Destination: Berkshires, Where Art Meets Nature

DESTINATION: BERKSHIRES, WHERE ART MEETS NATURE

This is the summer for planning, doing, staying an extra day, playing more, dreaming big, exhaling—or burning the candle at both ends. The Berkshires, culturally scintillating and beyond beautiful—in every season—is all about living life to its fullest. For centuries, artists and art lovers have looked to this region for inspiration, solitude, and sheer enjoyment. Its museums, galleries, and co-ops push the boundaries of contemporary art, and whether it’s your first trip or your millionth, the potential for artistic adventures in the Berkshires is limitless.

The Williams College Museum of Art

Williamstown, MA

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), located on the beautiful Williams College campus, creates and inspires exceptional opportunities for students, faculty, and the public to have meaningful experiences with art. On view through July 14 is Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation, which visualizes what freedom looks like for Black Americans today and the legacy of the Civil War today and beyond. Highlighting the perspectives of contemporary Black artists, Emancipation features commissioned and recent works by Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith. The seven installations span sculpture, photography, and paper and textile fabrications. Also on view is Cracking the Cosmic Code: Nu-

merology in Medieval Art, a new installation of medieval art from WCMA’s collection. The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. This exhibition aims to elucidate medieval relationships among numbers, events, and artworks. WCMA’s medieval and Renaissance artworks from the 5th to 17th centuries reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender and timekeeping. Admission is always free.

Clark Art Institute—Williamstown, MA

An unparallel place to enjoy art and nature, the Clark Art Institute’s intimacy and beauty provide a unique visitor experience. Home to a renowned permanent collection of paintings,

works on paper, sculpture, decorative arts, and early photography, the Clark’s holdings are especially rich in French Impressionist, Early Modern, and American paintings. The 140-acre campus includes scenic meadows and more than five miles of walking trails, providing a memorable setting of natural beauty. Summer exhibitions include Kathia St. Hilaire: Invisible Empires, on view May 11, featuring new and recent works that combine printmaking, painting, collage and weaving by Haitian-American artist Kathia St. Hilaire. Opening June 15, the Clark presents the first monographic exhibition of Caribbean-born artist Guillame Lethière, whose remarkable story has been all but lost to history. Guillaume Lethière, organized in partnership with the Musée du Louvre, celebrates

FEBRUARY 16–JULY 14, 2024

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

Harold Grinspoon, Everest, at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home.

Lethière’s extraordinary career and sheds new light on the presence and reception of Caribbean artists in France during his lifetime.

Greylock Gallery—Williamstown, MA

GUILLAUME LETHIÈRE

Greylock Gallery, located in the picturesque hills of northern Berkshire County, specializes in showcasing traditional and contemporary art from both emerging and established artists. Featured artists in this upcoming season include John MacDonald, Stan Taft, Tracy Helgeson, Mary Sipp Green, Teri Malo, and Tracy Baker White. Work from these artists rotates in the gallery, so expect to see new pieces with each visit. The Gallery recently acquired the complete collection of Allen “Hale” Johnson from his estate, which will be featured this summer. The Gallery is also offering private appointments and personalized home viewings based on availability and location. See work from an incredible line-up of artists and enjoy all that downtown Williamstown and the beautiful Berkshire foothills have to offer.

Sohn Fine Art—Lenox, MA

Sohn Fine Art specializes in contemporary photography and unconventional mediums and is dedicated to the development, promotion and exhibition of innovative contemporary artworks by international and local artists. The gallery is pleased to present a series of mixed-media and photography exhibits this summer and fall. A is for Always, on view through July 29, is a solo exhibition of mixed-media by Berkshire-based artist John Clarke whose work combines photography, painting and classical music. Lenticular photography artist Jeff Robb will be joined by photography-based artists JP Terlizzi and Hans Withoos in a contemporary still life exhibit on view through the summer. The exhibit will feature Terlizzi’s newly released body of work, Creatures of Curiosity. In the autumn, Sohn Fine Art is proud to present an exhibit featuring work by Bert Stern from the family collection paying homage to the artist and his family and including photographs from Stern’s Last Sitting shoots with Marylin Monroe before her passing. Sohn Fine Art’s Master Artist Series Program hosts world class photographers in the Berkshires annually. The goal is to offer unique experiences with artists in the top of their fields, to patrons and collectors of photography, as well as professional and aspiring photographers and artists.

Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio Lenox, MA

Built in 1931 and 1941

Guillaume Lethière, Woman Leaning on a Portfolio (detail), c. 1799, oil on canvas. Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, museum purchase, 1954.21. Photo: Worcester Art Museum/Bridgeman Images

heart of Lenox, next to Tanglewood, this historic museum was the home of artists George L. K. Morris and his wife Suzy Frelinghuysen, founding members of the American Abstract Artists. On view June 20, Get to know George and Suzy offers a view into the lives of the artist couple and their individual paths to artistic expression. The exhibit includes real audio of Morris’s voice as he speaks about his life, thanks to a newly digitalized oral interview from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art from 1968. Also in the Studio, a recently discovered gouache and collage piece by Morris which was a commission for GE refrigerator ads from 1940 is on exhibit. Director and nephew Kinney Frelinghuysen highlights paintings on view and from the Collection on Thursdays and Saturdays at 11:15 a.m. in the Director’s Corner series. Painting demonstrations

Your Creativity, held every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is a chance to relax and create art with no rules and no judgement. Some examples and materials will be supplied.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home Lenox, MA

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home is a National Historic Landmark and cultural center dedicated to the intellectual, artistic, and humanitarian legacy of American author Edith Wharton. The 113-acre property that served as Wharton’s residence from 1902 to 1911 features her classically inspired mansion, as well as French and Italian gardens preserved with the botanical arrangements once planted by Wharton herself. Admission to the historic house is ticketed, yet exploring the grounds, checking

the official home of the annual sculpture show formerly known as SculptureNow. The exhibition, now titled Sculpture at The Mount, will showcase a diverse range of sculptures of varying scale and media produced by emerging and internationally established artists. On view from June 2 until October 20, this immersion of art in the natural world will be free and open for the public to explore. Artist-led tours for groups of all ages, interests and abilities are available for booking.

Chesterwood—Stockbridge, MA

Chesterwood is the historic home, studio, and gardens of America’s foremost public monuments sculptor, Daniel Chester French, best known for his Minute Man, in Concord, MA, and the Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Chesterwood is open seasonally from May 25 to October 21. On view are hundreds of French’s plaster maquettes and working models along with finished works in

Tracy Helgeson, Blue Around The Moon oil on wood panel, 36 x 30"

Hale Johnson, West Stonesdale Farm, oil on panel, 20 x 40"

Curt Hanson, Field with Turkeys oil on panel, 30 x 24"

bronze and marble. Informative guided tours as well as open touring hours take visitors through the buildings and grounds. Visitors can see inside the elegant, Gilded Age family residence, and are encouraged to explore the formal gardens, woodland trails and studio piazza with its stunning mountain view. A new tour experience of the historic residence is available this season after a four-year hiatus due to renovations.  Engage in new educational programming this season such as intergenerational art making in the Art Lab and monthly evening explorations around special topics related to French. The fifth annual Arts Alive! performance series returns with favorites such as tableaux vivants, site-specific original choreography, poetry readings, musical performances and more. Now in its 46th year, the annual contemporary outdoor sculpture show will open June 29 and run through the end of the season. Curator Lauren Clark (Clark Fine Art) has chosen artists

whose work explores themes of light and shadow including Dewitt Godfrey, Joe Wheaton and Wendy Klemperer.

Norman Rockwell Museum

Stockbridge, MA

Norman Rockwell Museum (NRM) is a Berkshires must-see destination with exciting new exhibitions throughout the year featuring both Norman Rockwell and the best of American Illustration. There is always something new to discover here. This summer’s landmark exhibition explores comic levity in American Illustration with What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine together with iconic works by Rockwell that share his uncanny ability to invite laughter over everyday moments. New interpretive panels across the campus along scenic paths to Rockwell’s art studio, sculptures by son Peter Rockwell, and trails to the Housatonic River, are not to be missed. NRM offers timed in-depth

tours of Rockwell’s Studio and guided gallery tours on Rockwell’s Life & Art. Set aside time to explore the beautiful thirty-six-acre campus when you visit this iconic art museum.

