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The Berkshires Norman
Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge,
Route 183, Stockbridge. The
world's largest collection of original art by America's favorite
illustrator is on display here. The museum moved from the Old Corner
House in town to a new $5 million building on the 36-acre Linwood estate
along the Housatonic River in the Glendale section. Nine galleries
display more than 570 original paintings and drawings by the artist, who
lived his last 25 years in town and made its scenes and people his
subjects. Both guided and unguided tours are scheduled. The artist's
studio was moved to the site from the center of Stockbridge and was
re-created as he left it. The museum also includes changing exhibits of
Stockbridge memorabilia and a gift shop that does a land-office
business, including the sale of some 30,000 reproductions annually of
Rockwell's painting of Stockbridge's Main Street at Christmas. (413)
298-4100. www.nrm.org. Open daily 10 to 5, May-October; Monday-Friday 10
to 4 and weekends 10 to 5, rest of year. Adults, $10. Chesterwood
Estate & Museum ,
4 Williamsville Road, Stockbridge. The
secluded estate of sculptor Daniel Chester French, famed for the Minute
Man in Concord and the Seated Lincoln in Washington, has been open to
the public since his daughter donated it in 1969 to the National Trust
for Historic Preservation. Visitors start at a gallery in the old cow
barn, where many of French's sculptures are shown. But the house and
studio are the gems of Chesterwood. The 30-room Colonial revival built
in 1900 is where French spent six months a year until he died there in
1931. Gracious rooms flank the wonderfully wide, full-length hall in
which a summer breeze cools the visitor. One interesting item among many
is a rose from Lincoln's casket. In the 22-foot-high studio you can see
French's plaster-cast models of the Seated Lincoln and a graceful
Andromeda, which he was working on at his death. It's placed on a
flatcar on a 40-foot-long railroad track and wheeled outdoors
occasionally so schoolchildren can see, as French did, how a sculpture
looks in natural light. The front of the studio with a corner fireplace,
couch and piano is where he entertained frequent guests; in back is a
piazza with wisteria vines and concord grapes framing a view of Monument
Mountain. Chesterwood's gift shop is worth a visit. You also may stroll
along easy trails in a hemlock forest carpeted with needles. (413)
298-3579. www.chesterwood.org. Open May-October, daily 10 to 5. Adults
$8.50, children $3. Naumkeag,
5 Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge. Many
admire the interior of this 26-room, Norman-style gabled mansion built
in 1886 by McKim, Mead and White for Joseph H. Choate, lawyer for the
Rockefeller family and ambassador to the Court of St. James. Chinese
export porcelain, rare Persian rugs, Murano glass and family portraits
by John Singer Sargent are part of the Choate family collection found
throughout the house. We like it best for the lavish hillside
landscaping and gardens inspired by Choate's daughter Mabel, who devoted
her life to philanthropy, collecting art and nurturing Naumkeag. She
combined her talents with Fletcher Steele, the preeminent landscape
architect, to produce a private world of terraces, walkways, sculpted
topiary, fountains and even a Chinese pagoda in twelve distinct garden
areas. In a cool Venetian garden, water trickles from a tiny fountain; a
stream cascades beside the steps in a grove of birch trees. The
sculpture in the gardens befits Mabel Choate's interest in the arts. (413)
298-3239. Open Memorial Day to Columbus Day, daily 10 to 5. Adults $8,
children $2.50. Gardens only, $6.
The
name is synonymous with music and Lenox. The summer home of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra since 1936, the 210-acre estate above the waters of
Stockbridge Bowl in the distance is an idyllic spot for concerts and
socializing at picnics. The 6,000 seats in the open-air Shed are
reserved far in advance for Friday and Saturday evening and Sunday
afternoon concerts. Up to 10,000 fans can be accommodated at $14 to $18
each on the lawn (bring your own chairs, blankets, picnics and wine, or
pick something up from the cafeteria). Free open rehearsals for the
Sunday concerts are scheduled Saturday mornings at 10:30. The
acoustically spectacular Seiji Ozawa Hall seats 1,200 inside and another
200 on sloping lawns so situated that you can see right onto the stage.
It's used for chamber music concerts and student recitals most
weeknights in summer and for community events in spring and fall. (413)
637-1940 or (800) 274-8499. Concerts, Friday and Saturday at 8:30,
Sunday at 2:30, last weekend of June through August. Tickets, $14 to
$90. The
Mount Estate & Gardens, 2
Plunkett St., Lenox. Like
Jefferson's Monticello, novelist Edith Wharton’s Mount is an
"autobiographical house." It was designed by its owner – a
Renaissance woman whose graces in the art of living made her the Martha
Stewart of her day – as a compelling reflection of her storied life
and work. Restored to the tune of $9 million so far, one of the icons of
American architecture is on display as never before. For its centennial
in 2002, seven top designers furnished the stunning public rooms
"in the style of Edith Wharton,” as if she were their client
today. In 2003, the bedroom suite – the private sanctum where the
first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature wrote each morning
– was opened to public view. She designed and built the 42-room
Georgian Revival mansion based on the principles outlined in her
best-selling 1897 book The Decoration of Houses, which is still
in print today. The 50-acre estate combines English, French and Italian
elements in a classic New England setting above Laurel Lake. It includes
three acres of formal gardens in the Italian style, a stable, a
bookstore and the Terrace Café, which is open seasonally for light
lunch and refreshments on the same terrace where Wharton entertained the
likes of Henry James and the Vanderbilts. “It is an exquisite and
marvelous place,” James wrote, a precursor to what visitors find
today. (413)
637-1899. www.edithwharton.org. Open May-October, daily 9 to 5. Adults,
$16.
Frelinghuysen
Morris House & Studio, 92
Hawthorne St., Lenox. Set
back down a ten-minute walk on 46 acres next to Tanglewood is this
relatively new cultural prize. It was the summer home of opera singer
Suzy Frelinghuysen and painter George L.K. Morris, both key members of
the American Abstract Artists Group, who championed Cubism long after it
went out of style. Morris designed the striking, Bauhaus-inspired
structure. Preserved as it was in the early 1940s, the tiered white
house harbors paintings, murals and sculptures by Picasso, Braque, Léger
and Gris as well as the late owners’ own works and those of American
Cubist friends. Guides lead hourly tours to help immerse the visitor
into the artists’ pre-World War II world, when championing abstract
art was highly controversial. Walking trails in the woodlands
surrounding the house museum lead past a monumental sculpture, “The
Mountain,” a reclining woman on a raised platform that Morris
commissioned from his friend Gaston Lachaise. (413)
637-0166. www.frelinghuysen.org. Hourly tours Thursday-Sunday 10 to 4,
July 4 to Labor Day, Thursday-Saturday through October. Adults, $9.
A
new museum is emerging in Ventfort Hall, the imposing Elizabethan-style
mansion built in 1893 for Sarah Morgan, the sister of J.P. Morgan.
Partially restored and open for tours, it is reflective of the 75
so-called “Berkshire Cottages” built in Lenox around the turn of the
last century when the village became a Gilded Age resort. Through
lectures, exhibits, theatrical performances and special events, the
museum interprets the great changes that occurred in American life,
industry and society during the late Nineteenth Century. (413)
637-3206. Guided tours daily on the hour from 10 to 2, Memorial Day
through October. Adults, $8. Material excerpted from New England's Best, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth, copyright 2002, and Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2004. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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