A Groundbreaking Arts Center
- Elise Linscott Gladstone
- Oct 24
- 5 min read
By Elise Linscott Gladstone
CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW CAMPAGNA KLEEFELD CENTER FOR CREATIVITY IN THE ARTS AT MCLA IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER
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 also will 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 by 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 artists, 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.”
Born in Catford, England, and raised in Southern California, Kleefeld has written 25 books, published many tri-lingual and bi-lingual translations, and created an extensive and diverse body of drawings and paintings, ranging in style from romantic figurative to abstract. Her art is featured internationally in galleries, museums, private collections, and multimedia presentations. When she looks back on her career, Kleefeld says she doesn’t think about it in terms of accomplishments; rather, she sees it as “an endless process,” she says.
Birge says the center will bring more innovation to the college in that it will feature lab and gallery spaces whose benefits will extend beyond fine arts and into other academic areas.
“All disciplines on campus will benefit from having classes, speakers, and events in the space,” he says. “The heart of liberal arts is broad-based, cross-disciplinary education, and this center will serve as a hub that brings together students and faculty from across the college.”
While the Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, completed in 2013, provides a state-of-the-art space for science and technology, there’s currently no comparable facility for the arts. When Kleefeld expressed interest in supporting the college through the creation of this new arts facility, the idea of creating a cutting-edge center dedicated to creativity became possible.
The conversation between MCLA and Kleefeld started through former Gallery 51 Director Erica Wall, who knew Kleefeld’s art advisor, Georgia Freedman-Harvey.
Freedman-Harvey followed the exhibits that Wall was presenting at Gallery 51’s artist-in-residence program. “Over time, she saw in MCLA a philosophy that she thought was a match for what I wanted to do in contributing to an academic institution,” Kleefeld says. Freedman-Harvey and Wall raised the possibility of MCLA having a permanent gallery and art center. As it turns out, Kleefeld already was interested in establishing a presence on the East Coast. “Erica was enthused with the idea, and Georgia and Patricia Holt, my long-time friend and colleague with my art and writing, worked with Erica starting in 2021 to advance this possibility,” Kleefeld adds.
Even when Wall left MCLA for a job at Colby College in Maine, Kleefeld kept the conversation going and began working with Bob Ziomek, vice president for institutional advancement at MCLA, and Richard Glezjer, vice president of academic affairs, to advance the project, Kleefeld explains.
Kleefeld says she’s excited about the college’s expanding arts curriculum and the development of a multi-disciplinary approach to learning about the arts. Her own career has spanned multiple art forms, created from an “inner wildness” that can reflect “our primal nature and oneness with all things,” according to her artist statement. She lets her intuition choose the color and form, opting for work that’s symbolic and experimental in nature, she says, ranging from abstract, figurative and expressionist.
Kleefeld, who studied art and psychology at UCLA, has relationships with other colleges, too. She’s a benefactor to the University Art Museum and College of the Arts at Cal State Long Beach, where she gifted 120 of her works, according to a 2019 press release from the college. In addition to her art, Kleefeld donated $10 million to the museum, which was subsequently renamed the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum.
Kleefeld’s award-winning art is in the permanent collections of, among others, The Downey Museum of Art in California, Pepperdine University’s Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, and The Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea, Wales.
“The groundbreaking represents the beginning of what I envision as a collaborative effort with MCLA to bring originality, freedom of expression, creative inspiration to the students and staff at MCLA and adding more enrichment to the vibrant art community of North Adams and the surrounding areas,” Kleefeld says. “Art is an interactive mirror of our innermost process, inspiring individuals toward their most expressive, creative potential. So, I see the center as a means of individuation for students and others in the surrounding community.”
As the new primary gallery and arts programming space on campus (rather than the Gallery 51 space on Main Street), The Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts will support MCLA programs by providing opportunities for students to engage with artists, their work, and the community through classes, curation and exhibitions. It will also support MCLA’s Benedetti Teaching Artists-in-Residence and student artists-in-residence, according to a statement from the college.
Kleefeld says the opportunity to help MCLA in this way is “thrilling.” She says her philanthropic actions come from “an internal well of being, not from concepts or outer expectations.”
“I feel enriched by spiritual and other expanded dimensions, with experience and the external expressed through my unique instrument of being,” she says. “I feel we are all instruments in a cosmic symphony. So, it is this internal existence that inspires me to be philanthropic, including providing the center for MCLA, as an affirmation of the importance of a place dedicated to inspiring independent thinking, creativity, and potentially inspiring others to learn from this experiment, this experience, and enrich their own lives.”
The college is planning a formal groundbreaking ceremony for the building this fall, to be announced at a later date.
I once played Retro Bowl College while waiting for my bus, and missed it because I was in overtime. Totally worth it for that winning touchdown.
It’s amazing to see how MCLA is creating a space where art, imagination, and innovation intersect. The idea of students engaging hands-on with creativity reminds me of how rhythm and timing matter in Geometry Dash Lite — one moment of focus can turn practice into mastery. This new center feels like it’ll do the same for young artists, giving them that perfect rhythm between freedom and precision.