I'm sorry to intervene in the middle of a thread I haven't followed, as
I've been "no mailed" for a few weeks, but Eric Siegel wondered whether I
was still around, and so this is a response to his query.

Eric is referring to American History Workshop's plan for the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, dubbed Mass MoCA, which is
being established in North Adams, Massachusetts.  The Guggenheim, during
the days when Tom Krens was busy organizing it as a kind of Benettons of
the museum world, aimed to take over the enormous (million sq. ft. or so)
former Arnold Print Cotton Works (once one of the largest textile mills
in the world) and later Sprague Electric Company works (a major defense
contractor), and turn it into a huge museum for displaying environmental
art, sculpture, and other installations and performances.  Through many
convolutions, this plan eventually won the support of the state officials
in Boston, who floated a $35,000,000 bond issue to restore the site for
this purpose.  (Their love of contemporary art may have had less to do
with this than their sense that a property covering 1/4 of the downtown
area of the mill town could not simply be abandoned.)

Well, in the course of time, the Guggenheim pulled out, and the rationale
for the project needed to be rethought.

AHW joined a number of other organizations, including Jacob's Pillow, the
dance center in nearby Becket, in conjuring up a new vision.  Reasoning
that the institutions we most cherish in the cultural world are those
like the art museum with original paintings, the opera house, the public
library, which were created in the last two centuries by urban bourgeois
societies around a very distinct notion of art and performance, we
imagined that new forms of "the life history of contemporary art" would
require new sorts of institutions.  If one thinks of the creative process
as starting with a lonely artist sitting in a Parisian garret (cold),
dreaming of success, finally seeing his works on the walls of the Salon
or on the stage of the Opera Garnier, then living out a prosperous life
surrounded by *his* wife and mistress and proteges, and then bequeathing
his works to the Nation, then these old forms are just fine.  But what
does one do when the artist is involved in a collaboration from the
beginning, when the mounting of the work requires months of try-outs on a
stage, involving the contributions of visual, musical, dramatic, and
performance artists from many backgrounds, and the work is given in
unorthodox settings (perhaps site-specific), and then needs to be
archived in facilities that have never been imagined yet?

So we imagined that Mass MoCA could be a lively place where the entire
life process of the work of art, from first glimmers through try-outs and
public
presentations through a new form of archival recording and storage, would
be located.  Visitors coming to such a site would not confine their
attention to the completed works of painters or choreographers, but to
the process, the intentions, the struggle, the feedback and revisions, etc.

So AHW invented an interpretive path through the proposed arts complex in
which visitors would engage  artists at various stages of their work,
without invariably distrupting their progress, through the use of new
interactive media.  Unhappily, none of this is likely to happen.

But if anyone is interested in seeing a version of the AHW plan for the
"MoCA walk," I will be happy to respond.  Only off-list inquiries, please.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Richard Rabinowitz              <> American History Workshop
[log in to unmask]                  <> 588 Seventh Street
718/499-6500 fax: 718/499-6575  <> Brooklyn, New York 11215-3707



On Wed, 3 Apr 1996, Eric Siegel wrote:

>    If Richard Rabinowitz is still hanging around here, maybe he could
>    tell us of his fascinating conception for the re-imagining of North
>    Adams (?) MA.  This long-delayed project, which is supposed to be
>    funded partially out of State bonds, will recreate this town as an art
>    town.  As I recall, part of Richard's conception was to make it a
>    place where tourists could come watch artists at work.  I think that
>    the Gugg was supposed to be one of the original tenants, along with
>    Jacobs Pillow.
>
>    Eric Siegel
>    [log in to unmask]
>