The arts in the 1960s and 1970s...Tanglewood, Music Inn, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Jacobs Pillow, etc.

Over the course of three decades, Music Inn presented hundreds of concerts, many boasting the greatest names in jazz, folk, blues, and rock music. Names like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and Odetta. Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughan and Ethel Waters. The Rev. Gary Davis, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Browni

Berkshire Playhouse in 1928 where many famous Actors starred in productions the James Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Katharine Hepburn, and Buster Keaton, to name a few...

In 1964, the Berkshire Theatre Festival. The board hired Stockbridge resident and playwright William Gibson and he hired Arthur Penn, another Stockbridge resident , to direct and then the BTF entered a new trajectory

Tanglewood had been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937...the 1960s and 70's added contemporary music that rattled the grounds with rock and roll and a much younger audience...

Jacobs Pillow

Ted Shawn created Jacobs Pillow as a place for contemplation, creativity, and performance...Since then, it became the summer home of the world's most famous choreographers and dancers...

Martha Graham came to Jacob's Pillow for the first time in 1960...Other brilliant choreographers and dancers soon followed...At the same time, The Pillow became one of the leading summer dance festivals for dance students- many who became famous dancers and choregraphers in their own right.

In addition to traditional dance forms, Jacobs Pillow also supported innovation and asked many "modern" dance company's to perform and teach at the Pillow- Here is an early performance of The Nikolais Dance Theatre at the Pillow.

Photo Gallery

This is an original 1936 stamp announcing the very first outdoor concert seriesby the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The concert series was given under a large tent for an audience of nearly 15,000 setting the stage for the large music shed inaugurated on August 4, 1938. The basic structure and design remains today!

In 1953 Rockwell moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Stockbridge was a quintessential New England town in the idyllic Berkshires. He lent works to the Norman Rockwell Museum, established there in 1969.

Berkshire Playhouse opened on June 4, 1928, with a production of "The Cradle Song" with Eva Le Gallienne. Actors who have starred in productions at the Berkshire Playhouse include James Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Katharine Hepburn, and Buster Keaton. Notable producing directors have included Billy Miles, Joan White, Robert Paine Grose, George Tabori, Arthur Penn, Josephine Abady, Juli

Chesterwood is the former summer home, studio and gardens of American sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), who is best known for creating two of our nation’s most powerful symbols: the Minute Man (1871–75) at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, and Abraham Lincoln (1911–22) for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Daniel Chester French was one of the most successful artists

The Berkshires were also known for their "summer cottages" of the very wealthy who took their private train cars to Great Barrington and spend their summers in the mountains. This is one of the small ones! And, infact, was the home of Harriet Sossner in the 1960s that helped furnish 7 Arts Antiques when it was first opened.

This is another one of the "Berkshire Cottages." Over the years they evolved into guest houses, educational centers- many being turned into high-end condos in the 1980s and 1990s.