The rumors are true: it's BEAUTIFUL in the Berkshires, and outdoor art awaits! 🌿☀️ Come traipse through our outdoor exhibitions, recently reopened for the summer. Wander through a decked out airstream trailer, explore an abandoned boiler room animated with sound, sing into oversized hollow pipes or watch the sun dance through James Turrell's Skyspace — there's something for everyone in our 24 acres of art and nature. Plan your visit at the link in our bio 😌

⏰ OPENING ALERT! Starting Sunday, May 28, step inside @josephgrigely 's new show In What Way Wham? (White Noise and other works, 1996-2023). In the mid-1990s Grigely, who has been deaf since the age of 10, began amassing handwritten notes passed to him by people who do not know sign language. Since then, he has gathered an archive of over 30,000 notepapers – at MASS MoCA, these bits and pieces of communication have been arranged from floor to ceiling in two intersecting oval rooms. Grigely’s archive of social contact asks us to think deeply about human communication, about the formal and informal qualities of language, and about what happens when language is rendered inaudible. Head to the link in our bio for a behind the scenes glimpse of how White Noise came together, and head to our website to learn more about tomorrow's special Member Preview of the exhibition.

“No photos, please.” When artist Carrie Schneider watched actress Romy Schneider utter these three words in the 1975 French drama L'important c'est d'aimer, something clicked (and it wasn’t a shutter). The leading lady’s plea (or demand) not to be captured on camera struck a chord with Schneider, a photographer who has explored the objectification and subjecthood of women throughout her career. In her new exhibition Sphinx, on view March 11, Carrie Schneider looks at looking itself – the artist’s experimental, ingenious photographs (informed by the feminist theory of Laura Mulvey) use the camera’s imaginative potential to create bold new ways of seeing and understanding women. Head over to our YouTube for a full behind-the-scenes look into Carrie Schneider’s workshop.

📣Attention Artists! Want your very own studio space in North Adams? @assets4artists next open call for Studios residency applications is ⚡LIVE⚡! ⏰Deadline to apply: July 8. Head to the link in our bio to apply. We have three general application options: ⚡A general application (disponible en inglés y español), which typically awards applicants 3-9 months out from the award date; ⚡An early application for artists who could benefit from additional lead time to plan their stay or to apply for outside funding; ⚡An alumni application for artists-in-residence who want to come back and join us again! A4A welcomes artists of all disciplines, at all career stages, and from all walks of life. Fellowship opportunities for this open call include: ⚡General Fellowships (All Disciplines) ⚡Fellowships for Black or Indigenous Artists and Writers ⚡Puerto Rico Artist Fellowship (All Disciplines) ⚡Residency for Massachusetts Creatives (All Disciplines) ⚡Oregon Visual Arts Fellowship ⚡University Fellowships Residency application deadlines are typically only twice a year, so now is a great time to apply! Pictured: Thomas Bils (@thomasbils), Jenny Olsen (@jennyolsenart), Feda Eid (@fedaeid), Sean Desiree (@seandesireestudio), Jamie Denburg Habie (@jamiedenburghabie), Arthur Youngblood (@youngblood_artist), Clemente Sajquiy-Ramirez (@clemente.s.ramirez.3), James Kaun Balo, Lynn Yarne (@be.nice_studio), and Vessna Scheff (@vessnascheff). 📸 by Carolina Porras Monroy

⏰ Two weeks remain to see @ytobarrada's thought-provoking show Ways to Baffle the Wind, on view now in Building 6. In 2019, Barrada came across a vintage Sunset Patio Book from 1952. The book offered design plans for mid-century modern outdoor patios and tips on how best to enjoy them – included in the advice was an essay titled “Ways to Baffle the Wind" which outlined various measures for evading pesky evening breezes. In Barrada's exhibition, strategies for harnessing, circumventing, or imitating the effects of nature are the basis for artworks that model ways to resist or adapt power. Imbued with the history of French colonization and environmental destruction in Barrada's native Morocco, Barrada's works intermingle political histories of resistance with personal narratives to explore the machinations of resistance and wonder.

