"Can MASSMOCA become a breadwinner for the Berkshires?" The Art Newspaper, June 1995, p. 16.

Can MASSMoCA become a breadwinner for the Berkshires?

by Jason Edward Kaufman

Despite seven years of financial hardship, flagging support from the American museum community, and adverse editorials in the local press, MASSMoCA is alive and hopes to start kicking.

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS. For seven years, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASSMoCA) has been a red-brick castle in the western New England sky, but now the grandiose plan to transform a vacant 28-building factory compound into a high-tech arts center is about to become a reality. At least it seems that way. Governor William F. Weld has approved $15.8 million to begin converting the landmarked 1870s former textile-printing mill into what director Joseph Thompson calls "a multimedia cultural factory for the 21st century."

It all began back in 1988, when the Dukakis administration earmarked $35 million for an unlikely scheme to build the world's biggest museum of contemporary art in a Berkshire Mountain village hundreds of miles from a major city. The colossus was to have been stocked with works from the Guggenheim Museum, whose director Thomas Krens helped christen the project when he was leading the nearby Williams College Museum of Art. But doubts were raised that North Adams could sustain a 13.5-acre showcase for esoteric Minimal and Conceptual art, and the project foundered as organisers were unable to attract $15 million in matching funds required by the State. [see The Art Newspaper, March 1993, p. 5] On the brink of collapse, MASSMoCA was salvaged by revising its mission to embrace visual and performing arts, and to focus on new media technologies. "Programmers need a place to make large-scale site-specific works in which electronic media, visual, and performing arts converge," says Mr. Thompson, a graduate of Williams College where he worked for Mr. Krens. "We're going to try to position MASSMoCA as a cultural place where this kind of thing can happen."

Now, rather than a visual-art museum, the institution comprises a variety of disparate "program partners." These are Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival from nearby Becket, which will conduct five rehearsal and performance cycles per year; The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center of Los Angeles, which will use the facilities to promote Japanese culture; and the Brooklyn-based American History Workshop, which will produce programs relating to American history. Kleiser-Walczak Construction, a Los Angeles-based special effects company, and 501C3, a New York-based multimedia production and publishing firm, will lease space. Mr. Thompson is seeking other partners, especially "performance groups who could record their work as a way to promote and market it into alternative market channels."

The new emphasis on performance and electronic media will not entirely displace visual art. The Guggenheim has offered a rotating loan of 450 works, nearly all from the Panza Collection, much of which was acquired by the Guggenheim in 1990. In addition, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in adjacent Williamstown will sponsor "one or two exhibitions or other multidisciplinary programs per year," curated by graduate students in the art history program jointly administered by the Clark and Williams College. "The original concept of MASSMoCA as a place for works that have no other home is still valid, and we'll pursue it," Mr. Thompson proclaims, noting that MASSMoCA's gallery space will be roughly three times that of the Whitney.

Bruner/Cott & Associates of Boston, specialists in mill restoration, will do most of the actual construction of the two-year first phase, scheduled for completion in late 1997. The project will refurbish 170,000 sf of interior space: 60,000 sf of galleries, half of them climate-controlled; 25,000 sf for a performing-arts multi-use "black box"; 25,000 sf for production, post-production, and sound and video stages; and 25,000 sf for commercial tenants in the arts, cinema, and multimedia-related concerns. "We're creating a 'flexible platform' on which a gallery in October may be a motion-picture studio in December and a music stage in March," says Mr. Thompson.

MASSMoCA previously spent nearly $3 million of State funds on engineering and economic-impact studies. To get the additional $15.8 million, they had to raise matching funds on a ratio of 3:7 -- around $8 million, of which the property's value accounts for about $3.1 million. Most important, they had to convince Mr. Weld that the scheme could fly. The governor had frozen the $35 million when he took office in 1992, and refused to allocate the money incrementally. Only gradually did he come to regard the dubious enterprise as perhaps the last best hope for this economically depressed mill town. His thinking is that the arts (and autumn leaves) define Berkshire County as a tourist destination, with Tanglewood Music Center, The Clark Art Institute, The Norman Rockwell Museum, and the Williams College Museum of Art all within relative proximity to one another. By enhancing this cultural infrastructure, investment in MASSMoCA may diminish the necessity for other State subsidies to the region.

Nevertheless, the governor's reluctance bespeaks prudent skepticism regarding the project's viability. Mr. Thompson purports that MASSMoCA will draw 135-150,000 visitor per year, generating $21 million in local spending, and adding $8 million in personal income for the local population. But that day is a long, long way off. At present, Mr. Thompson is one of but two full-time employees at MASSMoCA, and the only works of art on-site are a Mario Merz "igloo" loaned from the Guggenheim, and a cache of photographs donated by photojournalist Lucien Aigner. Can MASSMoCA become a breadwinner for the Berkshires? Mr. Thompson would like us to think his $27-million bet will pay off. As for now, all he can say with any certainty is that "after seven years, at least we're off to the races."

Jason Edward Kaufman ©