Music Summer Fundraiser for the Bidwell House Museum

Staff Reports 07:12AM / Monday, August 03, 2026Print Story | Email Story

MONTEREY, Mass. — The Bidwell House Museum announced the details of their annual summer fundraising party to be held on Saturday, Aug. 8 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the stunning home of Paula Bidwell McNay and Joe McNay in Richmond.

This year, the theme is The Berkshire Hills Are Alive With Music. The Museum's honoree in 2026 is long-time Board member and friend to the Museum, Kathryn Roberts. Roberts has been a volunteer with the Museum for 25 years and has held the roles of both President and Vice-President of the Board of Directors. She was also, for a number of years, head of the summer party planning committee and led some of the Museum's most successful fundraising parties.

Guests at the party will enjoy an evening of harp music from Tanglewood Fellow Renee Murphy, hors d'oeuvres by Handcrafted Catering, an auction that includes several trips to Europe and sensational views of the Berkshire Hills.

Tickets to the Bidwell summer fundraiser are $150 per person and can be reserved by contacting the museum office at 413-528-6888 or by purchasing them on the museum website at https://www.bidwellhousemuseum.org/event/the-berkshire-hills-are-alive-with-music/

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Karen Allen on Harrison Ford, John Belushi, Steven Spielberg and Williamstown

By Alan PetrucelliSpecial to iBerkshires
12:42PM / Saturday, August 08, 2026

Karen Allen operates her fiber arts and clothing store in Great Barrington when she's not making movies or performing in plays. Below, Allen with Harrison Ford during the shooting of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' She's appeared in three of the five Raiders movies.

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — Karen Allen wants to talk about the time she went blind.

It was 1979, a year after the release of her first major film, "National Lampoon's Animal House." She and a group of the movie's alum got together on a Sunday afternoon and threw a party, "to play music, hang out and sing." A day later, "the painful symptoms" began. Allen learned that she had contracted keratoconjunctivitis, a dangerous and rare eye disease that created "terrible, terrible, terrible pain. It caused me to go blind for a while ... my eye muscles started to deteriorate. I had to stay in my apartment to make sure — God forbid! — I didn't give it to anyone. It took about two months for me to recover."

That was then. Today, 47 years after the sightless saga, Allen can see clearly. And the choices she had made in her 50-plus year career remain sharply in focus: "The Wanderers," "Cruising," Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Shoot the Moon," "Starman," "Scrooged" — the list is longer than her bit role in Woody Allen's "Manhattan".

And that is just her film work. (Ironically, Allen played a 20-year-old Helen Keller in "Monday After the Miracle," the sequel to "The Miracle Worker." The 1982 drama flopped and played only 16 performances, marking Allen's only Broadway performance.)

This season, Allen returned to the Berkshire Theatre Group's Unicorn Theatre in Abi Morgan's "LoveSong," a play about how love changes people over time. Allen fell in love with the work when she saw it on closing night in Ireland last summer. She sent the script to BTG's Artistic Director and CEO Kate Maguire who "loved it" and green-lighted the project.

"LoveSong" runs through Aug. 29. For tickets or more information, call 413-997-4444 or visit BerkshireTheatreGroup.org.

Next up for Allen: The October release of the film "Other Mommy," "a psychological horror film."

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