It's starting to sound like summer! 🔊🔊 Tonight's performance by @rinasonline is officially SOLD OUT, but save the date for our upcoming summer shows: 1️⃣ On 6/17, hometown crooner @mynameisraiche and @jasminejanai_ bring the house down for a Juneteenth celebration unlike any other, co-presented by @berkshirebec. 2️⃣ On 7/1, @oscjerome and his smooth-as-butter sounds hop the pond to serenade us for an intimate evening in Club B-10. 3️⃣ Next up on 7/15, @blkbok turns classical piano on its head with virtuosic variety. 4️⃣ For two weeks in mid-July, our galleries explode with experimental sounds, culminating in our 21st annual LOUD Weekend hosted by @bangonacan. 5️⃣ On 8/17, vocal band @roomfulofteeth raise the roof with kaleidoscopic choral compositions. 6️⃣ On on 8/18, powerhouse songwriter @daniellepondermusic brings bravery and boldness to the stage. 🎟️ for all shows are available now at the link in our bio. See you in the crowd!

What if we told you that this image can't be found anywhere online? Artist Maryam Jafri wants you to see it anyway. In her 2021 series (Dis)appearance Online, on view now in the exhibition to see oneself at a distance, Jafri traces the status of key historical images from national archives in Iraq, Syria and Jordan to investigate their appearance, disappearance and non-appearance online, in both public and commercial image banks. Jafri located the photograph above — which depicts Faisal I of Syria at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 — in the archives of the National Museum of Damascus; a reverse image search reveals that this image does not circulate among the tens of billions of images available on the web. By drawing attention to the politics of image ownership in the digital realm, (Dis)appearance Online exposes the internet as a gap-ridden archive, capable of obscuring decolonial narratives as well as revealing them.

No smog involved. @jamesturell 's signature installations may appear as hazy as skies filled with smoke, but don't be fooled: only colored light and curved surfaces create the immersive and destabilizing optical field that museum visitors experience inside Turrell's Perfectly Clear. 📷: @florian_holzherr

Can we let you in on a secret? If you step inside Building 15, the silver-roofed warehouse across the river from MASS MoCA's main gallery buildings, you'll stumble into a hidden treasure: a monumental exhibition by renowned German artist @anselm_kiefer. Among the best-known and most important of post-World War II German artists living and working today, Kiefer "grounds" history in his compositions by layering his massive canvases with dirt, lead, straw, and other earthen materials. His long-term installation at MASS MoCA—realized in collaboration with @hall_art_foundation — includes an 82-foot long, undulating sculpture, an installation comprised of more than twenty lead beds, a steel pavilion containing 30 paintings dealing with nautical warfare and inspired by the quixotic theories of the Russian mathematical experimentalist Velimir Chlebnikov; and a new, large-format photograph on lead.

Can skincare be art? Ask artist @danieljgiordano, who mixes exfoliation with inspiration in his show Love From Vicki Island. Hydrating sheet masks — essential to Giordano's moisturizing routine — are the bedrock for a group of fantastical self portraits by the inventive artist that imbue the waste products of wellness with mythological whimsy. Nodding to the stock character masks worn in commedia dell'arte (a theatrical tradition popularized in Italy from the 16th to 18th centuries), Giordano's masks transform a skincare staple into a surface for playful performance.

Who's ready for the weekend? Last weekend, we had the pleasure of bringing members and artists face to face at a special preview of @josephgrigely's new exhibition, on view now. Our reception also celebrated @danieljgiordano, @carrie_schneider, @suneil_sanzgiri, @_bad_spy, Kapwani Kiwanga and Maryam Jafri, whose shows opened this spring. Old friends, refreshments, outstanding contemporary art and a mind-blowing afterparty with the singular @phonyppl – who could ask for anything more? 🌈 Plan your very own visit at the link in our bio, and head to our highlights to see what's on at MASS MoCA this month.

In this week's #tbt, we're looking back at @cliffordprinceking 's breathtaking scenes of Black queer intimacy featured in the 2021 exhibition Close to You. A visual diary of the friends, spaces, and activities that animate his daily life, King’s work imbues the seemingly mundane — styling a friend’s hair, painting a bedroom, dancing in a kitchen — with poetry and mystery. Shades of beige and brown suffuse these images, bathing the artist’s subjects in warm glows as they inhabit moments of repose. By centering kinship as it unfolds in the everyday, King offers understated images in which his subjects maintain the nuance and ambiguity of personhood, rendered as vulnerable as they are opaque, as natural as they are posed.