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By STEVE PFARRER

As part of a funding program for municipal and nonprofit performing arts centers, the Massachusetts Cultural Council is awarding over $150,000 to 10 arts organizations and centers in the Valley.The awards — part of $3.66 million in funding the MCC is...

By STEVE PFARRER

Can the arts help us reexamine our past and come to terms with injustice? Can music, film and other mediums become instruments for social change by helping us look differently at our history and our beliefs?Those are questions the Power of Truths Arts...

By EMILEE KLEIN

EASTHAMPTON — Unlike most bar logs, the pages of the small black book found on the homemade bartop at Valley Art Supplies are filled with doodles and scribbles: a cat Statue of Liberty, a skull cocktail glass and platypus gyroscope lily...

Artistic minds that think alikeEASTHAMPTON — City artists Ken Gagne and Adell Donaghue share a number of traits, from an inquisitive eye to a penchant for sketching surreal or humorous scenes in their drawings, yet that also engage viewers’...

By NAILA MOREIRA

Two new exhibitions inspired by the life and skeleton of the whale Staccato — a grandmother North Atlantic right whale whose remains came to UMass’ natural history collection after her death in 1999 — are now open to the public.Indigenous artist...

By STEVE PFARRER

What a difference a year makes.Late last May, the Northampton Fire Department abruptly shut down virtually all music performances at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence, citing inadequate fire prevention measures at the venue.The move...

By STEVE PFARRER

The 1980s witnessed the start of what have become some longstanding artistic landmarks in Northampton: the Young@Heart Chorus, the downtown New Year’s Eve festival called First Night Northampton, and a good-natured competition involving collegiate a...

A grand reopeningEASTHAMPTON — With a dramatic increase in space, 50 Arrow Gallery will inaugurate its new locale Feb. 8 with a celebratory reopening and the unveiling of a new exhibit, featuring the work of Valley artist David Andrews.The gallery’s...

By STEVE PFARRER

Looking for some talented older actors who can play a wide range of roles? Who have decades of experience in theater, film and television?Raye Birk and Candace Barrett Birk are at your service.The Florence couple, relatively new transplants to the...

By STEVE PFARRER

This past November, members of Hatchery, the teen dance troupe that’s part of Northampton’s School for Contemporary Dance & Thought, joined the Young@Heart Chorus at the elderly singers’ concert as part of a new dynamic: dancing to a number of songs...

Making Ground, Live!NORTHAMPTON — Late last winter, the Workroom Theater, the largest space in the city’s Community Arts Trust building (33 Hawley), was set to close down for months as new construction began to complete the 3,800-square-foot...

By STEVE PFARRER

NORTHAMPTON — After a delay caused in part by the pandemic, the city has a new poet laureate.Franny Choi, who was nominated last year for a Massachusetts Book Award, has written for the New York Times and the Atlantic, and been interviewed on NPR, has...

By EMILEE KLEIN

SOUTH HADLEY — Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School scans old rosters for this year’s January’s Guest Artist Series, hiring seven alumni to bring their skills and knowledge of dance back home in a series of 11 workshop classes.Rather than...

By STEVE PFARRER

When Lisa Kron was growing up in southern Michigan, her family would make an annual trek to a noted amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio — Cedar Point — one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the country, known in particular for its 16 different...

By SCOTT SONNER

The blank canvas of desert wilderness in northern Nevada seemed the perfect place in 1992 for artistic anarchists to relocate their annual burning of a towering, anonymous effigy. It was goodbye to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, hello to the Nevada...

By Chad Cain

HOLYOKE — The ambitious, $61 million effort to reopen the Broadway-style Victory Theatre moved $2 million closer to becoming reality this week after the city made a significant commitment of American Rescue Plan Act money for the project in its...

By STEVE PFARRER

It might seem that every conceivable angle of studying Emily Dickinson has been covered, and in just about every format: biographies, academic studies, poetry analysis, novels, movies, even TV shows.Yet the famed Amherst poet always seems to inspire a...

By STEVE PFARRER

NORTHAMPTON — The Back Porch Festival, Signature Sounds’ late-winter showcase for American roots music, is poised to return in 2023 — in a much bigger format.Incorporating elements of First Night Northampton, the Back Porch Festival will expand to...

By STEVE PFARRER

In the early 1900s, few young American women were allowed to go about unchaperoned. Fewer still would likely have been permitted to attend college on their own, almost 500 miles from home, and at the tender age of 16.But the painter and printmaker...

By DUSTY CHRISTENSEN

SOUTH HADLEY — The Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Public Charter School is looking for a new director after trustees voted Monday to fire head of school George Simpson. The board’s decision comes a month after Reading police arrested Simpson on...