Word: moca
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...light-bulb piece. "We have yet to have an artist who comes here who doesn't have a big idea," says Thompson. "These buildings have a heft that invites large gestures." It's not just new projects. Rauschenberg chose to display his biggest work in a gallery at Mass MoCA that is about the size of a football field. Even in art, size matters...
Originally the brainchild of Thomas Krens, then head of the nearby Williams College Museum of Art and currently the expansion-minded director of the Guggenheim, Mass MoCA was supposed to be a big splashy gallery, similar in concept to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The same architect, Frank Gehry, and other big names, worked on the initial plan. But in 1988 Krens moved to the Guggenheim, and the economic boom known as the "Massachusetts Miracle" evaporated, taking the funding with it. Joseph Thompson, Krens' successor, was left holding the baby. He has proved a shrewd parent. Thompson and a local architectural...
...Look at these spaces," says chief designer Simeon Bruner, marveling at the hulking, bricky, fortress-of-industry buildings. "What did we do to them? Nothing. We just cleaned them up a little." It's a likably egoless statement from an architect, and he's right. The makers of Mass MoCA had sense enough to leave the buildings alone. Perhaps they should have held back more; the less renovated spaces are the most enticing...
Thompson says he wants to "erase the traditional line between the visual and performing arts." To this end, Mass MoCA has a theater, rehearsal spaces, an outdoor cinema and what the center boasts is "two performance courtyards." These are ordinary courtyards, enlivened by the buildings, elevated walkways and bridges that surround them. There's something peculiarly exultant about watching a Los Lobos concert in an abandoned factory. That peculiarity is Mass MoCA's chief...
Whether the museum will flourish is more up in the air than Beuys' sculpture. Mass MoCA has to survive on a wee budget and attract more than seasonal tourists to the area. All this without a titanium-covered building or a huge permanent collection to marvel at. But the combination of this sprawling, roughhewn relic of an era of America's past bristling with the newest in every type of art form is something almost equally worth seeing...