Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
My largely positive review in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, Striving for Grand-Scale Intimacy (online now), did not cause the evacuation of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. A regional power outage was the culprit.
A spokesperson for the museum, whom I had contacted late this afternoon for fact-checking, told me that the entire area—including not only her museum but also MASS MoCA and the Williams College Museum of Art—had suffered loss of electricity because of a fire in the power station in North Adams. Severe thunderstorms have pummeled the area.
At the Clark, generators were providing the climate control needed to protect the Clark’s art, its spokesperson told me. Never a dull moment!
I’ll have more to say about the Clark’s reinvention (with more images) soon. For now, if you are one of those whose visit to see the Clark’s reimagined campus was sabotaged by the power outage (or if you’re someone who wants to see what architects Tadao Ando and Annabelle Selldorf, and landscape architect Gary Hilderbrand have accomplished, but haven’t made it over there yet), take a look at my article (which doesn’t have images at this writing but will soon) and come join me, via this companion slideshow that I compiled from photos I took at the gloriously sunny press preview: