Copyright 2005 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, New York)
January 23, 2005 Sunday
3 EDITION
SECTION: ARTS-EVENTS; Pg. I1

LENGTH: 1263 words

HEADLINE: Life in the city

BYLINE: BY DONNA LIQUORI SPECIAL TO THE TIMES UNION

BODY:


Maybe it's the upside-down trees suspended outside the entrance, or the newly installed upside-down cars inside the museum. After five years in business, whatever's floating around the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Mass., is proof that it's not your ordinary art venue. Joseph Thompson, the founding director, said original plans called for MASS MoCA to be a depot for large, minimalist art that wouldn't go anywhere. ``Dust it off and change the light bulbs,'' he joked.

Now, MASS MoCA's mission is as broad as its football-field-sized gallery, where Cai Guo-Qiang's ``Inopportune,'' a twisting array of cars replicating a car explosion, is installed. MASS MoCA has become all of the following: an incubator for new art, an artist residency and a popular performing-arts venue. But perhaps most importantly, the institution has become a catalyst for community renewal. MASS MoCA will continue celebrating its fifth season next weekend. (There was a gala last May, the actual anniversary, but this bash is for the masses, Thompson said.) Admission to the galleries will be free from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday. There will be guided tours every half-hour. And cake, Thompson emphasized. Later, there will be a Latin Dance Party with Radio Mundial, which starts at 7 p.m. There is a fee for the dance party $5 a person. While MASS MoCA is celebrating five years of success, there's still much to be done, Thompson said, especially in the areas of community redevelopment and fund-raising to keep the sprawling campus afloat. ``We've sustained ourselves very well,'' he said, noting there are many repeat visitors, and membership has steadily grown. MASS MoCA's attendance hovers at around 120,000 people a year, with 100,000 visiting the galleries. About 20,000 come for performing arts. Thompson said a third of the attendees hail from the New York City metro area, a third from Boston and a third from local areas, including the Capital Region. ``I can tell a story that's all glittery,'' he said. But he doesn't. While MASS MoCA has changed the face of the community, North Adams' downtown is still finding its way. ``The downtown economy hasn't found that magic mix,'' Thompson said, noting that one of every four or five storefronts is empty. ``I think we're about halfway there,'' he said. In the neighborhood To gauge the progress, MASS MoCA helped establish the Center for Creative Community Development (C3D), a joint project with nearby Williams College. C3D researches how arts and cultural institutions affect neighborhoods. ``It still has a long way to go,'' North Adams Mayor John Barrett agreed. What MASS MoCA has really done, he said, is changed the perception of North Adams as a dying Northeast mill town with no future. ``We became acceptable. It's OK to buy a house here to live here,'' Barrett said. Twenty years ago, people didn't want North Adams as their address, he said. Twenty years ago, North Adams lost its biggest industry. When Sprague Electronics shut down its factory at the site in 1985, after 43 years, North Adams was devastated. Thousands of people lost jobs and many downtown businesses closed. Twenty years ago, the unemployment rate was 14 to 15 percent, the mayor said. Now, the city of 14,681 has an unemployment rate of about 5 percent. In addition to exhibiting art and hosting concerts and movies, the museum has renovated parts of its 13-acre campus for commercial space, which began with a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant of $2 million and a $3.2 million low-interest loan. Tenants now include a computer-animation firm, a law firm and a publisher of how-to books. Part of the mill campus has also just been renovated into a courthouse for the Northern Berkshire District. Refreshing diversity ``I love MASS MoCA. I love the influence it has on my business,'' said Karen Kane, the owner of Papyri Books on Main Street. MASS MoCA brings artists and travelers from all over the world to her used-book store, which opened seven years ago. The diversity is refreshing, she said. ``When I was first here, you looked outside and there was nobody there. Now you see people with big shopping bags at Christmas time, or a young guy with dreadlocks. You didn't see that before,'' Kane said. However, she noted, business owners are still waiting for the ``critical mass.'' At Moulton's General Store, also on Main Street, T-shirts are sold that depict the upside-down trees hanging in front of MASS MoCA. The trees, an experiment titled ``Tree Logic,'' by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, were suspended between poles when the museum first opened. The trees are still growing, the branches curling up and toward the sun. The T-shirts read ``Only in North Adams.'' The image has become identified with MASS MoCA an unlikely entity in an old mill town. Not necessarily fans Laurie Moulton, part of the family that owns the general store and several other downtown businesses, said MASS MoCA is slowly changing the city. Now, artists have bought lofts in another renovated mill nearby, and they come to the store for papers, coffee and other daily goods. ``A lot more is to come,'' she said. ``It's helping the city move forward. ... I think it's going to be phenomenal.'' Moulton has been to MASS MoCA only three times since it opened. ``It didn't make me a fan of contemporary art. ... It took me a while to warm up.'' The mayor also was not a big modern art fan. ``I don't understand it,'' he said, ``but when I walk through there, I get a good feeling. It's not a sterile type of museum.'' The city, like MASS MoCA, is unquestionably evolving. ``It's a work-in-progress. I learned that from the artist community,'' Barrett said. One of the missions of MASS MoCA, which has no permanent collection, is to encourage artists to use the facility as a laboratory, to create new and groundbreaking art. Some pieces are dismantled or destroyed because of their natures, or because there simply aren't other venues big enough to contain them. Some are shown once or twice. Favorites that have been developed at MASS MoCA include the ``Uberorgan'' by Tim Hawkinson, a fun and large contraption with tubes and balloons filled with air that made whale-like noises. Then there was the haunting ``14 Stations,'' by Robert Wilson, cottages containing riveting dream or nightmare images. And Gregory Crewdson has converted the Hunter Center into a set for his large-scale photographs of a corpse-infested swamp, a flooded living room and a suburban back yard. He is expected back to stage more haunting images early this year. Choreographers and musicians including Laurie Anderson have created new pieces at MASS MoCA. Fragile health While there is much to celebrate, the museum's financial health is fragile. MASS MoCA does not have an endowment and must struggle to meet a $4.5 million operating budget. The museum usually needs to find an additional $1.5 million each year through fund-raising, Thompson said. So far, MASS MoCA has been able to close the deficit, but it's not easy. ``It is worrying,'' Thompson said, adding that an endowment will be necessary. ``We really would like to be in business in five years,'' Thompson said recently as he sat in a conference room. Behind him was a chart with a diagram drawn on it from a meeting. The words ``World Domination'' were circled, along with the words ``members'' and ``fun,'' along with a dollar sign. Thompson laughed when the sign was pointed out to him, saying he had no idea what that meeting was about. Still, he said, world domination isn't a bad goal.

GRAPHIC: Photo
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL P. FARRELL/TIMES UNION WHITE FORD CARS, suspended in midair and pierced by rods of light, fill MASS MoCA's largest gallery as part of the current installation "Inopportune." JEFF ZITER holds his 2-year-old nephew Leo Sedlock during a fifth anniversary celebration on Jan. 13 of MASS MoCA's KidsSpace Gallery.

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