MassMOCA and the architecture of installations

I have loved museums since I was a child. I'd say it was mostly due to my mother who liked them, too, and would take me to them whenever we were in the vicinity of one. I like all kinds, but now, I particularly like visiting new ones, or new additions to old ones.

Last weekend, I went with a friend out to North Adams, Massachusetts, where the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is renovating a set of old, brick manufacturing buildings as a setting for art installations. MassMOCA has been up and running for a few years, but money is not plentiful in North Adams, so only a part of the plan has been developed. But what has been developed is pretty interesting.
The buildings themselves are brick shells supported by massive wood posts and beams. The building housing the major art installations has been opened up with some nice engineering so that the spaces are quite large for a non-metropolitan structure. And the exhibits fill the spaces well.

A current special exhibit by Petra Coyne has a whole tree and stuffed birds flying around in one room, but lacks much visual challenge, though a pleasure to look at - more like elaborate stagecraft for an elegant party. The real pleasure comes from the more permanent installations on the second level of the building.

The first installation comes into view as you climb the stair. Fishline - of considerable weight I'd guess - is strung from one end of the very long room to the other, in the expanding shape of an upside-down horseshoe. A spotlight shining through the fishline to the opposite wall, creates an unexpected and visually confusing series of shadows. There is a quite real light created by the reflected light of the fishline, and then there are moving shadows on the wall. The effect is to confuse our sense of reality and space. You reach out to touch the fishline but it is a shadow; when you get inside the horsehoe shape made by the line, the reflected light changes shape as you move. It is a challenge to constructed reality as we normally perceive it. Such an installation is only be possible in this size room, and is effective precisely because of its size and the ability of the viewer to get into the shape and wander through it.

Another of the large installations begins as you wander into the next room. A red wall made of hemp rope tied in a kind of fishnet knot, hangs to one side and is bordered by two white walls. It is nice to look at, with good color and texture, but makes you question its intent. However, as you step past the far white wall, you realize that the red rope continues - smashingly - into the next room and falls out in spiralling piles onto the floor, filling the room with its curly legs. It has become a huge, red, fishnetted squid, bursting through the wall into the other room, with long tentacles spreading out in the far room. It has become a metaphor for the fearful power of sea creatures, but with some humor and challenge.

Beside the giant red squid, is a series of crunched, white, paper constructions, which in the context of the squid looks and feels like a kelp forest. There is little else to define its intent until you climb the set of stairs to the third floor. There the white paper crunches are transformed into tree trunks, twisting one way and another. MassMOCA has created an aquarium with a state park on the floor above. Only in such large, industrial spaces could such an effect be possible, and actually succeed. It was a wonderful installation.

In contrast to this uniquely effective use of space, in a smallish rectangular gallery on the first floor, was an exhibit of "Dr. Spock's" photography. In reality, Dr. Spock is Leonard Nimoy, who though living now in LA, comes from the North Adams area and is a gifted photographer.
His installation of photos of individuals' Other Selves, is a powerful and often humorous exhibit. It left the two of us smiling and thinking hard about just who our alternate selves might be.

The two uses of space - the gallery with Spock's photos, and the installations' space, - are opposing ideas of museum architecture. In the gallery space, the rectangle is used as an envelope for a flat, two dimensioned exhibit. People provide the third dimension. In the installation spaces, the architecture provides a volume inside which a 3-D art form is created. People become a part of the art, and move through and around it. Both kinds of spaces are useful, and it is a tribute to MassMOCA that it has allowed for the development of both kinds of art within its architecture.
It will be interesting to see just how Norman Foster's new wing of Boston's Museum of Fine Art allows for both 2-D and 3-D exhibitions!