Clark Art Lecture on History of Arcadia

10:43AM / Tuesday, April 08, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, April 12 at 11 am, the Clark Art Institute presents "A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature," a talk by Paul Holberton.

This free lecture is given in conjunction with the Clark's exhibition Pastoral on Paper and takes place in the Clark's Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

Dr. Holberton, author of the acclaimed two-volume book A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature (2021), examines how idyllic landscapes and rustic scenes have been portrayed from antiquity through the Renaissance and into the eighteenth century. Responding to leading early modern literary and artistic luminaries such as Torquato Tasso, Claude Lorrain, and Thomas Gainsborough, he traces the complex journey of the pastoral across cultures and eras, from Virgil's adaptations of Theocritus to the influence of medieval pastourelles.

The idyllic tranquility of the lives of shepherds became a prominent subject in literature, music, and the visual arts over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On view through June 15, Pastoral on Paper explores how artists depicted rural life by considering their representation of cows, cottages, mules, maidens, shepherds, ruins, and overgrown landscapes. Selected primarily from the Clark's strong holdings of drawings by Claude Lorrain and Thomas Gainsborough and supplemented with select loans of Dutch Italianate artworks, this exhibition analyzes pastoral imagery to examine how artists construct their own visions of an idealized landscape.

Pastoral on Paper is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by William Satloff, Class of 2025, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Willinet Cameras to Capture Monday's Williamstown Select Board Session

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
02:31PM / Saturday, October 24, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board's third-floor meeting to complete its evaluation process for the town manager will be televised by the town's public, educational and governmental television station.

Willinet Executive Director Teri Yuan confirmed this week that the station will put a camera in the upstairs conference room to record a planned 8 p.m. single-item agenda meeting to do the annual review of Town Manager Robert Menicocci.

The board at its last meeting decided to break the evaluation out from its regular 7 p.m. meeting in the first floor Community Meeting room, which is set up with multiple cameras and audio equipment to facilitate live Willinet telecasts of most public meetings of town boards and committees.

The Select Board offered no real explanation for the desire to complete the evaluation in an otherwise public meeting outside of view from Willinet's cameras other than a desire to "sit around the table" rather than sit on one side of a large table along one side of the first floor meeting room.

The "sit around the table" talk was particularly puzzling given the fact that Willinet has a camera mounted on the wall behind the spot where Menicocci generally sits for Select Board meetings, a camera that gives a full view of both sides of the table, and an angle that Willinet frequently uses when panels like the Finance Committee invite participants to sit across the table from the committee to give testimony.

Perhaps the real reason is better explained by a joking comment from one Select Board member at the Sept. 28 meeting who indicated that doing the evaluation without access to things like Zoom capability was "the object" of moving that business to the third-floor meeting room.

The evaluation discussion on Monday evening will follow on a survey of the five board members assessing Menicocci's performance in fiscal year 2026, which ended on June 30.

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