Williamstown
Diversions

Williamstown's scenic beauty is apparent on all sides, but less known is the composite of its art and history collections. You get a hint of both on arrival simply by traversing Main Street east from the green at Route 7. The hilly street with broad lawns leading to wide-apart historic homes, imposing college buildings and churches – totally lacking in commercialism – is more scenic and tranquil than the main street of any college town we know.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 225 South St .

The most widely known of the town’s museums chanced upon its Williamstown location  through an old family connection with Williams College and the fact that eccentric collector Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, wanted his treasures housed far from a potential site of nuclear attack. Clark 's neoclassical white marble temple opened in 1955 (he and his wife are buried under its front steps) and was expanded in 1973 by a red granite addition housing more galleries and one of the nation’s outstanding art research libraries. A 1996 addition opened still more galleries. Lately mounting major exhibitions that draw more than 100,000 visitors a summer, the Clark has particularly strong holdings of French 19th-century paintings (36 Renoirs), English silver, prints and drawings. The Clark was the single largest source for the Renoir exhibition at Boston 's Museum of Fine Arts . Shown mostly in small galleries the size of the rooms in which they once hung, the highly personalized collection of Monets, Turners and Winslow Homers quietly vies for attention with sculptures, porcelain and three centuries worth of silver (Sterling Clark liked good food and the silverware to go with it). All this is amid an austere yet intimate setting of potted plants and vases of dried flowers, furniture and benches for relaxation.

(413) 458-2303. www.clarkart.edu. Open daily late June to Labor Day, 10 to 5; rest of year, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 to 5. Adults $12.50, June-October; free, rest of year.

Williams College Museum of Art, Main Street .

A $4.5 million extension to its original octagonal building in Lawrence Hall makes this museum a sleeper in art circles. Itself a work of art, it contains an 1846 neoclassical rotunda with “ironic” columns that are decorative rather than functional. The eight sides of the rotunda are repeated in soaring newer galleries with skylights, some of their walls hung with spectacular wall art. Once headed by Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, the museum houses fourteen galleries and a staggering 12,000 works spanning the history of art, from 3,000-year-old Assyrian stone reliefs to the last self-portrait by Andy Warhol. In an effort to complement the better-known Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute's strengths in the 19th century, this museum stresses contemporary, l7th- and 18th-century American art and rare Asian art. It features traveling and special exhibitions rivaling those of many a metropolitan museum.

(413) 597-2429. www.williams.edu/WCMA. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday 1 to 5. Free.

 Nearby is the Hopkins Observatory, the oldest working observatory in the United States (1836), offering exhibits on the history of astronomy plus planetarium shows and viewings through college telescopes.

Chapin Library, Stetson Hall, Williams College .

Nowhere else are the founding documents of the country – original printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Bill of Rights and drafts of the Constitution – displayed together in a simple glass case on the second floor of a college hall. This remarkable library contains more than 30,000 rare books, first editions and manuscripts. You might ask to see James Madison's copy of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. One floor below is the Williamsiana Collection of town and gown, while the lowest level of Stetson contains the archives of band leader Paul Whiteman, with 3,500 original scores and a complete library of music of the 1920s.

(413) 597-2462. Open Monday-Friday, 9 to noon and 1 to 5. Free.
 

Williamstown Theatre Festival, Adams Memorial Theater, Williams College .

Founded in 1955, the professional summer festival presents “some of the most ambitious theatre the U.S. has to offer,” in the words of the Christian Science Monitor. It won the 2002 Regional Theatre Tony Award for outstanding achievement and contribution. Such luminaries as Dick Cavett, Edward Herrmann and Marsha Mason return summer after summer to the festival they call home for productions of everything from Chekhov and Ibsen to Tennessee Williams and Broadway tryouts, all the while mingling with the townspeople. The festival offers more than 200 productions in its summer season on its 520-set Main and adjacent 96-seat Nikos stages, outdoor Free Theatre and weekend Cabaret in Goodrich Hall.

(413) 597-3400. www.wtfestival.org. Festival performances Tuesday-Saturday, mid-June through August. Tickets prices vary, from $20 to $53.

