For the better part of my first two weeks as an intern at the museum, I was enlisted to do survey work of some of the yet-to-be renovated buildings on the MASS MoCA campus. At the same time I was getting better acquainted with the current boundaries of the museum space, I was also measuring the extent of the complex at large. Exploring all that real estate reminded me of the first time I was taught the scale of cosmological bodies in elementary school. First, we learned that the Sun is incomprehensibly large compared to the Earth, which already seemed pretty big. Then we learn that the Sun is only a red dwarf, a garnish on the astro-salads of all the supergiants laughin’ large in the sky. As big as MASS MoCA is right now, the complex is still filled with spaces like Building 17: artifacts of the old occupants (Sprague Electric) or at the very most, storage space for materials of older and ongoing exhibits. It’s uncertain if, when, and for what purpose all of the buildings on MASS MoCA’s campus will be reclaimed, but I wanted to make a record of what this one still contains.

Building 17 isn’t totally off limits. Museum staff and sometimes visiting artists, like the Miss Rockaway Armada who extracted materials from the large mill building for their installation, can get in via a bridge. In the fifteen odd years between when Sprague Electric ceased operations and when MASS MoCA opened its doors, there were also evidently some other visitors:

Remarkably, old cases with Sprague emblazoned on every surface remain stacked in corner rooms on each floor. Some arcane-looking arrays of electronic devices stand around, harrumphing.

By and large, the individual rooms on each floor are pretty filthy. Debris from rotting portions of the ceiling, abandoned gadgets, books, and “residue” from the more active residents of the building have aggregated on the floors.

They say it’s good luck if you can measure it by the pound.

Stepping over some of these collections, you gain access to parts of the building that retain a more tangible human presence. Remnants from the daily activity of the factory give a sense of how many people once energized the entire complex:

I was surprised at the proliferation of calendars. There are huge, beautifully printed multi-year calendars in almost every large work space. A few are legible from across their respective rooms.

And while twenty years of abandonment have made the floors somewhat treacherous, the walls have come to exhibit complicated webs of paint peelings:

I asked my boss if that was lead paint that is now chipping off and spreading fun through the air. He said, “probably.” I said, “oh.” That might explain why we don’t have more tiny neighbors scurrying through the place.

In some strange ways, Building 17 seems to have decayed very neatly. A testament to the efficiency of the Sprague workers perhaps, or maybe it underscores some rhyme and reason to a more natural form of atrophy. I’m amazed at how some instances of desolation can seem so appealing.

MASS MoCA rests within the confines of an ongoing narrative. The museum has prided itself on this fact, and many artists have certainly been drawn to it over the last decade. Being able to wander its campus has made it all the more concrete. As wonderful as it would be for the museum to utilize the physical assets at its disposal, maintaining this transparency of space and history is pretty crucial. I’ll end this look at Building 17 with the two best cultural artifacts I could find: Tom Selleck on the cover of a tabloid, and a man shaking hands with a robot.

Be sure to check out MASS MoCA’s flickr page for more images from Building 17. I’d like to add images from the attic and the basement some time in the near future. If you’d like a higher quality version of any of these photos, email me at erutigliano@massmoca.org and I’ll send it to you.

Tell your kids about paint chips,

Gene (VA Intern)

Digg | Del.icio.us | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit