On February 14 to 17, some 32 million people around the world will join the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, and Berkshire birders will share the quest.
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Movement and light come to the Berkshires midway between winter and spring (By the Way column)
Sunday is midwinter, halfway between the first day of winter and the first day of spring, and in the Berkshires energy is stirring in performances like Vuyani Dance Company’s Cion, on college campuses and in the woods.
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Gamaliel Rodríguez draws mills, mountains and possible futures at Mass MoCA
Puerto Rican artist Gamaliel Rodríguez has drawn a landscape of mills and mountains by hand in a 60-foot-long mural along the hallway outside the Hunter Center at Mass MoCA.
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Arabesques finds inspiration in a springing line at the Clark Art Institute (By the Way)
Arabesques at the Clark Art Institute traces the influence of a curving line that feels as though it moves freely across the page, from Islamic art to 19th-century Europe.
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Contra dance is alive and growing in the Berkshires
The tradition of contra dancing stretches from coast to coast and back more than 400 years. A caller teaches a series of simple moves, and dancers join in to live music with a beat and a quick melody.
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Michael Rakowitz invokes a lost hall from the palace of Nimrud at WCMA
At the Williams College Museum of Art, Internationally acclaimed artist Michael Rakowitz has re-imagined a hall in the palace of Nimrud, built c. 1350 BCE in the historic Assyrian city on the Tigris river.
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Spirits of the past — Tracing the Jenks family through 400 years (By the Way column)
Last week I stood on a hill where one of my ancestors stood 230 years ago. Christmas is supposed to be a time for ghosts. Between the old year and the new year, we have a few days out of time. Maybe that’s why so many Christmas stories commune with spirits. […]
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The Berkshires welcome winter solstice with firelight and evergreens (BTW column)
We have almost reached the longest night of the year, and for hundreds of years people have taken time for it around the world, and in the Berkshires too.
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Axis Mundo at WCMA rediscovers an artistic community in Los Angeles in the 1970s
A group of artists grew together in Southern California. They were kept out of galleries and museums and mainstream media, so they made their own spaces. And they are gathered together again now in Axis Mundo at the Williams College Museum of Art — an exhibit that has won national attention.
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Choreographer Camille A. Brown explores humanity and superpowers in ‘Ink’
A man and a woman rest their heads together, forehead to temple. Two young men lean shoulder to shoulder, looking up, as though they’re finding light in the night sky. In Bessie awardwinning choreographer Camille A. Brown’s Ink, they are superheroes set to fly.
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