One of my Williams classmates is running a summer program at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (which was North Adams State back in our day), so we arranged to meet up for dinner in Williamstown. I realized, though, that it’s been ages since I went over the mountains, and decided to go over a few hours early and pick up some culture at one of the art museums. After a quick scan of the webpages, I settled on MassMoCA in North Adams:
They allow photography in most of the galleries, so I dragged my good camera along, which means this discussion of the trip will be illustrated…
The choice was between this or the Clark Art Institute, and generally speaking, the Impressionists-and-older stuff they have at the Clark is much more my thing. There were more current exhibits at Mass MoCA that I hadn’t seen before, though, and also, it being less my thing was more a feature than a bug, because it makes for a lower-impact Art Experience.
This being contemporary art, it’s all very high concept, in ways that are sometimes so galaxy brained that they wrap all the way back around to the other side. Like, for example, this giant blob of a sculpture that squats in the garden outside:
While I don’t think much of it as an artwork, it is a pretty good illustration of the problem I end up having with a lot of contemporary art. To connect for me, the art has to sort of walk a tightrope between the complementary failure modes of on the one side being so high-concept that the point is totally obscure, and on the other being just painfully on-the-nose in a way that really puts me off. I end up speed-walking through a fair number of galleries at this sort of museum as a result.
That second failure mode, being too obvious, is the trickier of the two, in a lot of ways. A couple of pieces in the early-ish part of my visit illustrate that. On the one hand, there’s this collection of masked portraits:
The title here is thuddingly obvious, but the portraits are interesting enough in their own right that I basically ended up liking it. On the other hand, there’s this array of begging bowls partially filled with change:
The point here is pretty obscure until you read the explanation of the concept— it represents the average student debt in the US (one measure of it, anyway). On the one hand, there’s a “Huh, that’s interesting…” aspect to that, but the explanation is so heavy-handed and the participatory aspect so pretentious that I ended up slightly on the negative side.
To the other side, there’s this parade of action figures on suspended glass panels:
The point here is sort of deliberately obscure in a way that leaves me at “Um, yeah. Cool toys, bro.”
A lot of this stuff has a participatory aspect, like this hall full of suspended rocks:
This is actually the setting for a giant sound-and-light show, which I got roped into because it was about to start when I entered from the wrong direction. There are little lights on tracks that move around and cast shadows of the hanging rocks on the walls in a way that sort of tells a story, and leads you (slowly) up the ramp through the center of the hall. It’s an impressive display of effort, but the message was so thuddingly obvious toward the end that I found myself lapsing into Peter Falk from The Princess Bride: “Yes, you’re very clever. Now shut up.”
(I think it’s ultimately more successful than not, but it’s a near thing given that the whole show lasts close to half an hour.)
Probably the most effective of the big installations that I saw was this global-warming themed gallery with creepy statues of deer and interesting lighting effects:
(That’s a composite of three different pictures.) The individual components of this look cool enough to be striking without having the unifying concept explained, and when it is, it’s straightforward enough to not be overly irritating.
In the end, though, I’m just a really boring normie type guy, so the single thing I liked the best was probably the collection of photos of walls, windows, and words by Patrick Sansone, who’s also in the band Wilco (who have close ties to MassMoCA for some reason). I don’t have a really good photo of the pictures on display, but I definitely recommend flipping through the examples on his website. But then, that’s exactly the sort of randomly artsy stuff I go for when I’m wandering around with my camera, only, you know, better. So of course it appeals to me…
Anyway, it was an enjoyable enough way to pass a chunk of the afternoon and pick up a little culture. And when I stopped into the on-site brewpub to get a beer and wait out the time until I was supposed to go to dinner, it turned out the friend I was supposed to meet an hour later in Williamstown had stopped into that pub for a drink as well, which was super convenient.
Two other photos that don’t really fit any kind of narrative about my tastes in art. The first is a combination of signs in one of the galleries:
I have no idea who the Tarses family are, but they have a bunch of signs like this scattered around declaring their “sponsorship” of stairwells and bathrooms and exit doors. So, you know, good on them for having a sense of humor about the whole philanthropic enterprise.
Finally, a shout-out to this dude:
I was standing on the corner with my camera, waiting for the light to change so this truck could clear the shot, and the driver honked his horn and gesturered for me to take his photo. Which ended up a slightly more interesting picture than the truck-less shot of North Adams against the Berkshires than I was waiting for, so thanks, buddy.
If you like this kind of boring-normie art criticism, here’s a button you can click to get… well, I don’t do a lot of this specific thing, but you can get more writing with this sensibility:
And if you want to call me a cretin for not being more enthusiastic about this stuff, I’ll probably ignore you, but the comments will be open: