Mass MOCA

The Clark Art Institute’s popular First Sundays Free program continues on Sunday, May 2. Admission to the galleries is free to all visitors for the entire day, but advance registration is necessary.    

Bang on a Can announces the hourly schedule for its next Bang on a Can Marathon – Live Online – on Sunday, April 18, 2021 from 1-5pm ET. All 15 pieces on the program will be world premiere performances of newly commissioned works, streamed from musicians' homes around the country and across the world. Over its first six live online Marathons in 2020-2021 (May 3, June 14, August 1, October 18, February 21, and March 21) Bang on a Can has presented more than 125 performances, including 47 world premieres of new commissions and over 150 composers and performers. Bang on a Can plans to continue these Marathons, streaming online at live.bangonacan.org,

Artist Carrie Mae Weems will join students from Williams College, Bennington College, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for an online public conversation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 1. Some 500 individuals may register for the Zoom lecture which will later be available on YouTube.

MASS MoCA staff petitioned the National Labor Relations Board today, March 8th, for a union election. The unit includes curators, art fabricators, educators, facilities, other front-facing staff, and more.

MASS MoCA presents Close to You, a group exhibition that gathers the work of artists who probe the capacity of the visual arts to conjure feelings of closeness — both to others and to ourselves. On view from Saturday, April 3, through January 2022, in the Michael & Agnese Meehan Gallery, the exhibition features the work of Laura Aguilar, Chloë Bass, Maren Hassinger, Eamon Ore-Giron, Clifford Prince King, and Kang Seung Lee.

Skyspace will augment one of the world’s most comprehensive experiences of installations by James Turrell while realizing a vision the artist had when visiting the museum’s campus in 1987. The Skyspace will join a long-term exhibition of Turrell works at MASS MoCA, which includes one work from each of the six decades of the artist’s career.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) announces Glenn Kaino: In The Light of a Shadow from April 3, 2021 through September 4, 2022. Curated by Denise Markonish, the show will take over MASS MoCA’s signature Building 5 galleries, with a series of immersive installations that create a sense of wonder and hope while issuing an urgent call to action. 

In 2015, Michael Conforti retired as director of the Clark Art Institute after some 20 years. The Clark is very different now then what he signed on for. Today, the Clark hosts summer blockbuster shows and is one of the nations foremost research centers. From the beginning, it has had close ties with Williams College where Conforti teaches a graduate course in museum studies. He oversaw the expansion and renovation with architect Tadao Ando. While running the Clark he was on the road and hard to pin down. Now retired, we worked together on an extensive overview of his career, accomplishments, and issues for museums.

In a year like no other, we're as grateful as ever for you, our art-loving community near and far. Thank you for your continued support, words of encouragement, and mask-covered smiles — we wouldn't be here without you. 

MASS MoCA and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) at MCLA are launching In Session, a series of four panel discussions on anti-racist work in museums, streamed live on MASS MocA's YouTube channel and Facebook page beginning on Thursday, December 10, at 6pm EST with upcoming dates to be announced soon.

In March 2020, Los Angeles-based artist Richard Nielsen began painting portraits of people in their COVID-19 face masks. On view at MASS MoCA, This is Not a Gag includes his first set of 49 paintings. Presented in a Zoom-like grid, the series shows the determination behind the eyes of artists, writers, and friends of the artist and MASS MoCA. The subject’s faces may be covered, but variations in masks and individual expressions speak volumes about our lives today. These paintings are not about the pandemic, per se, but about the fiercest and finest parts of human nature.

After 22 years as a curator of the deCodova Museum, Dr. Nick Capasso, for the past 8 years has been director of the Fitchburg Art Museum. It is one of the poorest regions of the state. The community is 35% Latino and 55% of school children speak Spanish at home. The museum is unique for its bilingual initiatives and community outreach. There is diversity in all aspects of its exhibitions and programming. The museum shows New England artists. The collection has grown with an emphasis on photography, African, African American, and American art. Meeting daunting challenges the Fitchburg Art Museum is a remarkable success story.

