MASS MoCA, at last

A view of James Turrell's Into the Light at MASS MoCA

A recent survey reported that just 13% of Americans are happy - the other 87%, may simply need a visit to MASS MoCA.

A lot of people hear the words "contemporary art" and immediately think they can't relate (why they seem to think they can relate better to 19th-century art - i.e. Monet - is beyond me). But the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is so friendly, and the art there so fresh and varied, that I believe it could make many converts of those stodgy grumps.

On a recent (much delayed) foray, my wife and I viewed nine exhibitions (among many others), and we really had a good time doing it. Need I explain that the place is huge, with nine buildings and some spaces so vast they might be better measured in acres than square feet? So it requires stamina, and a lot of time, if you want to try to see it all.

Blane De St. Croix - Hollow Ground 2020
(seen during site-specific installation)

The primary temporary show, entitled How to Move a Landscape, features several monumental works by Blane De St. Croix, an eco-artist committed to battling climate change by making art about the effects it can have in far-flung places, such as above the Arctic Circle. It also includes a great deal of smaller-scale work, covering a range of media from drawing to sculpture, installation, animation, and video, in addition to a research section that offers sketches, photographs, and other ephemera.

Unlike most political artists, De St. Croix hasn't lost his sense of humor - much of his work is quite playful, even as it confronts our pending global disaster. Notable in this regard is an electric train set that runs in a circle near the entrance to the exhibition, piercing a wall tunnel-like twice as it goes round and round. Its cars are loaded with modeled tranches of tundra, neatly offering a solution to the show's titular problem.

This witty miniature is balanced by a massive, tilting construction in the huge gallery beyond that looks for all the world like a life-size swath of melting glacier, which you can perambulate and walk under, and even poke your head up into (via some of its melty craters). Technically, De St. Croix's sculptural illusion is effective, yet it's also obviously a physically challenging bit of installation. Entitled Hollow Ground, I found it very likable and, frankly, far more interesting live than it looks in pictures.

Ad Minoliti - Fantasias Modulares

Underscoring De St. Croix's emphasis on scale is a "monumental miniature" entitled Broken Landscape IV that depicts a long, deep slice of the U.S./Mexican border. The meticulously crafted sculpture stands eye-high, and is dozens of feet long, with tiny details of grass, telephone wires, and, of course, the barrier fence marching along its surface.

Near the sprawling St. Croix exhibition is a relatively small one-room installation by the Argentine artist Ad Minoliti that more than makes up for its size by deploying great swaths of cartoon-bright colors. Indeed, Minoliti is something like Disney for the cultural elite (that's us, dear reader!), and served on this visit as a delightful palate cleanser as we moved on through the museum.

Ledelle Moe, whose massive concrete heads and figures occupy the famously football field-sized Building 5, is another sculptor utilizing scale to powerful effect. Entitled When, the installation seems to impose silent contemplation on its viewers, similar to the awestruck effect of standing in a vast temple or cathedral.

Ledelle Moe - Remain  at left; Congregation at right

While this collection includes works from as early as 2005, the show's central piece is current. 2019's Remain is an 18-foot-high kneeling female figure that evokes the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. In addition to the figure, Remain incorporates a complex scaffolding of metal rods that support innumerable small concrete forms of uncertain identity. The sculpture is deeply impressive even while remaining rather mysterious, as is the rest of the work in this show.

Another sprawling exhibition currently at MASS MoCA, entitled Kissing through a Curtain, engages with questions of communication, crossing borders (its 10 artists come from all over the world), and - obliquely - our current crises of COVID and racial injustice. Unfortunately, I found the work simply didn't engage my interest, much of it seeming to try too hard.

Justin Favela - Popocatepetl e Iztaccihuatl vistos desde Atlixco,
after Jose Maria Velasco, 2016

In one example, Justin Favela's painstaking paper and glue renderings of numerous landscape paintings by Jose Maria Velasco, which are provided as a starting point for the show, come off as merely colorful kitsch. In another, Kim Faler has suspended a panoply of enlarged sculptural renderings of chewed wads of bubble gum. Are you kidding me? In the end, I couldn't find the inspiration to care about any of these artists' obsessions.

