MASS MoCA, Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art, Bennington Museum, and Williamstown Theatre Festival Launch New Initiative Targeting Summer 2017 Season of Art, Dance, Music, and Theatre

The directors of five leading cultural organizations launched a new initiative to drive awareness, increase tourism, and encourage economic development by focusing on the extraordinary cultural resources that are unique to the Berkshires area.

ArtCountry is a consortium including MASS MoCA, the Clark Art Institute, the Williams College Museum of Art, the Bennington Museum, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The group launched their collaboration in March 2017 and will highlight the unique assets of the region through collaborative programming, joint ticket offers, and a unified approach to attracting visitors to the region.

The ArtCountry organizations will offer a four-way museum ticket this summer, providing discounted admission to the Clark, MASS MoCA, and the Bennington Museum and offering a twenty percent discount in the WCMA Museum Store. The $40 ticket represents a twenty percent savings and is valid throughout the year.

The group’s newly launched website, artcountry.org, details the philosophy behind ArtCountry:

“We don’t think there’s anywhere else quite like our corner of the world. Four incredible museums and an amazing theatre festival. Great hiking, biking, and river kayaking. Maple syrup. Exciting music, theater, and dance. Artisanal foods and craft beers. The Appalachian Trail. Farm stands and farm-to-table restaurants. Mountains, pastures, and endless beauty. Fresh air.”

Underscoring the partnership, the directors of each institution provided an overview of their summer plans, highlighting the energy and diversity of a season that is expected to bring new attention to the region defined by the Berkshire hill towns of Williamstown and North Adams and extending into Bennington, Vermont. 

MASS MoCA

Located in North Adams, Massachusetts, MASS MoCA launches into the summer season on May 28 with the opening of Building 6, its third phase of campus development that encompasses 130,000 square feet of interior renovations to its 19th-century mill buildings. A rich array of long-term programming accompanies the building’s opening, including partnerships and collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson, and Gunnar Schonbeck (Bang on a Can). Additional artists to be shown in Building 6 include Dawn DeDeaux, Lonnie Holley, Mary Lum, Barbara Prey, and Spencer Finch. 

Nick Cave’s Until remains on view through September 2017, an exhibition in which MASS MoCA’s signature football field-sized space is transformed into the artist’s largest installation to date. Made up of thousands of found objects and millions of beads, which make viewers feel as if they have entered a rich sensory tapestry (or directly inside the belly of one of Cave’s iconic Soundsuits), Until addresses issues of gun violence, gun control policy, race relations, and gender politics in America today. Other exhibitions on view through the summer include Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Franz West, and Anselm Kiefer.

Highlights in the performing arts program include a concert with veteran rock band CAKE on May 28, punctuating the opening of Building 6. Alt-rock band My Morning Jacket performs on the outdoor concert field on August 12. Wilco’s Solid Sound Music and Arts Festival, featuring Wilco, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Robert Glasper Experiment, Kevin Morby, Big Thief, and others, falls on June 23-25. Bang on a Can, a three-week contemporary music festival, fills MASS MoCA’s galleries and performance halls with new and exciting music from July 19-August 5. On September 15-17, the museum campus transforms into a bluegrass and roots haven with FreshGrass Festival, which features the likes of Brandi Carlile, The Del McCoury Band with David Grisman, Railroad Earth, Bill Frisell, The Wood Brothers, Alison Brown, and others (plus more to be announced).

“MASS MoCA is pleased to partner in this collaborative effort, ArtCountry,” notes MASS MoCA Director Joseph Thompson. “Highlighting programmatic strings and interconnections between the five neighboring institutions will attract more visitation during the 2017 summer season and encourage longer stays.”

CLARK ART INSTITUTE

The Clark Art Institute will host four special exhibitions focused on the work of Pablo Picasso, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Helen Frankenthaler, offering a diverse array of presentations featuring paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts. Picasso: Encounters, on view June 4-August 27, explores Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) interest in and experimentation with large-scale printmaking throughout his career, challenging the notion of Picasso as an artist alone with his craft. The exhibition includes important paintings on loan from the Musée national Picasso–Paris.

