Clark Art Lecture on History of Arcadia

10:43AM / Tuesday, April 08, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, April 12 at 11 am, the Clark Art Institute presents "A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature," a talk by Paul Holberton.

This free lecture is given in conjunction with the Clark's exhibition Pastoral on Paper and takes place in the Clark's Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

Dr. Holberton, author of the acclaimed two-volume book A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature (2021), examines how idyllic landscapes and rustic scenes have been portrayed from antiquity through the Renaissance and into the eighteenth century. Responding to leading early modern literary and artistic luminaries such as Torquato Tasso, Claude Lorrain, and Thomas Gainsborough, he traces the complex journey of the pastoral across cultures and eras, from Virgil's adaptations of Theocritus to the influence of medieval pastourelles.

The idyllic tranquility of the lives of shepherds became a prominent subject in literature, music, and the visual arts over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On view through June 15, Pastoral on Paper explores how artists depicted rural life by considering their representation of cows, cottages, mules, maidens, shepherds, ruins, and overgrown landscapes. Selected primarily from the Clark's strong holdings of drawings by Claude Lorrain and Thomas Gainsborough and supplemented with select loans of Dutch Italianate artworks, this exhibition analyzes pastoral imagery to examine how artists construct their own visions of an idealized landscape.

Pastoral on Paper is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by William Satloff, Class of 2025, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.

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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