Suzette Martin's project of 200 'prayer flags' has been installed at the River Street Park in North Adams, MA, behind MASS MoCA. They have been fastened along a fence at 6' apart. A proto-project, also titled 'Airborne Transmission' of then 19 flags can still be seen on the grounds of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. These 'flags' have been there since August. The new installation is impressive and will have a much larger impact, by reminding us that the entire Nation is still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, now with more than 200,000 deaths in the USA. Please read below.

The art of Blane De St. Croix comes at the viewer via a multivalent attack on the staggering challenges posed by irreparable climate change. The diversity of this artist’s media and its ecological content — driven by a political mandate — evokes the tradition of Social Sculpture by the postwar German artist Joseph Beuys. The MoCA project How to Move a Landscape draws on dramatically different approaches to convey the rapid erosion and melting of permafrost in the Arctic.

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.

With the decades long development of the MASS MoCA campus complete but for some loose ends director Joe Thompson is moving on. Since graduating from nearby Williams College, now in his early 60's it's the only job he's ever had. His work and MoCA development over the years has had enormous cultural and economic inpact on Northern Berkshire County.

Artists everywhere are communicating and presenting work virtually that was conceived and created or executed this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Life and art had mostly moved from our physical to our virtual world. Artists at the Eclipse Mill have done the same. Here we present three projects, two 'real' and one online, just a slice of artistic work that's being created in 40 studios. 'IMPROMPTU' has become a virtual exhibition on August 15 and 'Airborne Transmission' has been installed as described below.

This week we lost a neighbor and friend the artist/ activist Phil Sellers. He grew up in Ohio where he and his wife Gail Kolis Sellers launched a pottery business. They moved to North Adams to be with her family. Together they ran River Hill Pottery in the Eclipse Mill. The Sellers were involved in many arts and politcal activities. That entailed organizing artists to help oust long term mayor John Barrett,III. They became close friends with mayor Dick Alcombright who helped with their many public art projects.

When I interviewed Alan Shestack in 1992 he had been MFA director for five years. It was a time of economic downturn and the museum faced an annual deficit of $3 million. We discussed ways in which the museum might meet this challenge including a relationship with a museum in Nagoya, Japan which it helped to launch and program. He spoke adamantly that selling works to cover costs violated the mission and covenant of museums and their donors.

We Are All Contagious is an on line exhibition of U Mass Dartmouth. It was juried by Nato Thompson the Artistic Director of Philadelphia Contemporary. He started his career at MASS MoCA. Artists respond to COVID-19. Will the art of contagion be heroic, tragic, mythic, humorous? We are authoring our own history and future right now with this online exhibition.

When David Felton came to cover the Lyman Family, he knocked on my door in the Harvard Square Murder Building. He introduced himself as sent by my friend Bill “Dr. Gonzo” Cardoso. In his Rolling Stone piece, I was caricatured as a political thug, Harry Bikes. He covered Lyman and Charlie Manson both of whom he interviewed.

MASS MoCA is in pain as are all of us. Joe Thompson appeals for our help. For now in North Adams its MASK MoCA.

The 2020 Bang on a Can Marathon will feature more than 40 participating artists, over two dozen solo performances, and four world premieres of newly commissioned works by Dai Wei, Shara Nova, Molly Joyce, and Ken Thomson. Guest composers will be online to introduce their works. The 6-hour live Marathon will be hosted by Bang on a Can Co-Founders and Artistic Directors Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe.

In a normal season the Hancock Shaker Village, which was founded sixty years ago near Pittsfield, is open from April through December. With spring planting and the birth of livestock this is a busy time of year. The annual Baby Animals Festival draws some 20% of annual visitation and 15% of earned revenue. We spoke with director Jennifer Trainer Thompson about strategies to function during the pandemic.

Then 27 the Institute of Contemporary Art was the first of many boards that Sydney Roberts Rockefeller joined. Director Andrew C. Hyde quit not long after the beginning of his second term. Left in the lurch was a planned conference on public art. When she stepped up to rescue the conference the board made her director. She was on site during the renovation of 955 Boylston Street. It was designed and largely funded by the architect Graham Gund.