Community

Community

At The Not So General Mills Mansion: A Gilded Age Holiday

Once upon a holiday, the Mills Mansion — now the Staatsburgh State Historic Site, near Rhinebeck, NY — was home to some of the most exclusive Christmas parties in the country. This Downton Abbey-styled household, flush with Gilded Age cash and helmed by ambitious socialite Ruth Livingston Mills (portrait below by

By Editor

Community

Christmas (Etc.) In Connecticut

This time of year, you can’t throw a snowball (if there was any of the white stuff to throw) without hitting a holiday bazaar. But Litchfield county’s well-crafted festive collaborations — their winter strolls and lighting ceremonies — will shine especially bright this month. Sorry Fox News, but none

By Editor

Community

Bunny Williams Opens Her House for Historic Holiday Tour

Bunny Williams is used to greeting hundreds of people in a single day as they troop through her famous Falls Village garden that she opens for charity events several times every summer. The New York-based interior designer lets visitors poke their noses inside her Adirondack-style pool house as

By Editor

Community

Wilderstein: A Grand Middle Ground

Despite the brickbats of revisionist history, FDR was a great president and his wife Eleanor a towering public figure. But their taste in architecture and design were rather lacking in, shall we say, devil-may-care fun. In fact, this deficiency, if it is one, was quite deliberate. The statement

By Editor

Community

Community: 20 Questions for Laurie Norton Moffat

Photo: Sue Geller Laurie Norton Moffatt, champion of the artwork and legacy of Norman Rockwell, spearheaded the transition of the Norman Rockwell Museum from a local house museum to an internationally recognized cultural institution dedicated not only to the work of the iconic American illustrator but also to a scholarly

By Editor

Community

The Briarcliff Motel: Not Just Another Roadside Attraction

Londoners Clare Weatherall and Richard Proctor first came to the Berkshires 15 years ago as tourists on a whirlwind tour of New England, staying mostly at bed & breakfast lodgings. Motels were out of the question. Like many Europeans, their impression of the quintessentially American roadside accommodation had been informed

By Editor

Community

Made in the Berkshires Unites Artists of All Stripes

Barbara Sims and Hilary Somers Deely Two years ago, Stockbridge actress Hilary Somers Deely received a fateful phone call. Kate Maguire, the CEO and artistic director of the Berkshire Theater Group, wanted Deely to pioneer a new kind of arts festival—one that would pool the Berkshires’ wealth of visual

By Editor

Community

Olanafest 2012: Eat for Art's Sake

“Edible art” is a term that’s bandied about quite a lot these days. Few, however, come as close to the concept as the trustees of Olana, the sprawling, architecturally beguiling estate that Hudson River School painter  Frederick Church built for himself in 1870, set majestically on a sylvan hilltop

By Editor

Community

Omega's Women & Power Conference Explores What’s Possible

“When sleeping women wake, mountains move.” So goes the Chinese proverb. The influential women gathering at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY this weekend, September 21 – 23, for the biennial Women & Power Conference can’t be accused of sleeping, but they sure are moving mountains with their work, words, and

By Editor

Community

High Art Meets Hootenanny at MASS MoCA's FreshGrass Fest

Infamous Stringdusters perform on 9/21 “People might think of museums as being places where you have to be quiet and careful,” says Katherine Myers, director of public relations and marketing at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. "But MASS MoCA -- we like to try new things." The dynamic

By Editor

Community

Berkshire WordFest 2012: A Literary House Party at The Mount

The right place can light a fire under the artistic imagination. Claude Monet dreamed up Impressionism in the forests of Fontainebleau; singer-songwriter Justin Vernon of the Grammy-Award-winning indie folk group Bon Iver hid out in a Wisconsin cabin while he wrote the band's debut album.

By Editor

Community

Road Trip: The Return of the Lakeville-Salisbury House Tour

Who doesn’t love to peek inside private homes to see how friends and neighbors live? When the chance arises to do just that, especially in highly coveted spaces, it’s hard to resist an invitation. On Saturday, September 8, in Northern Litchfield County, that invitation is extended to the

By Editor