Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ELDREDGE MORRISSEY spring from a private fortune. It began as a farm bought by Marian MacDowell after she returned home from Germany; she had gone there to study piano and ended up marrying her considerably older teacher, Edward MacDowell, who would be known as the first American composer to develop a reputation abroad. In the summer of 1898 he was working at home when Marian surprised him—she'd had a one-room cabin built on a hillside over- looking Monadnock, a tranquil spot in the woods where he could work undisturbed. He didn't have much time to enjoy it—he died not long after—but in his last years he suggested to Marian that she invite artists to use the cabin. He envisioned a "tiny imitation of the American Academy in Rome." It was left to Marian to transform Edward's lark into reality. She bought an adjacent par- cel of land, built a sawmill and a working farm on the property, erected dormitories and stu- dios. From the start she envisioned a place where residents "may learn to appreciate fully the fundamental unity of the separated arts," stipulating that "no social distinctions shall be allowed to determine the choice" of those invited to stay there. Not everyone was dazzled. J.P. Morgan, a supporter of Edward's, refused to hand over a dime to finance Marian's "damn fool scheme for indigent bohemians." (These days, a band of rotating colonists that plays open-mike nights in Peterborough has adopted Morgan's snub for its name.) Marian wasn't easily cowed. She founded MacDowell clubs around the country, spoke to women's clubs and sororities, launched penny drives, encouraged sponsors to endow individ- ual studios, and pressed famous colonists to speak on her behalf. When a freak hurricane laid waste to the grounds in 1938, former colonists raised nearly $40,000 needed to make repairs. At 50, Marian resumed a career as a concert pianist and toured the country, giving hundreds of recit- als of her husband's music. Afterwards, standing on crutches in front of the audiences, Marian made financial appeals on behalf of her institution. And it had become an institution. Beginning in the 1920s, the decade when Dorothy and Dubose Heyward wrote the play that would become Porgy and Bess at Barnard Studio, MacDowell colonists had amassed a raft of literary prizes, premieres, and museum exhibitions to attest to the good sense of Marian's scheme. When she retired from the day-to-day management of the colony in 1946 (under signifi- cant pressure from the board of directors) she was nearly 90. As you might imagine, a century at a retreat for artists doesn't pass entirely without incident. In the early 1950s, colony regulars Mary Colum and her husband, Padraic—lifelong friends of Marian and of James Joyce— precipitated what may figure as MacDowell's sole blackballing. After years of complaints about their disruptive behavior, abetted by Mary's wicked tongue, the board voted to limit colonists to 10 residencies, effec- tively making the Colums ineligible. The rule was quietly repealed after the couple passed away. Perhaps the most indelible character was the com- poser Louise Talma. Beginning in 1943, she visited MacDowell a not-likely-to-be-equaled 41 times, working mainly in the smallest studio on the property, a Hansel-and-Gretel cottage named Phi Beta. She was single, lived alone, and wore an often severe expression, so no one at the colony had the backbone to chide her, at least until 1994, when the new, 30 -something resident director, David Macy, took Talma aside to say that she really couldn't smoke at the dinner table any longer. Two years later, at Yaddo, after attending a reading and downing a customary shot of Jack Daniels, Talma died in her sleep. She left her money—exactly a mil- lion dollars—to MacDowell. People assume that artists' colonies tend to be breeding grounds for affairs, and they are not wrong. MacDowell has seen its share. When the pay phones were taken out of Colony Hall, some joked that it was done in the interest of saving marriages. Colonists tend to look upon these things with forbearance—chiseling at your masterpiece day after day can be a soli- tary business. And not all colony romance is frivolous. Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides met his wife, the sculptor Karen Yamauchi, at MacDowell. The composer and drummer Bobby Previte first spoke to the novelist Andrea Kleine on a path in the woods between the studios Sorosis and New Jersey. Several years later, a justice of the peace married them on that spot. It was snowing, Kleine wore a skirt made of feathers, and Previte sang her a song. "It was one of the more moving things I've seen at MacDowell," said David Macy. "About 10 colonists were there, and afterward everyone went back to work." Just as crucial as the time and space—and possibly the most rarefied thing a stay at MacDowell confers—is a particular kind of encouragement. Among American artists, the lauded and discussed hap- pen to be fortunate curiosities; the vast majority plug away in unpaid obscurity, and only the delusional get into writing or art for money. An invitation to Peterborough is one of the few certified ways your peers can let you know that they're glad the thing you made is in the world, and glad that you stuck with it despite the many fine, sensible reasons not to. Meredith Monk told me that when she came to MacDowell, most everyone thought of her as a downtown performer. "It was the first place I felt accepted as a composer, which was deeply moving and important to me," she said. Natalia Almada recalled: "When I was dropped off in Peterborough for the first time, I felt so validated to be in a place where all of these people I admired had been. I just stood there and cried." "WITH NOTHING TO DROWN THEM OUT, THOUGHTS GET AMPLIFIED." —ALEX HALBERSTADT Lunch delivered daily to each resident in a picnic basket is a treasured tradition. 106 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM