![]() ![]() Museum Town, which premiered March 10th at the South by Southwest Film Festival, is comprised of two main narrative threads: the first lays out a history of the institution’s funding challenges since staff members of the Williams College of Art took hold of a newly vacated North Adams factory space in 1986. Narrated by Meryl Streep, and featuring a gentle but energetic original score by Wilco bassist John Stirratt, the film is a deceptively breezy retrospective on Mass MoCA’s unlikely success it illuminates how and to what extent art and cultural institutions can help revive communities under duress. In her directorial debut, journalist and author Jennifer Trainer returns to a project that first fascinated her back in 1985, when she wrote an article for The New York Times about the fledgling idea to situate an art museum in a struggling small town. Fast forward to today and North Adams is best known as home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) - one of the largest contemporary art museums in the world.Ī new documentary called Museum Town chronicles MASS MoCA’s tumultuous early years and examines its founders’ vision of art as a tool for economic development. Since then, the town has been mired in financial troubles. During the postwar boomer years, the town was a bustling manufacturing center, but in 1984, the local electric company shut down its factory operations, putting thousands of residents out of work. Promotional materials and publicity have altogether failed to acknowledge this pertinent detail.”ĪUSTIN - The picturesque mill town of North Adams, Massachusetts sits nestled between state parks and mountain reserves a few miles south of the Vermont border. The film itself makes no reference to this conflict of interest, and publicity for the film treats this fact disingenuously by referring to Thompson as simply ‘writer and journalist’ Jennifer Trainer in both her South by Southwest director bio and in her official festival interview. “Museum Town was directed by Jennifer Trainer Thompson, a former MASS MoCA director of development and the former spouse of current MASS MoCA director, Joe Thompson. We contacted the writer for clarification on the matter and received the following response: Major art and architecture exhibitions are presented in skylit galleries leading off the sunken court.Aerial view of Building 6 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) (image courtesy MASS MoCA)Įditor’s Note: After the publication of this review, it has been brought to our attention that the director of the MASS MoCA documentary is also a former employee of the museum, a fact that was not made clear in the publicity materials or during its screening at the SXSW film festival. The sole compensation for the CRA’s stupidity is this jewel-like cluster of geometric forms, clad in rough-textured red sandstone, hunkered down amid the office towers. MOCA remains an oasis of low-rise tranquility with a deliberately different layout from traditional museums. At its opening, critics derided the building’s windowless, blank wall along the Grand Street sidewalk, but Isozaki deliberately designed the building to face inward towards the California Plaza development. East Asian traditions were referenced with the play between positive and negative (building and courtyard) space. Isozaki chose forms and shapes for the building that were vaguely traditional, but mostly abstract. Only four of its seven levels are above the street level.Īdministrative offices are located at the level of Upper Grand Street under a barrel-shaped roof. ![]() ![]() Under and around the courtyard are the public galleries. The entrance is marked by an arch leading to a subterranean terraced courtyard. Japanese architect Arata Isozaki created a contrast to the extreme heights of the Bunker Hill glass-and-steel high rise towers by designing MOCA as a sunken, red sandstone-clad space. In addition to private donations, funds for MOCA came from a 1.5 % allocation of budgets from Bunker Hill development projects required to go towards public art. When the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) opened its permanent quarters at California Plaza in 1987, Bunker Hill was a multi-level landscape of sprouting skyscrapers. © Installation view of URS FISCHER, April 21–August 19, 2013, at MOCA Grand Avenue, courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photo by Brian Forrest Text by the Architects / MOCA ![]()
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