NORTH ADAMS, MASS.- MASS MoCA announced its upcoming exhibitions through March 2022, featuring solo shows of work by Lily Cox Richard, Amy Hauft, and Marc Swanson. Cox-Richard and Hauft have been commissioned by MASS MoCA to create ambitious new installations as part of their exhibitions, and both had residencies at the museum earlier this year. General details about each exhibition follow below.
“Our upcoming visual arts programming reflects MASS MoCA’s commitment to supporting artists in the creation of new work by providing them with the spaces, tools, and assistance they need to realize what is often their most ambitious work both in concept and scale,” said Denise Markonish, senior curator and director of exhibitions at MASS MoCA and curator of the upcoming solo shows of Lily Cox Richard, Amy Hauft, and Marc Swanson. “We are looking forward to welcoming these artists, who have been working with us for years, to present their new works in North Adams.”
Lily Cox-Richard: Weep Holes
March 12, 2022 – January 2023
Featuring entirely new work, Lily Cox-Richard’s exhibition Weep Holes addresses ideas of stewardship, beauty and threat, collective action, and the building and dismantling of systems. While in residence at the Recycled Artists in Residency Program (RAIR) in Philadelphia, PA, the sculptor became fascinated by a giant bale of tinsel she found, and how the material continually transformed from the sparkling decoration we know to the dulled block that had been weathered by time. The works in Weep Hole will include, among other projects, the tinsel bale and a large-scale version of a hand-tied shaker broom made of recycled material from the waste stream–so large that it becomes like architecture. Both of these objects celebrate Shaker ideas of labor and reuse and will be highly crafted and ordinary at the same time–made uncanny by their scale and placement.Cox-Richard was in residence at MASS MoCA in July 2021. Weep Holes is curated by Denise Markonish.
Amy Hauft
March 12, 2022 – January 2023
Amy Hauft creates architectural installations that reorient our experience of the landscape and of planetary living. Hauft’s exhibition at MASS MoCA will make visitors palpably aware of their relationship to the curve of the earth and our distance from the moon. The centerpiece of the exhibition is 700,000:1, which takes its title from the mathematical odds of a person on Earth being hit by a meteor. Constructed from two enormous spheres on the floor and the ceiling, viewers will be invited to ascend the lower sphere and place their heads in the upper sphere, invoking the feeling of being simultaneously on the ground and in the sky. Accompanying 700,000:1 will be a new installation commissioned by MASS MoCA about the unfathomability and allure of the moon, which Hauft created when she was in residence during the summer of 2021. This exhibition is curated by Denise Markonish.
Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco
March 12, 2022 – January 2023
Marc Swanson works across diverse media, creating sculptures and environments that explore the relationships between humans, culture, and the natural world. His most ambitious installation to date, A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco will consist of two separate large-scale immersive environments. A Memorial to Ice is inspired by the dioramas found in natural history museums as well as Thomas Cole’s writings on the negative effects of development in the Catskills region, while The Dead Deer Disco is a reimagined disco in which Swanson explores feelings of freedom and mourning in reference to the AIDS crisis. Taken together, these two installations confront loss and our inability to control human nature and the world around us. A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco is curated by Denise Markonish. The exhibition at MASS MoCA will be followed by an exhibition at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY, on view from July 13 through November 13, 2022.