Orchestrating Elegance: Alma-Tadema and Design, on view June 4–September 4 shows as interest in the painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) surges. The Clark offers new insight into one of his most successful and distinctive artistic endeavors—the design of a music room in the Greco-Pompeian style for the New York mansion of financier, art collector, and philanthropist Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819–1902).

As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings, on view July 1–October 9, comprises a selection of large paintings by Helen Frankenthaler from the 1950s through the 1990s, focusing on nature as a longstanding inspiration. The paintings in this exhibition represent the full range of styles and techniques that she explored over five decades of work; while all are primarily abstract, they also contain allusions to landscape, demonstrating how Frankenthaler’s delicate balance between abstraction and a nuanced responsiveness to nature and place developed and shifted over time. No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts, on view July 1-September 24, explores Helen Frankenthaler’s inventive and groundbreaking approach to the woodcut.

“We are looking forward to an exceptional summer and are delighted to be able to bring such important works to Williamstown to share them with our community and our visitors,” said Oliver Meslay, Felda and Dena Hardymon Director of the Clark Art Institute. “From our wonderful permanent collection to these great exhibitions highlighting such diverse topics, we are sure our visitors will have a spectacular experience as they explore our galleries and enjoy walking our trails and taking in the beauty of our campus. ArtCountry perfectly encapsulates the unique wealth of cultural opportunities available in the region and we are confident that this summer’s visitors will be delighted by the discoveries they will make and the inspiration they will find at each venue.”

WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL

Just a mile down the road at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the 2017 Summer Season—the 63rd Season for the Tony Award-winning theatre company—includes four world premieres, a new musical, the first production of a WTF commissioned artist, and much more. Running from June 27–August 20, 2017, the season begins on the Main Stage with a production of a new play by Jen Silverman, The Roommate (June 27–July 16), directed by Mike Donahue and featuring Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner S. Epatha Merkerson (WTF Debut) and Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominee Jane Kaczmarek (4th season at WTF); continues with Sarah Ruhl’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist comedy The Clean House (July 19–July 29), starring Tony Award nominee Jessica Hecht (10th season at WTF) and directed by Rebecca Taichman; and closes with a new musical, A Legendary Romance (August 3–August 20), with music and lyrics by Geoff Morrow and book by Timothy Prager and directed by Lonny Price.

The Nikos Stage season kicks off June 28 with the world premiere of Jason Kim’s play The Model American (June 28–July 9), directed by Danny Sharron; and also includes the world premiere of Where Storms Are Born (July 12–July 23) by Harrison David Rivers, directed by Tony Award-nominee Liesl Tommy, and starring Outer Critics Circle Award nominee Myra Lucretia Taylor (10th season at WTF); the world premiere play Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow (July 26–August 6) by Halley Feiffer and directed by Obie Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Trip Cullman; and Actually (August 9–August 20) by Anna Ziegler, a co-world premiere with Geffen Playhouse, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. All four of this season’s Nikos Stage productions have been commissioned by or developed at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

“We are excited to share these productions—many of them homegrown at the Festival—with our loyal patrons, who join us summer after summer to experience the rare and special magic that happens in Williamstown,” Artistic Director Mandy Greenfield said. “This summer, hundreds of theatre artists—expressing the full talent and diversity of our country—will converge in Williamstown to bring life to our 63rd season. Together, through that most human endeavor of storytelling, these artists will aim to make sense of the world, give meaning to the world, and perhaps even provide temporary escape from the world!”

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), sharing the same campus as the Williamstown Theatre Festival, welcomes the summer season with a packed lineup of exhibitions and programs. From the first exhibition to make extensive use of the Rauschenberg archives to faculty-led mini courses to lively patio programs, WCMA brings visitors a summertime slice of campus life.

Through August 20, Robert Rauschenberg’s Autobiography is on view at the museum. It includes recurrent motifs from throughout his career, as well as x-ray imagery of his body, his astronomical chart, a childhood photograph, and a photo-document of his first performance. With Autobiography as the point of departure, the exhibition combines archival documents and original works of art that speak to the ways in which Rauschenberg both found himself and inserted himself in the world.

