![]() ![]() Residents left in droves in search of jobs. Unemployment in North Adams soared as the last 2,000 workers were pink-slipped. The company’s payroll, which supported 4,000 workers at its peak in the mid-1960s, started to decline over the next two decades and in 1985, the company finally shut its doors. In the 1970s, sales continued to rise for Sprague components, but profits sagged due to overseas competition. Mayor Richard Alcombright shakes hands with former governor Jane Swift, a North Adams resident who also spoke at the Building 6 opening. Twenty years ago, MASS MoCA opened its doors with the help of $35 million in state funding and a promise to bring much-needed jobs and visitors to North Adams. The grand plan for MASS MoCA has always been to create a synergistic relationship with its host city. “I see this as a generational shift,” he says. He says the shift from a manufacturing to an arts community is as much cultural as it is economic, and takes time. He is confident the museum will not only attract more tourists who will spend money in other areas of the city, but will act as a catalyst for other arts-related businesses that will call North Adams home. Halio says she and her husband plan to eat at the museum café on this visit, but maybe they’ll eat downtown on their next. The gun barrel is angled toward a would-be voter’s head. “This one is about social justice,” she says, staring at a piece featuring a gun rack mounted on the outside of a voting booth. Marcia Halio, who drove up from Delaware with her husband to visit their daughter at Williams College in neighboring Williamstown, says she is very impressed by the level of art in Building 6. “We want to make it impossible for people to visit MASS MoCA and the northern Berkshires and to leave after a few hours or even a day,” says MASS MoCA’s founding director, Joseph Thompson. “We want them to take the time to stay and shop around town and buy two to three meals before heading back home.” ![]()
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