Over the past few months a team of us have been developing the new children’s scavenger hunt that will take place in the galleries the fourth Saturday of June, July and August this summer. The hunt will focus on the two newest exhibitions in the galleries Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape and Being Here is Better Than Wishing We’d Stayed by Miss Rockaway Armada. Not only have we been having great discussions about how to pull themes from both exhibitions, including recycling and conservation, into the hunt but we have also been making prototypes for art projects. Today we had our first prototype meeting and I thought you might be interested in seeing what we have been working up.

Upside down plants prototype 1.

Upside down plants prototype 2 + 3.

And our Education Coordinator Alison showing off her plant prototype and a camouflage crown she created.

Cheers,

Brittany

Many, many artists who either perform or exhibit at MASS MoCA do great work here and go on to be widely recognized for their artistic endeavors. We wrote a while back about David Lang, one of the co-founders of Bang on a Can, who won a Pulitzer prize for music in the spring. On the awards front we’re currently pulling for Stew’s Passing Strange to win some Tonys — the show has seven nominations. Stew performed an Alt Cabaret here in August 2004.

Also in the news is Wendy Sutter, former cellist for the Bang on a Can All Stars and North Adams summer resident for almost all of the seven July Bang on a Can Music Festivals at MASS MoCA. In a review of Philip Glass’s recording Songs and Poems, critic Allan Kozinn writes, “Ms. Sutter’s rich-hued, supple playing conveys that passion and drama vividly, and she is equally compelling in a varied selection of movements from Mr. Glass’s Naqoyqatsi film score.” Another Bang on a Canner, David Cossin provides percussion for the recording.

If you love Denise Markonish’s new exhibition Badlands, you’ll find plenty more of her curatorial talents to love around the region this summer. Here’s the roster of exhibitions she’s curated this summer:

• Cultivate (a companion exhibition to Badlands) at Berkshire Botanical Garden opens June 8
• In the Zone II through August 3 at Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, Vermont
• The Medium is the Message at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz which opens June 7
• AND the Fence Show at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy opens June 14

Those of us for whom a super-productive weekend  means getting rid of 2007 New Yorkers and replacing the paper towels in the kitchen are awed by Denise’s productivity and salute her success.