The Mohawk Trail Association

04/05/2025

Musicians on Musicians Curated by Wilco on view currently at MASS MoCA (1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA)
Since 2019, MASS MoCA has curated selections from a private collection of music photography. In conjunction with this year’s Solid Sound Festival, we handed over the selection process to the members of Wilco, who have chosen 35 images featuring performers such as Johnny Cash, The Clash, James Taylor and Carole King, Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Cobain, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Band, and many more.
The exhibition will feature some quotes from Wilco and the collector about the importance of how music images our times.
https://massmoca.org/event/musicians-on-musicians/

04/05/2025

Martin Puryear’s monumental sculpture Big Bling is on display at MASS MoCA.
Sited at the museum’s extreme southern perimeter in the heart of the downtown North Adams, Massachusetts business district, the sculpture creates a dramatic new connection between MASS MoCA’s 16-acre, 28-building factory campus and the city’s Main Street business district.
The spectacular forty-foot-tall work — the largest temporary installation Puryear has created — is built of wood, Puryear’s signature material, and chain-link fence. Through abstract means, the artist has crafted an ongoing dialogue with history, art history, identity, and politics. Here, “bling,” a slang term for flashy jewelry and accessories, is rooted in the urban youth, hip-hop, and rap culture of the 1990s. Originally commissioned for New York City’s Madison Square Park, the title of the artwork and its initial placement in the heart of Manhattan demonstrate Puryear’s recognition that Big Bling was a reflection of the character and the inhabitants of dense urban environments. Restored and transposed to MASS MoCA’s campus, the significant scale of the piece in relation the lower-scale and density of a New England factory town changes viewers’ perspective while amplifying the work’s monumental impact.
In the studio, Puryear’s sculpture applies methods gleaned from traditional crafts, carpentry, boat building, and other trades with spare, exacting stylistic dignity and formal clarity. Unlike his sculptures made from bronze, iron, stone, or carefully assembled from solid wood, Big Bling is constructed industrially from curved laminated wooden beams and exterior grade plywood, materials suitable for outdoor building. Instead of the wire mesh and tar that he has sometimes used for the surface of his sculptures, here Puryear has chosen a quintessentially urban material, stout chain-link fencing, to wrap the plywood construction. Metal fences function as makeshift boundaries around empty lots, construction sites, and playgrounds, concurrently protecting property and excluding people. Puryear has posed a similar dilemma in Big Bling: the multi-tiered work suggests an edifice that might be ascended level by level, but whose entry is blocked by a barrier fence.
A sleek golden shackle is stationed near the pinnacle of the colossal sculpture. It is anchored near the top of the structure — a shimmering beacon, a harness that both adorns and restrains the sculptural form. Big Bling is part animal form, part abstract sculpture, and part intellectual meditation.
About the Artist
Puryear earned his BA from Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. in 1963 and his MFA from Yale University in 1971. After serving in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone (1964–1966), he attended the Swedish Royal Academy of Fine Arts (1966–1968). The Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a retrospective of his work in 2007. Puryear has received, among others, the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (1980), a Louis Comfort Tiffany and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1989). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1992) and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Yale University (1994). Puryear represented the United States in the 2019 Venice Biennale. The artist lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York.
http://www.massmoca.org

04/05/2025

Author Talk Howard Fishman: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse
Co-Presented at the North Adams Public Library on Wednesday, April 9th at 6:00pm free for ll
NOTE: This co-presentation takes place at neighboring North Adams Public Library (74 Church St., North Adams, MA) not at MASS MoCA.
Join MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store and the North Adams Public Library for a free reading, presentation, and book-signing of To Anyone Who Ever Asks, a title that was Shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for best biography.
The mysterious true story of Connie Converse — a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found broad recognition — and one writer’s quest to understand her life. The unreal voice, story, and recordings of Connie Converse are too good not to know, and too out of place for the 1950s to make sense — a singer who seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, and the singer-songwriter movement that exploded a decade later with the likes of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
And then there is the bizarre legend about Connie Converse that has become the prevailing narrative of her life: that in 1974, at the age of fifty, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this be true? Who was Connie Converse, really?
Supported by a dozen years of research, travel to everywhere she lived (including North Adams), and hundreds of extensive interviews, Fishman approaches Converse’s story as both a fan and a journalist, and expertly weaves a narrative of her life and music, and of how it has come to speak to him. Ultimately, he places her in the canon as a significant outsider artist, a missing link between a now old-fashioned kind of American music and the reflective, complex, arresting music that transformed the 1960s and music forever. But this is also a story of deeply secretive New England traditions, of a woman who fiercely strove for independence and success when the odds were against her; a story that includes su***de, mental illness, statistics, siblings, oil paintings, acoustic guitars, cross-country road trips,1950s Greenwich Village, an America marching into the Cold War, questions about sexuality, and visionary forward thinking about race, class, and conflict. It’s a story and subject that is by turn hopeful, inspiring, melancholy, and chilling.
About the Contributor:
Howard Fishman is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where he has published essays on music, film, theater, literature, travel, and culture. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Artforum, MOJO, and The Village Voice, among others. Fishman is a playwright and an internationally touring performer, songwriter and bandleader based in Brooklyn, NY. He has released eleven albums to date and is the producer of the album Connie’s Piano Songs: The Art Songs of Elizabeth “Connie” Converse.
Pre-order a signed copy of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, which will be available for purchase after the event here.
http://www.massmoca.org

