“Can you imagine 400 years of your history, 400 years of you – where you come from?” composer Avery Sharpe’s niece, Sofia Rivera, speaks her own words aloud in Sharpe’s newest album 400: An African American Musical Portrait. “I can only go back to 1619 in America. As a Black […]
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Mass MoCA re-opens as the Covid-19 shut-down eases
Mass MoCA re-opens on July 12, after four months of the Covid-19 pandemic, with new work in the galleries including Kissing through a Curtain, a new group show exploring the idea of translation.
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Song and Survival: Bernice and Mariah Lewis perform in national folk festival
Berkshire singer/songwriter Bernice Lewis has performed nationwide since she first came to the Kerrville Folk Festival four decades ago. This year, in Covid-19, she and her daughter Mariah have returned to festival — online.
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An anonymous artist creates a summer treasure hunt
It turns out the Berkshires has an stealth artist who creates gifts and leaves them quietly in public places — the Guerilla Bunny paints eggs by hand with dragons and phoenixes.
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MCLA calls for places where diverse voices can rise
Art can become a powerful tool for understanding, for MCLA’s new Institute for the Humanities, and MCLA has set out to create experiences and open spaces where diverse voices can share stories.
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Celestials from China change North Adams in 1870
The Celestials, a group of young men, came from China to North Adams in 1870 to work in a shoe factory, and Mass MoCA recalls their story. Imagine them looking out the train windows here for the first time.
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Parable of the Sower — science fiction feels current
Octavia Butler wrote The Parable of the Sower as a novel set in a world on the edge of collapse, in 2024, and Toshi Reagon has written an opera based on the book. I remember the nnight her music came here.
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MCLA and Berkshire museums bring energy in hard times
This spring, museums in the Berkshires are moving online. Cultural and creative places have faced abrupt disruption, and they are cutting back, but at the same time they are reaching out.
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Berkshires in Covid-19
Even in a time of coronavirus, the Berkshires are a deeply creative place. Actors and dancers are creating new work. Artists are teaching workshops. Farmers markets are moving online. BTW has been gathering them in one virtual space.
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How do we respond as Massachusetts starts to reopen?
The governor’s announcement this week allows some local places to begin to reopen, and it raises questions for all of us as. And as I talk with you about the community, it raises questions for me.
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