By Nancy Moffitt
Joe Thompson, WG'87, and the rags to riches story of MassMOCA
If you call the Massachusettes
Museum of Contemporary Art
(MassMOCA), hope that you
get put on hold. There’s no
Muzak, information or even
classical music, the usual museum
standby. And while there’s
little doubt you’ll be perplexed
and even entranced by what
you hear, you won’t know what
it is you’re actually hearing.
Could it be chimes, or a faint,
high-pitched gong? What is
that sound?
“It’s a recording of a sound
art installation that Berlin
artist Christina Kubisch did in
our historic clocktower,” explains
Joseph Thompson,
WG’87 and director of MassMOCA,
located in the Berkshire
Mountains of Western
Massachusettes. “She went up
into the clocktower and
strummed and hammered and
stroked the bells, recording
some 90 separate mini-compositions
to computer memory.
She then hooked up a series of
solar cells to the computer, and
the computer picked and combined
a short selection of mini-compositions
depending on
the location and intensity of
the sunlight. The bell tower
now responds to the weather.
When you’re on hold, you hear a compilation of those sounds.”
Being put on hold at MassMOCA,
it would seem, is diagnostic
of the larger MassMOCA
experience: off-center, daring,
provocative, and according to
the critics, something to be admired.
“I have seen the future,
and it’s MassMOCA,” wrote
Lee Rosenbaum, contributing
editor of Art in America magazine,
in a Wall Street Journal article.
MassMOCA is the largest center of its kind in the nation,
a sprawling complex of 27 ren-ovated,once-abandoned factory
buildings – 220,000 square feet of space in all – with a dramatic
array of on-loan art including a Rauschenberg that
fills a gallery the size of a football field. It is the 13-year creation
of Thompson, who stubbornly nurtured the $31.4
million project despite numerous setbacks, including a temporary
loss of state funding and asbestos-laden buildings.
Open since last Memorial Day, MassMOCA has drawn
100,000 visitors at this writing, and many would say brought
new life to the dusty, struggling river town of North Adams.
The national media has largely taken a kind and admiring view of MassMOCA and its
rags to riches evolution, as well as Thompson, 41, its
feisty leader.
The idea of MassMOCA was conceived by Thomas
Krens, then director of the Williams College Museum of
Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts, who envisioned the
country’s largest museum for contemporary art. The original
plan seemed simple enough: the state would fund the
renovation of the striking but tattered buildings, while
major private collectors would provide the art. But in
1988 this plan began to unravel. The Massachusetts economy
took a nosedive along with Michael Dukakis’ campaign
for president, and Krens left to become director of
the Guggenheim. Meanwhile, the project’s initial partnerships
fell through, and the state withdrew its support.
Thompson was left “holding the baby,” wrote Time magazine,
adding that he “has proved a shrewd parent.”
Thompson restructured the highly politicized project
from museum to arts center. Over a period of years, he
raised millions in private funds, a condition of the state’s
continued financial support.
|