04/04/2025

Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real on view May 3rd 2025 until February 22nd, 2026 at Historic Deerfield (80 Old Main Street, Deerfield, MA) This exhibition will explore the enduring interest in clothing our bodies to achieve fashionable shapes.It will feature twenty-five ensembles from the 18th to 21st centuries drawn predominantly from Historic Deerfield’s renowned clothing collection. Displayed along with the historical garments will be the understructures – stays, corsets, hoops skirts, and bustles – that helped shape, exaggerate, or reduce bodies to fit fashionable ideals.
The show will follow a loose chronological organization starting with two garments from the 1760’s – a woman’s formal dress with exaggerated wide skirt supported by hooped petticoats and a man’s pink and gold brocaded suit. Fashions from the 19th century will highlight huge sleeves, corseted torsos, and skirts that were supported by crinolines and bustles. Fashion plates from the museum’s collection will help contextualize styles within their time while select modern fashions, juxtaposed with historical garments, will offer interesting connections between the past and today.
Http://www.historic-deerfield.org

04/04/2025

Carly Glovinski: Almanac exhibit in the Hunter Hallway at MASS MoCA (1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA) is currently on view.
Rooted in observation and fueled by a curiosity about the history of objects and handicraft processes, Carly Glovinski makes work that explores the make-do, resourceful attitudes associated with domestic craft and a reverence for nature. The elements of time and place are embedded in work that mines her surrounding coastal New Hampshire and Maine environment for inspiration and looks to the repetitive cycles of seasonal blooms and celestial orbits.
Most recently, Glovinski has created installations based on varieties of flowers that she grows in her own garden or has collected from friends and travel. Often used as ceremonial markers, flowers are present at events both good and bad: to celebrate, to mourn, to apologize, and to offer love, joy, comfort, and healing. Almanac is Glovinski’s largest pressed flower work to date. Spanning 100-feet, the work envisions the late April through mid-September northeastern New England growing season, through hundreds of painted and cut out blooms of dozens of flower varieties: cold hearty daffodils, violas, and bleeding hearts, to irises, Queen Anne’s lace, morning glories, and cosmos. By observing, tending, and preserving these flowers, the installation becomes a visual record of time and seasons passing, as well as a commentary on the labor of care.
About the Artist:
Carly Glovinski received her BFA from Boston University in 2003 and is represented by Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York. She has been awarded residencies at Surf Point Foundation in 2021, and the Canterbury Shaker Village in 2020, and grants from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and the Blanche Colman Trust. Selected exhibitions include Farnsworth Art Museum, Maine; The Global Center for Circular Economy and Culture, Delphi, Greece; Colby Museum of Art, Maine; Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY, Richard Heller Gallery, LA; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Her work has been in major publications such as New American Paintings, ArtMaze Magazine, Hyperallergic, Colossal, and Vice, and is held in numerous public collections including Colby Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Fidelity Investments, Cleveland Clinic, and Bank of America. Carly currently lives and works in New Hampshire.
http://www.massmoca.org

04/04/2025

Print Room Pop-Up: Art & Wellness@ The Clark (225 South Street, Williamstown, MA) on Sunday, May 4th from 11:00 AM–1:00 P in the Manton Study Center for Works on Paper
As part of First Sunday Free, enjoy a special display of works on paper in the Manton Study Center inspired by May's theme, “Art and Wellness.” Through drawings, prints, watercolors, and more, the artists of these works explore themes of mental, physical, and spiritual healing. View thought-provoking art and reflect on your own path to wellness.
Free. For accessibility questions, call 413 458 0524.
Image: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Carnot Malade! (detail), 1893, lithograph. The Clark, 1955.1436
www.clarkart.edu

