Mayor Barrett, the Web and “Cultural Tourism”

By Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 21, 2000) – I don't know a lot about the ins and outs of North Adams government and politics, but in general I do follow the politics of culture fairly closely, and something happening in North Adams is a tremendous case of lost opportunity.

Turn the clock back a few weeks to when North Adams Mayor John Barrett – who, by the way, I've always liked and respected both professionally and personally – went public with his complaints about a locally-generated website featuring accusations of personal and professional malfeasance on his part.

Forget for a moment that until Barrett went public with his complaint, including the filing of a lawsuit accusing the authors of the website of libel, hardly anyone knew about the site or the scurrilous accusations it contains.

Barrett was within his rights to play hardball and to expose the so-called guardian angels, whom I assume he suspects of harboring more than their fair share of political grudges against him. He made it to first base in the court system, and as of now there will be a hearing in the fall on the matter.

Fine. But then an odd thing happened. The local chamber of commerce piped in and called on the website authors to stop their Internet-based campaign against Barrett. They feared that precisely when North Adams was in the midst of a genuine rebirth as a tourist destination, based in large part on the success of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the presence of this site on the World Wide Web – and particularly the name of the site, which features the city's name prominently in its address – would confuse or discourage people from coming to the “new” North Adams.

Apparently the good folks at the chamber believe that accusations of governmental corruption – that, for example, Mayor Barrett uses a city-owned car for personal use (gasp!), or that back when he was a schoolteacher in the stone age he made use of corporal punishment as a disciplinary method (the horror!) – might tip the balance against travelers who are indecisive about whether to make the journey to Tunnel City. Forget, for the moment, that such a line of logic is a hard one to follow, and with no basis in fact. (OK, raise your hands, how many of you will not travel to Boston because you hold the entire city personally responsible for the fact that Lt. Gov. Jane Swift earns more than you do in a whole year for teaching three graduate students for seven weeks? How many of you are boycotting San Antonio because a mayor there once committed adultery? How many of you will never take a trip to Washington, D.C., because Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky…..oh, never mind, you get the picture.)

In fact, if anything, experience indicates the exact opposite; that with a little imaginative thinking framing the issue, the controversy surrounding Mayor Barrett and his web nemesis could be a boon for North Adams.

Stay with me. I know memories are short, but does anyone recall the sensation surrounding “Sensation,” the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that including a so-called artwork of elephant dung and the image of a Madonna which incurred the wrath of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and thereby went on to break every standing box-office record in the museum's history?

I submit that what we have here, gentlemen of the chamber, is a serious lack of imagination on your part.
The only thing standing in the way of a national sensation of “Sensation”-like proportions is one more step to connect the dots, to somehow tie together the offending, offensive website and Mayor Barrett's personal triumph, Mass MoCA itself.

In other words, all that needs to happen is the website needs to be proclaimed an official, virtual exhibition under the curatorial auspices of Mass MoCA, thereby granting it the status of “art.” Come up with some kind of catchy title for the new “interactive exhibition,” like “Police State” or “Scoundrel.” Mayor Barrett then does a Rudy Giuliani and, as the guardian of all that is decent and proper, lashes out against those who would prostitute art to the lowest common denominator, or confuse art with politics, as happened recently in New York when in the wake of “Sensation” the Whitney Museum installed a piece in which Giuliani was likened to Adolf Hitler.

The irony of course is that Mass MoCA is in large part Barrett's brainchild, and that he is still chairman of the Mass MoCA Commission. But the many layers of irony such an exhibition will contain will only give pundits more to pontificate about. Frankly, it's the stuff of a post-modernist's wet dream.

But then, Barrett is anything if not a very smart politician. How else to explain his initial, seemingly unfathomable move in making public the website? The only reasonable explanation is that all along, Barrett himself saw that this sort of controversy would be good for North Adams and, as always, putting the interests of the city ahead of his own personal gain, he saw the wisdom in airing the dirty linen publicly, in the hopes of stirring a tempest which in the long run would make North Adams a much more interesting, exciting, vital place of interest to cultural tourists.
Unfortunately, the other actors in the scenario have yet to step up to the plate and play their parts. Well, now you have the script. Let the show begin!

Backstage bits
I'll never forget wandering into a Boston nightclub a dozen years ago – it might have been the Channel – and being totally blown away by a performer who combined the manic intensity of Little Richard, the showmanlike funk of James Brown, and the soulful pipes of Solomon Burke. While national fame has eluded him, Barrence Whitfield is a legend of sorts, at least in the Boston area. He's also a versatile performer, known to rock as hard as the Rolling Stones or twang like a honky-tonker. A recent album, “Ritual of the Savages,” covers territory as vast as Elvis Costello-like pop, Van Morrison-like gospel/soul (“Everybody Needs Love”) and swinging jump-blues (“Wiggy Waggy Woo”). Whitfield is at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington tomorrow night at 9.

Catching up with Vertical Horizon: Faith Hill knocked the title track of “Everything You Want” out of the #1 position this week on the Adult Top 40 chart. The song is now #2 but still with a bullet. But even more impressive, Pittsfield native Searn Hurley has a piece of a genuine, top 10 hit. “Everything You Want” is #9 with a bullet on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart. The album remains steady at #41 on Billboard's Hot 200 album chart. You can catch the hometown hero live in concert tomorrow at Bushnell Park in Hartford.

We've heard from Woody, Arlo and Abe. Now it's Sarah Guthrie's turn, and she's breaking out big as the newest Guthrie on the folk scene. Catch her this week at the Iron Horse tomorrow night,w armin gup the crowd for Bill Morrissey at 7, and again next Thursday, Apil 27, at the Lion's Den in Stockbridge at 8.

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