1999-2000: The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece

In 1999, Robert Rauschenberg’s extensive work was our first major exhibit in the space. This self-contained collage-like retrospective of mixed media also served as the setting for MASS MoCA’s grand opening gala.

2001-2003: 14 Stations

In 2001, Robert Wilson’s sculptural installation 14 Stations filled the space. It was a seminal interpretation of the Via Crucis or “Way of the Cross”- referring to the moments of passion Christ experienced en route to crucifixion. Visitors could peer into each structure to experience the different scenes and figures along the way.

2004-2005: Inopportune

A few years later, nine exploding cars took over the 300 foot long gallery, suspended from the ceiling with multicolored rods shooting in all directions. This dramatic stop-motion moment served as the centerpiece for Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s show Inopportune.

2007-2008: Projections

In 2007, Jenny Holzer transformed the space with large-scale projections of selected poetry by Wislawa Szymborska. Coupled with giant bean bags scattered throughout the room, visitors were invited to sit back and absorb the surreal landscape and accompanying messages.

2008-2009: The Nanjing Particles

In 2008, English conceptual artist Simon Starling animated the huge exhibition space with large sculptural forms derived from microscopic particles.

2009-2010: Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With

A year later, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle explored the failings of Modernism with his upside-down glass house. The exhibit was based on Mies van der Rohe’s uncompleted project The House With Four Columns (1951), a square structure open to view on all four sides through glass walls. Everything hung in suspension and a phone rang off the hook.

Up next…. Stay tuned for Sanford Biggers’ show, opening on February 4, 2012!

Here’s to many more amazing shows in the future!

As the 2011/2012 performing arts administration intern, a position that is grant-funded by the Tin Man Fund, I get to curate my very own show… and I can’t believe how quickly the date is approaching! When I started my job at MASS MoCA seven months ago, I had no idea how much work (and joy!) would go into booking, planning, and finally bringing the stunning modern-Irish steppers of Darrah Carr Dance to the museum:

1. RESEARCH: Before I could book a performing artist, I needed to figure out what my interests were. What was I passionate about? What did I want to see more of in the Berkshires? As a recent grad of Connecticut College (go camels!) with a double major in Human Development and Dance, I immediately knew that I wanted to bring accessible and innovative modern dance to MASS MoCA. My Human Development interest in communities and education also fueled my desire to curate dance that could interact with the public, possibly through a workshop of some kind. I spent a few days in NYC visiting our performing arts curatorial team and researching dance companies that appealed to my interests and to MASS MoCA’s audience. In the end, I decided on Darrah Carr Dance – Darrah blends traditional Irish step dancing with modern dance vocabulary and techniques, and also has a developed educational outreach program, so she was a perfect fit.

2. MAKING THE DEAL: Next, I reached out to Darrah, to see if she wanted to partner with MASS MoCA – she did! I drafted an offer letter outlining the basics such as show date, compensation, and travel arrangements for Darrah, the curatorial team, and my cool boss Sue (Manager of Performing Arts + Film) to sign… and voila! We were set to do a show together. That meant that Darrah and I had lots and lots of questions for each other. I wanted to know about which dance pieces she might bring, who her audience was, and the specifics of her community programs. She wanted to learn about the size of the performance space, our tech capabilities, and if our hotel served continental breakfast! Darrah and I were (and still are) in constant phone and email contact to iron out all of the details that go into producing a show. We eventually both signed a much more in-depth contract together, so that all the details we discussed on the phone and via email are put into one organized document.

3. SPREADING THE WORD: I was excited about the performance, Darrah was excited about the performance, so then it was time to get everyone else excited about the performance! Under the guidance of Katherine, our amazing Director of Marketing, we started spreading the news about Darrah’s performance. Our talented graphic designers printed beautiful posters, the super marketing intern Cora put up flyers all over the Berkshires, and Keifer down in the Box Office enthusiastically plugged the show to all incoming patrons. We also created advertised on many types of social media, contacted local professors of dance or Irish culture, reached out to Irish dance academies all over New England, and asked a few newspaper and radio stations to give us a shout-out. Getting butts in seats is important for obvious reasons (we want MASS MoCA to always have the funds to showcase inspiring performances in the future!), but it’s also important because Darrah and I want to share our passion for dance with as many friends as possible. 

