MASS MoCA presents EJ Hill: Brake Run Helix, on view beginning October 29. For Brake Run Helix, EJ Hill will create a sprawling exhibition that incorporates freestanding sculptures, paintings, a stage for performances, and a rideable sculptural installation inspired by the form and function of roller coasters. Filling MASS MoCA’s famed 100-yard-long Building 5 gallery, the exhibition is Hill’s first solo museum exhibition and will be his largest installation to date.
MASS MoCA presents Choreopolitics: Brendan Fernandes and nibia pastrana santiago, on view beginning April 9. The exhibition juxtaposes the work of the two multidisciplinary artists, who use dance to resist, heal, and connect. Choreopolitics is curated by McClain Groff, a graduate curatorial fellow in the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
MASS MoCA has announced artist Lily Cox-Richard’s Weep Holes, an exhibition of all new work that addresses ideas of stewardship, beauty and threat, collective action, and building and dismantling. Weep Holes is curated by MASS MoCA senior curator and director of exhibitions Denise Markonish and will be on view from March 12, 2022 through December 2022.
MASS MoCA has announced an exhibition of large-scale architectural installations by sculptor Amy Hauft. By playing with scale and perception, Hauft proposes ways of experiencing the vastness and mystery of our universe while complicating our understanding of our physical circumstance on Earth. Experienced together, the three sculptural works that comprise the exhibition invite viewers to consider what senior curator and director of exhibitions, Denise Markonish, describes as “an exhibition that ultimately reminds us of the otherwise abstract knowledge that we stand atop a twirling ball hurtling through the solar system, that we live in the blink of an eye, and are subject to endless variables in life, in the universe.” Hauft’s installations will be on view from March 12, 2022 through December 2022.
MASS MoCA has announced the artist Marc Swanson’s most ambitious installation to date. A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco addresses the impending losses resulting from climate change, and the frustrating inability to change or control this outcome. Through the use of theatricality, taxidermy mounts, video, light animations, and shrouded sculptures, A Memorial to Ice at The Dead Deer Disco makes palpable our inability to control human nature, and asks us to both recognize this loss and to celebrate our present. The exhibition will be on view at MASS MoCA from March 12, 2022 through December 2022.
MASS MoCA presents Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind, on view beginning November 20. The exhibition of new and recent work—including sculpture, drawings, textiles, films, and works on paper—is assembled to model, parody, and learn from attempts to regulate and organize nature. Ways to Baffle the Wind is a collaboration between MASS MoCA and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, based in New Orleans. The exhibition is guest-curated by Andrea Andersson, Founding Director and Chief Curator of the Rivers Institute.
MASS MoCA announces its upcoming exhibitions through March 2022, featuring solo shows of work by Lily Cox-Richard, Amy Hauft, and Marc Swanson.
MASS MoCA announces Amy Yoes: Hot Corners, a site-specific installation that will transform a 142-foot hall space in Building 6 into a multi-room, immersive complex with thematic forms and functions. Hot Corners, on view May 28, 2022, combines Yoes’ passion for architecture, period rooms, interior design, and decorative arts in a dynamic environment that will serve as a destination space for interactive participation.
MASS MoCA announces Shaun Leonardo’s You walk… as the inaugural exhibition in its newly established community engagement space. Located within the Hunter Mezzanine, the project space was established with two-year funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and will serve as a convening area for individual visitors, groups, staff, and artists. You walk… , on view May 29 through Spring 2023, applies the Brooklyn-based artist’s renowned performative social practice to the space through the use of visual cues, written prompts, and facilitated programming that encourage self-reflection and cross-cultural dialogue.
You walk… marks Leonardo’s first time transposing his “physical embodiment” practice onto a functional space. Using visual elements like two-way mirrors and mock windowscapes, Leonardo creates a space that both reflects a shared physical present but also alludes to the singular differences that can shape one’s perspective.
Major support for You walk… is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
MASS MoCA announces the installation of Taryn Simon’s large-scale outdoor sculpture, The Pipes, which will be on long-term view on the museum’s campus starting June 26, 2021. What began as an oversized concrete instrument for a cacophony of global mourning in Simon’s work An Occupation of Loss (Park Avenue Armory, 2016) will be populated by the sounds, collective call and response, and movements of a living public. The 11 structures that make up the installation – which Simon originally designed in collaboration with Shohei Shigematsu of architecture firm OMA – are modular, and have been adapted by Simon and Shigematsu for the MASS MoCA campus.
The Pipes joins MASS MoCA’s growing constellation of long-term outdoor artworks sited throughout the museum’s campus and downtown North Adams, including works by Jenny Holzer, Martin Puryear, James Turrell, and Franz West. This will be Simon’s second project at MASS MoCA, following her acclaimed 2018 solo exhibition A Cold Hole + Assembled Audience.
The installation of Taryn Simon’s The Pipes at MASS MoCA is made possible in part by the Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust, Gagosian Gallery, Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, and David Zicarelli and Virginia Troyer.