With The Fourth quickly approaching, thousands will be escaping the urban scene for a long holiday weekend or week. Given a choice between seashore and hillside, more New Yorkers than ever are choosing the Berkshires—weekendspeak for Berkshire County, in Western Massachusetts.

The region has been known for its liberal leanings since early times—with Shay’s Rebellion, a violent uprising during the late 1780s in protest of economic and civil rights injustices, leaving a permanent mark on the region’s culture. It has also been a magnet for notables in the world of art and culture, with famous residents and visitors such as Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorn and Daniel Chester French, who left New York and Boston behind for the spectacular vistas and bucolic setting, and later, Norman Rockwell, whose legacy lives on at the eponymous museum in Stockbridge. 

The northern part of the county is currently undergoing a transformation from an out-of-the-way stop on a vacation to a cultural magnet. Last year, Mass MoCA, which occupies the 16-acre site of the former Sprague Electric Company, in North Adams, doubled the museum’s size, adding long-term exhibitions of artists including Laurie Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Jennie Holzer and James Turrell, as well as expanding its performance programs.

Founded in the 1980s, it was conceived by Thomas Krens, who was then director of the Williams College Museum of Art before spearheading the Guggenheim’s global expansion between 1988-2005. Currently he’s back in North Adams, directing a number of cultural initiatives including the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, to be designed by Frank Gehry. The area has attracted so many transplants from New York and Boston, who in turn draw many weekend visitors, that a new deluxe hotel and restaurant will open in North Adams this year. The restaurant, Loom, with chef-owner Cortney Burns (a transplant from San Francisco), has created considerable pre-opening buzz.  Along with Mass MoCA, The Williams College Museum of Art and the college’s art research division, the Clark Art Institute form a major art destination, all within a 10-mile radius. Photo left: Jennifer Steinkamp: Blind Eye, currently on view at the Clark
Photo below, Mass MoCA; courtesyBrunerCott Architects

Berkshire County’s role in the Industrial Revolution stems from the hydropower of its formidable rivers, the Westfield and the Housatonic, along whose banks America’s papermaking industries originated. Crane & Companywas founded in 1801, and continues to be the sole manufacturer of U.S. currency paper as well as stationery items. It operates the small but informative Crane Museum and Center for the Paper Arts in a historic stone house in Dalton. Info

Artist and longtime DART subscriber, Thomas Libetti—himself a transplant from New York City to South Egremont, offered his take on Berkshire County arts last week in this email:

Here are a few noteworthy exhibitions in my hood, Southern Berkshire County, (aka SoCo), and a half hour away in Hudson, NY:

Ellsworth Kelly’s Suite of Plant Lithographs at Berkshire Botanic Garden’s newly renovated Leonhardt Galleries, along with a lovely showing of contemporary sculpture throughout their garden, entitled Beautiful Strangers: Artists Discover the Garden (berkshirebotanical.org).

September Gallery, 44 Warren Street in Hudson, is an evolving platform for artists of diverse disciplines. The gallery is committed to engaging the surrounding community, while hosting artists predominantly from Upstate to Brooklyn to Boston, currently showing, Stars and Cells: Nicole Cherubini, Victoria Fu, Carrie Moyer. Info Map

And in between the two, my series of drawings inspired by John Cassavetes’ 1968 film Faces (50th anniversary btw), downstairs at a Crossroads Foodshop, 2642 State Route 23, Hillsdale, NY. Photo above More about Thomas in DART

While not in the Berkshires, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is a worthwhile side trip on the way north. Located on the campus of Hampshire College, in Amherst, it is the first full-scale museum dedicated to picture book art and childhood literacy, with exhibitions by international artists and continuous public programs.

For more info on what’s happening in the Berkshires, go here