We are really excited about our new program a co-ticket with our good friends at the  Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.  We’re calling  it One Ticket-Two Views and you get into both museums for $25 (would be $30 if purchased separately).  You can buy the ticket at either of the museums and you have two weeks to visit both of us.

We’ve been thinking about ways Sol LeWitt and Norman Rockwell are related and ways that they in sharp contrast. Here are a few things we’ve come up with:

They are both widely recognized icons of distinctly American art.

They both worked in the 20th century and lived in New England

They both have spaces devoted exclusively to their work in the Berkshires

Rockwell’s work was created intensely by Rockwell himself, LeWitt’s work was installed intensely by professional draftsmen

Rockwell’s work frequently focuses on detailed stories, LeWitt’s wall drawings focus the idea over the object

One of Rockwell’s most famous quotes was: “Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing
the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”   LeWitt’s most famous quote was: “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”

Have you visited both MASS MoCA and Rockwell Museum? Do you have any connections to add?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The U.S. Mint has asked Governor Deval Patrick to select one preferred and three alternate Massachusetts national sites to be featured on the reverse of a quarter in 2010. Governor Patrick is calling on the people of Massachusetts to help with this decision.

Included in the list of possible images is Arnold Print Works (MASS MoCA) as well as other Berkshire area sites. VOTE NOW to see your favorite Berkshire attraction on the back of the quarter!

You can vote as often as you would like until 5:00 p.m. February 26, 2009.

For the past several months there’s been a terrific program at Kidspace for teenage girls called The Mona Lisa Project. This is the description from their site:

The Mona Lisa Project is designed for eighth grade teenage girls who are seeking the opportunity to explore art and yoga. MLP will help to develop multiple art-making and yoga skills, as well as to empower young women through creative acts, health awareness, and leadership activities.

They’ve been keeping a blog detailing their activities and its a delight to read.  Please check back often to see what these impressive women are up to!

To get to MASS MoCA’s Honky Tonk Dance Party! The Cheshire Chicken and AWESOME Honky Tonk band The Defibulators (Listen Now) hope to see you there!

Cheers,

Brittany

Assets for Artists is a program aimed at helping artists throughout Berkshire County who wish to become home owners and/or strengthen their creative businesses.

Grants of up to $4,000 for artists seeking to become first-time home buyers and $2,000 for artist-entrepreneurs will be available for fourteen low- to moderate-income artists (all disciplines encouraged to apply).

Upcoming Information Sessions:

Monday, February 9, 7:00pm

Lichtenstein Center for the Arts

28 Renne Avenue, Pittsfield, MA

Tuesday, February 10, 5:30pm

MCLA’s Gallery 51

51 Main Street, North Adams, MA

Visit the Berkshire Creative website for more information and to download the pre-application form.

Cheers,

Brittany

Here is a note from our fabulous Kidspace Director Laura Thompson:

Every time I tell people where I work they say that I must really like my job because for the past six years I have commuted to North Adams 3 -5 days a week from Saratoga New York.  On good days it takes me 1 ½ hours to drive through upstate New York and part of Vermont to get to the Berkshires.  On bad days, it could take up to 2 ½ hours. A bad day is when I have to follow a log truck going 35 miles an hour all the way up Route 7 because there is no place to pass.  Or during a rainstorm when people forget how to drive.  Springtime sometimes makes me late for work when the ducklings are crossing at the farm in Pownal (or that day that a large old turtle was crossing, ugh!).

But what I really think about my job is this… I am consistently impressed with the amazing things that the museum accomplishes.  I have worked for some really difficult and struggling organizations, where staff animosity was deathly and unproductive to say the least.  MASS MoCA, on the other hand I call “my happy place� where there is a great deal of support and positive energy, and fun (how about that in the workplace!).

The perception some have of the museum field is that the more renowned the organization the more pretentious the staff.  Some friends once said to me that staff at many museums take themselves too seriously and from my early experience in museums I can bear witness to this: for example, at one museum I worked for, staff was not allowed to call the museum director by his first name.

What inspired me to write this blog entry was in response to an impromptu family outing Joe (MASS MoCA director) planned a few weeks ago where all staff and their families were invited to go bowling and have pizza. My husband sometimes kids me when I tell him I want to go up to the museum on my day off for a staff event or museum program…�it’s work�, he says.  But I know, he knows my work is so different from his work in the cubicle-filled, florescent-lighted for-profit world. (Don’t even get me started on the difference: just know that the people on the tv show The Office and comic strip Dilbert are not fiction!)

The bowling party was a simple thing to do but really reinforced my belief that museums (or any job excluding brain surgeons) that take themselves too serious are a drag. Or as Martinetti said in 1908 “Museums, cemeteries! But to take for a daily walk through the museums our spleen, lack of courage, and morbid restlessness, we will not grant it!…Why will you poison yourselves? Why will you decay?� I don’t think he had MASS MoCA in mind when he said this.

(The Thompson family at the bowling party)

Laura Thompson
Director of Exhibitions and Education
Kidspace at MASS MoCA