04/04/2025

Victoria Palermo Bus Stand at MASS MoCA Outdoor Exhibit
This exhibit is Off – Campus on Main Street in North Adams
The Bus Stand, designed by artist Victoria Palermo, is a public artwork and permanent addition to the North Adams community, adding to the movement to bring more public art to the city through the efforts of DownStreet Art. Palermo, of Queensbury, New York, is a visiting assistant professor of Art at Skidmore College. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries and museums, including Kidspace at MASS MoCA in 2003-2004 and 2010. Recently, her work has been shown at the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY; Salem Art Works, Salem, NY; and Union College, Schenectady, NY.
The Bus Stand was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
The Bus Stand, 2012
http://www.massmoca.org

04/03/2025

Meet the Artist Susan Rose on Wednesday April 9th at 5:00pm
North Adams Public Library (74 Church Street, North Adams, MA)
Celebrate the unveiling of an exhibit by local artist Susan Rose.
We will have light refreshments and hors d'oeuvres.
Susan will be available for conversation & questions.
In our lovely front parlor.
Any questions, please email Reference Librarian Lisa Harding at [email protected] or give us a call.
https://www.facebook.com/naplibrary
https://naplibrary.libguides.com/home

04/03/2025

Envisioning America: Deerfield Academy’s Collection of Paintings and Drawings on view May 3rd, 2025 until March 1st , 2026 at Historic Deerfield - Flynt Center of Early New England Life 37 Old Main Street Deerfield, MA)
Historic Deerfield will present a new exhibition, Envisioning America: Deerfield Academy’s Collection of Paintings and Drawings, which highlights significant works of art from the Academy’s collection, many of which have not been on public view for decades. Deerfield Academy, a private boarding school located in Old Deerfield, possesses a rich collection of American art, ranging from colonial American portraiture to early 20th-century modernism. A majority of the works belonged to Rowena Russell Potter (Mrs. Lucius D. Potter, 1880-1960) of the neighboring town of Greenfield. They were given to the Academy in 1960 in honor of her father, Charles P. Russell. Potter collected a chronological overview of American art and provided the Academy with a lasting resource for art education. Her acquisitions coincided with the emerging study of American art around World War II and a taste for 18th- and 19th-century artists that would come to define the field. She also formed a significant collection of American decorative arts, which she gave to Historic Deerfield at the same time.
The Academy collection includes a “who’s who” of American art across the centuries, and the exhibition explores a range of artistic styles and themes. Eighteenth-century works by British colonial painters John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West captured the likenesses of early colonists and landscapes as they maintained transatlantic ties to England. After the American Revolution, artists such as Charles Willson Peale represented the emerging republic and considered how best to visualize a new nation. With the onset of the Civil War, painter Eastman Johnson focused upon realistic genre scenes and portrayals of American life as a response to social change in the country. William H. Beard and John F. Peto explored similar themes in their fields of animal and still-life painting.
By the late 19th century, American landscape painters George Inness and Ralph Albert Blakelock portrayed atmospheric scenes tied to a more personal response to nature. Blakelock created haunting landscapes that captured the stillness and mystery of night, experimenting with painting techniques to portray moonlit scenes. As a cosmopolitan group studying abroad, other artists increasingly shifted toward impressionistic styles and modernist subjects, as seen with works by Childe Hassam, Homer Dodge Martin, and Robert Henri. This exhibition brings together a rich assemblage of Deerfield Academy’s American paintings and drawings to explore the artists and narratives that underpin American art history before the first World War.
Included with general admission. No advance registration required.
Http://www.historic-deerfield.org

04/03/2025

Wooly Wonders – Heritage Breed Sheep Weekend
May 3rd & 4th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life at Historic Deerfield (80 Old Main Street, Deerfield, MA)
Fun for the whole family!
Come and visit heritage breed sheep under the big tent this weekend! Discover the history of sheep in New England and learn why the Merino created such a craze!
Event Highlights
Back by popular demand: “Meet and Greet the Sheep” with heritage breed expert, Peter Cook from Tare Shirt Farm in Berwick, Maine.
Sheepdog herding demonstrations.
Enjoy hands-on activities like dyeing yarn and weaving.
Make and take a sheep-inspired craft or two.
Sheep shearing demonstrations.
Have fun playing lawn games and trying your hand at using a drop spindle to spin wool into yarn.
Included with general admission. Free for members, youth 17 and under, and residents of Deerfield/Historic Deerfield.
Http://www.historic-deerfield.org