4. BEHIND THE SCENES: I can’t even express how much  backstage work went into producing this performing arts show! First, there were a billion technical aspects that need to be prepared; luckily I had the hilarious duo of Eric and Eric, who keep the Production department running smoothly, to help me through it. Together we decided on a seating set-up, a one-of-a-kind stage plot, ad-hoc wing space, necessary lighting and sound equipment… the list goes on and on. With Meg (Company Manager and, more importantly, my MASS MoCA Mom), I arranged all the artist services components of the show. I booked hotel reservations, organized meal plans, and prepared the dressing rooms. I also organized ushers, planned house management, and wrote the program with the help of Court, who coordinates volunteers and coordinates front of house during performances.

CURTAIN CALL: And now, finally (finally!), the show is looming only a few days in the distance – soon, Darrah Carr Dance will be at MASS MoCA in the flesh (the shuffle-ball-changing, pirouetting, flying leaping dancing flesh)! I’ll have a busy day helping Darrah and her dancers with their arrival, community dance workshop, tech and dress rehearsals, and the evening performance, and I absolutely can’t wait. Curating my own show was a huge undertaking that opened my eyes to just how much effort and how many people it takes to produce a performance. I am so, so thankful for all the generous, cooperative, wacky-wise-wonderful friends who helped me pull this off. Darrah, Sue, Katherine, Keifer, Eric & Eric, Meg, Court, and everyone else who was involved: you guys are the bee’s knees.

Come see what we’ve all been working so hard on – Darrah Carr Dance at MASS MoCA on Saturday, January 21 (free workshop at 2:00 pm/ticketed performance at 8:00 pm)! Call the Box Office at 413.664.4481 for more information.

See you there! Love, Emily

Fun was had by all at Kidspace’s Merpeople-making session on December 29.   Here some of the participants display their mermaids and mer-gents.  James Grashow’s spectacular cardboard mermaid (shown above with her school of friends) and Aurora Robson’s recycled plastic bottles were the inspiration for the art project.  Photos of some of the participants with their creations follow.

Versions highlights the widespread re-usage of images throughout the history of art, so don’t worry, Disney isn’t only at fault.  However, Laric emphasizes how such recycling of images is iconoclastic in that the art that was once unique loses much of its significance as it is re-mediated.  These Disney segments are shocking because their originality and individual magic has been undermined, essentially leaving them simply as versions of one another, hence the title of the documentary.

Though Disney is not the only one reusing images and animation, it is quite rampant through their history.  Here are some other examples of Disney’s recycling habits.

Guilty:  Robin Hood, Aristocats, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, the list goes on and on and this vid exposes them all!

The Jungle Book copies other film animation, as pointed out by Laric, in addition to repeating countless of its own images (including their dances!).

Suspiciously similar leisurely bike rides, horse-drawn ice trucks, and bar brawls make appearances in films like The Great Mouse Detective, Make Mine Music, and Casey at the Bat.

Bambi and Fun and Fancy Free face a similar issue in the forest and the same wolf terrorizes in Make Mine Music and Lambert the Sheepish Lion.

The re-usage of images has also spread into live action films, as seen in Enchanted, which draws from The Little Mermaid.  However, Enchanted definitely pokes fun at the classic Disney princess, and the usage of images from these films is what makes it so funny and ridiculous.

The reality of when most of these films were made is that animation technology was not nearly as advanced as it is now, making it not all that surprising that they would reuse animation.  Even so, it can detract from some of the Disney magic.  How do you feel about the recycling system used by Disney and throughout art history?

Every time a Wall Drawing is put on display, a group of draftsmen paint or draw a new interpretation of the piece.  In following Conceptual Art, when the idea behind the art takes precedence over the actual piece of artwork, LeWitt writes a set of directions of how to create each piece of artwork.  The directions drive the art process.

Before creating the new piece, wherever the Wall Drawing is currently located must be painted over so it no longer exists in that setting.  Even if MASS MoCA wanted to relocate one of our Wall Drawings, the artwork cannot be moved, it must be repainted in the new space.

