Mass MOCA

A broad range of work by 27 artists is on view in the Eclipse Annual Exhibition. The annual Open Studios event will occur during the run of the show from October 17 through October 19.

This exhibition presents the work of eight artists who are dead serious about the issues they deal with but with an enormous sense of humor. With this project it is quite alright to have a few laughs.

Several months ago we met Andrew Klass when he was the youngest exhibitor in the "Berkshire Salon" at the Eclipse Mill Gallery. This is how first one man show at the popular Cup and Saucer in downtown North Adams. It is a short walk from the campus of MCLA where he is enrolled as a fine arts major.

The Berkshire Hills are very much alive this fall. Choose from the ridiculous or the sublime, from the Ballet Trockaderos with men in tutus and on pointe to the arrival of Irina Brook at Shakespeare & Company to wrest a play from Oscar Wilde's book, The Canterville Ghost. For a complete change of pace, the Cirque du Soleil is coming to Amherst and Boston.

Besides the various mill building re-uses, nondescript chain stores and undistinguished houses, there are many notable and beautiful architectural structures, facades and details throughout the former mill town of North Adams, Massachusetts. This photographic portfolio is a glance at a few often overlooked details of architectural beauty.

A perfect storm of cool, rainy weather, $4 a gallon gas, and a lousy economy caused the coining of a new term "Staycation" during the summer of 2008. While clearly an off year Berkshire arts and tourism held their own largely through its range of world class offerings.

With Labor Day Weekend approaching Jordan Young will be heading back to college. For the past summer he was an intern at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art with a range of duties and challenges. Overall he reports that it was a remarkable experience.

The images rendered by the realist painters Pennie Brantley and Robert Morgan reflect their extensive travel in Europe and South America. Their work remains on view at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams through September 1.

Berkshire residents are reveling in an amazing array of area arts offerings. Our monthly Preview serves to help guide your choices with helpful facts, insider details and handy links. The only mistake would be to procrastinate. Nothing gold can stay.

The Eclipse Mill in North Adams includes the Eclipse Mill Gallery which has just opened its second show of the season "Off the Wall: Art of the Eclipse in the Third Dimension." There is also the Ralph Brill Gallery which is about to open "Nude & Naked" and River Hill Pottery which is participating in "Off the Wall." Visitors to the gallery also enjoy browsing through books offered by bookseller Grover Askins. There's a lot to take in with one stop on the way to and from Mass MoCA.

The awesome array of Berkshire arts events in July is astounding. Our theater, music and dance companies create their schedules one by one, but taken together it's going to be one sensational Summer Festival right here in our own backyard. Enjoy.

For too many years it has been dead in downtown North Adams in the shadow of Mass MoCA. Visitors to that museum did not spill over to depressed Main Street. But that may change as there is now a map guiding visitors to some dozen or so arts venues. It is creating a real buzz for Northern Berkshire County.

Part One: Use this handy guide to Berkshire museum discounts, and you can enjoy the same wonderful attractions that draw tens of thousands of people to our region each summer.

A number of leases have expired for galleries on Newbury Street and the South End. This has led to more than the usual turmoil and change in the always difficult Boston art market. While regional dealers struggle there are reports on a boom in the $25 billion international art market.

Not only does I Am My Own Wife launch the season for the Barrington Stage Company this is also the first productionn in its new Second Stage in downtown Pittsfield. This is the first of three reports on a remarkable peformance by Vince Gatton.

The Memorial Day weekend saw the exuberant launch of the arts season. In the Northern Berkshires Greylock Arts, in Adams opened Being There while the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams hosts the Berkshire Salon.

Some 47 artists from the Berkshires, New York State, Vermont and Cape Cod are participating in the first annual Berkshire Salon at the Eclipse Mill Gallery in North Adams.

Berkshire residents and visitors are about to enjoy the earliest and most promising arts season in years. We pick the best of the early music, theater, dance and gallery offerings, from Memorial Day to the end of June 2008.

Using a computer program Devorah Sperber reduces details of Old Masters into a pattern of individual pixels. These are then combined in grids made of spools of thread. The results prove to be visually delightful as well as educational.

Few artists have ever more thoroughly used to full and dramatic impact the daunting vortex of the Guggenheim Museum. In that sense alone the installation of work by Cai Guo-Qiang is a spectacular triumph. Berkshire residents will recalls his earlier exhibition at Mass MoCA.

Theater, music and dance performances are sprouting up everywhere. Here's a head's up on the most promising. After a hard winter, it's nice to see the Berkshires bloom with life again.

The Mod Squad took over the Clark for a British Invasion party. Even a nasty night couldn't dampen the festive spirit of fighting of the winter blues.

In July it will be 20 years since Tom Krens left the Williams College Museum of Art to become director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. His resignation was announced today. He has changed forever the mandate for major museums and how they are managed.

Frederick Remington, one of the artists collected by Francine and Sterling Clark, proved to be the poster boy for Manifest Destiny and a favorite artist of presidents, particulary Republicans. But it was great fun and the Texas two step during the gala opening of the Remington exhibition at the Clark Art Instiute.

The recently established tradition returns to Lenox, Mass with the annual Labor Day Weekend Tanglewood Jazz Festival. Tickets to all Tanglewood events are now on sale.