On the other hand, the Them and Us/Ellos y Nosotros exhibition by the Mexican-American artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez), communicates and engages effectively across languages and and borders, using varied media while literally straddling the frontier between Tijuana and San Diego.

I loved this show for its audacity in making art out of common materials such as printed metal signs, cloth fabric, wood, neon, and kernels of corn, and for its liberal incorporation of the Spanish language (significantly, there are more than 50 million Spanish speakers in the U.S., though it is still not an official language here).

ERRE - Orange Country

ERRE (the written rendering of the Spanish rolled "r") is an ingenious creator whose installation at MASS MOcA incorporates a full-scale re-creation of a section of border wall as a divider between the show and the rest of the space on the second floor of Building 6 (a fabulous building, by the way, which opened about three years ago and is gorgeous all by itself).

His messages are both simple and complex, featuring a mysterious video of a fictional desert crime scene, proverbs presented as shimmering metallic-colored eye charts, a four-poster bed with a map of Mexico in pounded nails, and an elegant but deeply chilling curved cage. For me, this is what political art strives to be, but so rarely succeeds.

Wendy Red Star - Medicine Crow

More educational than political, but very pointedly cultural, is an exhibition in MASS MoCA's Kidspace gallery by the Native American artist Wendy Red Star. In Apsáalooke: Children of the Large-Beaked Bird, Red Star uses altered archival photographs to examine historical truths about her Apsáalooke (Crow) nation, and creates large-format color self-portraits that debunk stereotypical views of Native Americans.

Not just for children, this work is witty, well crafted, and draws you in. Though a timed reservation for the smallish Kidspace is recommended, we were allowed to walk in, as the space wasn't at capacity. Also, it's possible to visit just the Kidspace gallery without paying admission to MASS MoCA, should you so desire.

Speaking of planning ahead, in these pandemic days one must set up a timed entry ticket to visit MASS MoCA (and masks are, of course, required) but it's such a huge space that keeping adequate distance once inside is no problem. I found it easy to reserve a timed arrival window online, and when we got there a few minutes late due to road construction delays, we were ushered in with a welcoming smile.

More urgently, to view James Turrell's truly extraordinary exhibition Into the Light, one must gain a specific timed entry slot by "purchasing" a free ticket online. If you do, you will be treated to an immersive experience unlike anything you've ever been through (see images at top and bottom of this post). In it, your retinas will get a bit of a workout, and your cones (the color receptors) will be having a ball.

An example of a James Turrell hologram

Turrell is a light sculptor. How do you sculpt with light? Turrell does it by creating smooth, deep, white spaces and then washing them with liquid color. The illusions thus created are mesmerizingly potent. In one of the works constructed at MASS MoCA (and officially scheduled through 2025, though we were told that was extended to 2042), you enter the space and see effects both inside it (i.e. around yourself and the others in there with you) and outside its entrance (where the colors change magically in response to your eyes' mechanisms). It's hard to describe, but unforgettable.

Additionally, there are quite a few other works by Turrell, including about half-a-dozen holographic projections, numerous very sleek architectural models of his plans for lightworks inside a crater he owns in Arizona, and several other individual light sculptures, one of which resembles a snowy black-and-white TV screen (though it is actually a shaped, empty void). Some of these require that you enter a darkened space through labyrinthine path, and then let your eyes adjust. Others work in ambient light, creating spatial illusions that are simply fascinating. Go and see for yourself.

Note: Ledelle Moe's When is scheduled to end on Jan. 3, 2021, and ERRE's Them and Us will run through summer 2021, while the other shows we viewed appear to be ongoing, either without a published ending date or with one very far in the future.

It's also worth noting that When and Them and Us are curated by Susan Cross, who is the juror of this year's Mohawk-Hudson Regional Exhibition, set to open at the Albany Institute of History & Art on Sept. 19.

A view of James Turrell's Into the Light at MASS MoCA

Summer shows to see

Venus with an Organist and Cupid by Titan is on view at the Clark this summer.

Summer has arrived and it's usual for a spate of blockbuster shows to open at our region's major museums. But, alas, this year is a disappointment - there's no Van Gogh and Nature (which smashed box-office records at the Clark Art Institute last year); there's no Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George (which put The Hyde Collection - and Glens Falls - at the center of the art world's focus in 2013); and there's no Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera (which exemplifies the drawing and staying power of a well-formed exhibition, as it went on tour from Stockbridge's Norman Rockwell Museum in the summer of 2010 and, since then, has generated over 12,000 page views on my review of it here).

