MAC strives to provide the broadest and most inclusive representation of the arts by delivering cultural experiences that embrace a wide range of aesthetic and conceptual points of view to support a diverse and vibrant community.
MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) is MCLA’s newly expanded arts programming arm. MAC serves as the nexus for internal and external partnerships to create engaging and equity-focused projects that encourage public arts participation, as well as the investigation of arts-based pedagogy that can reshape institutional practices. MAC (formerly known as BCRC, the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center) functions as a hub that supports interdisciplinary approaches to education, social justice, and academic research across MCLA’s campus. MAC supports the expansion of MCLA programming to include: faculty opportunities for interdisciplinary curriculum development; interdisciplinary faculty and student social justice research; arts and culture symposia and workshops; internships for underrepresented student communities; and the development of an open-access archive that includes documented community arts projects and support tools that other college campuses and communities can use and apply to fit their needs.
Run by MCLA since 2005, Gallery 51, exhibits work from a wide range of emerging to mid-career contemporary artists from around the world. The Gallery hosts 3-4 exhibitions each year, the Artists Laboratory Residency, and countless events and happenings. Staffed by mostly student workers, MCLA Gallery 51 provides students with hands-on experience in the day-to-day operations of a gallery. MCLA Gallery 51 can be found at 51 Main Street in downtown North Adams.
MCLA Arts & Culture hosts several artist residencies each academic year.
Learn more about the MCLA Art, Arts Management, and Performing Arts programs.
Sm[ART] Commons is run by MCLA arts management students featuring interviews, reviews, articles and resources for current and prospective students, alumni, and the surrounding community. Students have conducted interview profiles on professionals in the field, alumni and students providing a platform for students to investigate the field of arts and culture.
Through interviews with some of the region's most unique and interesting voices, this podcast is cracking open the connections between arts learning and workforce skills in Berkshire County, MA.
The Jessica Park Project was established in 2004 at MCLA to study and promote the art of Jessica Park, a renowned artist with autism in mid-career who lives and works in Williamstown, MA. Originally part of the Fine and Performing Arts major where student classes in Arts Management created exhibitions, books, and catalogues to celebrate Jessica's work, the Project, still under the guidance of its founder and now Director, Professor Emeritus Tony Gengarelly, works with the college and community to display Jessica Park's stylistically brilliant and compelling art, as well as that of other artists on the autism spectrum, to many audiences in Berkshire County and Southern Vermont. In this endeavor we still enjoy the support of Jessica and the Park family as well as a number of partners, on and off campus. Our current connection to MAC through Gallery 51, where a number of Park related exhibitions have been shown over the past several years, places the Project exactly where it needs to be as it continues to advance the IDEA principles of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access through the study and appreciation of Outsider Art.
MCLA Arts & Culture
375 Church Street
North Adams, MA 01247
413.662.5320
