Three days to chase the end of summer

A long weekend of quiet days … what should we do with some free time? I’m thinking I may explore the Taconics, take a long walk along the ridge or look for meadows where the wildflowers stand taller than my shoulders. Where are the natural open spaces where fringed gentians grow?

I could visit the Festival of Books in Spencertown to amble through 15,000 gently used books and listen to writers. Daphne Palasi Andreades will be there Saturday afternoon, talking about Brown Girls, her novel weaving stories of friends coming of age in Queens.

And Mayukh Sen will explore Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America — Chao Yang Buwei, the chef who introduced America to stir-fry, or Madeleine Kamman, the Paris-born chef who tangled with Julia Child …

Photo by Kate Abbott

Sunflowers bloom in the Shaker garden.

BenGable Savories would supply me a picnic lunch if I order ahead (summer vegetable soup, farm-smoked ham sandwich with manchego, biscuits with strawberry jam, peach crisp and Stumptown coffee …) And if I stay into the twilight, at Performance Space 21. I can walk through an old orchard in the dark and untangle a spiderweb with street artist Juhyung Lee.

Or I could ramble through the Southern Berkshires, come back to Edith Wharton’s garden at the Mount (see above) and check out the Lenox Library book sale … and spend quiet hours with the summer shows at the Norman Rockwell Museum or Hancock Shaker Village. My summer interns came with me to both in August, and still I could go back.

I haven’t yet seen Kimsooja’s work with light and woven cloth in the Shaker sisters’ shop, or her community work in the Meetinghouse, intertwining strings. Where PS21 invites people to unweave a web, she is inviting them to weave one together … and remember the women who put their hands to work here in the kitchen and wash house and fields.

This weekend …

Rodin comes to the Clark Art Institute and Rose B. Simpson to Mass MoCA, and Mary Ann Unger’s abstract forms to the Williams College Museum of Art. Armando Cortes brings bright notes to the ceramics group show at Mass MoCA, as Tomm El-Saieh does at the Clark and Rudy Gutierrez at the Norman Rockwell Museum, and sculpture fills Edith Wharton’s gardens (above)…

Rodin's bronze shows the heroic head of Pierre de Wissant, one of the Burghers of Calais.

Rose B. Simpson's clay figures lean together wearing clay beads in the ceramics show at Mass MoCA.

Mary Ann Unger's abstract sculpture curve in tactile blue-black helixes.

Armando Guadalupe Cortés’ 'Castillo' honors the people and the land in his native Mexico with vividly bright seeds as well as stones, feathers, figurines and more, at Mass MoCA.

Wanga Neges appears in Tomm El-Saieh's 'Imaginary City,' a solo show of large paintings in vivid abstract color, at the Clark Art Institute. Press image courtesy of the museum

Scarlet runner beans bloom on a sculpture made by the internationally recognized Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak.

John Coltrain swirls with brilliant color in Rudy Gutierrez' illustration. Press image courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum

Events coming up …

Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.

Gilded Age Christmas

Dec 6 2023 @ 10:00 am

Ventfort Hall is decorated for the holidays in 19th-century style, with lighted tree and stockings by the fire and more, and open for self-guided explorations.

Winterlights @ Naumkeag

Dec 6 2023 @ 4:30 pm

Winterlights is back, filling the gardens with holiday light and sound for a magical outdoor experience at Naumkeag as it shimmers with thousands of lights.