The closest thing we have this year to a summer blockbuster is the Clark's Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado (which opened on June 11). However, in our age of ubiquitous Internet pornography, it is almost quaint in its outdated immorality, and rather uninspiring compared to the usual star-studded summer fare offered by Williamstown's queen of art museums.

Instead, we seem to have a season of prints: The Hyde is presenting Dürer and Rembrandt: Master Prints from the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly (set to open on July 10) and the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown has Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Bohemian Paris (which opened on May 28), featuring posters, prints and drawings - but no paintings.

We also have a summer of outstanding contemporary art, in venues as diverse as the Albany International Airport; The School in Kinderhook; libraries in Albany and at Union College; small galleries in Lake George, Hudson, and Schuylerville; and the vast MASS MoCA in North Adams, where conservative skeptics are won over every day by consistently excellent selection and installation of today's most challenging living artists.

Here are my recommendations for summer viewing, in approximate descending order of scale:

1. Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder, MASS MoCA through April, 2017. I could recommend this show on the basis of the title alone - but it includes a grand swath of international artists, at least one of whom I know I love, so there's reason to believe it delivers on the promise. And there are nine (count 'em) other current exhibitions there as well. Just plain go.
2. Dürer and Rembrandt: Master Prints from the Collection of Dr. Dorrance Kelly, The Hyde Collection through October. When it comes to classical European printmaking, Dürer and Rembrandt are widely considered to be the best in history, and this collection is described as "one of the most distinguished private collections of prints" in the US. Should be a terrific show.
3. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Bohemian Paris, Fenimore Museum through Sept. 5. Lautrec was known for his color lithographic posters advertising Parisian entertainments, and these will be the centerpiece of the show. This summer the Fenimore also features exhibitions of early Ansel Adams photographs (from when he made the prints himself) and a traveling show of Whistler lithographs from the Speed Art Museum - so this is the perfect combination destination with the Hyde for lovers of works on paper.
4. Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado, Clark Art Institute through Oct. 10. Williamstown is a heckuva lot closer than Madrid, so why not check out these 28 master paintings? Please forgive my lack of enthusiasm for what could turn out to be the best show of the summer. And let me know how you liked it!
5. Staying Power, Albany International Airport Gallery through Jan 2. After 17 years, founding director Sharon Bates is retiring from the Arts and Culture Program at the airport, and this brilliant show is her swan song. More than a commentary on time's passage and the agelessness of the creative process, it is a gathering of eleven of the region's most vital artists of any age. Remember - you don't need to pass security to see it, and parking is free with validation from the gallery or gift shop.
6. Change of Place: Four Solo Exhibitions, The School in Kinderhook though the summer. New York City gallerist Jack Shainman opened his upstate showcase two years ago and I must admit I haven't been there yet (being open only on Saturdays makes it a challenge). But this space has earned raves from all over and the current set of solos by Pierre Dorion, Hayv Kahraman, Richard Mosse, and Garnett Puetta is a strong incentive to get there now.
7. Fence Select and Ray Felix, The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, July 16 through Aug. 27. An annual favorite, plus a solo show by last year's top prize winner. On a sad note, Felix's Fulton Street Gallery in Troy has just closed, ending a long but worthwhile struggle to maintain a membership gallery that featured many good shows over the years and was a co-sponsor of the Photography Regional. It will be missed.
8. Too Many Words, Albany Public Library Pine Hills Branch through Oct. 2. Six artists are organized by able curator Jess Cone into a quirky but also elegant exhibition space that brings art to the library-going public. These shows are always good, and the open hours are extensive, so access is easy.
9. Woodcuts and Sculptures, The Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville, through July 10. Two of the region's best artists (Allen Grindle and Mary Pat Wager) in a strong pairing at one of the few local commercial venues that has survived showing contemporary fine art.
10. Corwin Lewi and Barbara Price, Lake George Arts Project July 9 through Aug. 12. Consistently (along with Albany Center Gallery) one of the two best small nonprofit exhibition spaces in the region. These two artists produce subtle, delicate drawings connected to life's passing moments.

