He began by saying that, amid a sea of uncertainty, one thing was distressingly clear: The museum’s “earned revenue” - ticket sales, largely - had been “wiped out overnight.” That was hardly surprising, given the circumstances. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staffĮight days after closing the museum’s doors, Thompson sent a jarring e-mail to the museum’s members. The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams has been closed since March 16. As the pandemic drags on, though, the economic fallout becomes increasingly alarming. “When you’re in the gathering business, like we are,” said Mass MoCA director Joseph Thompson, “this hurts.” The museum has been shuttered since March 16, as part of the global effort to slow the spread of the disease. With 250,000 square feet of gallery space, Mass MoCA, as the museum is called, has the biggest footprint of any contemporary art museum in the US.īut Mass MoCA is now also a weighty symbol of economic fragility in the coronavirus era. Even the site of it - the 16-acre former Sprague Electric Company in North Adams, which closed its doors in 1985 - has the air of resurrection. But perhaps none is more emblematic of the area’s reinvention than the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The region is replete with cultural venues, from the Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow campuses to the Clark Art Institute. But it’s without any shred of doubt that the visitor economy is the backbone of our economy, and that it’s critical to our economic health. “More recently we’ve been able to diversify - the creative economy, innovation, even some new manufacturing. “We’re very much a new economy, in the last 20 years or so,” Butler said. Jonathan Butler, 1Berkshire’s CEO, said as many as 8,000 jobs were either directly or indirectly tied to tourism last year, with the industry’s economic footprint growing by 35 percent in the last decade alone. And while dubious locals and longtimers had their doubts, recent numbers suggest the transition was thriving.Īccording to 1Berkshire, the local regional economic development agency, the visitor economy - hotel stays, restaurant meals - accounted for $1.2 billion in economic activity in Berkshire County in 2017, well more than the $917 million brought by manufacturing. Over time, restaurants, bars, and hotels blossomed to serve growing numbers of tourists drawn by the area’s riches. The region has picked up and dusted off from the collapse of its 19th- and 20th-century industrial economy, forging a new path alongside cultural organizations, new and old alike, to make Western Massachusetts a global arts destination. The 21st century has been a time of incremental rebuilding here. But in the grinding days and weeks since social distancing - our only defense - started choking nearly every aspect of public life, something more has been revealed about the Berkshires regional economy: It is especially vulnerable. "They don’t want to take a risk, because the immediate future is so unclear.”Īs the coronavirus thunders its way across the planet, through big cities and small communities alike, an unearthly stillness has become the unnerving new normal. “Everyone has canceled everything," said Karakaya, the inn’s general manager.
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