Only one official interpretation of a Wall Drawing can exist at one time; once the previous one has been painted over, the draftsmen are free to start their work.  The draftsmen then use LeWitt’s directions to create their interpretation.  However, every draftsman and every space is different, meaning that each time a Sol LeWitt is put on display, it is inherently unique.

Check out how varied, and at times similar, Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings can be even when they are rooted in the same directions!

Wall Drawing 146A at MASS MoCA.  The “A” in 146A refers to the original (146) being white wall with blue crayon and this piece having blue walls with white crayon.

146 at the Guggenheim in NYC in 1972.

Wall Drawing 289 at MASS MoCA (on the left)

Wall Drawing 289 at the Whitney in 1976

Wall Drawing 386 at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 386 at Massimo De Carlo in Milan, Italy.   Notice that at MASS MoCA each star is separated in black squares, while at Massimo De Carlo they all are supported by the same black background. The directions  say “an India ink wash outside,” leaving such decisions up to the draftsmen.

Wall Drawing 391 at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 391 at Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France in 1983. The space provides a very different effect.

Wall Drawing 681C at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 681C at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC

Wall Drawing 692 at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 692 at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale.  How do you think people look differently at art when it is in a gallery versus a space like a hospital?

Wall Drawing 766 at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 766 at SF MoMA in 2000. There’s a clear variation of the color ink washes!

Wall Drawing 792 at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 792 at the Gladstone Gallery.  The directions to this piece simply calls for “Black rectangles and squares,” allowing great range in interpretation.  It’s incredible how different the piece is on a plain wall compared to when it accentuates a room’s architecture.

Wall Drawing 793B at MASS MoCA

Wall Drawing 793C at the Wadsworth Atheneum.  COOL! We love the variation here.

Wall Drawing 821A at MASS MoCA.  Look closely and you can tell that there is white paint on this wall.

Wall Drawing 821 at the MCA Chicago. Grass definitely serves as a different canvas than a plaster wall!

Wall Drawing 901 at MASS MoCA.

Wall Drawing 901 at the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Wall Drawing 1005 at MASS MoCA.

Wall Drawing 1005 at PROA in Buenos Aires, Brazil in 2001.

Wall Drawing 1152 at MASS MoCA. Subtitled “Whirls and Twirls,” very fitting.

Whirls and Twirls at the Rooftop Garden at the Met in NYC in 2005.

In our Sol LeWitt retrospective, we have two Wall Drawings that he never saw beyond the point of conception.  LeWitt passed away in 2007, having already written the directions for these pieces, but our draftsmen didn’t start work until 2008.  The following two Wall Drawings, as part of his Scribble Drawings series, have only ever existed on the walls at MASS MoCA!

Wall Drawing 1260 at MASS MoCA. “Scribble: Square without a square.”

Wall Drawing 1261 at MASS MoCA.  Like all of his Scribble Drawings, it consists of layers upon layers upon layers of scribbles to create the tone gradation.

Every museum has a well-kept secret.  Whether it’s a stolen sketch, a haunted hallway, or a hidden painting tucked beneath another print, such covert wonders are proudly guarded as they help form each cultural hub’s individuality.  Today we reveal one of our favorite secrets—Phyllis Criddle.  You may not have heard of her (yet) because we have been keeping her all to ourselves.

Though only 23, she’s worked at MASS MoCA for 7 years, more than half the life of the museum! Starting as a member of the Art Fab crew, she went from working with hardware to working at Hardware, the MASS MoCA Store, where she is now the assistant manager.  Phyllis does more than run the store.  She has created a custom line of MASS MoCA clothing and accessories, embodying the museum’s mission of catalyzing new, bold art, which includes her famed Wilco dress (seen above, modeled on Phyllis).

Her first MASS MoCA creation was a dress crafted from the museum’s logo-splashed t-shirts.  Completely hand-sewn and definitely one-of-a-kind, the dress was rumored to be purchased by one of the creators of the video game phenomenon Rock Band.  His wife even appeared at MASS MoCA this past summer, wearing the dress to the Bang on a Can Festival.  Phyllis also was commissioned to create Katharina Grosse inspired tablecloths, which were draped over every table at the museum’s 2011 Benefit in New York.

The buzz around Phyllis has recently grown ever since she debuted her Wilco fashion line, created out of hundreds of wristbands from the Solid Sound Festival held at MASS MoCA.

