids 5 and under
Harold Lo?pez-Nussa featuring Gre?goire Maret | Saturday, October 4, 2025, 8pm
The next installment in MASS MoCA’s series highlighting some of the best and brightest in contemporary jazz brings pianist and composer Harold López-Nussa to MASS MoCA’s Club B10 for a thrilling evening of performance, featuring harmonica virtuoso Grégoire Maret. Catch an energizing evening that reflects the full range and richness of the Cuban musical tradition with a distinctive combination of folkloric, popular, and classical elements, and improvisation.
Tickets: $36 advance, $46 week-of, $66 preferred; members receive 10% off
Chuwi | Sunday, October 12, 2025, 8pm
"The Voice of a New Puerto Rican Generation" – PopSugar
The genre-blending group Chuwi is redefining the sound of the island with a bold mix of plena, indie, and Caribbean rhythms. Hailing from Isabela, this dynamic quartet — featuring siblings Lorén Aldarondo, Wester, and Willy and family friend Adrián López — has quickly built a loyal fan base through their infectious energy, heartfelt lyrics, and magnetic live performances.
Tickets: $27 advance, $37 week-of, $44 preferred; members receive 10% off
PUBLIC PROGRAMS IN THE GALLERIES
Public Programs at MASS MoCA seek to foster curiosity, self-expression, and creative inquiry by providing opportunities for knowledge exchange, community-building, and hands-on engagement.
In Session: Gallery Visits with Ana?s Duplan | Saturdays, October 25, January 31, April 4, & July 11, 10am–noon
Join poet, curator, artist, and professor of postcolonial literature Ana?s Duplan for a multi-session, seminar-style series in our galleries to explore the concepts of privilege and power in contemporary art through reading short texts, writing in response to exhibitions, and discussion.
This series focuses on exhibitions by Black, Indigenous, and people of color identifying artists at MASS MoCA, who explore the concepts of privilege and power in some form. Duplan poses the question: “Power is a big part of political and artistic discourse, but can feel very abstract; what does it mean?” Each session will help to understand and assess how power manifests in each exhibition.
Participants can register for a single event or the entire series. Registration includes admission to the event and exhibition galleries, and copies of two books.
Tickets: $60 per session (includes gallery admission and two book titles); $200 for all sessions (if registered by October 25, 2025)
Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…
Co-organized with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH)
- Drop-In Drawing: Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… | Saturdays, October 25, November 22, December, 20, January 17 & March 21, 2–4:45pm
Practice drawing and engage with fellow visitors alongside the skillful artworks of Vincent Valdez. Stop into MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store to check out a drawing pad and graphite pencil for drawing in the galleries of Vincent Valdez’s Just a Dream… exhibition. Participation is first-come, first-served with 15 drawing kits available to be borrowed.
Free with gallery admission - Family Portrait Workshop: In Celebration of Vincent Valdez | Saturday, November 22, 2025, 11am
Join local painter Julia Dixon for a family portrait workshop in celebration of Vincent Valdez’s exhibition Just a Dream… Drawing inspiration from the many diverse portraits on display in the exhibition, participants will first visit the galleries to learn how artists use different techniques and styles to tell stories about people. Then, they will create a portrait of their caregiver using wet or dry materials. Prior drawing and painting experience is not required to attend. Recommended for ages 6 to 16. Please note that caregivers should stay with their children at all times and are encouraged to participate.
Tickets: Free for members and children 12 and under, $5 for accompanying adults and teens
Ohan Breiding: Belly of a Glacier
Co-organized with the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA)
- In Conversation: Ohan Breiding & Lisa E. Bloom | Saturday, November 8, 2025, 2pm
Sharing an interest in artistic representations of climate change, artist Ohan Breiding and Lisa E. Bloom, author of Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics: Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic (Duke University Press, 2022), will discuss of Breiding’s multimedia exhibition, Belly of a Glacier, which functions as a moving eulogy for the soon-to-be-extinct Rhône Glacier.
Free; pre-registrants receive free museum admission after the conversation courtesy of WCMA
IN THE RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT STORE
Celebrating its two-year anniversary, MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store features newly created companion artworks in collaboration with exhibiting artists, contemporary artist editions and books, vinyl, and other unique gift ideas. It’s also an intimate venue in the Northern Berkshires that features engaging author talks and special events.
Common Notions Publisher Showcase with Josh MacPhee | Thursday, September 25, 2025, 5pm
Join us in the R&D Store for an evening with Josh MacPhee and key players of indie publisher Common Notions, in a conversation moderated by MCLA Professor of Art Melanie Mowinski. MacPhee is joined by Kennedy Block, co-author of Strike While the Needle is Hot, and Malav Kanuga, Common Notions' publisher. Common Notions Press publishes books that provide timely reflections, clear critiques, and inspiring strategies that amplify movements for social justice, and MacPhee has published two titles with them this year: Strike While the Needle is Hot: A Discography of Worker’s Revolt (in September) and Armed by Design (in January). The talk will be preceded by a listening party featuring the vintage, working-class music of labor movements featured in their book.
Tickets: $5 advance; cost of ticket will be deducted from any purchase in the R&D Store the night of the program; free for members
Book Talk: Mariah Rigg Extinction Capital of the World | Thursday, October 23, 2025, 5pm
Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Mariah Rigg's Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai'i — and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.
