Mass MOCA

After one season the Rudd Museum of Art in North Adams has been renamed with a new mandate as Berkshire Artist Museum. It recently reopened with a Rudd installation Iceberg in the nave and That '70s show as phase one of Then and Now which will be complete later in the season.

Wilco and thirty other bands invade Mass MoCA this weekend

During the Pluralism of the 1980s the Italian born artist Francesco Clemente was a part of the neo expressionist movement. Having recently reinvented himself the artist who lives in New York and India had a series of glitzy decoratve tents fabricated by artisans. The artist has painted the interiors with provocative, fluid, naive narratives. This imajor installtion in Mass MoCA's vast Building Five has been paired with the cartoon inspired, theatrical scaled paintings of the populist artist./ musician conceptualist Jim Shaw. The work is obviously fun and accessible but skates on thin ice.

Jeff and Jane operate Hudson' Antiques in Mass MoCA. A few years ago they moved into a loft down the hall from us. They flipped it and move to Billtown, Jane and I go way back. Covered a lot of turf together over the years.

Because of the activity of the 19th century collector William Sturgis Bigelow the Museum of Fine Arts has some 30,000 Japanese prints. He donated 80% of these treasures. Through August 8 the MFA is showing 230 works by the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The centerpiece is his iconic color woodblock print “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” “a.k.a. “The Great Wave.” It is from "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" which the artist produced while in his 70s. He later added ten more because of the success of the series.

Now in his final weeks as director of the Clark Art Institute Michael Conforti hosted a media event promoting a blockbuster season for Northern Berkshire County. There were presentations by Joe Thompson for Mass MoCA, Tina Olsen for the Williams College Museum of Art, and Mandy Greenfield for the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Notably absent from the media event were North Adams based arts presenters Downstreet, The Eclipse Mill Gallery, The Rudd Museum of Art and the fall annual Williamstown Film Festival.

The Provincetown based based conceptual artist a master of gonzo agit-prop, Jay Critchley, is having his first museum level solo exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. We visited his cluttered home, studio and back yard where he was preparing works for installation in the museum. We viewed the artifacts from numerous projects and conceptual works.

In an annual collaboration between Jacob's Pillow Dance and MASS MoCA yesterday we enjoyed four pieces by Keigwin & Company. One, a solo, his first time on stage in three years was performed by the choreographer Larry Keigwin. We saw his work for If/ When a musical starring Idina Menzel on Broadway.

Recently the Clark Art Institute completed a $145 million expansion and renovation following the master plan of Tadao Ando. Now 69 the director Michael Conforti will retire this summer following 20 years in Williamstown. Widely regarded as one of America's finest mid size regional museums on his watch the endowment grew from $128 million to $357 million.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Stravinsky/ Nijinsky The Rite of Spring in 1913 the Bill T. Jones/ Arne Zane Company collaborated with Siti Company to create a deconstruction A Rite. Last night the powerful and revolutionary piece was performed at the '62 Center of Williams College. What caused an audience to riot a century ago was met with polite and enthusiastic applause.

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.

The Solid Sound 2015 lineup features Tweedy (which features Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer), Mac DeMarco, Real Estate, Parquet Courts, Shabazz Palaces, Richard Thompson Trio, King Sunny Ade and His African Beats, Taj Mahal, Cibo Matto, Jessica Pratt, Luluc, William Tyler, Bill Frisell, The Autumn Defense, NRBQ, Stained Radiance (Nels Cline + Norton Wisdom), Glenn Kotche and Jeffrey Zeigler, and many others.

In August of 2010 Leonard Nimoy thrilled Berkshire Trekkies with an appearance at an exhibition of his photography at Mass MoCA. A lecture that October was cancelled when he was rushed to the emergency room in North Adams. He died this week from complications of COPD.

In August of 2010 Sidewalk Sam was on hand, at the invitation of Gail and Phil Sellers of Art About Town, to create one of his renowned public art projects on Holden Street.During a Boston blizzard yesterday he died in his sleep. We first met the artist as an activist and prankster in the 1970s.

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.

Traditionally the Clark Art Institute offered free admission during the off-season. This was particulaerly attractive for local residents with the opportunity to view the collection and special exhibitions. The museum also staged some wonderful Clark After Dark parties. We used to say never miss a Clark party. Particularly on a bleak winter night. Now less costs more.

As of January One the Clark will no longer be free during the off season. It is offering token free days but adult admission is full freight at $20. Add another $10 to see special exhitions. Which is still more generous than Mass MoCA which has a single annual free day. It sends the wrong PR and marketing message to the local community. What price can you put on being a welcoming good neighbor?

“Festival 2015 delivers a remarkable range of dance from ballet to tap, music from classical to jazz, brand new works commissioned by the Pillow, and the most astonishing performers in the world,” comments Ella Baff, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “We start the season with Ira Glass’s Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host and the re-opening of the Jacob’s Pillow Archives as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of public access and a major expansion of its home, Blake’s Barn. We end with a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company, a world premiere by Mats Ek, and the up and coming company MADboots Dance. Quite a range indeed.”

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.

James Turrell is best known for developing Roden Crater in Arizona as an epic scaled celestial observatory and light work. The project is incomplete and not accessible to visitors. But it is the heart and soul of work that is world renowned. In 2013 there was a touring retrospective of his work. The approximate scale of that exhibition, some 32,000 square feet, will be used for a 25-year-long Turrell installation at Mass MoCA.

Mass MoCA a kunsthalle or non collecting museum established a new paradigm when it opened 25-year-long, large scale installations of works by Sol LeWitt and Anselm Kiefer. Now six more A list artists are planned including space for multi media performance artist Laurie Anderson. During the recent media event to announce these ambitious projects we spoke with Anderson about her ongoing relationship with MoCA and the Berkshires.

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.

During an evening of suspense Tony Gilroy showed a clip from Nightcrawler. It was a film wrtten and directed by his brother Dan. It was fun to see how that scene developed in the arc of a grim but fascinating film.

In a two hour presentation of clips from Bourne, his and other classic suspense films, Tony Gilroy presented a master’s class on state of the art filmmaking for an enthralled audience at the Hunter Center of Mass MoCA. The event which was hosted by artistic director, Steve Lawson, with the artist Stephen Hannock, an Oscar winner, as discussant, was a highlight of the 16th annual Williamstown Film Festival.