MCLA Announces Music, Gallery and Theater Performances for Winter, Spring Semester

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Department of Fine and Performing Arts at MCLA announced the Winter/Spring 2024 programming including cultural events, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and musical experiences.

According to a press release:

MCLA Gallery 51

The first exhibition of 2024 will examine the entangled histories of ecology and migration. "Unfortunately It Was Paradise" features three artists, Lorena Molina, Larissa Rogers, and Jumana Manna, who address how ecology surfaces in our memory, imagination, and present that are shaped by the legacies of slavery, war, and settler colonialism. The show is on view through March 29. To close the semester, the gallery will feature work from a variety of MCLA students from April 15 to May 11 with an opening reception on April 18 from 5 to 7 p.m.

MCLA Theater MainStage Performance

This March the Fornés Festival returns with "The Summer in Gossensass" by María Irene Fornés and directed by Laura Standley, associate professor of Fine and Performing Arts at MCLA. The show will run from April 4 to 6 at Williams College's 62' Center. "The Summer in Gossensass," tells the story of two American actresses living in London during the 1890s who launch the first English language version of the play HEDDA GABLER by Henrik Ibsen.

MOSAIC Performance

On April 7, the internationally acclaimed Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band will take the stage at the MCLA Church Street Center at 7 p.m. The Wheels improvise with the intimacy of chamber music and the intensity of a rowdy dance band. Their engaging contemporary interpretation of Jewish music is irresistible to audiences ranging from elementary school students to the judges at the International Jewish Music Festival, who heralded them as "a true musical democracy."

MCLA Theater Developmental Workshop Musical

To close out the theater season, a developmental workshop musical titled "Emma When You Need Her," written by Bendetti Fellow Rudy Ramirez, and directed by MCLA Fine and Performing Arts Associate Professor Jeremy Winchester. It will take place at the Church Street Center from April 26-28. The Spring Music Concert, featuring MCLA Wind Ensemble, Concert Choir, and Studio Students, will take place on April 29 at 7 p.m. at the Church Street Center.

MCLA in Talks With Anonymous Donor for Art Museum, Art Lab

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:19AM / Monday, April 29, 2024

Andre Lynch, the new vice provost for institutional equity and belonging, introduces himself to the trustees, some of whom were participating remotely.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts may be in line for up to a $10 million donation that will include a campus art museum. 

 

President Jamie Birge told the board of trustees on Thursday that  the college has been in discussions for the last couple years with a donor who wishes at this point to remain anonymous.

 

"It's a donor that has a history of working with public liberal arts institutions to advance the arts that those institutions," he said.  "This donor would like to talk with us or has been talking with us about creating art museum and an art lab on campus."

 

The Fine and Performing Arts Department will have input, the president continued. "We want to make sure that it's a facility that supports that teaching and learning dynamic as well as responding to what's the interest of donor."

 

The college integrated into the local arts community back in 2005 with the opening of Gallery 51 on Main Street that later expanded with an art lab next door. The gallery under the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center had been the catalyst for the former Downstreet Art initiative; its participation has fallen off dramatically with changes in leadership and the pandemic. 

 

This new initiative, should it come to pass, would create a facility on MCLA Foundation property adjacent to the campus. The donor and the foundation have already split the cost of a study. 

 

"We conducted that study to look at what approximately a 6,500-square-foot facility would look like," said Birge. "How we would staff the gallery and lab, how can we use this lab space for fine and performing arts."