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Berkshire, Bennington Cultural Institutions Create 'Art Country'

Mass MoCA Director Joseph Thompson talks about the ArtCountry collaborative on Wednesday morning.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Joseph Thompson's been talking for years about creating a destination in North County that will keep tourists longer than a day.

The director of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is convinced that trading up day-trippers for overnights, weekends or longer will cause a seismic shift in not only the way Northern Berkshire is perceived but exponentially increase the cultural economic impact on the region.

On Wednesday morning, Thompson was joined by the directors of four other major cultural institutions in launching ArtCountry.org, a collaborative designed to go beyond a simple "cultural corridor" and to think regionally.

"Our goal is to make it increasingly difficult if not impossible to do all this in a day," he said after each director presented an upcoming season full of exhibits and performances.

Olivier Meslay of the Clark Art Institute; Mandy Greenfield of Williamstown Theatre Festival; Christina Olsen of the Williams College Museum of Art, and Robert Wolterstorff of the Bennington (Vt.) Museum joined Thompson in the "ship's prow" of the massive and soon to open Building 6 high above the Hoosic River.

Like the Clark's opening of its expansion three years ago, Mass MoCA's opening this May of its $65 million development of more than 105,000 square feet of gallery space is expected to draw record crowds. Plus, the Solid Sound Festival returns to the campus in June, bringing another 8,000 to 10,000 visitors.

"I think this moment was really a crucial year to really make something even bigger, or," Meslay said to some chuckles, "try to make something bigger."

The institutions already do a lot of discussions and loaning, he said, and the three other museums are "nourishing" the Clark.

"Opening this wing of Mass MoCA was putting on us under a lot of pressure to be at this level, and find that we were gathering on ArtCountry was perfect for what it did for us," Meslay said.

"The Bennington Museum is only 30 minutes from here ... from the Clark Art Institute you just go up Route 7, it's 18 minutes from parking lot to parking lot," said Wolterstorff. "In other words, we really are part of one cultural community: Art Country."

It recently ran a full-page ad in the New York Times and developed a website with museum and theater information, directions, other happenings, and hotel sponsors the Porches Inn, the Williams Inn and Tourists, the new name for the Redwood Motel.

"We purposely listed in our ArtCountry ad a thousand miles of trails of hiking and biking because we think it's an essential part of what people enjoy when they come to this area," Thompson said. "Outdoor recreational opportunities, a chance to engage in this really beautiful environment."

Some 38 miles of trails surround Mount Greylock, and Mass MoCA is looking to be the linchpin of the bike trails between Williamstown and Adams. It's even created a tunnel, with an art installation, of course, that runs through Building 6. All that's missing is a bridge over the Hoosic River flood control chute that's awaiting approval by the Army Corps of Engineers and, well, the bike trails.

"We're linking two bike trails that don't yet exist, but they will. I'm sure they will," said the ever-optimistic Thompson.

The directors are hoping the "threads and objects," as Olsen put it, that run through this season's exhibitions will create a natural continuity for museumgoers, including Grandma Moses as a modernist and perspectives of Robert Rauschenberg and Helen Frankenthaler (both connected to Bennington College) in several forms. WTF will premiere four new works, a musical and its first production by a commissioned artist.

Beyond exhibitions, there will be pop-up performances, lectures, activity programs and special events.

Olsen said a lot of what was presented Wednesday is "what we're after with ArtCountry and that is a place in which you can experience world-class culture that doesn't take itself too seriously a lot of time ... fantastic local food and drink ...

"And all of it in a bucolic landscape of hiking, biking and eating."

New Eagle Street Shop Has the Perfect Toppers

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
11:14AM / Saturday, August 01, 2026

Tip Top Hats sells Patricia Welch's handmade designs and more commercial products at lower prices. 

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The city has a millinery for the first time in more than 40 years. 

Patricia Welch, who has more than 60 years of hatmaking experience, recently opened Tip Top Hats at 16 Eagle St.

Welch said she has always been fascinated by hats and has seen many fashion trends. She's particularly interested in the mod movement.

"It's just something that I have a facility for and have been doing for so long, it's kind of second nature," she said. "It's over 60 years since I’ve been making hats, not all the time, but on and off for a long, long time. So I had a lot of life experience to draw from. I've seen many, many fashions come and go. Being a child of the '60s, I was heavily influenced by the mod movement, fashion movement, and it has stuck with me all these years."

Welch previously owned a shop in Gloucester before moving to New York in the late 1990s. Her work has been featured in juried shows and she's done design consulting.

While she worked in engineering and exhibiting designs, she always made her hats. It all started when she was 13 years old and had to solve a problem.

"I used to go riding on motorcycles with no hat on, no helmet, and your hair would get terribly knotted up," Welch said. "So the first time I made a hat, it was kind of a little bonnet of cotton that just tied under my chin, and it was just to keep my hair from getting tied in knots by the wind."

She came across the "for rent" sign on storefront in May and made a decision she would like to occupy it. She opened on July 1 during First Friday.  She said it was a great way for her to get out of retirement.

"Kind of impulsive, but you know I'm not young, and tired of being retired, basically," Welch said. "So this is a wonderful, fun experience, and I think it'll bring more to Eagle Street."

Millinery shops were a mainstay of women's and men's fashion well into the 1960s. At one time, North Adams had three or four independent millinery shops plus departments in some of its stores, like Roberts Co. and the Boston Store.

They began closing down in the 1960s because of owners' retirements or deaths, dislocation because of urban renewal, and changing fashions. The last ones were the Style Shoppe and Hollywood Millinery (then Hollywood Fashions) in the early 1980s. 

Welch has hats made from straw, fake fur, wool, leather, and more. Her designs can take hours to complete.

"I start by having an idea in mind for the style that I want to work on, and then I'll pull from my textiles and make a selection that would all work nicely together, so that I can I can make a particular style using various textiles from the same group, so it becomes a collection rather than just a random bunch of hats," she said.

She wants to have something for everyone, and since her one-of-a-kind hats can be pricey, she has  commercially hats that are moderately priced.

"Typically in finishing a hat, there's handwork, which is why they become more expensive. Because some hats I spend well, literally hours on," she said.