Clark Art to Screen 'Metropolis'

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Thursday, April 20 at 6 pm, the Clark Art Institute screens "Metropolis" in its auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center. 
 
Presented in connection with the Clark's exhibition "Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch," this is the third event in the Clark's five-part series, Visionary Architecture on Film. The film series explores themes related to Paul Goesch's life and work in early twentieth-century Germany. 
 
According to a press release: 
 
In a futuristic city marked by extreme inequality, the wealthy live lavishly in skyscrapers while workers toil underground, operating machines that keep society running. One of the first science fiction films, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927; 1 hour, 54 minutes) both reflected and accelerated the emergence of Art Deco design in the United States and Europe. With its themes of mechanization, societal stratification, and fascism, the film is a grand tour of the issues that animated interwar Germany.
 
Free and open to the public; no registration is required. The Clark's Visionary Architecture on Film series is organized by Ella Comberg, MA '24 in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. 

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9/11 Now Part of Broader Conversation in Classrooms

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — When talking about teaching the greatest American tragedy of the 21st century in today's classrooms, teachers draw a parallel to how they were taught about one of the defining moments of the 21st century.
 
"Oddly now, it is kind of like when my World War II relatives and teachers talked about the Depression or Pearl Harbor," Mount Greylock Regional School history teacher Jeffrey Welch said recently. "The kids [today] are generally interested in personal and social history, and so, for that reason alone, they are curious.
 
"But 9/11 is also a 21st century icon. Local families lost loved ones, some of whom are still connected to the school community. Also, so many have connections to NYC and have been to Ground Zero and the museum. It is poignant, I think, but far less visceral for the students to study with the passage of time."
 
As the nation prepares to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on Friday, the nation's classrooms are the place where the events of 9/11 and its repercussions are being taught to a generation that lacks the emotional grounding in the events at Ground Zero that high school students may have had as recently as a dozen years ago.
 
At Wahconah Regional High School, Bryan Patton, who was reached separately for this story, made the same historical reference when asked about teaching 9/11 25 years after the fact.
 
"It's interesting because the way we have covered 9/11 has evolved over the years," Patton said. "It definitely used to get students' attention as a current or recent event years ago. For many students now, it's the way Pearl Harbor or Vietnam was when I was a student in the '90s.
 
"It was actually a difficult thing for my colleagues and I to grasp as they didn't live through it. It was before they were born so to them it's just an historical event. They ask questions. They care. But it's not the visceral response it used to be."
 
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