Contemporary sculptures gleam on a winter morning at Mass MoCA

This morning, I came to hear the Mass MoCA winter season announced — art and events across the next few months, leading up to William Kentridge’s residency in May. He will come with a troupe of more than 50 performers for a two-week residency and performance of his in-progress work, The Head and The Load, and fill the broad space of the auditorium with African experiences of World War I.

The galleries will see new paintings and photography. In Pitch, Allison Janae Hamilton will through the pine woods and turpentine industry of Northern Florida. In Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure the Night, artists look back to classic night scenes, from constellations to night clubs and from Rembrandt to Hopper. And we have more coming.

The long nights are also filling with music, dance, film and comedy. Alicia Hall Moran will warm a January night with an ‘alt opera’ inspired by Carmen, figure skating and the jazz trio Harriet Tubman. Concerts will range with dance music and singer / songwriters, and in April, Trio Da Kali will perform music from their Mande culture, singing with West African instruments. The Kronos Quartet (here last week) has said Da Kali is the closest they have come to the voice of Mahalia Jackson. And I thought of her singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 — what a glory it would have been to hear that live!

Looking ahead, I walked through the museum, watching the wind whip snow off the mill roofs.

By the Way Berkshires is a digital magazine exploring creative life and community — art and performance, food and the outdoors — and I’m writing it for you, with local voices, because I’ve gotten to know this rich part of the world as a writer and journalist, and I want to share it with you.

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