Berkshire Magazine Holiday 2021 | Page 10

KRISTY EDMUNDS MASS MOCA ’ S NEW DIRECTOR

Kristy Edmunds had just arrived the day before to North Adams , following a red-eye flight from L . A . to Boston and then a drive across the state to the Berkshires . She was beginning the process of unpacking and meeting the layers of people who make MASS MoCA what it is — the staff , patrons , board members , cultural leaders , and other people in the region . Edmunds is filling the shoes of MASS MoCA ’ s founding director Joseph Thompson . For now , she lives right across the street in an apartment , and this is her first full day in person , on the ground . She sits comfortably in the striking Building Six and talks with Berkshire Magazine editor-in-chief Anastasia Stanmeyer .
Have you completely moved on
from your prior position as artistic
director of UCLA ’ s Center for
the Art of Performance ( CAP )? I am no longer the artistic director there . I am more the artistic advisor , so there is a transition while I onboard at MASS MoCA . And my kids and my partner won ’ t be moving here until they finish the school year , so I ’ ll be going back and forth . I will see through a number of program initiatives that we have coming up over the winter and spring .
Are there any connections
between CAP and MASS MoCA ? Yes , a lot of the artists and projects that have been in residence or have done creative development at MASS MoCA have presented their full finished form at CAP . And there are artists like Glenn Kaino who are based in L . A . and are exhibiting at MASS MoCA . There is a lot of interconnectedness .
Which exhibitions are you excited about at MASS MoCA ? I ’ m really excited about “ Ceramics in the Expanded Field .” That is just stunning . My mom was a potter — she made bowls and cups and plates . You hardly ever
get to see the wild imagination that lives inside of that material and that medium . Where are you going to see something like that if it ’ s not here ? That , to me , is really inspiring .
Do you feel connected to what is going on here ? Totally . Angelique Kidjo was just here in residence with her work , and she will be back . Taylor Mac was just here in residence , and I ’ ve co-presented and co-commissioned his projects in Los Angeles . This gives me a lot of excitement . Esperanza Spalding is in residence right now , working on the Wayne Shorter opera . She has been working on that project for over eight years with Wayne . [ See page 6 .] I know both of them well . In fact , I first met Esperanza when she was a high school student in Portland , Oregon , and I was running the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art . I went into the local school to talk and , boom , there she is . I ’ ve presented her work before , and I ’ ve been watching Wayne as they have tried to figure out how to manifest this opera over time , and it ’ s an epic journey . So , the fact that they are here gives me total joy .
Does this new position you have
at MASS MoCA bring together
everything that you have been
doing professionally in the past ? Yes , totally . There is also the artist residencies . The thing I love about MASS MoCA is that it ’ s in its bones , it ’ s in its DNA , it ’ s in its predisposition , and the evidence of it is everywhere . You can have an entire creative pipeline across the arc of an artist ’ s work . In these 16 acres at MASS MoCA , all of the possibilities are real — studio space , support , knowledge building , dreaming , fabricating , building , going off into the great unknown to see if you can reach for that high-water mark in your artistic practice . And there is the liberty to be able to dream at scale , work at scale , and work in very small intimate ways . The small sublime things live next to the giant maverick things .
What do you see as your role in this ? It ’ s first and foremost — especially in the moment that we are in — looking at the staff , the board , and the people who have really carried this thing forward , and re-tuning that instrument so that people feel less anxious . Imagine that you ’ re a founder who has
been with the organization for 30-something years . Some of these people have journeyed with Joe during that time . Some of them have been here for only a year — a year when there has been a pandemic . How do we find the logjams and start to free them ? There is another pair of shoulders , and there is a lot of that work that is necessary at this juncture . It ’ s a real inflection point across our entire country .
Do you want to improve things ? The word “ improve ” is kind of tricky , because I ’ m full of respect for what has happened . Also , improvement indicates that nothing can ever fail again . Failure is important in the creative world — not as a planned failure , but the risk to try . It ’ s kind of like you can decorate mediocrity because you know how it ’ s going to work , and it usually will pass , or you try and you push toward something that might be extraordinary , but its outcome is unknowable . You have to have the grit and the fortitude to work in that way , and to meet the artists in the moment that they are in .
8 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Holiday 2021