Posted on: Friday, September 10, 2004

Film looks at how museum helped town

Advertiser Staff

The documentary "Downside UP," about America's largest museum of contemporary art and the impoverished small town it transformed, will be screened at 3:30 p.m. today at the Hawai'i Theatre.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in North Adams, opened in 1999 in an abandoned factory. Filmmaker Nancy Kelly created a first-person record of how her blue-collar hometown struggled with its identity as a hoped-for recovery loomed, thanks to an unlikely ally — the forces of modern art.

In 1998, when the museum was under construction, 80 percent of North Adams' downtown sat vacant. Now the museum attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year; new restaurants have opened and high-tech businesses have moved in.

The screening is free and will be followed by informal discussion and refreshments at the nearby The ARTS at Marks Garage. Kelly and other filmmakers will be present to discuss documentary filmmaking and how culture and the arts can transform a neighborhood.