Add note: Through June 30, an exhibition titled Give 'Em Hell by street artist Scout/Pines is on view at Time & Space Limited in Hudson. Other Hudson galleries always worth visiting include BCB Art, John Davis Gallery , Davis Orton Gallery, and Carrie Haddad Gallery. Enjoy your summer!

A painting by Scout/Pines at TSL in Hudson through June 30.

Seeing Double: The Anaglyphs of Eric Egas at Albany Institute of History & Art

Eric Egas - Fippery, archival pigment on canvas

Stereoscopy has been with us since the birth of photography in 1839, but outside of 3D movies, few of us give it much consideration. Eric Egas is an exception.

Inverde

More than 30 years of efforts to capture three dimensions in flat images are presented in Seeing Double: The Anaglyphs of Eric Egas, which opened at the Albany Institute of History & Art on Aug. 15 and runs through Oct. 25 (an anaglyph is a blue-red stereo photograph). The exhibition, in Egas's words, provides "portals for viewers to enter into a state of ambiguity" through gazing at these images both with and without the red/blue glasses provided (they also work with the images shown here - just be sure to put the red lens over your right eye).

But stereo is only part of the Egas effect. He makes variations on the classic red/blue separation, and then pushes those colors so that the overlapping images become as fascinating in themselves as they are when viewed in 3D. Egas has, over the years, increased the scale of these prints, and adopted a lush layering of pigment on canvas - in the end, they are sometimes more painting than photograph, featuring rich areas of reed, blue, green, and purple. A few images even flirt with full color rendition (while still being anaglyphs).

This turns the exhibition, with more than 50 prints, most of which are at least four feet wide, into a multi-level experience: One is encouraged to spend time viewing the images without the glasses, then with them and so on back and forth, providing transformational changes that often surprise the senses.

Smith-Dallas 1983-2008

Beyond these innate visual  effects, Egas loves to play with space, often combining, reversing, and inverting images to further disorient the viewer (but in a good way). Among the earlier, less complex examples, mirrors often appear, which in themselves take on spectacular depth in the stereo format; some of the later pieces render more elaborate subjects into labyrinthine forms, complex textures, and symbolic or surreal meanings.

Wedding

Egas features a broad range of favorite subjects, including animals (alive and stuffed), people in social situations (as well as portraits and self-portraits), architectural spaces, gardens of many kinds, and a variety of tchotchkes from lawn art to flea market wares to baroque ornamentation. His sense of humor is sharp and off-beat - this is a show to be enjoyed as well as studied.

Hanna

Some of the most arresting images for me are the ones with tropical subject matter - this is perhaps influenced by my personal experience  of visiting Eric at his home in Puerto Rico in 1997 (we met around 1985, when he had a show of his early anaglyphs, including some of the ones in this exhibition, at my former gallery in Albany). There's something special about seeing an overall leafy texture in the flat image, and then getting lost in the complexity of layers of foliage once you put the glasses on. It's magic.

Some of Egas's attempts end up reaching a bit too far, to where you may not even be able to see the 3D effect, but the reach is worth a try, as the entire body of work is experimental - and experiential - in nature and intent. Overall, with this very ambitious installation that nicely stretches the boundaries of the Institute's usual emphases, Egas has successfully involved us in his unique and engaging vision.

Note: Eric Egas will have an exhibition of new work at Brill Gallery in North Adams, Mass., from Nov. 7 through the end of December, with a public reception and artist's talk from 6 pm to 8 pm on Saturday, Nov. 7.

Island 2015

Jim Shaw: Entertaining Doubts at MASS MoCA

Jim Shaw - The Rinse Cycle 2012 acrylic on muslin

Have you ever tried to describe a crazy dream you had, or tried to follow someone describing such a dream? Then you will have some idea what it's like to experience the large exhibition Entertaining Doubts by California artist Jim Shaw at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. Shaw draws a great deal from his dreams, and attempts to manifest them physically through sculpture, painting, and installation.

Alas, it is not an entirely successful effort, just as none of us has ever really adequately articulated our own dream or understood another's, but a lot of compelling and enjoyable art is created along the way, so it's also not a failure. Shaw has great skills in drawing and painting, and a good understanding of the theatrics that go into effective installations, and MASS MoCA gives him plenty of space to spread out in.

