MASS MoCA
THE OFFICE is the Curator of Performing Arts and Film at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), where we developed a robust performing arts program to complement the institution’s visual arts work and have programmed a year-round series of dance, music, theater, and documentary film in multiple venues on the museum campus since its opening in 1999. Housed in a unique complex of renovated 19th Century factory buildings in western Massachusetts, MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest centers for making and enjoying today’s most evocative art. Moving into the closed and abandoned Sprague Electric plant and helping to revitalize a flagging North Adams and its surrounding region, it has become one of the world’s great examples of art and culture’s capacity to act as both an economic engine and a vital element of healthy communities.
With vast galleries and a stunning collection of indoor and outdoor performing arts venues, MASS MoCA is able to embrace all forms of art: music, sculpture, dance, film, painting, photography, theater, and new, boundary-crossing works of art that defy easy classification. The museum is the perfect lens through which to explore the dynamic interaction between artistic disciplines, and a singular incubator for creative development. Performing arts are integral to MASS MoCA’s mission, and more than 40 weekends every year are devoted to live events.
Much of the work MASS MoCA presents in its light-filled spaces, on its technically sophisticated stages, and within its beautiful network of courtyards is actually made on site.
For visual arts, this happens during extended fabrication residencies for artists whose work is shown in the galleries. In the performing arts program, hundreds of projects have been created, advanced, and realized during developmental residencies, where artists-in-residence in all performances disciplines are given space, time, and technical support to bring their projects to the next stage of development. These residencies also give audiences extraordinary opportunities to experience the artistic process and to see work being made during open rehearsals, artist talks, and work-in-progress performances.
Festivals that activate multiple spaces or even the entire museum campus are also essential to MASS MoCA’s programming. Bang on a Can has brought new music to the Berkshires every July since time immemorial; the Freshgrass Bluegrass and Roots Music Festival, which is co-produced by the Freshgrass Foundation every September, has become a preeminent American roots event and a must-play for emerging and iconic Americana artists alike; the High Mud Comedy Festival rolls into town every spring; and Wilco’s Solid Sound has emerged as one of the true gems of the popular festival circuit.
Through each of these exceptional events, and in all of MASS MoCA’s performing arts programming, runs a common thread that connects the art on stage to the art in the galleries, illuminating the porous borders between different forms and celebrating the sense of discovery and possibility that defines the museum—and drives our work as curators.
[Banner photo: Douglas Mason / MASS MoCA]
![Wilco headlines on the mainstage in Joe's Field during Solid Sound. [Photo: Greg Saulmon]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e83e9b6ae45e242b93eb8bb/1589299923950-LTF28JL1CASIWHFO3SVQ/wilco.jpg)