The new $65M expansion of MASS MoCA, a trailblazing art center, has shown how creative capital can be an economic engine ?We?re trying to achieve nirvana.?
When Joseph Thompson, the director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), describes the scale, scope, and vision behind his institution, he isn?t just adopting the aggrandizing language of the art world. MASS MoCA?s campus, and its new facility, is colossal in every sense of the word.
Located in North Adams, an old mill town in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts, MASS MoCA has been open to the public since 1999?and, this past weekend, it doubled its exhibition space with a long-awaited expansion that completes a circuitous path through the entire facility. The now-complete Building 6 is a game-changer in terms of square footage alone: three floors, an acre each, roomy enough to hold multiple site-specific James Turrell installations, say, or a 15-ton marble carving by Louise Bourgeois. Jason Forney of Bruner/Cott Associates, the renovation architect?who helped redesign the mammoth former factory space?described the finished product as more landscape than building. The addition gives the museum more exhibition space than any venue in the country.

Douglas Mason
The Prow at MASS MoCA.

Bisected by a towering, 20-foot-wide light well, the building and its massive footprint lets MASS MoCA display contemporary art in a way other institutions can?t (it?s about ?...