Mass MOCA

Covid delayed the opening of Artists of the Thursday Chinese Dinner Group by two years. It was worth the wait with a tasty buffet dinner on opening night at Berkshire Art Museum in downtown North Adams. The former church houses the Barbara and Eric Rudd Art Foundation, Most of the church displays a permanent installation of his work. The three levels of the tower galleries has a lively display of works by diners and artists.

MASS MoCA is inviting concepts for the old Sprague Electric Company guardhouse at the main entrance of the MASS MoCA campus located on Marshall Street in North Adams, MA.  

Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA present LOUD Weekend, a fully loaded eclectic super-mix of minimal, experimental, and electronic music over three days throughout the museum’s expansive campus. Phil Kline will be featured.  With Jim Jarmsuch he will be improvising on loud guitar,

Participating cultural organizations include Barrington Stage Company, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Berkshire International Film Festival, Berkshire Theatre Group, Community Access to the Arts, The Clark, Hancock Shaker Village, Jacob’s Pillow, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, MASS MoCA, The Mount, Norman Rockwell Museum, Shakespeare & Company, The Trustees and Williamstown Theatre Festival. 

The Board of Trustees of Hancock Shaker Village announced today that director Jennifer Trainer Thompson will step down in July. Thompson has been widely credited for her transformational leadership of the museum and is recognized as an innovator in the museum community. Since her appointment in September 2016, Hancock Shaker Village has grown in size and stature and has been infused, as The Boston Globe noted last summer, “with great gusts of contemporary vitality”.

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.

We are very excited to invite you to our first Open Studios in 2 years! As the weather gets warmer, and things are feeling safer, we are looking forward to opening our doors to you to get to know this month’s artist cohort.

ORBS by Jane Hudson, a series of 12 paintings on canvas hang on the rough brick walls of Tunnel City Coffee on the Mass MoCA campus. They bring a dynamic energy to the space. The paintings depict orbs of various hues surrounded by bursts of color as radiant beams.

The Williams College Museum of Art presents Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints, on view from February 18 through June 11, 2022. It is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s printmaking to date, including single prints and series, for a total of over 200 individual prints.

Mass MoCa has a busy schedule of exhibitions and special events through April. Check this out and bookmark.

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Iphigenia, an opera is a cross generational collaboration between 88-year-old jazz legend, Wayne Shorter and the much younger and widely acclaimed performer/ composer esperanza spalding. It was an eight year project that was particularly intensive this past year. After a residence it was presented as "an open rehearsal and work in progress" at MASS MoCA over two nights. It's debut will occur in Boston at ArtsEmerson on November 12 and 13. It will travel from there.

Ceramic art works and products have increased substantially in size and expression over the last ten or more years. The sky is the limit here at the current MoCA exhibition and the energy was palpable in the galleries during a rainy Saturday.

During the era of KIng Cotton North Adams thrived by processing bales shipped north from plantations. The Eclipse Mill produced thread which was woven across the street in the Delftree Mill. Until 1938 the mills employed child labor. During a single visit Lewis Hine created nine photographs outside the mill. These images as well as vintage views of the Eclipse Mill comprise a special exhibition. They flank the entrance ramp to the vast artist/ loft complex. The community based project is an aesthetic, historic and humanistic accomplishment.

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The Clark Art Institute’s popular First Sundays Free program returns on Sunday, October 3. Admission to the galleries is free to all visitors for the entire day, but advance registration is strongly recommended.

The Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) announces that Kristy Edmunds has been appointed as its new Director, following a 10-month international search and a unanimous decision by the Board. Edmunds comes to MASS MoCA from UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA), where she has served as the Executive and Artistic Director since 2011.

In Iphigenia, two of the most visionary and daring musical voices of our time—composer Wayne Shorter and librettist and performer esperanza spalding—have created a modern operatic re-imagining of the ancient tale of a daughter sacrificed to the gods. The set is designed by luminary architect Frank Gehry. Performances in the Hunter Center are Friday, November 5, 8pm & Saturday, November 6, 8pm

This Saturday the one and only Jeff Tweedy takes the stage in MASS MoCA's Joe's Field, joined by special guest and Wilco bandmate, Nels Cline. If you're mourning another year sans-Solid Sound, here's your chance to get that Wilco-meets-MASS MoCA fix.

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy takes the stage, joined by special guest and bandmate, Nels Cline, for a concert benefiting MASS MoCA’s Joe Thompson “Yes” Fund. All proceeds directly support the museum’s mission – instilled by our founding director Joe Thompson — to champion artists and art-making in all forms. 

As a title, Sections riffs off the organizational structure of a newspaper—a structure which is palpably felt in print editions where each section is folded separately and sandwiched into the others. This concept plays out spatially across the gallery, as the walls, floor and ceiling each become uniquely activated by the work installed on them.

This series of black basalt-ware ceramics was created by James Turrell in collaboration with Irish potter Nicholas Mosse of Kilkenny, Ireland.  The ceramics collection absorbs light as opposed to refracting it; pitch black and unyieldingly dark, Lapsed Quaker Ware exerts a visual gravitational pull, drawing in the viewer with a visceral sense of the sublime.

June at the Clark Art Institute brings the opening of one of its main summer exhibitions, Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway, and a variety of programming—in person and online—offering opportunities to explore art, ideas, and creativity in exciting new ways.

FreshGrass features bluegrass traditionalists and innovators on four stages and platforms throughout the museum’s 16-acre campus. Festival programming also includes FreshScores, a silent film with original live music; FreshGrass commissions and world premieres; instrument and industry workshops; pop-up performances and retail; and local Berkshire food and spirits vendors.   

Bang on a Can announces the hourly schedule for the second OneBeat Marathon – Live Online – on Sunday, May 2, 2021 from 12pm - 4pm EDT, curated by Found Sound Nation, its social practice and global collaboration wing. Over four hours the OneBeat Marathon will share the power of music and tap into the most urgent and essential sounds of our time. From the Kyrgyz three-stringed komuz played on the high steppe, to the tranceful marimba de chonta of Colombia's pacific shore, to the Algerian Amazigh highlands and to the trippy organic beats of Bombay’s underground scene – OneBeat finds a unifying possibility of sound that ties us all together.