Day 48, MoCA on a Mass Scale

The first thing that strikes you as you approach MassMoCA is the size of the buildings. It doesn't fit the conventional mold of what an art museum should look like.

The buildings began as a cloth printing factory. It employed 4,200 of the 10,000 residents of North Adams. There was so much dye used in the printing that the river ran different colors. On the 1940s, the rising cost of American cloth and the slow recovery from the Depression, forced the company to close its doors.

The building was then the home of Sprague  Electric. During World War II, the company thrived employing 4,500 of the towns 18,000 residents. It continued producing state of the art electric components until 1986 when they couldn't compete in price with products made overseas.

A group of people were looking for an economical place to exhibit large scale contemporary art pieces that didn't easily fit into other museums. The buildings are still mostly intact and were sitting, waiting for the next incarnation.

You wander through the floors of at least eight buildings, courtyards, and  grounds. We were there over two and a half hours and weren't sure we actually saw everything since there seemed to be no organized way to wander through.

One of the things I really liked was that large spaces are dedicated to a single artist. The pieces can be imposing. One that touched me the most was Glenn  Kaino, In the Light of a  Shadow, which explores a connection between Derry, Ireland and Selma, Alabama. The film at the end, which uses U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday song was really powerful.

MassMOCA is an indoor museum. It controls the number of people visiting by timed entry, something many indoor spaces are doing, requiring masks, and taking email and phone information for contact tracing, something I thanked them for. Sadly, the women who took our information said people usually have the opposite reaction.

We are now in Western Massachusetts. Even though the mornings are crisp, the nights haven't been cold enough to cause the leaves to change. It does mean that winter is on the way and there is only so much time to get road work done. It seems like work is being done everywhere.

We're sorry we won't be here at the peak of autumn colors. Hopefully, we'll see them as we make our way home.

We are under a severe thunderstorm watch. I'm let you know how it goes tomorrow.