Clark Art Film Screening and Poetry Event

08:14AM / Tuesday, April 29, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, May 3 at 4 pm, the Clark Art Institute presents "Walt Whitman Comes to the Clark," a combination film screening and poetry event centering around Whitman's most famous poem, "Song of Myself."

This free event takes place in the Clark's Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

Whitman's "barbaric yawp," "Song of Myself" celebrates freedom, inclusion, and democracy. Working with this iconic piece, theater collective Compagnia de' Colombari has created seven short films with actors and musicians around the globe bringing Whitman's words to life in startling and beautiful new ways. These films are screened as part of their nationwide Whitman on Walls! (WoW!) tour. After each film, a poet published by Tupelo Press offers an original piece of work written in response to the film—conversing with, talking back to, and wrestling with Walt Whitman.

Compagnia de' Colombari is a New York City theater group founded in Orvieto, Italy, in 2004. Springing from the vision of director Karin Coonrod, it involves an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places.

Tupelo Press is an independent non-profit press discovering and publishing works of poetry, literary fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established writers.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Mount Greylock School Committee Hears Budget Requests, Pressures

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:32AM / Wednesday, February 18, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee Thursday heard the final rounds of fiscal year 2027 budget requests and heard why those — or any — discretionary increases in spending will be difficult in the year that begins July 1.

Williamstown Elementary Principal Benjamin Torres and middle-high school Principal Jake Schutz each presented the spending priorities formulated by their respective school councils. The requests followed a presentation by Lanesborough Elementary Principal Nolan Pratt at the January meeting.

Superintendent Joseph Bergeron then told the School Committee that state and federal aid to the district is going to be slightly lower than FY26 and reminded the panel that the district spent the last two years spending down its reserve accounts, as requested by the member towns, to the point where those reserves — School Choice, tuition and excess and deficiency — cannot be applied to the operating budget.

"Spending the exact same amount of money from this year to next year — that alone will mean a 4 percent increase [in appropriations] to each of our towns," Bergeron said. "That's the baseline on top of which everything else will happen.

"We know we're seeing an 8.75 percent increase in health insurance, but we also have an increasing number of employees who are taking our health insurance, so that health insurance line is increasing substantially. When it comes to out-of-district tuition as well as transportation, both of those are seeing marked increases as well."

District staff and the School Committee will further refine its FY27 budget over the next five weeks, with a budget workshop scheduled for Tuesday, March 3, and a public hearing and final budget vote on March 19.

The district's appropriations to Williamstown and Lanesborough, which each pay a proportional share of the prekindergarten-Grade 12 district's operating expenses, will face an up-or-down vote at each town's annual meeting, in May and June, respectively.

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