We recently sat down with Phyllis to discuss her art endeavors and her MASS MoCA + Solid Sound line.

Can you tell me about your clothing designs?

I like making things out of different and innovative materials.  The first piece I ever sold was a metal dress made from hardware pieces.  The body of the dress was brass mirror plates held together by zip ties and there were turnbuckles going across the front of the dress, bolts coming out of the shoulders, and some little d rings around the bottom.  I made that when I was still in high school and sold it to a family friend who lives in Vermont.  She is an ex-fashion designer herself and just loved it.  That’s when I started making things out of unusual materials.

How did the Wilco line come to be?

There were thousands of wristbands left over from the two Solid Sound Festivals that we’ve had, and no one wanted to see them go to waste.  The Box Office Manager approached me about making something with them, and I thought it was a brilliant idea! I was only too happy to accept.

Were the wristbands already used?

They’re new. Most people keep theirs as a souvenir.  I’ve even seen people come back to MASS MoCA wearing them.  I mostly have customer wristbands, but I also have some staff, and artist wristbands, as well.

How long did it take to make the dresses?

They were very different. The t-shirt dress was stitched by hand. T-shirt material is stretchy so it’s difficult to run through a sewing machine the same way you do with woven material. There are special machines to sew knits, but, I don’t own one, so I stitched the whole thing by hand.  The embroidery on it, the little flowers, was all done by hand. So I think that from start to finish, it took approximately 2 years, but I’m not working on it every hour of the day.  I’d do a little here and there, some days a lot, and some not at all.

The [Wilco] dress downstairs, was more like two months, but I think I put more hours in a day into that one.  The main difference is the sewing machine, though.  I was able to use the machine for 95% of the work.  There was some finishing inside I didn’t use the machine for, but that was very minimal.

Where did you get the MASS MoCA t-shirts for the first dress?

A lot of them were mine already. A lot of them were my dad’s, who also works at MASS MoCA. I bought a few new ones, but most of them belonged to a colleague of mine who used to work in the store.   She brought me huge bags full of t-shirts that she didn’t wear anymore because they didn’t fit right.

Any shirts left? Would you make another t-shirt dress?

I don’t know if I’ll make another dress.  However, I do have quite a few MASS MoCA t-shirts left, both cut and uncut.  I was thinking I might make a tote bag or something with those.

What are you working on now or thinking of working on in the future?

The piece that I’m working on now is a jacket for a woman.  It is a few sizes bigger than the dress.  It’s going to be mostly the fluorescent yellow bands for the staff in 2011, but there will also be the blue ones from 2010.  It’s a fairly simple jacket.  It has long sleeves, no collar, and it’s sort of medium length.  It’s more of a fashion statement than a practical item.

I would also really like to make some belts.  When the wristbands are sewn down to the cotton lining they actually create quite a robust material.  I think it’d be a good material for belts.  The belts will be fairly inexpensive and fit a wider range of people than the clothing.  I’d like to make some simple d-ring belts, and also some slightly more complex ones with holes and a traditional buckle.  I want to do a couple more dresses, a few jackets, some vests for both men and women, pouches, bags, and possibly wallets.

Have you worked on any other MASS MoCA items in the past?

I did make MASS MoCA key chains around the same time of the t-shirt dress. They were like puffy little pillows, made from nylon rip-stock material with painted canvas stitched on top.  I made about 40 of them and they were sold at the store, as well.

Have you been trained in fashion design or did you learn it all yourself?

I am mostly self taught, but I would really love to go to fashion school eventually.  I did one year of college in Toronto at the Ontario College of Art and Design, which does not have a fashion program.  I just did general art there.

 In the future what would you like to do?

I have no idea.  I know that I definitely want to go back to school and earn a degree in fashion, but beyond that I haven’t given it too much thought.

If people do want to buy your  Wilco dress, what should they do?

The dress is up for sale now, it’s $600 and you can find it at Hardware at MASS MoCA

Part of the allure of a secret is being privy to influential knowledge, but we couldn’t keep Phyllis all to ourselves.  We hope that our secret spreads, and we look forward to seeing Phyllis Criddle’s future artistic endeavors.

By Linnea DiPillo