Wanting to have some time away from the city, we hit the road this past weekend, driving up to the Berkshires to visit MASS MoCA, an incredible contemporary art museum located in a former mill complex. It's still off-season up in the mountains, and we were a bit thrown by how cold it got (it snowed for about 5 minutes on Sunday morning), but despite the weather and the fact that the town of North Adams, MA was pretty empty, we still had a fabulous time. If any of you ever visit the area, I would highly recommend staying at The Porches Inn, which was created from a row of beautiful Victorian mill-workers houses that are located directly across the street from the museum. It's got a great mix of turn-of-the-century and modern art and design incorporated in it, and is definitely one of the nicest inn's I've ever stayed at. As for MASS MoCA, I wasn't sure what to expect from the country's largest contemporary art museum, and ended up being just as fascinated by the architecture of the space itself as I was by the art on display. The museum makes great use of the fact that they have such gigantic open factory spaces as galleries, especially for the exhibition Material World and for the museum's Sol LeWitt retrospective. I don't especially like LeWitt's work, but I did enjoy this semi-permanent retrospective (it will be up for 25 years), housed on three full floors of one building. His work is much more interesting when you see its progression through the years. We also caught the puppetry performance Disfarmer, about the American portrait photographer and hermit Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959), which was pretty incredible. In all, a very nice weekend away.
The Porches Inn.
Sol LeWitt as far as the eye can see...
And then you turn a corner and there's some more.
The Porches Inn.
Sol LeWitt as far as the eye can see...
And then you turn a corner and there's some more.
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