(Courtesy MASS MoCA)ĭenise Markonish, senior curator and managing director of exhibitions at MASS MoCA, says that while bringing the best international artists working today to the museum is part of its core mission, it has the added benefit of bolstering a local arts community. One of James Turrell's ganzfeld rooms installed at MASS MoCA.
And even for the rotating schedule of curated art shows, artists are encouraged to create new pieces on site. In addition to these residencies, a small number of artists, including James Turrell and Laurie Anderson, have been given space to use for long-term exhibitions of their work. Jon Hamm, the actor most famous for his role as Don Draper in “Mad Men,” was also in residence this past spring to workshop a multidisciplinary project called “Fishing.” In the fall of 2018 he worked with collaborators to develop a multimedia performance, “The Head & The Load,” that has gone on to tour worldwide. This is precisely what brought William Kentridge, the celebrated South African artist, to the museum. “I think the most impactful thing we've really done … is we have these residencies for people or artists who are in any stage from, ‘We're just coming in to think about something,’ to, ‘We're opening at the Next Wave next week, and we need the last tech rehearsal before we go on international tour,’ and kind of everywhere in between,” says Rachel Chanoff, curator of Performing Arts and Film at the museum. The fact that the museum has so much space at its disposal means that it’s been able to become something quite unique: namely, an incubator for the arts, a place where artists of all stripes could come not only to show work, but also to imagine and realize new projects and experiment with new ideas. It still has that very much alternative space feel to it, sort of bootstrap.”īut its physical plant is not the only thing that makes it stand out. “I love the fact that even after 20 years, it's still not a standard ‘white cube’ experience. And since its founding, other spaces, inspired in part by MASS MoCA’s success, have been appearing on the national landscape, including the ICA Watershed in Boston, and the Momentary, a new venture in adaptive reuse by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.īut MASS MoCA remains unique, according to Paul Ha, director of the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, for staying true to its roots. Before there was MASS MoCA, there was PS1 in Long Island City (now MoMA PS1), a school building repurposed as a contemporary art space. The original idea was to take a set of industrial buildings, recently vacated with the shuttering of the city’s largest employer, and turn it into an economic and cultural motor to drive the region toward prosperity. A team led by one of Krens' acolytes, Joe Thompson, brought it into fruition. It was the brainchild of local business leaders and Thomas Krens, then-director of the Williams College Museum of Art who would go on to lead the Guggenheim Museum in its global expansion. MASS MoCA is touted as the largest of its kind in the world, and boasts a total of 250,000 square feet of exhibition space.
MASS MoCA director Joe Thompson in the museum's Building 6. The jam-packed schedule sheds light on how the institution sees itself: as a center of advanced art and performance by nationally and internationally known artists, an incubator of new talent and experimental ideas, and an institution that is very much part of a local community. That’s how this world-class contemporary art museum located in the Western Massachusetts city of North Adams is celebrating its 20th anniversary. A family-friendly block party with games like arty corn hole and a concert by NPR Tiny Desk Contest winners Tank and the Bangas will round out the schedule. There’s a talk by local historian and author Joe Manning highlighting the history, community and architectural setting in which the museum operates. Three exhibitions are opening at MASS MoCA this weekend: an experimental foray into installation art by singer Annie Lennox, a survey of artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith’s work imagining black liberation, and a group exhibition of hot young artists whose title is taken from a Kanye West lyric (“Suffering from Realness”). Facebook Email MASS MoCA, in the city of North Adams.
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