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HOW TO SAVE A HARDSCRABBLE MILL TOWN

Described as a “sorry gateway” in 1996, North Adams, Massachusetts, became a “hidden jewel” six years later. What happened? Nancy Barnes considers the phenomenon of MASS MoCA ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

On a warm spring day, around 800 visitors spilled into the 28-building complex of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), the largest contemporary art centre in the world. They had come to celebrate the museum's tenth anniversary--an unlikely success story, worthy of champagne toasts.
   
“Thanks for coming to the birthday party. The cake’s over in the café,” said a staff member to some visitors from the nearby Eclipse Mill, a former textile mill now occupied by artists. When MASS MoCA first opened in the hardscrabble city of North Adams (pop.16,797) in 1999, three out of four storefronts were vacant. But the arts centre has injected life into the area, transforming old warehouses into chic condominiums, artists’ lofts and trendy restaurants.

“It has forever changed the face of the community,” said John Barrett III, the mayor of North Adams. “That’s what MASS MoCA has done.”

A former mill town at the tip of the lush Berkshire region, equidistant from New York City and Boston, North Adams was typical of what Barrett described as “the other Massachusetts”, overlooked in a state known for its old money, posh universities and privilege. After peaking at the turn of the 20th century, the town’s manufacturing base began to erode, rendering it yet another American company town without a company. In 1985 the area’s largest employer, Sprague Electric Co, closed down, raising unemployment to 17%.

In late 1986 Thomas Krens, then director of the space-challenged Williams College Art Museum nearby in bucolic Williamstown, had an epiphany. Just outside Cologne, Germany, he came across art dealers exhibiting the work of Markus Lüpertz, a German sculptor, in an old, abandoned factory. Back in Massachusetts he approached Barrett (who has served as mayor for more than 20 years) about converting the old Sprague Electric complex into a museum to house large-scale contemporary works of art.

Though Barrett admitted that his artistic tastes run more toward Norman Rockwell, he wisely jumped on the MASS MoCA bandwagon, mindful of the economic needs of the town. The project's ambition earned some eye-rolling, and it was beset by some serious setbacks, such as the early collapse of crucial state financing and Krens’s departure in 1988 to begin his 20-year tenure as director of Manhattan's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art. But the arts centre finally opened in 1999, a cavernous, brick-walled complex across 13 acres with a sweep that matches the city’s undulating landscape. The centre's programming balances temporary visual-art exhibitions with a strong performing-arts schedule.

MASS MoCA's gigantic scale makes a visit feel transporting, like time spent in a different world. Its light, sun-filled rooms and gritty, industrial touches offer a singular experience, unparalleled by most other art museums and galleries. This summer boasts a typically astonishing array of mixed-media shows. Stunning installations by art-world giants such as Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys and Simon Starling are displayed alongside group exhibitions filled with edgy artists, including Joe Zane and Micah Silver. MASS MoCA hosts around 70 performing-arts events each year, many of them staged in its broad courtyard.

Spread over three floors in a huge and newly renovated gallery space is a retrospective of wall drawings by Sol Lewitt, a late American minimalist. The show follows the artist from his early geometric work in black and white, to his glossy, brightly coloured expressions (like “Splat”), to his shift back to colourlessness in his last years. This retrospective, which opened last November and will remain on view until 2033, was proclaimed America's top museum exhibition of 2008 by Time magazine.
   
“It’s an odd duck,” observed Joseph C. Thompson (pictured), who succeeded Krens as the
founding director of MASS MoCA. He was referring to the centre’s complicated role in promoting both contemporary art and local economic rehabilitation. It is a rare cultural institution that asserts both a cultural and socioeconomic agenda in the opening line of its mission statement.

“The first three or four years we were hanging on with our fingernails,” Thompson conceded. “We opened with no endowment, no cash reserves and no lines of credit.” It was a risky proposition to situate an arts centre without a permanent collection or an endowment in a town once described as a sorry gateway to nowhere. On the bright side, the museum’s bottom line has not been too affected by the recession. “One of the few benefits of having no endowment is you’re not hurt when markets fall.”

The complex began to stabilise financially in 2007, when a private donor pledged $2.7m in funds pegged to the centre’s endowment fundraising. Endowment pledges are now near $15m, just over $8m of which is in the bank. MASS MoCA also earns a considerable amount of funds from leasing space to for-profit ventures.

The centre has ultimately become a destination, with attendance projected to reach 140,000 in 2009, Thompson reported. Around a quarter of visitors are locals, and the rest come mostly from New York and Boston. But unemployment is still a big problem in some nearby neighbourhoods, and one out of four downtown storefronts remain vacant. “It’s still a fragile economy in the very early stages of what could be a long-term comeback,” Thompson observed.

Thompson has more plans for the MASS MoCA site. He hopes to secure federal stimulus funding to continue installing solar panels across the centre, to reduce energy costs (which now comprise nearly a third of its operating expenses). The proposal includes a green energy educational centre. 

“When Krens first brought me the idea, I thought he was a little crazy,” admitted Barrett, the mayor. “I didn’t understand the art world.” But after ten years with MASS MoCA, North Adams is enjoying the positive attention. Though the town did not get its first touchtone telephone until the late 1990s, it swiftly acquired high-speed internet service because Krens had insisted the new museum would require the capacity to teleconference “all over the world.” The town also changed its zoning ordinances to permit artists and others residents to live downtown. Barrett enjoys telling the story of Yankee magazine, which described the town as a “sorry gateway” in 1996 but went on to call it a “hidden jewel” six years later.

“What did we have that no one else had?” Barrett asked? “Space.” He then cast his eyes over 19th-century complex, with its 4,000-plus windows and an impressive clock tower, complete with a sound installation by Christina Kubisch. “Beautiful, beautiful space.”

Picture Credit: Mass MoCA

(Nancy Barnes is a writer based in Connecticut. She writes for ARTnews and Metropolis Magazine.)