The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood festival usually draws 350,000 visitors, with significant financial impact on the Berkshire region of Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Boston Symphony Orchestra
“Tourism has been decimated by widespread coronavirus closures … especially … in regions that rely heavily on seasonal dollars, including the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts,” writes Andrea Shea on Tuesday (6/30) at Boston radio station WBUR. “It’s a place where art, theater and music drive a post-industrial, creative economy now shuttered by the pandemic…. During a normal summer 350,000 visitors stream through the gates at the Tanglewood Music Festival [where] for decades the BSO musicians have performed.… ‘The last time Tanglewood missed a whole summer was precipitated by gas and rubber rationing in 1945,’ the orchestra’s CEO and president Mark Volpe explained…. Over the decades the Berkshires region has redefined itself as a cultural destination…. There’s the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Williamstown Theater Festival, Shakespeare & Company and a slew of museums including the Clark Art Institute, the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art … Unemployment in Berkshire Country … in May … reached 28%…. Phased reopening is underway in Massachusetts.” Eric Kerns, a partner in the North Adams-based Tourists hotel, said, “We feel a responsibility to the community as an economic engine. But we also feel an incredible obligation to be protective of this community that has spectacularly low infection rates.”
