Jane Louise Van Der Zee’s brother James would become known as one of the central photographers of the Harlem Renaissance — and she was an artist and musician in her own right.
Read articleLife in these hills goes back thousands of years in wide spirals of stories. Here we honor human stories, from the Mohican people who live and return here today to Elizabeth Freeman and W.E.B. DuBois, people who have come from many parts of the world to work here in the mills, and to live in the cities and the hills today, and many more.
Robert Blackburn fuels an artform and a community
On a winter night, a man in a wool sweater applies ink in a film of color … In 1947, on West 17th Street in New York, Robert Blackburn founded the oldest artist-operated and directed printmaking workshop in the country.
Read articleAfricana Studies grow at Williams across 50 years
Today students read graphic novels and James Baldwin. They follow the music in his novels, and then they write their own songs. They dance to marimba and jembe drums …
Read articleIndigenous artists alloy lands and stories at the Forge
In Mohican, Heather Bruegl says, the shape of the language shows one person thinking of another. Between you and I, you come first. She is remembering storyteller and linguist Brock Schreiber, as he spoke at the Forge Project just over the ridge in the Taconics.
Read articleMohican families connect in the land — across time
Bonney Hartley’s family lived here six generations ago. She is standing in the Stockbridge cemetery, in the sun under the maple trees, where her ancestor, Naunauneekkanuck, stood in 1735.
Read articleSisters find new Indigenous dimensions in ‘Kamloopa’
In Kim Senklip Harvey’s awardwinning comedy, two sisters and a close friend take a journey into power and find strength in their Native identities in their own ways.
Read articleWalk across time in hiking boots (Sept 29 newsletter)
Abigail Haynes-Lennox is directing us — a soprano in the extended company of Roomful of Teeth, up here on a mountain leading a damp and sweaty bunch of hikers in Shaker hymns.
Read articleClimbing Holy Hill revives a Shaker pilgrimage
Two music ensembles, Our Native Daughters and Roomfull of Teeth, and artist Allison Smith transform a walk in the woods into an experience of art and music in Climbing Holy Hill at Hancock Shaker Village.
Read articleMohican storytellers curate their past and future at Berkshire Museum
The canoe floats at the center of the room, a long tapering organic shape ribbed like a whale, and above it the shape of a wave crosses a banner in a web of blue lines, like a three-dimensional digital model, or a weaving.
Read articleBaby animals return to the Shaker farm
Bill Mangiardi holds a lamb a few days old. She has a twin brother, and their mother has not been feeding them equally, so Mangiardi offers her a bottle of warm milk from a generous nanny goat. ...
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