Yiddish Book Center—Amherst, MA

The groundbreaking permanent exhibition Yiddish: A Global Culture is now on view at the Yiddish Book Center. Global in scope, yet deeply personal, it tells the extraordinary story of modern Yiddish culture through hundreds of rare objects, family heirlooms, photographs, music and videos. The exhibition displays artifacts from the Center’s collections or on special loan, all shown in public for the first time. Highlights include a sixty-foot color mural of global Yiddishland by illustrator Martin Haake; an enormous hand-drawn 1945 micrographic portrait of Yiddish activist Chaim Zhitlowsky, composed of thousands of miniature letters from his selected texts, created in Buenos Aires by immigrant

The Historic Home & Studio of Sculptor Daniel Chester French

Making Peace with the Past © 2024 Jaye Alison Moscariello Acrylic, Latex and Graphite on Canvas, 62 x 84"

textile worker Guedale Tenenbaum; a well-worn leather medicine ball, used by the popular Yiddish novelist Sholem Asch when he relocated to the U.S. in the 1940s; and vintage clothes and a leather steamer trunk from the 1920s that were used by the celebrated Yiddish literary couple Peretz Hirshbein and Esther Shumiatcher on their decade-long travels around the world. Visitors can also explore a recreation of the turn-of-the-century Warsaw apartment of writer I. L. Peretz, whose legendary salon stood at the forefront of Yiddish modernism in the 1900s and 1910s. The period reproduction features books, profiles of writers and artists in Peretz’s circle, a soundscape of voices from the salon, a re-creation of Peretz’s desk, and wallpaper based on original photographs.

Jaye Alison Moscariello—Sandisfield, MA

Jaye Alison Moscariello is a painter with passion. She is interested in personal and political interrogations of ancestry and place. “[My work] comes from within as I experience the world, and works its way outward, yet it’s always informed by what is happening in the world.” Her recent body of work, Territories Blue, engages with the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, both regions where she has personal connections. The abstract rectangles and earth tones in Territories Blue evoke aerial views of both archaeological dig sites and villages and cities that have been levelled by bombings. As part of her interest in history and archaeology, Moscariello has spent time looking into her own family ancestry and is working on a new series tracing the migrations of her parents’ families and contemplating her own recent migration, returning to New England after years in Northern

California due to the increasing dangers of the wildfires. Moscariello’s work can be seen at Hancock ShakerVillage in Pittsfield, MA, as part of the rotating Artists from Home exhibition, through May 31 and featuring art from her Abstracted Memories series. She is also part of “Where Do We Come From? Where Are We Going?” at Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, MA, through September 1, and After the Thaw at Sandisfield Art Center in Sandisfield, MA, May 4 to 30.

Berkshire Museum—Pittsfield, MA

Berkshire Museum has brought the wonders of the world to Berkshire County for 120 years with its diverse collection of over 40,000 objects and robust programming. Located downtown, the museum is perfectly positioned for visitors to enjoy the amenities of the city before or after exploring all that Berkshire Museum has to offer. The Museum features the wonders of our culture, history, the planet, and life. Explore a vast collection of fine art, historical objects, and experience the Aquarium & Reptile Room—Berkshire Museum’s popular living exhibition. The Wild Indoors: The Animal Art of Julie Bell opens June 1 and explores award-winning artist Julie Bell’s paintings of animals in their natural habitats. Bell has received several awards, including nine awards at the 2014 Art Renewal Center’s International Salon, where she won first and third place in the Animal Category and first place in the Imaginative Realism Category. Berkshire Museum combines natural science, history, and art in its vibrant exhibitions both permanent and rotating. Explore the collection, experience the aquarium, and find inspiration for all ages.