Clark Art Hosts Talk By Richard Taws

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, Feb. 21 at 2 pm, the Clark Art Institute's Research and Academic Program presents a lecture by Richard Taws, professor and head of the History of Art Department at University College London, in conjunction with the Shadow Visionaries: French Artists Against the Current, 1840–70 exhibition. 
 
The talk takes place in the Manton Research Center auditorium.
 
Taws examines how representations of infrastructure, nature, and technology shaped the cultural imaginaries of nineteenth-century urban modernity, and how they intersected with contemporary ideas about time and history in France. Focusing on artists featured in Shadow Visionaries, including Charles Meryon, Victor Hugo, and Nadar, the talk explores tensions between organic life and mechanical form, visibility and invisibility, and tradition and transformation, in Paris and further afield.
 
Richard Taws specializes in European visual cultures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He taught previously at McGill University, Canada, and has been a Getty Postdoctoral Fellow, a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Visiting Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. In 2012, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize; in 2018, a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship; and in 2022, a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
 
Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.

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Williamstown, Five Other County Towns Receive Seasonal Community Grants

Staff Reports
BOSTON, Mass.  — Five months after Williamstown's town meeting opted into the commonwealth's Seasonal Communities program, the town has received its first grant from the state under the program.
 
Gov. Maura Healey Tuesday announced nearly $2 million in Seasonal Community Grants to help all 24 municipalities in the program statewide.
 
The funding helps communities advance housing projects with the potential to support 594 year-round homes, including affordable housing developments, infrastructure improvements and planning efforts that will help unlock future housing opportunities.
 
"From the Berkshires to Cape Cod and the Islands, our seasonal communities are an important part of what makes Massachusetts special," Healey in a news release. "But we know these communities face unique challenges, especially when it comes to housing for the people who live and work there year-round. That's why we created the Seasonal Communities designation and are backing it up with funding to help local leaders build more homes, support their workforce and keep their communities strong for generations to come."
 
That list of awardees includes six Berkshire County towns:
 
• Egremont — $60,687 to support septic and well construction for Phase II of Town Hall Housing, adding affordable housing units (20 units).
 
• Great Barrington — $84,731 to conduct a housing needs study, develop a Housing Production Plan and support the design and engineering of roadway and streetscape improvements near Reed Street and Main Street.
 
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