#MASS MOCA KIDSPACE HOW TO#
#MASS MOCA KIDSPACE WINDOWS#

You still shouldn’t touch, but, well… maybe you won’t get yelled at if you do (like being at Grandma’s house: don’t touch, and here’s a cookie instead).Īs an intern, I was lucky enough to get a tour of some buildings still awaiting renovation.

#MASS MOCA KIDSPACE WINDOWS#

It’s a little intoxicating to see art-visual and performance-among exposed brick walls and pipes and old metal staircases and nice big picture windows with breathtaking views.

Maybe it’s because when we go to a museum, we’ve come to expect sterile white rooms, gilded gold frames and plenty of signs saying “Don’t Touch The Art.” Maybe it’s because we don’t usually get to look at fine art before a rock concert. MASS MoCA’s campus feels comfortably human and welcoming.

Tanglewood, the summer of home of The Boston Symphony, is adjacent. It’s a cozy, unassuming place for either a weekend getaway or a longer vacation. There’s good food (Jack’s Hot Dogs and The Hub) and plenty of other cultural attractions nearby: Williams College Museum of Art, The Clark Art Institute, Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Natural Bridge State Park and Mount Greylock (the highest point in the state). North Adams is small, with neat rows of colorful houses and an overload of cute churches. Thompson still spearheads the museum today, working with plenty of other dedicated folks who’ve been there since before the doors opened they celebrated MoCA’s 15th anniversary in May of this year.

#MASS MOCA KIDSPACE HOW TO#

Joseph Thompson, also working at the Williams College Museum of Art, was named founding director of MASS MoCA and after a lot of work to acquire funding, conduct feasibility studies, how to complete renovations, etc., the rest is history. The Director of the nearby Williams College Museum of Art was looking for a large space to exhibit contemporary art and the Mayor of North Adams suggested the huge former Sprague campus (13 acres, to be exact)-voilá. Sprague played a major role in the manufacture of materials needed for WWII and later government projects such as the Gemini Moon Missions, but closed in 1985 due to overseas competition. Arnold Print Works was forced to consolidate as a result of the Great Depression and sold the site to Sprague Electric Company in 1942. What the campus looked like during the Sprague Electric years.Ī little history: the galleries and performance venues are in renovated factory buildings constructed by Arnold Print Works (from approximately 1860 to 1890) along the Hoosic River in North Adams, Massachusetts. No, it’s not in Boston (a running joke among staff) it’s as far as you can get from Boston while still in the state of Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a collection of mind-boggingly huge galleries and venues located in the Berkshire Mountains, an area that looks straight out of a fairy tale (and-fittingly perhaps-is the place Herman Melville wrote his famous tale). It sounded too good to be true, and to be honest. Somewhere along the way, I found a link about MASS MoCA’s internship program.

I wanted an internship-preferably an affordable one (a tall order in today’s arts economy, to be sure)-at a decidedly Really Cool Place. In fall of 2009, I sat on my bed in a small apartment surfing the web with the fervor only a student soon-to-be graduate has.

Mass moca kidspace