In Lex and Love, on view through September 17, two new chapters in Meleko Mokgosi’s Democratic Intuition project investigate the irresolvable contradiction that is democracy. Presented together for the first time at WCMA, Lex and Love consider the daily experiences of diverse populations that occupy southern Africa. Lex explores the role of gender in specific cultural and socio-economic relations. Inspired by work made by William-Adolphe Bouguereau during the Scramble for Africa, Love’s eight shaped canvases examine allegory and historicity.

Accession Number, on view now through August 20, revolves around the 396 works of art WCMA acquired between 1960 and 1962, including ancient Egyptian amulets, Chinese Qing dynasty vases, William Morris Hunt’s majestic painting of Niagara Falls, and much, much more. As with all objects that enter the collection, the museum assigned them a code when they arrived—called an accession number—that recorded both the year and sequence of their acquisition. Using accession numbering as a display strategy, Accession Number poses different questions: What did the museum prioritize, why, and what did it overlook? Which works of art do we still value today? And finally how do we infer meaning from this or any archive? We explore this last question in a nearby installation that lets the public curate their own digital display.

WCMA also features a weekly slice of campus life with faculty-led mini courses, patio programs, and Reading Room workshops in Summer School 2017 (Thursdays, July 6-August 24). This summer, the museum explores two pillars of the academic experience—the library and the archive. These mainstays of academia are the inspiration for lively seminar-style chats on popular non-fiction books, a series of mini-courses in our galleries that draw from the quirkiest kinds of libraries, and a lending library of games and materials, which can be checked out for use on our patio.

"At WCMA we make world-class exhibitions and programs, like Rauschenberg: Autobiography, Lex and Love: Meleko Mokgoasi, and Summer School, that are smart, funny, and don't take themselves too seriously,” remarks Christina Olsen, Class of '56 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art. “That gels well with ArtCountry, where you can experience the best art and culture in the world, and hike and bike in some of the most spectacular scenery on the east coast."

BENNINGTON MUSEUM

Across the border in Bennington, Vermont—a 20-minute ride by car—the Bennington Museum combines the best of the art, history, and innovation of Bennington and the surrounding region, which has been a center of immense creativity for over 200 years. As the foremost collecting institution in southern Vermont, the museum engages visitors with objects ranging from letters by George Washington to modern and contemporary art. The museum brings visitors face-to-face with tangible things that make history come alive—a powerful and crucially important experience in an increasingly digital age. The museum offers changing exhibitions each year, along with permanent exhibitions such as Gilded Age Vermont, Bennington Modernism, Grandma Moses, and 19th-century Bennington Pottery.  

Grandma Moses: American Modern, on view July 1-November 5, combines two great collections of the painter’s work from Shelburne Museum and Bennington Museum, supplemented with key loans from private collections arranged by Galerie St. Etienne. At the same time, Bennington Museum’s permanent Grandma Moses Gallery will be filled with 20 more masterpieces on loan from public and private collections. The result is an almost unprecedented opportunity to see more than 60 works by this colorful American folk painter in one place, the largest group of works by Moses assembled in decades.

Places, Faces, and Hands: Vermont Photographs by Clemens Kalischer, on view May 27-September 4, features the work of a man who fled Germany and arrived in America during World War II. It was the sympathetic photographs he made of his fellow European refugees in New York City in the 1940s that first brought him notice. However, since 1951, he has lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, working as an independent photojournalist focused on the lives of rural people in India, Italy, and the American South, as well as New England. Some of his greatest images were made in Vermont, including his 1951 photo essay on Peacham, photographs of farmers, factory workers, landscapes, and modernist architecture, and his extended series recording six decades of the Marlboro Music Festival.

“ArtCountry really is a community, with interlocking exhibitions and programs, and all of us within a 30-minute circle. I’m thrilled that Bennington Museum is here, holding down the northern flank!” said Robert Wolterstorff, Executive Director of the Bennington Museum. “Grandma Moses is a local artist, and we always have her works on view. But Grandma Moses: American Modern is going to be a subversive exhibition, challenging your expectations. You may think you know her, the little old lady who painted happy rural scenes, but we’re going to shake it up by showing her work alongside artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell, and Fernand Léger. Come on up to Vermont. It’s lovely here.”

Three local hotels, The Williams Inn, Tourists (opening Summer 2017), and The Porches Inn at MASS MoCA, are ArtCountry’s lodging properties and will offer special accommodation packages combining hotel stays and admission offers.