Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

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Mass MoCA was the idea of Thomas Krens. Krens was the director at the Williams College Museum of Art and was looking to open a new contemporary art museum in the Berkshires. Sprague had closed only a few months before, when Krens had a conversation with then North Adams mayor John Barrett that spawned the idea of using the old Sprague campus as an exhibition space.

Krens left the project in 1988 to take over the directorship at Guggenheim Museum. Joe Thompson, another Williams College of Art employee, took over the project and lead it until Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1999. He is still director today.

Mass MoCA has had a significant economic impact. In 2015, it was estimated to have produced 383 related jobs and 34.3 million dollars in the local economy, a 10 million dollar rise form 2007. But the impacts has not always been distributed in the way people expected when the project was proposed in the 1980s. Much of the MoCA’s related economic activity has come from their commercial renting not in revenue that goes into local businesses like resturants. Now much of the economic potential of North Adams is measured in projects inspired by MoCA, projects like the upcoming for-profit train museum or the proposed art hotel, both of which are Krens’ projects.



MoCA