Clark Art Lecture By Artist Mariel Capanna

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. —On Saturday, Feb. 15 at 2 pm, the Clark Art Institute presents a talk by artist Mariel Capanna marking the opening of "Mariel Capanna: Giornata," the newest public spaces installation at the Clark.

This free lecture takes place in the Clark’s Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release: 

Mariel Capanna (b. 1988, Philadelphia, where she lives and works) plays what she calls "games of remembering" as a way of reckoning with loss. Working from home videos and family slideshows, whose runtime is her constraint, the artist races to record fleeting memory images in oil paint. She scatters these flat, pastel forms like confetti across deep, atmospheric surfaces, creating compositions that are at once jubilant and wistful. For the Clark, Capanna presents two new, site-specific oil paintings as well as a monumental, two-sided fresco. The fresco process is also defined by time constraints: the term giornata has referred, since the Italian Renaissance, to the area of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day. Mariel Capanna: Giornata marks the artist’s first museum solo exhibition.

This year-long installation, free and open to the public, is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.

Support for Mariel Capanna: Giornata is provided by Margaret and Richard Kronenberg.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events. Admission to the Clark is free January through March 2025.

Concerns Over PFAS Spark Sewage Debate in Williamstown

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:50AM / Tuesday, April 01, 2025

The composting facility at the intermunicipal wastewater plant is operating at about two-thirds capacity. 

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Forever chemicals are the source of a protracted debate for the Select Board.

 

Out of 15 fiscal articles on the warrant for the annual town meeting in May, the board last Monday voted to recommend passage of 14.

 

It delayed its decision on Article 5, which concerns the budget for the sewer department, more specifically the town's share of operating costs for the Hoosac Water Quality District.

 

Some members of the community, including a member of the Select Board, say the district is choosing a course of action that is at odds with the environmental principles that the town espouses.

 

The HWQD is a 55-year-old intermunicipal entity shared by Williamstown and the city of North Adams.

 

Residents of both communities on public sewer service send their wastewater to a treatment facility in Williamstown off Simonds Road (Route 7).

 

The facility cleans and treats the wastewater and discharges it into the nearby Hoosic River.