Berkshire Museum To Celebrate Look@us Opening With Day Of Activities
PITTSFIELD – The Berkshire Museum in downtown Pittsfield will celebrate the opening of the summer exhibition Look@Us: Portraits from the Berkshire Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art with a day of activities for families and adults on Sunday, June 29, from Noon to 6 p.m.Highlights include hands-on art-making activities, a photo booth, a talk by guest curator Carol Diehl, and a reception. Admission to the opening festivities is $20 per person, or $50 per family (up to two adults and four children). Members discounted rate is $10 per person, or $25 per family. Admission includes the preview of the exhibition, all activities, hors d’oeuvres and soft drinks at the reception (cash bar), and Berkshire Museum admission. Look@Us opens to the public July 1.
Family activities will take place from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Visitors may try out the “Identity Swap,” using costumes to change their identity, then take their pictures in the photo booth. At “Line Up for Art,” visitors will use collage, drawing, and other materials to create a self-portrait. Aspiring young fashion designers are challenged to design and make accessories at “Project Artway.”
At 3:30 p.m., Carol Diehl will give the introductory lecture, “Identity Crisis or Challenge? From Facebook to You Tube, Defining Ourselves for the New Century.” She will explore how Internet and social networking technology removes traditional intermediaries and provides everyone, from teenagers to parents, new ways to put themselves out into the world. Diehl is an artist, critic, and former slam poet. Her blog was recently cited in the Wall Street Journal.
Her paintings have been widely exhibited, and she is the recipient of artist’s grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as residency fellowships at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Reviews of her work have appeared in numerous publications including Art in America, The New York Times, ARTnews, and The Village Voice. Diehl is also known as a critic and is a Contributing Editor to Art in America. Her writing has been published in, among others, ARTnews, New York, and Metropolis. She has served on the faculty at Bennington College (VT) and the Graduate Fine Arts Program of the School of Visual Arts (NY).
From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., a reception in the recently restored Crane Room will include a station to make “Portrait Cookies” using sugar cookies and assorted candy toppings. Apogee Catering will serve a selection of hors d’oeuvres, including: Adobo chicken skewers, artichoke puff pastry bites with cream cheese and caramelized garlic, jewels of Siam (Thai-marinated beef with tri-color bell pepper confetti and carrots julienne in fluted cucumber cups), prosciutto-wrapped melon, cocktail corncakes, crispy fried chickpeas, mini pizzas, creamy crab dip, and chevre champignons. Soft drinks are provided courtesy of GUS—Grown Up Soda. Alcoholic beverages will be available at a cash bar.
Look at Us, on view July 1 through October 26, 2008, will feature paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints, by artists ranging from Ammi Phillips and Erastus Salisbury Field to John Singer Sargent and Norman Rockwell. The new climate control system will allow the Berkshire Museum to exhibit works on paper from its collection that have rarely or never been seen, including works by Edouard Vuillard and James McNeill Whistler. The exhibition will be complemented with a selection of nine portraits on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, including works by Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Cindy Sherman. Multimedia elements will include video installations by Berkshire artists and Facebook “portraits” of Berkshire Museum icons including the mummy of Pahat and Wally the Stegosaurus, and a photo booth where visitors may create their own portraits. In-kind sponsorship is provided by Curtis Publishing and the Saturday Evening Post.
The Berkshire Museum is located at 39 South Street on Route 7 in Downtown Pittsfield. The galleries and aquarium are open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. For more information, contact the Berkshire Museum at (413) 443-7171, ext. 10, or visit www.berkshiremuseum.org.
