MASS MoCA

MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest centers for making and enjoying today’s most evocative art. With vast galleries and a stunning collection of indoor and outdoor performing arts venues, MASS MoCA is able to embrace all forms of art: music, sculpture, dance, film, painting, photography, theater, and new, boundary-crossing works of art that defy easy classification. Much of the work we show in our light-filled spaces, on our technically sophisticated stages, and within our lovely network of late 19th-century courtyards is made here during extended fabrication and rehearsal residencies that bring hundreds of the world’s most brilliant and innovative artists to North Adams all year round.

MASS MoCA exhibits art by both well-known and emerging artists, focusing on large-scale, immersive installations that would be impossible to realize in conventional museums. The broad-shouldered, raw industrial character of our soaring galleries (with 250,000 square feet of open and often naturally lit space) has proven both inspiring and liberating to artists.

MASS MoCA presents more than 75 performances year-round, including contemporary dance, alternative cabaret, world music dance parties, indie-rock, progressive bluegrass, outdoor silent films with live music, documentaries, and avant-garde theater. Indeed, the word “museum” in our name is misleading because fully 50% of MASS MoCA’s programmatic resources, staffing, and emotional bandwidth is devoted to the performing arts, and our commitment extends to hosting work-in-progress showings, residency workshops, and support of experimental R&D.

MASS MoCA offers a wide range of participatory learning opportunities for students, teenagers, teachers, adults, and families, including: hands-on art-making classes; lectures; Art Assembly performances for schools; artist Q&As; docent-guided tours; art camps; after-school programs; and Kidspace, a child-centered art gallery and hands-on studio that offers in-depth art education through curricular-based classroom programs with local schools, as well as free public admission all year round (call for free public hours).