Clark Art Book Talk

08:02AM / Wednesday, July 24, 2024Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Wednesday, July 31 at 6 pm, the Clark Art Institute hosts a talk by Emilie Boone, summer 2024 Clark Fellow and author of "A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography" (Duke University Press, 2023).

Boone speaks with Sara Houghteling, special projects coordinator at the Clark, about the overlooked facets of Van Der Zee's photographic legacy. The event takes place in the Clark's auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.

According to a press release:

In "A Nimble Arc," Boone positions Van Der Zee at the intersection of art and the vernacular, reshaping our perception of this iconic figure and the role of photography in the tapestry of everyday Black life. Boone is a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle first book award for scholarship on Van Der Zee.

Emilie Boone is an assistant professor of African American/African Diaspora Arts in the department of art history at New York University. She researches the art and visual culture of the African Diaspora with a focus on vernacular photography and global encounters. Following her first book "A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography," Boone will advance her second manuscript as a 2024 summer fellow in the Research and Academic Program at the Clark.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A book signing follows the talk. Copies of "A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography" will be available for purchase at the talk and in the Museum Store.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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