Mass MoCA Goes Big With Upcoming Renovation, Season
 Mass MoCA Executive Director Joseph Thompson talks about upcoming big events at the museum, including the return of the Solid Sound Festival. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts has some big things in store — both literally and figuratively.
After Executive Director Joseph Thompson and his staff announced a packed winter and spring season on Wednesday, Thompson led a tour of "Building 6," which is slated to be renovated into usable gallery space.
The renovation, which will nearly double the exhibit space, is happening thanks to a $25.4 million state grant announced in November and private donations that MoCA hopes will total $30 million.
Right now, Building 6 is a large, cluttered and cold storage space in a strangely fashioned triangular building that is shaped as it is because of its placement where the north and south branches of the Hoosic River meet.
"It's a massive building. It's hard to wrap your head around it," Thompson said. "It's one acre of area per floor, times three."
As the work progresses over the next couple of years, he said, visitors will get to experience Louise Bourgeois' dense abstract sculptures (including a "massive" marble sculpture that never before has left the artist's studio), James Turrell's rooms of light (which "has a really powerful kinetic and physiological effect on you"), Jenny Holzer's visual "word based-art" and Laurie Anderson's audio and voice exhibit that will be more like a stage than a gallery (and is a "perfect Mass MoCA project that's situated between the performing arts and the visual arts").
But beyond the extra exhibit space, the renovation of Building 6 means something else to the museum, Thompson said. Right now, the sprawling complex is connected in some places but requires visitors to back-track through some exhibits. Building 6 will help make a smoother flow through the museum.
"We've been working to connect these series of loops," he said.
Thompson described the renovation as a "typical Mass MoCA rehab project" and in response to a question about historic preservation said the museum follows Chapter 8 of the building code in its renovations.
"We do what we have to do," he said. "The building's actually in pretty good shape."
The museum itself is in pretty good shape, if the upcoming winter/spring season is any indication.
Thompson spoke briefly about the long-awaited return of the hugely popular Solid Sound Festival, returning to Mass MoCA at the end of June. The program will be announced in early 2015, but Thompson said one change is that MoCA is aiming to "simplify" the camping process with two campgrounds — one downtown (Solid Ground) and another at Hoosac Valley High School.
Jodi Joseph, the museum's director of communications, spoke on behalf of the Education Department, announcing a February vacation camp for kids as well as the annual free community day, set for Jan. 31. This event features art, music and dance performances, and — new this year — tours that give a glimpse into the background operations, like lighting and installation.
"It's a pretty awesome free-for-all," she said. "The museum is firing on all cylinders."
Curator Denise Markonish talked about some of the upcoming visual art exhibits, including Jim Shaw's "Entertaining Doubts," in which the artist will take over the large second-floor galleries to mine the essentials of American cultural detritus.
"We're doing his largest show ever on the East Coast here," she said.
The other large exhibit of the season is the first major U.S. solo exhibit by artist Fang Lijun, a founding protagonist of the Cynical Realist movement in post-Tiananmen China. This exhibit also includes extremely large works that are unique in their dichotomy, said Thompson, who introduced this work personally.
"They have immense scale to them," he said. "They're still hand-painted with tiny brushes and have beautiful detail."
Moving along to the performing arts schedule, Sue Killam, the managing director of performing arts, played clips of musicians coming to Mass MoCA, including alt-country trailblazer Steve Earle on Feb. 7; Nick Zammuto bringing a night of mad science-music-and-video on March 21; and Neutral Milk Hotel on April 17.
Also on the performing arts schedule are residencies by choreographer Lucinda Childs' revival of her 1983 work "Available Light," being reconstructed right here at Mass MoCA and then performed for the public March 6, 7, and 8, before the show begins a major domestic tour; and Helado Negro workshopping his new musical/visual project "Island Universe Story" on Jan. 24, with creative collaborators including Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco, members of the William Onyeabor Atomic Bomb Band, and Marc Ribot's band.
In addition, Keigwin + Company will perform two shows on April 11 and 12 in Mass MoCA's now-regular collaboration with Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.
"We're always so excited to pair our teams together," Killam said, adding that they were especially happy to present Larry Keigwin. "We're thrilled to have him. He's sort of a refreshing new choreographer on the scene."
In addition, Killam gave an overview of the "Up in the Club" series of music, dance and comedy set in the museum's Club B-10 performance space, including a special St. Patrick's Day performance by Irish singer-songwriter-raconteur Liam Ó Maonlaí.
"We're going get our Irish up," she said.
And once again, the museum is hosting a documentary film series, this one with the theme "Deception," featuring four films all about trickery of different sorts. She showed a clip from "Art and Craft," a surprisingly true story of a master art forger who anonymously donates his handiwork to world-class museums, to whet the appetite of the staff, museum members, media and other community members who attended Wednesday's announcement.
"We have a growing small little audience in the community. We've created this fun little club," she said. "It's always better to see films with other people than home alone. Always."
For the complete Mass MoCA winter/spring schedule, visit massmoca.org.
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