DIA Beacon

This spring, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present an exhibition by pioneering abstractionist artist Sam Gilliam. Between May 25 and Sept. 4, “Sam Gilliam: Full Circle” will pair a series of circular paintings (or tondos) created in 2021 with “Rail” (1977), a landmark painting in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection.

The building of wall drawings at MASS MoCA has become a pilgrimage site for Sol LeWitt one of the foremost artists of his generation. They are on semi-permanent display with a contract for 25 years. For a more limited time, through June 11, there is the opportunity to experience the work on a more personal and intimate manner with Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints at the Williams College Museum of Art.

Joe Thompson graduated from Williams College in 1981. As founding director of MASS MoCA he has been here ever since. Stepping down in October he will sever ties next summer. Between now and then he will plan the next move. Other than some loose ends his remarkable work here is complete. Magnificently so.

It was a challenge to find a legal parking space anywhere near the museum in North Adams. On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, from dawn to dusk, there were long lines and a constant stream of visitors. There may have been some 6,000 during the day and another 10,000 attended the rock concert by Cake on MASS MoCA's Joe Thompson Field.

Tom Krens joined the Guggenheim Foundation in 1988 when museums were attempting to transform to business models. Now, for North Adams he is developing Global Contemporary Art Museum. In a new paradigm it is being privately funded as a for profit institution. With reverse momentum he is establishing a business on the model of a fine arts museum.

While director of the Williams College Museum of Art Tom Krens initiated plans for Mass MoCA. When he left for a 20 year career at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that project moved forward under Joe Thompson. Now Krens, a Williams graduate and Williamstown home owner, is proposing to create a for profit museum on leased land fronting the high traffic corridor between MoCA, Williams College and the newly expanded and renovated Clark Art Institute.

As founding curator of contemporary art for the museum of fine arts Kenworth Moffett acquired some 100 key works including a Picasso, Miro and Pollock. During the brief tenure of Merrill Rueppel as director he missed the opportunity to acquire the Pollock masterpiece Lavender Mist. Inviting guest curators Moffett brought a lively and diverse program to a museum notable for ignoring modern and contemporary art.

During the 1960s I was an intern in the Egyptian Department and Jim Jacobs worked in the Classical Department. In the decades since the MFA we have remained friends back in the day celebrating holidays in the Berkshires. Recently we met to discuss his career from classicist to artist and then private art dealer. He started working for Charles Alan and Leo Castelli. In particular he was close to the sculptors John Chamberlain and Donald Judd We discussed minimal and pop art as well as the museums Dia Beacon, Mass MoCA, Chinati and Judd Foundations.

During the recent press conference to announce plans for Phase Three of the development of the Mass MoCA campus we met with the museum’s chief architect Simeon Bruner. In addition to his ideas for the design of building six we discussed the approach of reuse architecture of which he and his firm Bruner/ Cott have been pioneers.

Yesterday's lively press conference at Mass MoCA, announcing the $54.4 million Confluence Campaign, was preempted by a news leak of an embargoed press release by Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. While that story provided a tantalizing overview the press conference covered many of the complex and exciting details. This updates our prior reports with more to follow.

On November 17 Mass MoCA announces plans for the renovation and programming of 130,000 square feet of industrial space as the final phase of development for its North Adams campus. Planned to open in 2016 the museum must match a state grant for $25.4 million. Works from the estates of Robert Rauchenberg and Louise Bourgeoise will be on view in addition to installations by Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, James Turrell and Gunnar Schoenbeck.

Twelve days after breaking news the New York Times has reported on $25.4 million in Commonwealth funding for the $50 million renovation of the final phase of build out for Mass MoCA. While damning the museum with faint praise the Times drags up an eight year old controversy of a botched installation by Christoph Buchel. The reporter probed far and wide for on and off the record smears of the museum and its critical reputation.

