The concentration of cultural institutions in Berkshire County is the reason most people visit, and it is genuinely unusual. A rural county of around 125,000 people supports a contemporary art museum of international standing, one of the finest small collections of European painting in the country, the summer home of a major orchestra, and several professional theatre companies.
The practical problem for a visitor is that these are spread over fifty miles of hill country and most of them want half a day each.
Year-round institutions
MASS MoCA, in North Adams, occupies a converted electronics factory and is the largest contemporary art museum in the United States by exhibition space. The scale is the point — it shows installations that will not fit anywhere else, and several are effectively permanent. It handles a wet afternoon better than anything else in the county and is the one major institution that reliably works with older children.
The Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, holds a concentrated collection of nineteenth-century European and American painting — a great deal of Impressionism, and Sargent, Homer and Remington. The building sits in its own landscape with walking trails, which makes it a longer visit than the collection alone suggests.
The Norman Rockwell Museum, in Stockbridge, holds the largest collection of his work along with his relocated studio. It is a more interesting museum than its subject's reputation implies, particularly on the mid-century magazine industry that Rockwell worked inside.
The Berkshire Museum, in Pittsfield, mixes art, natural history and science. It is the most family-oriented of the county's museums and the least demanding.
Hancock Shaker Village, west of Pittsfield, preserves a Shaker community with its buildings, farm and the round stone barn. It is outdoors in large part, so it suits fine weather better than the others.
The Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown is free and frequently overlooked, which is a mistake.
The summer season
From late June to early September the county's population effectively doubles, and the reason is the performance calendar.
Tanglewood, near Lenox, is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the single largest draw in the Berkshires. Concerts are given in a covered shed with an enormous surrounding lawn, and the lawn is the characteristic Tanglewood experience — a picnic, a blanket and an orchestra at a distance, for a fraction of the seated price. A Tanglewood weekend fills accommodation for a considerable radius, which is worth knowing before booking a trip that has nothing to do with music.
The Williamstown Theatre Festival runs through the summer and has a long history of drawing significant actors to a small stage.
Barrington Stage in Pittsfield and Shakespeare & Company in Lenox both run substantial seasons, and both extend past the summer into the autumn, which makes them the answer for a September or October visit when Tanglewood has finished.
Jacob's Pillow, in Becket, is a dance festival of international standing and the least known of the major summer events outside the dance world.
Several chamber music festivals fill in around these, and the smaller ones are frequently the most rewarding and the easiest to get into.
Building a weekend
The mistake is to attempt three major institutions in two days. Each of the large museums wants three to four hours to be worth the admission, and stacking them produces exhaustion rather than memory.
The arrangement that works is one institution per day, morning or afternoon, with something outdoors attached to the other half. The county is compact enough that this is easy — see outdoors and hiking for what fits alongside.
Geography helps. North County — MASS MoCA, the Clark, Williamstown — is a coherent day. South County — Rockwell, The Mount, the Stockbridge gardens — is another. Trying to combine them means an hour in the car in the middle of the day.
For summer performances, buy tickets before arranging anything else. Accommodation follows the calendar here, and a Tanglewood weekend booked late is expensive and distant — see area lodging.
Out of season
November, and April into May, are when a good deal of this closes or reduces its hours. The major museums stay open; the summer performance season does not exist, and several smaller attractions shut entirely.
That is not a reason to avoid those months — the museums are quiet and the county is cheap — but it is a reason to check opening hours rather than assume them. What else is available then is on more things to do and, in winter, on the ski hills.