Still, the artists Mass MoCA have selected credit it for allowing experimentation. “There’s more wariness about taking on something too new or too experimental among us, including Mass MoCA,” he said. Michael Darling, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, noted, though, that since the recession, many museums have focused more on artists with name recognition. Among the words they used to describe Mass MoCA’s curatorial program are “less ambitious than it once was,” “more middlebrow” and “gun shy.” It was the Kiefer opening and the display of Xu Bing’s “Phoenix,” two gigantic birds made of detritus, that pushed 2013’s attendance far above the more typical 120,000 visitors.īut some curators at those museums, while declining to speak on the record for collegial reasons, disagree. ![]() Together, the LeWitt and Kiefer exhibitions have muddied Mass MoCA’s profile as a presenter of experimental art. But he found the spaces here to be very compelling.” Kiefer has his own studio and doesn’t need our help. “We focus on emerging and midcareer artists who want to make something large, and we like to fabricate the art with them. “We would never have done it ourselves,” Mr. The foundation paid for the revamping of the building, landscaping and most of the increased operating costs. One day last month, he showed off a second semi-permanent installation, which opened last September: three massive works by Anselm Kiefer borrowed from the Hall Art Foundation and installed in a renovated water tank building. “Before that, everything we did changed every year, and when you change shows, the cupboard may be bare,” Mr. When the installation opened in 2008, Holland Cotter of The New York Times called the setting “close to perfect.” For Mass MoCA, it was also close to a permanent collection, which it lacks. Thompson, aside from putting new pressure on the museum’s small staff, $7 million annual budget and minuscule $3 million endowment (plus $12 million in reserves), may further challenge the museum’s stated identity as “an experimental platform for art making.” His plans call for Mass MoCA to devote half its exhibition space to art that already exists. ![]() Since then, in some eyes, Mass MoCA has lost some of its appetite for risk. Büchel charged that Mass MoCA had mismanaged the project and had allowed some people to see the work before completion, while the museum called his demands unreasonable and said he had abandoned the project - landed in court, and though the parties eventually settled, both sullied their reputations in the process. Thompson said, when Mass MoCA had no endowment and no cash reserve. It blew past its $165,000 limit to about $385,000, driving the budget “to the brink,” Mr. Most notably, the museum brushed with financial disaster in 2006, thanks to the exploding costs of a vast, unfinished installation by the Swiss artist Christoph Büchel. It will double its exhibition space to 260,000 square feet - more than DIA:Beacon’s 240,000 square feet in Beacon, N.Y., and just shy of the total gallery space at the sprawling Los Angeles County Museum of Art.īut the expansion will again test Mass MoCA, which has teetered several times before and since its opening in 1999. Ripe for growth, Mass MoCA will now spread into nearly all corners of its 26-building campus. “Mass MoCA has become a really important asset in North Adams,” said Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America, which awards grants to encourage such “creative placemaking” pursuits around the country. And it has become a model for hundreds of other localities hoping to use culture as an economic driver. It adds more than $20 million a year to the regional economy, including the businesses that rent its surplus space, according to the Center for Creative Community Development at Williams College. Last year, Mass MoCA attracted a record 162,000 visitors. Thompson, the museum’s director, funds to start the last phase of an effort he helped hatch nearly three decades ago: transforming an abandoned 19th-century factory complex into a destination arts center that could help revive the struggling economy of North Adams.ĭespite setbacks that threatened its existence, part of his dream has now been realized. Inside was a $25.4 million earmark for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which gave Mr. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts had signed a $1.4 billion capital facilities bond bill. ![]() Thompson had been waiting for finally arrived on Aug.
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