Going Dutch in the Berkshires

In 1609, the Dutch came to New York with a mercantile spirit and made Manhattan the prosperous center of the New Netherlands. In the summer of 2007, the Dutch have landed in the Berkshires with quite a different spirit: to promote the careers of artists living in the Netherlands.

This summer, the government of the Netherlands is spending nearly $1 million to bring dancers, musicians, and visual and performing artists to such Berkshires staples as Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Clark Institute as part of “NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires.”

So where did these artists throw their first party? The cultural institution with the most social and artistic cachet back in New York, of course: the MASS Moca contemporary art museum and creative laboratory in North Adams, Mass.

MASS Moca’s supporters include such heavy-hitting art collectors as Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, who are associated with the Museum of Modern Art; Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, both board members of the Whitney Museum of Art; Cynthia Hazen Polsky, a board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jack and Susy Wadsworth, associated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Asia Society, and Robert Speyer, whose father is on the board of MoMA. And not to worry, MASS Moca also has a few celebrity patrons: Meryl Streep, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Leonard Nimoy, and Barry Levinson, to name a few.

Those New Yorkers weren’t in North Adams on the night the Dutch landed, but the mood was still very New York: urban, experimental, and rowdy.

Several works by Dutch artists are on display at MASS Moca. An outdoor social and event space formed by canvas overhangs of varying heights was created by artist Dre Wapenaar in the middle of MASS Moca’s assortment of 1870s-era industrial structures has become the hot spot of the summer. Mr. Wapenaar has previously exhibited his tent structures here as well as at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

“This is my sixth or seventh time here, and the last few times, I’ve forgotten about New York completely,” Mr. Wapenaar said.

Textile artist Fransje Killaars transformed the hallway outside the museum’s theater into a psychedelic celebration of fabric, taking inspiration from the idea of the sample book. Ms. Killaars has had several shows in Europe, but is hoping the exposure here leads to representation at a New York gallery.

All of these artists mentioned how fortunate they are to live in a country whose government is so supportive of the arts. There is an office at the Hague devoted to promoting Dutch artists around the world. Promotion in America is the responsibility of an office in New York.

“We’re active all over the country as brokers between the Dutch art world and the American art world,” the general director for cultural affairs of the New York Consulate General of the Netherlands, Jeanne Wikler, said.

A Duke’s ‘Uncharted Course’

At 89, Anthony Drexel Duke has a lot of great stories to tell and a gift for telling them, a fact well known to supporters of the nonprofit he founded at age 19 to help underprivileged children, Boys & Girls Harbor. Now others have a chance to hear these stories. Mr. Duke has published an autobiography written with Richard Firstman, “Uncharted Course: The Voyage of My Life.”It traces the great privilege of Mr. Duke’s upbringing as well as his great generosity.

Because Mr. Duke has so many colorful anecdotes, it’s a page-turner.

At the party to celebrate the book’s publication, Mr. Duke told one anecdote not included the book: the time Jackson Pollock drove into the Harbor’s camp in East Hampton to drop off a painting to be auctioned in a fund-raiser. It was not exactly the success of the auction. “It went for something like $15,” Mr. Duke said.