Clark Art Presents Book Talk

01:30PM / Thursday, October 16, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Wednesday, Oct. 22, the Clark Art Institute hosts a book talk with author Bonnie Tsui.

Tsui discusses her 2025 book "On Muscle," in which she brings her blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean to us. The free event takes place in the Clark’s Manton Research Center auditorium at 6 p.m.

In "On Muscle," Tsui traces how muscles have defined beauty—and how they have distorted it—through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health. Woven throughout are Tsui’s own drawings and stories of her childhood with her Chinese immigrant artist dad—a black belt in karate—who schooled her from a young age in a quirky, in-house Muscle Academy. "On Muscle" shows us the poetry in the physical and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we’re capable of.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. Copies of "On Muscle" will be available for sale at the event. A book signing follows the talk.

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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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