I'm not a weekender, generally. Many New Yorkers feel the need to escape the the noisy city on weekends. MUST. SEE. NATURE. Or at least, they feel the need for open spaces, starry skies, mountains, trees, ponds, quaintness, or simple suburban quiet. I'm not one of those New Yorkers. Don't get me wrong, I love being in little hotels, or visiting out-of-town friends, or decompressing on the beach. But I rarely feel the need to leave New York, and as I work relatively long hours during the week, my weekends are essential for errands, home-time, and New York things like museums and concerts. So I actually get away and get to see new places much less than I would generally enjoy. I've lived in NYC for 13 years, but I've never actually traveled northeast--I've never been anywhere in hardcore New England.

An old marquee in downtown North Adams click for larger

Until this past weekend. Christopher whisked me away for a romantic weekend in western Massachusetts, where steeples, antique shops, and regional museums lie nestled in the rolling hills of the Berkshires. We took off last Friday night, Japanese take-out and freshly baked cupcakes from Podunk Teahouse at the ready, popped in Willie Nelson's amazing new CD, and hit the roads previously known to me only through traffic reports--Willis Avenue Bridge, The Major Deegan, The Taconic Parkway.

left: Steeples of North Adams; right: Public Library click for larger

Three-and-a-half hours later we arrived in sleepy little North Adams, Massachusetts and checked into Porches, a hotel made of a block of town-houses that had given shelter to factory works across the street from a large 19th-century industrial complex of mills and factories. That campus of industrial buildings is now MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum, which in fact was the reason for our trip. Our room was well-appointed, with a large living area, a working fireplace, a small kitchen housed in a large wooden chest, and a huge bathroom fitted with a jacuzzi tub. Did I mention the working fireplace? We enjoyed a bottle of wine and a fire and well-deserved Saturday-morning sleep in. We got up refreshed and ready for art.

MASS MoCA is enormous. It's not a museum with a collection, but rather a venue for temporary exhibitions of contemporary art of all stripes. It's as wonderful to take in the museum's architecture as it is to see the art. Old factory chic. Huge open interior spaces. Fantastic brick exteriors.

We were treated to three big shows: a retrospective of Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, a German paintings show of artists from the New Leipzig School, and an installation by Carsten Hoeller called Amusement Park. The Huang Yong Ping show left me cold. Built of impeccable craft and borrowed ideas, it was a Far East watered down blend of previously (and better) executed and more pure Western ideas. I know--how un-PC can I get?--but I just didn't find it compelling at all.

The paintings show--Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection--was much more up my alley, and it too showed some kind of comparison between East and West--well, okay, East and West Germany. The artists all studied and live in Leipzig, and they all work within the East German tradition of social realist figure painting. But, of course, German reunification has blurred those lines of tradition and division, and this group of paintings reflects the style and manner of the earlier East German social realism, but with all the political and historical angst that come with being compared to and influenced by the art coming out of the bigger German art centers like Berlin. All the artists included were interesting. My favorite paintings were a group of interiors by Matthias Weischer, claustrophobic paintings of unnervingly quiet empty rooms.

left: Christopher amused; right: Me distorted click for larger

Carsten Hoeller's Amusement Park, though, is what really made the museum trip for me. I've long been fascinated by amusement part rides--I love riding them and I love looking at them. This sculptural installation of modified rides captures the creaky disorientation that comes with the sights and sounds of any midway. The rides are lit up and broken down, and all in motion--very very very slow motion. The Tilt-a-Whirl (purposefully misnamed by the artist as "The Twister"?) moved so slowly that at first I couldn't tell it was moving. Long pauses of slow-motion stillness are interrupted when the shifting balance finally allows a curved seat to give in to gravity and roll around its track. Hoeller also cleverly reinvented the fun-house mirror with a room of electronic panels projecting slightly delayed images of museum-goers. The show is like a slow-motion fever dream, or a nightmare for someone who's afraid of rides.

left: CP outside of MASS MoCA; right: DZ outside The Clark click for larger

We ate a romantically nondescript Italian dinner in "downtown" North Adams, and enjoyed a chilly walk around the main drag. The next day we had breakfast and the Sunday NY Times delivered to the room. Then we checked out and drove a few miles west to Williamstown, Massachusetts. I'd always wanted to see The Clark--a small private museum who's paintings I'd seen here and there on loan to other museum shows. My expectations were high and I was not disappointed. The collection is thrilling, with amazing examples of 19th Century American and European art--Renoirs, Manets, Monets, Degas, Casssats, Sargents, Homers. I confess, 19th-century art is much more to my taste than contemporary. The museum is small enough to see in a little over an hour, and dense enough to drive you wild with delight. My favorites were a small Manet interior and a Sargent Venetian street scene:

left: Manet: Interior at Arcachon, 1871; right: Sargent: A Street in Venice, c. 1880-82 click for larger

We ate lunch at a sweet little bar in Williamstown--very New England. I had Boston Clam Chowder and fish & chips ("Do you know where I can get scrod?"); Christopher had crab cakes and a burger. Yum. Then we hit the road for a late-afternoon dappled-sunlight drive through the gorgeous Berkshires of upstate New York. We arrived back in the city in love with art, life, Willie Nelson, New York, New England, weekends away, and each other. It was a wonderful weekend.

Comments (1)