We have had the most fabulous day in North Adams, a once forgotten little town that is being rejuvenated by having the most amazing museum of contemporary art in the whole of America, MASMoCA. It is housed in multiple 19th century factory buildings and is a wonderful and enormous space to house many brilliant exhibitions. I hardly know where to start to tell you about all the beautiful creative stuff we discovered! It was lovely to be allowed to take as many photos as I wished too.
We spent a long time reading some of Tom Phillip’s work, illustrated below. He has taken a Victorian novel and reproduced every page, hiding some words under an illustration and highlighting others so as to create a poem on every page. I loved it though there are almost 1000 pieces so didn’t manage to read many! If you click on the photos, I hope you’ll be able to read the poems. This is an inspiration for me – I really want to try it though referencing other literature and monument opus happenings as he does, I’ll leave to him!
The most stunning gallery was that containing Phoenix by Xu Bing, a Chinese artist, two huge and magnificent birds made from scrap. My photos do it scant justice so I would urge you to look up the artist and his work. The story of its creation was shown in beautifully illustrated pages and in a video.
There was so much beautiful art in there that we popped out for lunch and then spent another couple of hours soaking up works by Sol Lewitt, Johnny Carrera, Mark Dion and lastly Jason Middlebrook whose beautiful pieces interpret the landscape.
We could have done with another whole day here but tomorrow we move on through Massachusetts, leaving our delightful hotel, The Porches, which is made up of six 1890’s houses once the homes of the factory workers who worked in the building which houses the gallery and which we could see from the windows there.
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However, we weren’t finished yet! The town had a street art trail for us to follow.
</That was a very full and different day, even if my feet ache now!