04/03/2025

Permanent Collection Gallery Tour @ The Clark (225 South Street, Williamstown, MA) from
11:15am – 12:15 pm on the following dates
Saturday, April 5th, 12th, 19th & 26th
Saturday, May 3rd, 10th, 17th 24th & 31st
Join a Clark educator for an informative tour of the permanent collection galleries and learn more about the Institute's unique history and growth.
Free with gallery admission. Capacity is limited. Pick up a ticket at the Clark Center admissions desk, available on a first-come, first-served basis. Meet in the Museum Pavilion.
www.clarkart.edu

04/03/2025

Amy Podmore: Audience currently on view in building 6 The Robert W Wilson Building at MASS MoCA (1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
Amy Podmore is propelled by an interest in surrealist strategies of transformation and the line between stillness and motion in sculpture.
In Audience, she offers enigmatic plaster casts of found wicker baskets and cornucopias. What we see as the exterior is actually the interior of these baskets, unfolding a vulnerable underbelly in the act of reversal. Podmore embeds motorized glass eyeballs into the woven warp and weft of the basket surfaces, still visible in the plaster translation. Defamiliarized, the molded baskets and their ranging, expressive forms adopt an almost anthropomorphic quality. As their eyes sleepily fall shut and whip open, the museum visitor becomes the one being uncannily watched back.
Exhibited in MASS MoCA’s Building Six, in the largest form Audience has taken to date, Podmore assumes implicit dialogue with Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), whose work is on view adjacent to her own and also features eyeballs. Generations apart, both artists nonetheless invoke whimsical forms and concepts of the gaze to consider the psychological uncanniness of the everyday.
About the Artist:
Amy Podmore lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts where she is currently the J.Kirk T. Varnedoe named professor of art at Williams College. She received her MFA from University of California, Davis and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Previous exhibitions venues include the Tang Museum, Williams College Museum, Bell Gallery (Brown University, Providence, RI), Allston Skirt Gallery (Boston, MA), Rose Art Museum (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA), DeCordova Museum and the ICA (Portland, ME).
http://www.massmoca.org

04/03/2025

North Adams Winter Indoor Framers Market happens the First Saturday of the Month to May 2025 Saturday April 5th, May 3rd.
New Winter Market Location Studio B at Hotel Downstreet from 9am to 1pm.
Parking is available on Main street or in their lot, then enter through the front doors and follow the signs to find your favorite local vendors. We cannot wait to see you!
Fresh seasonal produce, Cheese, Meat, Farm fresh eggs, Syrup, Honey, Breads, Pastries, Cookies and More
Credit [&] Debit cards accepted
Also snap/EBT [&] Double benefits while funding lastFor updates on vendors and more info about the market each week follow them on www.facebook.com/northadamsfarmersmarket
https://www.northadamsfarmersmarket.com/

04/03/2025

DaddyAF MoCA (1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA) Co-Presented with Jacob’s Pillow
Work-in-Progress Showing on Saturday, May 3rd at 8:00pm in the Hunter Center
Celebrated dance-theater artist David Roussève’s DaddyAF: Waiting for Peter Pan is an intimate meditation on life’s purpose, created and performed by a q***r African American acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. Like strands of DNA, it connects elements encoded in his body, including 600 years of genealogy, a roller coaster journey with HIV, and the shattering loss of a husband — while revisiting movement from 35 years of dance-making to explore the meaning of ‘virtuosity’ for a 64-year old body.
DaddyAF is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, and MASS MoCA with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, more information at npnweb.org.
DaddyAF was created with support from Danspace Project, UCLA’s Chancellor’s Research Fund and The Chancellor’s Arts Initiative. DaddyAF is made possible with generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and a MAP Fund creation grant.
This program is supported in part by the Irene Hunter Fund for Dance at MASS MoCA in association with Jacob’s Pillow. $25 Advance, $35 Preferred
https://tickets.massmoca.org/10856/10857
http://www.massmoca.org

04/03/2025

The last Greenfield Winter Farmers' Market of the season will take place this Saturday, April 5, from 10 AM - 1 PM.

We want to thank the farmers' market and their various vendors for extending the market into the winter months. We also want to share a big shout out to the Greenfield Public Library for hosting the market and continuing to serve as a great community destination!

04/03/2025

04/03/2025

04/03/2025