We are delighted that charges have (finally!) been dropped in the Steve Kurtz case. The case started in May of 2004. While Kurtz was preparing for Critical Art Ensemble’s piece Free Range Grain part of The Interventionists at MASS MoCA, his wife of twenty years, Hope, died in her sleep. When police responded to his 911 call, they noticed a small food-testing lab and petri dishes containing bacteria cultures (part of the scheduled installation, which would have allowed museum visitors to see if their store bought food contained genetically modified (GM) organisms). The FBI was called in, they and cordoned off the house and investigated Kurtz for terrorism. The film Strange Culture was made about the case. Learn more about the case and Critical Art Ensemble here.

Taschen is only producing 1500 of their exhaustive monograph on Jeff Koons. These coffee table books are numbered and signed by Koons. MASS MoCA has six of these very special books available for sale, Amazon.com only has two, Barnes & Noble has none. North Adams is the best place to get yours!

Koons’s exploitation of the banal, in the aggrandizement and/or embodiment of kitsch and pop imagery, has become his trademark; detractors may delight in their naysaying, but Koons’s work commands millions at auction and his position at the forefront of contemporary art is indisputable.This exhaustive monograph begins with a biographical essay by Interview magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Sischy that puts his work into context and tells his personal story, as well as a text by Eckhard Schneider’s analyzing Koons from a European perspective. Arranged in chronological chapters by work groups, the main body of the book features art historian and critic Katy Siegel’s detailed analyses alongside hundreds of large-format images tracing Koons’s career from 1979 to today. Rounding off the book are an extended bibliography and a lavishly illustrated biography. Fans of Jeff Koons’s work will find in this publication not only a sumptuous book-object, but also the most comprehensive study of the artist’s work ever published.

Check out Lisa Foderaro’s piece in today’s NYT Escapes section about MASS MoCA and North Adams and our friends at Porches and Norman Rockwell Museum.  We are proud to be a “place of serious whimsy, where unusual artistic ideas are allowed to flourish.”

There’s a great new website for Joseph Smolinski’s Tree Turbine which is a new site specific work commissioned as part of Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. Badlands opens May 25, 2008 but you can come see the turbine getting installed in our Courtyard C over the next few weeks.

Sue Killam gave birth as the sun rose on Sunday, April 27 at 5:53am to a bouncing red haired baby boy (9 lb, 6 oz, 22 inches!) Heartiest congratulations to Sue and Kevin!

 Eclipse Mill artist Ralph Brill along with nine RPI undergraduate and graduate students have created a light display titled River Revival that will embellish the Hoosac River chute between the Holden and Marshall Street bridges with 200 feet of fiber optic cables and a color-changing LED luminary. This Saturday, April 26 from dusk to 11 PM.

Downstream, across from the Porches Inn, more artists will install light displays to highlight the river.

Stop by Cafe Latino in the MASS MoCA complex for dinner (seating until 9 PM) or a drink (bar open until 11 PM) before or after taking in the light show.

Drummer Kenny Wollesen and his band Himalayas have been at MASS MoCA since Tuesday making instruments out of discarded objects, parading through the community, and sharing their music with anyone and everyone. Here are a few photos from the past two days.

You can still join in on the fun! Wollesen and crew will offer one more workshop on Friday, April 25, at 11 AM, and a blow-out jamboree will take place in the Hunter Center on Saturday at 4 PM! For more information call the MASS MoCA Box Office 413-662-2111.

  

 For more photos of the Kenny Wollesen workshops visit the MASS MoCA Flickr group. Also check out the MASS MoCA You Tube page to hear and see the workshop bands in action.  

MASS MoCA, MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center, and Pittsfield’s Office of Cultural Development – partnering under the umbrella of Berkshire Creative – are launching Assets for Artists, a pilot initiative aimed at helping artists throughout Berkshire County who wish to become home owners and/or receive small business training and assistance.

Pre-application forms for the “Assets for Artists� program are due Friday, April 25, 2008, and can be downloaded at www.mcla.edu/bcrc (where you can also find more information about the program). The brief pre-application form must be accompanied by a resume or bio detailing your artistic and other career experience and accomplishments.

Artists in all disciplines living in Berkshire County are welcome to apply. For more information on eligibility for the Assets for Artists program and the services to be offered, contact Blair Benjamin at MASS MoCA (413-664-4481 x8104 or blair@massmoca.org).

Jeremy Goodwin proffers his thoughts on Friday’s show in the Berkshire Eagle. Thanks for the shout out to our future potentially legendary shows.  We aim to please!

We could not be more delighted at the news that our dear friend David Lang, one of the co-founders of Bang on a Can who spends every summer right here in North Adams at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA is this year’s recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for music. He’s pictured above in the center of this photo by Peter Serling with Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. A bouquet of roses (from Quadland’s) for you David!