Jim Shaw - Frank Frazetta Figure 2013 - installation view

A signature of the show is Shaw's re-use of discarded painted theatrical backdrops. The worn texture of these huge curtains of muslin, and their time-softened colors, are very appealing, and Shaw makes the most of this appeal by limiting his interventions to partial overpainting or, in some cases, simple reinterpretation by the placement of flat figures in front. Shaw also takes smaller cuts of the backdrops and paints on them like stretched canvases. These are some of the best works in the show, perhaps because it is easier to digest them, or because smaller works can concentrate the idea better. (Mind you, in this context, small is relative: say, six feet rather than forty.)

Jim Shaw - Blake/Boring 2010
ink on paper 

Another key feature of Shaw's work is his impressive mastery of comic-book style inking, which he applies to various obsessions. Clearly, he is a child of the '50s and '60s, and is completely, unabashedly in love with Superman, whose image is captured, transformed, fractured and fragmented in many ways here.

Sources as disparate as William Blake and Walt Disney are blended into the Superman myth as processed by Shaw, connecting the visionary's Songs of Innocence and Experience to the Seven Dwarves and then linking it to Kryptonite.

Jim Shaw - Fire Female 2012
faux hair wigs with airbrush

Again, I think these elements come across best when simplified, as when Shaw groups giant cutout drawings of Superman's body parts into a wall-mounted installation, or in another installation where the black-ink area of the superhero's costume shorts turns out to be a portal into a plastic dreamworld of glowing colored crystals (shown below).

Shaw also shines in book-page-scale drawings of vortices, swirls of hair, and others of his many obsessions (architecture, the human body, American Indians, snakes, and Wagner's Ring series among them).

Shaw's sculptural forays include architectural dioramas, amusing surrealistic furniture designs (such as a nose-shaped wall sconce), and bizarre wigs, which also appear in a series of paintings made over inkjet prints, rather than discarded muslin. These paintings extend Shaw's technique of altering given imagery and introduce a self-conscious reference to art history in the form of a white rectangle cut out of the colorful image, then replaced outside it as a gray-toned expressionist swirl.

Meaning what? As with the dreams, I couldn't quite get inside Shaw's head to understand the point. But I'm grateful that it's such an active place, and that an artist of Shaw's ability makes the effort to take us there. Entertaining Doubts continues through February 2016.

Jim Shaw - The Issue of My Loins 2015 (installation detail)

In addition to Jim Shaw, MASS MoCA is currently featuring several other exhibitions. Two that are particularly worthy of note:

Eclipse is a remarkable, immersive video installation by Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris in collaboration with the ecological writer Elizabeth Kolbert that commemorates the passenger pigeon on the 100th anniversary of its extinction (image at left).

Not only a powerfully moving experience of what the incredibly numerous birds were once able to do (i.e. blot out the sky), Eclipse is a brilliant example of digital technology put to an innovative purpose as art. It also offers a beautifully produced oversized publication free to visitors. Eclipse is a must-see; it continues through Sept. 1.

Bibliotecaphilia is a group show curated by Allie Foradas with support from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute that brings together six very diverse artists around the theme of books.

It includes a complex interactive installation by Jonathan Gitelson that invites visitors to spend time with a great variety of books annotated by their former owners; Dan Peterman's wonderful sculpture titled The Polymer Catalog - one ton archive, which looks like massive stacks of books but is just slices of colorful recycled plastic boards; Meg Hitchcock's painstaking and beautifully transcendent collages made of individual letters cut from holy books; and a large-scale carved wooden screen by Susan Hefuna.

Also included in Bibliotecaphilia are Jean Prebe's site-specific sculpture titled The Secret Lives of Books (pictured below), and an adults-only series of nine videos by Clayton Cubitt titled Hysterical Literature, in each of which a woman sits at a table and reads aloud from a book of her choosing until she has an orgasm (you don't see what's going on below the table, but it apparently involves a skillfully wielded vibrator).

Bibliotecaphilia continues through the end of 2015.

Three exhibitions at MASS MoCA

I finally got myself back to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams this week after a too-long absence, and it was well worth the trip. As my museum-going companion succinctly pointed out, MASS MoCA made its bones by taking risks, and they always seem to pay off - even when something there doesn't work, you have to admire the effort.

At the very least, you have to be impressed by the scale of things at this gargantuan former factory complex, and you can count on the vastly abundant industrial forms that make up the physical plant to be esthetically pleasing and fascinating in themselves, sometimes even more than the art. One reason I made the trip now was to catch the tail end of an important installation by the German painter/sculptor Katharina Grosse, which opened many months ago and will close on Oct. 31.

Ungrammatically and, to me, annoyingly titled one floor up more highly, the piece combines elegantly sandblasted, pure-white forms in styrofoam with garishly spray-painted mounds of rocks and dirt that also contain a few recognizable objects, such as a massive wooden bench and articles of clothing. Also in this group is a floor-mounted, curved planar polygon that is either a painting or a sculpture, depending on your definition of those media, and through a door at the end of the gargantuan space containing these works are two levels of spray-painted rooms, one of which features a framed abstract painting hung on the wall.

Grosse's installation is exuberantly colorful, muscularly formal, richly textural - I could go on, but you get the picture - and I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Somehow, though, it left me cold. Can't really explain why that is, as I normally enjoy all those elements in a wide variety of art. The closest I can come to explaining this failure to ignite is that the piece just doesn't work as a whole, that despite its quantity it doesn't properly fill the space - that this artist has bitten off more than she could chew.

Others surely will disagree, and I encourage you to go and see for yourself whether you do or not - but I am willing to take the risk of saying in print that this piece is, at best, a beautiful and expensive mess.

Meanwhile, up on a catwalk, exposed to the elements and a real challenge to reach on rickety old legs is Michael Oatman's All Utopias Fell, a neo-retro-futuristic fantasy that extends Oatman's longstanding obsessions into his best work yet - an experiential time-and-space capsule that should bring out the kid, or at least the mad scientist, in all of us (pictured above).

Oatman is essentially a collage artist who regularly works in three dimensions as well, creating participatory environments chock-full of stuff: pictures, gadgets, artifacts and so on. AUF consists of an Airstream trailer with solar panel-festooned wings and deployed parachutes that appears to have crash-landed on the museum's superstructure. Its occupant is missing, but his incomprehensible, complex inner world is on full display in the ship he rode in on.

Visitors can enter and do as they please in this delightfully bizarre interior, which is accessible only in good weather (i.e. not during the winter months) and which will remain there indefinitely. It contains all manner of material related to energy - books, a bicycle-driven generator (I rode it, and it works), and more or less functional-looking living quarters (featuring a goodly supply of toilet paper and put-up tomatoes), along with an elaborately (but crudely) furnished electrical workbench and many, many mysterious electronic contraptions.

A full description would be next to impossible - imagine the contents of an artistically and scientifically inclined packrat's garage or basement all fitted into a tiny living space and you get the idea. As with past installations by Oatman, I was left shaking my head in wonder at his ingenuity, resourcefulness, sense of humor - even his sincerity. He's a space-age kid stuck in a postmodern man's world, but thankfully he's got what it takes to drag us back in time to where he comes from - and it ends up looking like a wonderfully twisted version of where we're going.

A third major exhibition that opened at MASS MoCA in May and will remain until March is titled The Workers (or The Workers: Precarity, Invisibility, Mobility); it originated in a smaller form in Mexico, and has been expanded for its incarnation here, to include 25 international artists and filmmakers who depict workers in various ways.

Equal parts art and propaganda, The Workers has a terrific concept and ends up being a fine example of something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Much of the art in the show is overwrought, as politically oriented art so often is, yet for me the show was still stimulating and enjoyable. As with most of the group shows I've seen here over the years, it uses the space of the galleries extremely well, allowing a comfortable flow from piece to piece and room to room.

A number of the pieces in the show appear to have been made specifically for it, in some cases by local artists, with an eye toward the detailed industrial past of the museum. This conjunction of purposes is the key to the success of the show, and I was somewhat surprised to find that I consistently preferred the pieces in the show that were related to this history.

