Clark Art Lecture on Emamzadeh Yahya Project

07:36AM / Wednesday, November 05, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 5:30 pm, the Clark Art Institute's Research and Academic Program hosts a talk with Keelan Overton (Independent Scholar / Clark Fellow) on the Emamzadeh Yahya Project.

The talk takes place in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

Established in 2021, the aim of the Emamzadeh Yahya Project is to increase awareness and understanding of the Emamzadeh Yahya shrine complex and its dispersed tiles, collections, and archives worldwide, without pursuing commercial, political, or institutional objectives. The project's key values are independence (of conception and production), collaboration (between individuals and disciplines), and accessibility (across languages, formats, and audiences). This talk provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the project's evolution and first scholarly product, The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine, a website containing an online exhibition, exhibition catalogue, and academic edited volume

Overton is an independent scholar and art historian based in Santa Barbara, California, specializing in the Perso-Islamic world from Iran to India. She has worked as a curator inside museums and independently, and her publications have explored such topics as patterns of collecting and museology in the field of "Islamic art," diachronic histories of manuscripts and buildings, and cultural relations between Iran and the Deccan. Since 2021, she has directed an independent, interdisciplinary, and international research project devoted to the Emamzadeh Yahya shrine complex at Varamin. The first outcome is a website that charts some alternative paths in museology, publishing, collaboration, and accessibility. At the Clark, Overton will complete some final aspects of the website.

Free. Accessible seats available. A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event

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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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