Day 1: Drove up late afternoon, fortunately the rain had stopped. We had udon noodles at this Japanese place Yo-Yo Ma frequents when he's playing at Tanglewood. E thinks the B&B owners always recommend Asian restaurants to us because we're Asian.
Day 2: We enjoyed the Mass MoCA museum. I really like having a tour guide at modern places, it always helps so much in understanding the art, and this particular tour guide was great. The two big exhibits were "Ahistoric Occasion" and a retrospective of Huang Yong Ping, one of China's pre-eminent artists today. The paintings that impacted me the most were a series called Heirlooms and Accessories by Kerry James Marshall. At first glance you see three prints in a row of necklaces with charms containing black and white photos of young women's faces from a past era. As you get closer, you see faintly outlined in the background a scene. It turns out to be a famous photo. It's famous for two reasons - one is because it was the last public lynching (Marion, Indiana, 1930) and also because most of the onlookers are turned toward the photographer during the picture. What Marshall has done is picked out a different woman's face in each print and framed it with the charm and chain.
"KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: This piece was sort of a reminder that these people are accessories to a crime in the first place, and that the heirlooms and the things that their offspring inherited from them were inherited from them because they were engaged in this kind of violence."
A piece by Huang Yong Ping, The Nightmare of George V:
"The title identifies the hunter as King George V of England. Huang explains that in 1911 the king, while hunting in Nepal, killed four tigers in three days, a remarkable feat. One of the tigers attacked the king, and he donated this specimen to a museum in Bristol, where Huang found it. In Paris the artist located preserved animals from other treks. He attached to a wicker howdah on the elephant’s back a tiger in the documented position of attack, but he replaced the royal howdah–an emblem of empire–with the sort used to protect well-heeled tourists. The tableau looks back to the approaching end of the colonial period."
From:blogs.walkerart.org
We had lunch at a nice place next to Williams College called Helen's (my husband REALLY liked his Reuben), drove the Mohawk Trail for a bit, until I was too depressed by the lack of foliage, and then hung out in Lenox where we had dinner at the Church Street Cafe where I had great butternut squash fig risotto and pear bread pudding. The risotto was an accompaniment with the quail. Yes, I ordered the dish for the risotto...even thought about asking for more!
Back at the B&B (The Inn at Green River) we watched Friends with Money on E's laptop. Joan Cusack is a great comedic actress.
Mass MoCA:
E on the Willams campus:
View from the Mohawk Trail:
Day 3: Today we hung out in small towns like Stockbridge and Great Barrington before making the long drive home. We almost visited The Mount, Edith Wharton's restored home but balked at the high admission ($16 pp). One favorite moment was a nice drive through a residential section. We stopped by a pond and enjoyed the scenery and silence. One of the reasons we went shopping is because we were on the hunt for our 2006 Christmas ornament. We've started a tradition where each year we buy one ornament during our travels. The only rule is that is that is has to be a sphere. There's actually quite a bit of glass and artwork on display in the Berkshires (though antique stores outnumber everything else!).
On a bridge in West Stockbridge:
The Mission House (1739), right by the Austen Riggs Center, where E ALMOST did his psychology internship:
The pond/lake:
Now Reading: Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner, a novel about a woman who lived through Hiroshima and its consequences.
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