Whereas some of the international work struck me as bombastic (for example a full-size gallows with an office water cooler set next to the trap door), some of the more local work was resonantly lyrical. My favorite pieces in the show included a wall montage of the torn-out bottoms of paper bags with the names of the factory workers who made them stamped on them (take a look at a paper bag, and you'll see one) by Mary Lum, who lives in North Adams; Los Angeles photographer Anthony Hernandez' Landscapes for the Homeless; and an installation featuring a chain-link fence and images from a 1970 strike at Sprague Electric by New York City-based Camel Collective (pictured below).

The Workers is accompanied by a detailed brochure, fittingly printed on cheap newsprint in black ink. With written material that keys on "the uncertain fate of today's workers," it strikes a rather relevant chord - and one that I respond to more than some, having been laid off from my own job nearly three years ago. As with the logo (seen above, right), the catalog eloquently expresses this exhibition's roots in socialist theory, especially as it was embodied nearly a century ago by Mexican muralists, or more recently by artists of the Soviet regime. Clearly, this point of view still has life in our global culture and still inspires many artists.

Note: There are several other exhibitions also currently on view at MASS MoCA, including Memery; Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; and Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141. Additionally, there's an opening reception in the Kidspace gallery from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 1), which features several excellent artists, including Schenectady's Ginger Ertz, on a subaquatic theme. Seriously fun.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Matt Bua, Anselm Kiefer, Simon Starling and more at MASS MoCA

Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. I think Matt Bua might say the context is the medium. His installation in MASS MoCA's newly expanded and relocated Kidspace spills out through a second-story window into the museum's entry courtyard; it is haphazard, overstuffed, ripe for criticism. But, hey, it's for kids! So I won't get all snooty about it.

Cribs (tiny detail below) is a play on architectural ideas, a commentary on collecting, and a never-quite-grew-up kid's ebullient spewing of undigested detritus into a grand, half-assed construction that meanders all over creation and offers lots of little discoveries along the way. As a whole, it's a mess that all children will love.

But it's also for adults, and that's part of the message: Kidspace, under the curatorial eye of Laura Thompson, is hosting installations by name artists, and the serious art audience that frequents MASS MoCA is welcome to check it out. Hours are limited: just weekend days from 11 to 4 through May 31; then every day but Tuesday through June 27; then every day through Labor Day. (for more info on this and other shows, go to http://www.massmoca.org/search_results.php?st=2&search=11.)

Meanwhile, the other spaces at the sprawling former factory complex offer the usual very high quality, cutting-edge stuff. A long-term Anselm Kiefer installation that will remain through October fulfills the promise of this most revered of contemporary artists with five paintings and a massive sculpture that I found very moving (a large detail of one painting is at the top of this posting).

Kiefer's work is, in a word, elegiac. This installation proves that it is also lyrical and hopeful, though the darkness may overwhelm the light for some viewers. In addition to the concrete sculpture's allusive waviness, three gigantic paintings that form a cul-de-sac in a second room (accompanied by a large Joseph Beuys sculpture) are deeply felt and meditative.

A much more fun experience is to be had in a large group show titled Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape that fills a ramble of large and small spaces on the museum's main floor with fresh and juicy art that revisits a potentialy banal subject and brings it quite vividly to life. The A-list names in Badlands are many - Mike Glier, Alexis Rockman, Mary Temple, Nina Katchadourian, Ed Ruscha, Robert Adams, etc. - and the missed marks are few. But hurry, as it remains on view only through April 12.

Possibly the strongest single work in the museum at the moment is a stunning pair of sculptures (with an evocative pierced presentation wall leading to them) by Simon Starling titled The Nanjing Particles. These esthetically beautiful cast stainless-steel forms were created by selecting two silver particles from a 19th-century photograph of Chinese strikebreakers brought to work in North Adams, then enlarging them a million times.

It is poetic justice that the casting work was done by factory workers in China; the carnivalesque wall bears a huge blowup of the original picture of their forebears. This ingenious work is shown in the vastly cavernous space of Building 5, and the yards of air around it are a tonic. It will remain there through October.

Finally, I can't publish this review without mentioning what you already know: that the Sol LeWitt wall drawings at MASS MoCA are fabulous, that they will be there for at least 25 years, and that you really want to see them as soon as you can because you will want to go back again and again and again.