The Boston Globe

March 2, 1992, Monday, City Edition 


SECTION: METRO/REGION; Pg. 1 

LENGTH: 994 words 

HEADLINE: Not a pretty picture; 
City hopes museum proposal can spark dismal economy 

BYLINE: By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff 

DATELINE: NORTH ADAMS 

BODY: 
   The former Massachusetts secretary for economic affairs, Daniel 
Gregory, once observed that living in North Adams "is like being
at the end of a bowling alley. "

The hardy hill city on the Hoosic River just keeps taking the hits, one 
after another, and the pins keep falling. 

The region's major employers - lumber and textile mills, shoe factories, 
electronics firms and, most recently, the Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant - 
have shut down, cut back or moved away. The city's unemployment 
rate keeps rising, and its population keeps dropping - down to 16,700, 
according to the latest census figures. 

In the past 10 years, North Adams has been lambasted as the city with 
the most teen-age pregnancies per capita in the nation and 
the highest reported rates of child sexual abuse and physical abuse 
of children in the state. Its high school dropout rates are more 
than five times the state average. 

And now this gritty mill city, isolated in the state's northwest corner 
by formidable mountains to the east and south, is staking its
future on a plan to create the world's largest museum of contemporary 
art in this improbable setting. 

Located on a 14-acre site downtown in 28 buildings that previously 
housed the Sprague Electric Co., it would be a museum
unlike any other, featuring arte povera, or poor art - typically, large 
pieces made from objects that might be found in industrial
areas, explained Joseph Thompson, director of the fledgling 
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, or Mass MoCA,
as it is known. 

But one of the ironies of this sort of industrial art is that industrial 
workers "often don't understand it and don't particularly like
it, " he said. "And if Mass MoCA arrives like an alien spaceship and 
plunks down in the heart of town, visitors won't feel
welcome, won't come again, and the museum will fail. " 

That clearly is a worrying prospect in a community where, as city 
officials confirmed, there is nothing much on the economic
horizon but a new Wal-Mart and a Super Stop & Shop, and where signs of 
calamity sit on almost every corner. 

"For Sale " and "For Rent " signs dot the Italianate and 
Romanesque-styled buildings on Main Street. Teen-agers who should
be in school huddle under the awning outside Newberry's five-and-dime. 
Passersby walk with a dejected air. As Howard D'Amico, who 
runs Claire's Photo and Bargain Outlet, remarked last week, 
"Everybody has their heads down. "

In his office at City Hall, Mayor John Barrett 3d tried to keep an 
upbeat air. "We've weathered our worst storms, " he insisted.


Barrett explained that unlike most mill towns, which faced the decline 
of large-scale manufacturing in the 1950s and '60s,
North Adams held on well into the '80s with the help of Sprague 
Electric, which manufactured electronic parts. 

The company employed 3,800 people here, making North Adams effectively 
"a one-industry town, " Barrett said. 

But in 1985, when other communities in the state were celebrating the 
so-called Massachusetts Miracle, Sprague began
relocating all but one of its divisions. Now the empty Sprague 
buildings, occupying an entire quadrant of downtown, cast a
long shadow over the city's future. 

Recent cutbacks at the General Electric plant in Pittsfield and the 
closing of the nuclear facility in nearby Rowe have made the
city's prospects seem especially bleak. 

"It's the most destitute community I've ever seen, " said native Jeff 
Levanes, who was dishing up cheap eats at Jack's Hot Dog
Stand. "Never seen it any slower, " said Gerald Sapienza, a shoemaker 
whose son and many of whose customers are leaving
town in the wake of the Yankee Rowe shutdown, he said. 

With unemployment topping 10 percent, substance abuse - primarily 
involving alcohol - has risen, and with that have come
high rates of physical and sexual abuse of children, said Ray Burke, 
area director of the Berkshire County office of the
Department of Social Services. 

"Sadly, when there's a feeling of isolation, frustration and anger get 
turned inward, and often it's turned toward the family, " he
said. 

"We're just forgotten here, that's the feeling, " said Detective Robert 
Canale, who heads a unit of the North Adams Police
Department investigating child abuse. 

And teen-age pregnancies rise because youths "have nothing to do and 
nowhere to go, " Canale added. 

In the straitened economy, the possibility of a new and large 
contemporary art museum drawing tourists in droves looks to
some eyes like a panacea. With $ 35 million earmarked as the state share 
of the projected $ 78 million bill, it has seemed at
times like a realistic possibility. 

Then in December, Gov. Weld approved release of $ 688,000 in planning 
money but said no further funds would be available
until organizers secured an agreement with a reputable museum operator 
to manage the facility. To unlock state funds, Weld
said, organizers also must raise a total of $ 12 million by December of 
this year, including $ 3 million locally. 

It's a tall order in the beleaguered manufacturing city, where many 
locals have mixed feelings about the museum. 

"I'm not sure we want too many of those arty guys with rings through 
their noses coming into town, " said one burly resident at
the Army & Navy discount store. He didn't know what to make of arte 
povera and huge abstract works like the "Spiral Table
and Two Igloos " currently on display in one of the old Sprague 
buildings. 

"I don't think we have that many people who would, like, visit it, " 
said a cook at Jack's Hot Dog Stand, referring to the new
art museum. He did not want to knock the museum concept, he stressed, 
but said the community might be better off with the
real jobs, secure jobs, that would come with, say, a new prison. 
However, that is not on any official drawing board at the
moment. 

But more residents seemed to share the view of Jean Rondeau, who owns a 
second-hand bookstore downtown. "MoCA is a
good idea, " she said. "At this point, anything is a good idea. "

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