The MCLA Institute for the Arts and Humanities (MCLA-IAH) is a grant-funded initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which works to strategically promote equity-centered change on campus and in the community by (1) expanding access to area arts and humanities resources, (2) catalyzing opportunities for interdisciplinary engagements, and (3) advancing experiential teaching and learning practices in higher education. We create experiential spaces for arts education, dialogue, and action.
Hosted by the North Adams Artist Impact Coalition. Many people who are not of color and who work within the arts express a desire to be anti-racist and move toward systemic and institutional change. Part of the process of becoming anti-racist is to understand how difficult the journey itself is and why. We invite members of the Northern Berkshires’ vibrant arts community to engage in this discussion as a means of understanding the role we all play as the individuals who make up collectives and as the members who both run and support arts organizations that want to bring about positive change. BCRC and AIC recognizes that anti-racism is not easy work, but it is work that must begin with ourselves and must not lose momentum when the news cycle shifts focus. Artists and arts organizations, especially, are well positioned to affect tangible social change, both within and without. The past conversations are available on the North Adams Artist Impact Coalition's YouTube channel.
In Session is a series of four panel discussions on anti-racist work in museums, presented by MASS MoCA and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) at MCLA. They invite artists, curators, and arts administrators to discuss how museums and artists represent Black and Brown trauma in artwork, exhibitions, and performance, and navigate the resulting implications and challenges. These conversationsm are designed to pose more questiosn and answers.The first three panels were were streamed live on MASS MoCA's YouTube channel and Facebook page, and are still available on the YouTube channel. The fourth panel date will be announced soon.
Gallery 51 will host the virtual show The Art for Social Justice Project opening Sunday, June 6, 2021. This show was created by the young adults of the Arts in Recovery for Youth program to promote social justice and open community conversations. Through digital art, poetry and painting, the artists have chosen to express themes of racial injustice and political oppression, violence against women, bullying, rights of LGBTQIA+ persons, freedom of gender expression, body image and gender equality. The young adults showcase their art alongside the art of five mentoring social activists in the art world. The AIRY young adult artists are Rachael Bentz, Kiara Bresett, Molly Harrington, Jack Kelly, and Jalencia Melendez. The mentoring guest artists are Katy Holt, Em Reim Ifrach, Caroline Kelley, Pops Peterson, and Marney Schorr. Funding for the Art for Social Justice project was provided by New England Grassroots Environment Fund and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
The Jessica Park Project was established in 2004 at MCLA to study and promote the art of Jessica Park, a renowned artist with autism in mid-career who lives and works in Williamstown, MA. Originally part of the Fine and Performing Arts major where student classes in Arts Management created exhibitions, books, and catalogues to celebrate Jessica's work, the Project, still under the guidance of its founder and now Director, Professor Emeritus Tony Gengarelly, works with the college and community to display Jessica Park's stylistically brilliant and compelling art, as well as that of other artists on the autism spectrum, to many audiences in Berkshire County and Southern Vermont. In this endeavor we still enjoy the support of Jessica and the Park family as well as a number of partners, on and off campus. Our current connection to the BCRC through Gallery 51, where a number of Park related exhibitions have been shown over the past several years, places the Project exactly where it needs to be as it continues to advance the IDEA principles of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access through the study and appreciation of Outsider Art.
(No longer available for viewing)
The 2020 Alumni Art Show was an online exhibition co-hosted by the MCLA Alumni Office. The curated works included in the 2020 Alumni Art Show span the practices of fourteen artists who graduated from MCLA between 1971 - 2019. Each artist was invited to submit work for the exhibition, from which Gallery 51 made a final selection of the works included in the show. The show's program is available here.
(Postponed due to Covid-19)
MCLA'S Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) is pleased to offer the ART SHUTTLE! There will be three MCLA shuttles that will run from 3-6 P.M. The shuttle will start at MCLA. MCLA students will be picked up at Hoosac Hall Dorm and Williams College students will be picked up WCMA. This is a free service open to MCLA & Williams College Students.