By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, longing, and grief are fierce dispatches from a state haunted by the specter of colonization, a precious biome under constant threat. An older man grapples with the American-weapons research conducted on a neighboring island. A pregnant woman seeks belonging while poaching flowers in the rainforest with her partner’s mother. Two teenage girls find love during a summer spent on Midway Atoll. A young woman returns home following a breakup and reconnects with her estranged father and the island itself. Linked by both place and character, Rigg’s stories illuminate the exotification and commodification of Hawai’i in the American mythos.
Extinction Capital of the World is an environmental love letter to the Hawaiian Islands and an indelible portrayal of the people who inhabit them — marking the arrival of an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.
Tickets: $5 advance; cost of ticket will be deducted from any purchase in the R&D Store the night of the program; free for members
Jason Fulford on Jason Polan: The Post Office | Saturday, October 25, 2025, 5pm
Jason Polan (1982–2020), famous for his ink sketches in the cult favorite collection Every Person in New York, also had a robust exchange of artwork through the mail with friends, fans, and pen pals (Marcel Dzama, Stefan Marx, Richard McGuire, Rich Jacobs, Alec Soth, Barry McGee, and others). These whimsical drawings and short text works were discovered in the wake of Polan's untimely death and shed light on his prolific output.
Join us as Jason Fulford leads us through the editing process of The Post Office (Printed Matter, 2025). In gathering the material, the project reflects on Polan's affinity for the U.S. Postal Service and his commitment to mail art as a means to build networks and make connections—a practice he maintained over many years with both friends and strangers alike. The result is a new perspective on Polan's legacy, one that is playful and often touching, the contours of which offer an expanded portrait of the artist.
Tickets: $5 advance; cost of ticket will be deducted from any purchase in the R&D Store the night of the program; free for members
FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES
Kidspace is a creative laboratory at MASS MoCA centering experiential learning and inspiring curiosity in the arts for all. Our staff uses MASS MoCA’s rich array of exhibitions, performances, and artist residencies as a starting point to foster your own self expression. Kidspace is open during museum hours. Admission to Kidspace and the ArtBar is always free.
Día de los Muertos | Saturday, November 1, 2025, 4–7pm
Celebrate Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) MASS MoCA-style. Join us for the Mexican holiday of remembrance for those who have passed away.
Bring your friends and family to the museum for free admission to Vincent Valdez’s exhibition, Just a Dream… . The party continues under Spencer Finch’s Cosmic Latte, where you can contribute to an altar with your own ofrenda (offering), including photos or tokens of past loved ones, and dance to local Berkshire County musicians.
Kidspace is open all evening for art-making in the spirit of life and death, and a special-edition Family Storytime starts at 5:15pm.
Free to all
Family Night | Thursday, October 16, 2025, 5:30–7:30pm
Families with children of all ages are invited to Family Night at MASS MoCA on Thursday, October 16, from 5 to 7pm. This free event will feature after-hours access to select exhibitions in the museum, performances, art-making, food, giveaways, and fun!
Free to all
Family Storytime | September 13, October 18, November 15, December 20, 2025, 10:30am
Families with children up to age 6 are invited to join MASS MoCA Museum Educators for a storytime and related exploration in the galleries. Each storytime features a children’s book about contemporary art, creativity, and/or the themes of the exhibitions on view. Meet in Kidspace at the designated time for a brief gallery walk-through, and discussion of the art and storytime will follow. This program is presented in partnership with the North Adams Public Library.
Free to all; $5 suggested donation
School Break Kidspace Workshops | Monday–Friday: December 29, 30, 31, 2025 and January 1 & 2, 2026, 11am & 1pm
Join MASS MoCA Museum Educators for a series of free workshops for all ages during the end-of-year school break, December 29–January 2. Workshops will take place in Kidspace at 11am and 1pm every day, and each will focus on a different art medium and process. Come be inspired, learn something new, and make a project to take home! The ArtBar will also be open for drop-in art-making throughout the day.
RSVP encouraged but not required. (Note: Some workshops may be capped based on attendance; RSVPs will be honored before walk-ups.) Workshops are open to all ages; however, younger children may need support from guardians. All children must be accompanied by an adult in Kidspace.
Free to all; $5 suggested donation
MEMBER PERKS
The programs below are specially crafted for MASS MoCA members.
Members Family-Friendly Tour | Saturday, October 4, 2025, 10am
Member families with kids up to age 16 are invited to join this tour with our Museum Educators, showcasing highlights across the museum in an all-ages format. Learn about art together through discussion, gallery activities, and a final stop in Kidspace for art-making.
Curator Tour: Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… | Saturday, November 8, 2025, 10am
MASS MoCA members are invited to join curator Evan Garza for a members-only tour of Vincent Valdez’s exhibition Just a Dream…
Member Sip & Shop | Friday, November 21, 2025, 5pm
Members are invited to a Sip & Shop at the Research & Development Store and the MASS MoCA Gift Shop on November 21, 5–7pm! We’ll pair refreshments with an extra 10% discount and complimentary gift wrapping to kick-start the holiday season. Members will receive a “double discount” of 20% on all items in the R&D Store, November 19–26.
Learn more about becoming a MASS MoCA Member
Not yet a member? Join today to attend these events and enjoy free museum admission, ticketing discounts, invitations, and more year-round.
Prices listed for all ticketed events include all fees, which are waived for MASS MoCA members.