Clark Art Announces Ground/Work Outdoor Exhibition

08:11AM / Saturday, January 25, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Clark Art Institute announces its second outdoor sculpture exhibition, Ground/work 2025, opening in summer 2025.

Set throughout the woodland trails and open meadows of the Clark's distinctive 140-acre campus, the exhibition includes newly commissioned, site-specific installations by six leading contemporary artists.

According to a press release:

Curated by independent art historian Glenn Adamson, Ground/work 2025 features a dynamic range of outdoor presentations by international artists, Y? Akiyama, Laura Ellen Bacon, Aboubakar Fofana, Hugh Hayden, Milena Naef, and Javier Senosiain that respond to the Clark's unique setting while expressing ideas core to each artist's individual practice. Like the inaugural Ground/work, which opened in summer 2020, the installations will remain on view for over one year allowing visitors to encounter the works day or night and throughout the seasons, experiencing them anew as the landscape and weather conditions change. Ground/work 2025 closes in October 2026.

"When we first considered doing our initial Ground/work exhibition, we always hoped that the public's response would inspire future iterations of the project," said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. "The enthusiastic embrace of this concept was immediate and intense when we opened the exhibition in 2020 and the public's interest in and enthusiasm for another Ground/work project has been constant. We eagerly await the opportunity to bring this new presentation to life and to experience our grounds through the eyes of this new cohort of artists. Glenn Adamson, our guest curator, has invited artists whose work will be particularly responsive to the natural setting here at the Clark and we are confident that our visitors will be delighted by the works of art that are planned."

Glenn Adamson is an American curator, author, and art historian whose work focuses on the intersections of contemporary art, design, and craft, which he defines as "skilled making, on a human scale."

"The monumentality of this project, and its global range of artists, definitely make it a milestone in the institutional presentation of craft," Adamson says. "At the same time, I love the radical accessibility of it—the fact that it can be seen by anyone, free of charge, at any time of the day. Imagine a group of kids walking through the woods and suddenly coming upon one of these huge sculptures, a strange and beautiful presence in a clearing, and then learning how was made. How magical is that?"

Tags: Clark Art,

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Letter: Incomplete Picture from Greylock School Committee

Letter to the Editor06:30PM / Wednesday, October 28, 2026

To the Editor:

At the October Mount Greylock School Committee meeting, there was much celebration over the student growth percentiles (SGP) from last year's MCAS test data (Spring 2026). Growth is worth celebrating. But I worry the meeting, and the coverage of it, left families and our community with an incomplete picture of how our students are doing in math.

"Growth" sounds like it means scores went up, but that isn’t quite what SGP measures. SGP compares each student to students in the state who scored about the same the year before, then ranks how they did this year against that group. If a whole group of similar students decreases, the student who decreases the least can still earn a high growth percentile. A strong SGP tells us our students did better than their peers who scored similarly the year before. It doesn't tell us whether they are at grade level.

For example, the current 6th grade class at Williamstown Elementary School (WES) has decreased in their grade-level math proficiency every year since their 3rd grade MCAS. In 2024, 64 percent of the class was meeting expectations; in 2025 48 percent were at grade level, and in 2026 only 33 percent of their class met grade-level expectations. Our current WES 5th grade class follows a similar trend, with 48 percent meeting grade-level math expectations last year vs 56 percent meeting expectations in 2025 when they were in 3rd grade.

Not every class follows this pattern; our current 7th graders gained to 62 percent last year. But seeing entire classes decrease is something that deserves our attention.

Growth comparisons across the state provide useful information, but they do not tell the complete story. We also need to look at where our students are in terms of grade-level proficiency and how those numbers are changing from year to year within the Mt. Greylock school district. This will be our first year with the math interventionist role filled at WES and our second year with the new i-Ready curriculum.

As we watch whether these changes are working, I hope the School Committee will discuss proficiency alongside growth in its public meetings, so our community can see the full picture. Growth matters, but it isn’t enough if fewer of our kids are reaching grade level each year.

Sincerely,

Jenna Hasenkampf
Williamstown, Mass.

Hasenkampf is a parent of WES students in Grades 2 and 4.

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