Mass MoCA

I drove out to Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in the far northwestern corner of the state yesterday, about a two and a half hour drive from here. Pretty drive out through the Berkshire Mountains, though dampened by rain, which I was rather astonished by after several weeks of generally dry weather. The winding wet roads (the extreme example being the famous Hairpin Turn in North Adams) reminded me I’m going to have to get new tires if I decide to keep my old car on the road through the winter.

I arrived at the museum to find Rachel of The Velveteen Rabbi standing in the drizzle in the parking lot waiting for me and for Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries. Lorianne caught up with us about 15 minutes later at the lovely Gramercy Bistro, which Rachel, being relatively local, recommended for our brunch. After our omelets and eggs benedicts, and catching up on things off-blog and personal, we walked back over to the museum to get our eyes and ears and minds prodded and stretched and spun until a couple of hours later we found ourselves in the café glazed-eyed and stimulated to capacity.

I think we all liked best the aviary, "Library for the Birds of Massachusetts," part of the sprawling exhibit, “Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom” (see recent NY Times review here). We sat inside the giant birdcage for a long time watching the live finches chirping and flitting around the dead tree strewn with nature books and generally ignoring us. Then there were the flying cars exploding with fiber optic fireworks in Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Inopportune.” (There’s a slide show of the “Nine Cars” here and another of the rest of “Inopportune” here.) I was also happy to see the museum space itself – its huge galleries unfolding through the renovated 19th century factory buildings. The Mass MoCA website says they have 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, with one gallery (the one with the exploding cars, I take it) as long as a football field. It was well worth the trip out to see it, especially in such enjoyable company.

The dreary weather and my own idiocy in deleting photos I hadn’t actually uploaded to my PC combined to prevent me from showing any good photos of my own here. So I’ll defer to Rachels’ Flickr photos and Lorianne’s when she posts hers.

Update: Good, Lorianne has posted her story, with some fabulous pictures!

Comments

[Lorianne]

Cool slide-show links. Their pix aren't as dark & blurry as mine...

I've posted my pix (and somehow managed to ping you twice in the process...sorry!) Now that I've recovered from the surreal effect of So Much Oddness considered in a single afternoon, I'm feeling wondrously refreshed from the experience. What a great way to get away from everything: hallucinogenic drugs not necessary. :-)

[inkberry]

Thank you so much for schlepping out here to my neck of the woods! What a pleasure, to see y'all and to see the art all at the same time...

[Rachel]

Drat. I meant to post that comment as "Rachel" of "Velveteen rabbi," not "inkberry" of "inkblog." This is the danger of having two blogs and making comments with two different hats on...

[leslee]

Lorianne: Heh, yes it was rather hallucinogenic, wasn't it? And I didn't even get stuck in front of that Bjork-like video for however many loops it went through while I was visiting the Ladies room. Are you having flashbacks??

Rachel: Hey, it was well worth the trip - for the company, the food, and the Mass MoCA experience.(And I've posted with the wrong name, but I haven't been active on my Sensitive Traveler blog in a long time - need to get involved again there...)