A Groundbreaking Arts Center at MCLA
Construction of the New Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts at MCLA is Right Around the Corner
Excerpted from Berkshire Magazine – Fall 2025
by Elise Linscott Gladstone
Soon, MCLA will have a new state-of-the-art building welcoming visitors to its campus, deepening its connection to the surrounding arts institutions and strengthening its presentation of art in North Adams.
The new Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts, with construction to begin this fall and an anticipated opening in 2027, will be the first building of its kind for MCLA, making it a natural fit and an expansion for a liberal arts college surrounded by the culturally rich, arts-focused Berkshires community, says MCLA President James Birge. It will also allow the college to deepen partnerships with places like MASS MoCA, the Clark Art Institute, and the Williams College Museum of Art (with a new building projected to reopen in 2027), in terms of job placements and reciprocal programming.
‟Having this facility allows us to think anew about what those partnerships are like,” says Birge. There will be new opportunities for partnership and shared programming, he says. For instance, students will gain hands-on experience in museum and gallery operations, community education, and artist collaboration. ‟This positions us to be the institution in New England for arts management,” Birge says. ‟These partnerships will help grow enrollment and create more opportunities for better teaching and learning, while also allowing us to think about new majors that could emerge from these collaborations.” He did not specify what those majors could be, but says that ‟the interdisciplinary nature of the center means we’re exploring how it can enhance programs across multiple disciplines, as well as in the graduate and continuing education space.” There are limitations of MCLA Gallery 51’s current location on Main Street in North Adams, including the space available. The new facility, he explained, will allow for more ambitious programming, including public exhibitions of visiting artists and interactive sessions where audiences can engage with the creative process, from the formation of ideas to curation to installation. Located at the corner of Porter and Church streets, the Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts will be the first building that visitors and students see as they enter the campus from North Adams. The new center was made possible by a gift of an undisclosed amount from California-based visual artist, poet, and author Carolyn Kleefeld. A cornerstone will be its integration of Kleefeld’s art and poetry, offering ongoing opportunities for students to curate and engage with her work as a model for exploring the creative process. This engagement will extend to other art• ists, with students actively participating in selecting, situating, and appreciating works in the gallery.
Kleefeld says she hopes it will be ‟a creative, explorative interaction, inspiring expansive expression in myriad mediums, conversations, living life.”
