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.

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.

We are heralding the recent arrival of the LeWitt team. We’ve got 24 master artists plus 12 apprentices. The masters — senior and seasoned assistants who worked with the artist before his death in 2007 — include Tomas Ramberg, Nikolai Angelov, Takeshi Anita, Michael Vedder, Sachiko Cho, Elizabeth Christ, Megan Dyer, Lacey Fekashacey, Gabriel Hurier, Sarah Heinemann, John Hogan, Nick Kozak, Roland Lusk, Hideni Namura, Amy Rashbone, Emily Ripley, Anthony Sansotta, Mio St. Clair, Wim Starkenburg, Andrew Colbert, Chip Allen, Chris Cobb, Nobutu Suga.

Under the direction of Tomas Ramberg and Anthony Sansotta, teams of installers have been created with one of the master artists leading the interns and apprentices. The process of taking LeWitt’s original instructions for a wall drawing through to completion requires great attention to detail, and fosters a strong sense of camaraderie among the installers, who will be in residence through September 2008. In addition to intensive technical instruction, interns will benefit from lessons in art history each week and a behind-the-scenes view of the work of museums. Special gallery tours and seminar sessions will be given by MASS MoCA, Williams College Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Apprentices, who are recent graduates with studio arts training, and who will be trained extensively in all techniques, are: Emily Arauz from Wellesley College, Sylvia Birns-Swindlehurst from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Lexie Bouwsma from Hampshire College, Matt Capezzuto from Yale School of Art, Emily Colman from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (welcome back to Emily who was the marketing intern here last year!), Julia Isenberg from Mt. Holyoke College, Aran Jones from Hampshire College, Heather Jones from Truman University, Sam McCune from Trinity Christian College, Courtney McIlhenney, a North Adams resident, Anna Pickens from Alfred State College, Amanda Sciullo from Savannah College of Art and Design, and Jordan Starr-Bochicchio from University of Southern Florida.

WELCOME ALL. We’re delighted you’re here! Remember April is the cruelest month, but there’s nothing like summer in the Berkshires!

We’re delighted to have more than a dozen artists from The Miss Rockaway Armada in residence working on their installation which will be open to the public starting April 19. Check their blog for photos documenting their search for materials in the unrenovated buildings on the MASS MoCA campus. They’ll offer a FREE performance great for all ages on April 12 too.

NY Times writes today about the work of Trevor Paglen who was part of our exhibition Ahistoric Occasion from May 2006 - March 2007.

Our friends just up the block at MCLA’s Gallery 51 in collaboration with Northern Berkshire Creative Arts are hosting a talk by Director Joe Thompson about the LeWitt’s artistic practice and place in art history; the LeWitt Project which will expand our gallery space by about 30% and be a (practically) permanent installation (well, 25 years); and its impact on North Adams and the Berkshires. The talk is free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 3
6 - 8 PM
MCLA Gallery 51
51 Main St. North Adams, MA

Just posted new photos of the LeWitt project. It is looking beautiful and getting ready for wall drawing to begin in the next month or so.

If you’ve been in the cafe at MASS MoCA this month you might have spied this device out the window and wondered what it was. The sculpture is a prototype for one by Spencer Finch that will be installed on the US/Canada border in Calais, Maine, as part of a new work. Spencer installed it in our backyard for a few months to see how it stands up to the elements.

Lots of people you’ve met at MASS MoCA in the press. Tell everyone you knew them when….

Deb Solomon’s interview with Stew (who played in an Alt Cab here on August 14, 2004)

Fritz Haeg profiled in Sunday Styles (who was part of The Believers exhibition in 2007)

Cai Guo Qiang in NY Times and New Yorker (Cai’s Inopportune was originally commissioned by MASS MoCA for Building 5 in 2004.)