Nature. The prime spot – as well as the area's dominant feature – is the Mount Greylock State Reservation, a series of seven peaks with a 3,491-foot summit that is the highest in Massachusetts . You can drive, hike or bike to the summit for a spectacular five-state view. Other memorable views are obtained by driving the Taconic Trail through Petersburg Pass and the Mohawk Trail above North Adams . The 2,430-acre Hopkins Memorial Forest northwest of the campus is an experimental forest operated by the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies, with fifteen miles of nature and cross-country trails, plus the Moon Barn museum showing old photographs, farm machinery, implements and tools, and the Buxton Garden, a one-acre farm garden designed to have certain flowers in bloom at all seasons. Williams College also recently acquired Mount Hope Park, a former estate with extensive gardens and grounds.

Recreation. Golf is the seasonal pastime at the semi-private Taconic Golf Club, on the south edge of town and ranked as one of the tops in New England , and at the public Waubeeka Golf Links in the valley at South Williamstown . In summer, you can swim in the 74-degree waters of Sand Springs Pool & Spa, founded in 1813 and the oldest springs resort still in operation in the country. In winter, there's skiing nearby at Jiminy Peak .

Shopping. The college-community stores are generally along Spring Street, which runs south off Main Street opposite the main campus and between such campus appendages as museum, science center and sports complex. Zanna carries apparel of appeal to college women. More than 40 varieties of coffees and 25 of loose teas are available at Tunnel City Coffee. Library Antiques shows dhurrie rugs, English country pine furniture, Turkish pillows, china, gifts and more, as well as Asian art at the related LiAsia Gallery. More good art is available at Harrison Gallery.  

Water Street, a parallel street that blossomed later, has distinctive shops including the Cottage for classy gifts and clothing, The Mountain Goat for outdoors equipment, and Water Street Books.

For foodies, the most interesting shopping of all may be at The Store at Five Corners, an 18th-century general store gone upscale, just south of Williamstown at the junction of Routes 7 and 43. Expect to find Epicurean spices, Mendocino pastas, interesting wines, gifts, Italian biscotti and homemade fudge along with an espresso bar, baked goods from the store's bakery, and an assortment of breakfast and lunch items from the deli. There are tables upon which to enjoy, inside or out.

Extra-Special

MASS MoCA, 87 Marshall St. , North Adams .

The country’s largest contemporary art center features an ambitious array of exhibitions and performances on a 19th-century factory campus that quickly transformed gritty North Adams into an up-and-coming cultural and entertainment hub. Short for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, this is the remarkable result of a dozen years of ups and downs for a host of players from the director of the Williams College of Art and visionary architects to three different governors and the state.

Spearheaded by museum director Joseph C. Thompson, an art historian trained at Williams College, they transformed the thirteen-acre site into a 21st-century facility for art and technology while preserving the fabric of the old textile mills. The 27 red-brick buildings, listed on the National Historic Register and abandoned following the 1985 closing of the once-mighty Sprague Electric Co., are linked by an elaborate system of interlocking courtyards, viaducts and elevated walkways. Galleries, sculpture parks and performance arenas co-exist with e-commerce start-ups dubbed Silicon Village .

Nineteen high-ceilinged galleries – one as long as a football field – total more than 100,000 square feet of exhibit space. A new, huge building of Sol LeWitt's art has been attracting a lot of people and press lately.

MASS MoCA focuses on the work of artists charting new territory; works that blur the lines between visual and performing arts and works that have never been exhibited because of their size or materials (including a Chinese dragon boat at our latest visit). A lack of good signage and edifying descriptions suggests the uninitiated are better off on guided tours (offered several times a day in summer and fall and weekends year-round). 

The museum opened in 1999 after being given up for dead at least four times. Now it is a national model of not only how to re-use old buildings but how to experience art and architecture today. “I have seen the future,” wrote a Wall Street Journal reporter, “and it is MASS MoCA.” Even if you don’t like modern art, you’ll likely be impressed by this.

(413) 662-2111. Open daily 10 to 6, late June to Labor Day; Wednesday-Monday 11 to 5, rest of year. Adults, $15.

Material updated from Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2004.

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