In 2003-2004 Ann Hamilton installed a paper based work Corpus in the vast building five of Mass MoCA. It was a relatvely early project in the space. This article is reposted from Maverick Arts Magazine.

From 1974 to 1994 the German/ American artist Otto Piene was the director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. With a farm in Groton he continued to commute to his studio in Dusseldorf. He died this week, at 85, while working on a major museum exhibition and sky art event in Berlin. While celebrated internationally, there will be an exhibition of Group ZERO this seaon at the Guggenheim, he was snubbed by the Boston art world and media.

Several months ago we spoke in depth with Joe Thompson about a bill pending on Beacon Hill to grant $25 million toward the final phase of developing the North Adams campus of Mass MoCA. This week, early August, 2014 the bill has been signed by outgoing Governor Deval Patrick a Berkshire neighbor of the museum. Thompson, as he discusses here, must raise an additional $30 million for the project which will take several years.

Building Five of Mass MoCA is one of the largest and most magnificent spaces for contemporary art in North America. It is always fascinating to see how artists respond to the daunting challenge. Izhar Patkin: The Wandering Veil is now on view for the coming year.

In collaboration with the Hall Art Foundation a building dedicated to works by the German artist, Anselm Kiefer, will be on view at Mass MoCA for the next 15 years. Combined with the 25 year agreement for the Sol LeWitt building this greatly enhances the museum as America's foremost destination for contemporary art.

The vast vaulted space of Building Five is roughly the length and width of two, end to end, football fields. Globally, there are only a handful of similar spaces. The basic approach of artists over the last 13 years has been to jam it full or leave it relatively empty. The current installation "Phoenix" by Xu Bing realizes its full potential. In this second and final installment of an extensive dialogue Mass MoCA director Joe Thopson discusses the museum's programming and challenges.

During the twelve years of developing Mass MoCA, before it opened in 1999, Joe Thompson and his wife Jennifer cooked and sold hot sauce to help pay their bills. Twenty five years later in further developing the vast museum complex Thompson discussed the once unthinkable notion of running out of vacant real estate.

On an unseasonably mild February afternoon, during the off season, we sat with Mass MoCA director, Joe Thompson, for an in depth overview of his 25 years of developing the largest contemporary art museum in North America. In this first installment we discussed the beginnings and mandates for the 17 acre campus and its 650,000 square feet of "developable" space. We spoke on the record for an hour and a half then another hour after that. It is most unusual to spend that much time with a busy museum director.

Car Crashes with their bent and distorted slabs of polyrchormed sheet metal were the inspiration and metaphor for the signature work and jagged life of sculptor John Chamberlain. An appreciation with memories of time spent with the artist in the late 1960s and 1970s in New York and the Berkshires.

In 2001 David A. Ross, after a four year "honeymoon" was fired as the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Prior to that he served as director of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since departing as a museum director Ross has been a chameleon after decades in the art world with more than nine lives. Today he performs as lead singer with the band Red. His day gig is running a graduate program for the School of Visual Arts in New York.

The Berlin based artist, Katharina Grosse, has created an enormous, psychedelic, arctic landscape, One Floor Up More Highly. It will remain on view in the vast Building Five of Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass. through October. While spectacular to look at we wonder what it's all about.

With three days of programming the arts and the creative community were underplayed in the recent Berkshire Forum. Although the arts are a major employer and drive the economy of the Berkshires just one session was devoted to this essential agenda. The too few seats at the table excluded any representatives from the four major theatre companies, or even Jacob's Pillow. Mass MoCA director Joe Thompson was included in another panel where he commented on the important Wilco Festival this summer.

The total attendance for the weekend long Wilco Solid Sound Festival was about 10,000. But with weekend passes it is not clear just how many tickets were sold. Probably about half that figure. On an artistic level it was a great success. There was a nice mellow energy. With more advance planning and involvement from North Adams administration, merchants, vendors, artists and citizens it will surely be back bigger and better next year.