The Mount

The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home, announces the full lineup of the 2025 Summer Author Series and In Conversation. This year, the series features an expanded roster of literary luminaries reflecting diverse disciplines and perspectives. Susan Wissler, The Mount’s executive director, shares, “For over three decades, The Mount has been a beacon for thought-provoking discussions, and this year is no exception. Inspired by Edith Wharton’s passion for ideas and love of good conversation, we invite the Berkshire community to join us for enriching talks and discussions with the literary giants and innovative thinkers shaping our world today."

“Our 2025 season reflects The Mount’s unique intersection of history, literature, the arts, nature, and community. With Edith Wharton as our muse, we are excited to offer an illuminating season celebrating the sharing of ideas, stories, art, and music, while providing space for our community to gather, reflect, and wander in the natural beauty of the Berkshires,” says Susan Wissler, The Mount’s executive director.

An orphan Marie was adopted by a French army regiment as an infant. She promised to marry only a member of the regiment but falls in love with an outsider. Complications ensue as she learns that she was born to a marquise and is spirited away to live a noble life and have an arranged marriage within her new station. But this is a comedy. Do you really think that's going to happen?

The 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival is a winter arts festival located in Pittsfield’s Upstreet Cultural District in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, organized by the City of Pittsfield and Barrington Stage Company. Presenting short new plays during the dead of winter.  

As co-founder (with Ralph Gleason) of the most influential rock and popular culture magazine of its era, Jann S. Wenner is anointed and had the platform to make Zeus-like Olympian statements. But pure ego consumes his assumption that his short list of “friends” represents “the greatest rock stars and cultural icons of our time.” The seven that he crowned in his book The Masters are all white, straight and male.

With “Lizard Boy,” youth is served and age is respected.  This is a big tent musical that will please anyone with an open mind and a caring heart.  The auteur, Justin Huertas who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, and who plays the lead role, has fashioned an absolutely riveting theater piece that pulsates with emotion and extracts enormous empathy.

Experience the beauty and splendor of Edith Wharton’s beloved estate. The Mount is currently open Wednesday – Sunday for tours. We are open on Saturdays and Sundays in November & December. See the mansion all dressed up for the Holidays! Holiday House tours start November 27. Tours can be booked online at EdithWharton.org. Please visit our website for the latest calendar of events.  

Please join Close Encounters With Music for an End-of-Summer Celebration and Auction. You will enjoy beautiful vistas, a scrumptious lunch, an appearance by the PRISM quartet (saxophones). and an auction of exciting items to bid on,

The Mount is open for guided tours through October 31. Tours can be booked online at EdithWharton.org. The grounds are open, dawn to dusk, unless otherwise posted.

One of the treasures of the Berkshires is Close Encounters with Music, the brainchild of premiere cellist Yehuda Hanani. Close Encounters performs in nooks and crannies around the Berkshires and also in more prominent venues like the modern Osawa Hall designed by William Rawn of Boston, who went on to create much the same successful combination of indoor and outdoor space in Sonoma County, California. Concerts are performed in the charming turn-of the-century Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. Conceived by Joseph Mcarthur Vance, this hall was brilliantly updated by Hugh Hardy.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home announces its line-up for the 2021-2021 Summer Lecture Series. Now in its 28th year, the Summer Lecture series bring leading biographer and historians to the Berkshires. This year’s series will New York Times bestselling author Janice P. Nimura, Pulitzer-prize winner author Debby Applegate, and Biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern.

The Mount the home of Edit Wharton in the Berkshires announces a schedule of free programs. It is requires registration at EdithWharton.org.

In a normal season the Hancock Shaker Village, which was founded sixty years ago near Pittsfield, is open from April through December. With spring planting and the birth of livestock this is a busy time of year. The annual Baby Animals Festival draws some 20% of annual visitation and 15% of earned revenue. We spoke with director Jennifer Trainer Thompson about strategies to function during the pandemic.

A great day trip that enlightens and enriches the soul is as close as Berkshire county, home of Hancock Shaker Village. Spending a day learning about the Shakers, sharing dinner and thought with Peter Jennings son, Chris Jennings, and attending a concert with members of WILCO and transplanted local troubadour, Johnny Irion, can turn any day into sunshine.

Works by Stephen Hannock are in global museum collections. His Oxbow painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be included in a survey of Hudson River artist Thomas Cole. Hannock's mate Sting will also be involved in the project. When he created paintings for his friend's hometown of Newscastle the studies were shown at the Berkshire Museum. He gave one of the studies to the museum to honor philanthropist Nancy Fitzgerald. The fact of that work and the entire fine arts collection of the museum is unknown. We talked at length with the Berkshire based global artist about the impact of the museum's strategy to sell its fine arts collection with a radical makeover as an interactive educational museum for history and science.

Milford Sound with scenic fjords, national parks with spectacular mountain views and cascading waterfalls, and Dart River with thrilling jet-boat rides are the rewards of South Island. Traveling west across the Southern Alps, the rewards continue with the snow-capped Mount Cook region, Fox and San Josef Glaciers, a craggy coastline with "Pancake Rocks", and the artists' haven town of Hokitika.

Since June, 2014 Berkshire poet, Charles Giuliano, has published three books of gonzo verse. A fourth is in production for a summer release. On Tuesday April 18, at 7:30 P.M. he will give a reading at the Williams Faculty Club (WFC), 968 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267. The event is free and open to the public.

Now that it is assured of ongoing financial stability The Mount, a landmark in the Berkshires, is moving toward increased winter programming., Here is a schedule of upcoming events.

For 24 years Carl Belz was the director of the Rose Art Museum where he was a champion of regional artists with an emphasis on women. There was an annual major exhibition sponsored by Lois Foster who was later instrumental in his ouster when she and her husband Henry were the primary donors of an addition in their name designed by Graham Gund. Belz passed away recently at the age of 78.

The Mount in Lenox announces its schedule of events for the 2016 season.

Blantyre in our backyard, is only minutes from Tanglewood and the arts of the Berkshires. Rooms are beautiful and wine and gourmet food is affordable.

On June 5 at The Mount in Lenox, Mass. the publisher/ editor of Berkshire Fine Arts, Charles Giuliano, will launch Shards of a Life. From 5:30 to 7:30 PM on the porch there will be a reception and reading. In 1970 Giuliano coined and was the first to publish the now common word gonzo. The book of poems continues his development of the unique gonzo style.

The book of poetry Shards of a Life by Charles Giuliano will be launched with a reading and book signing at Edith Wharton's The Mount. The free reception will will occur on Friday, June 5 from 5:30 to 7:30. The critical essay "Beyond Gonzo" was written as the introduction for the book by J.M. Robert Henriquez

Shakespeare & Company presents its lineup for the 2015 summer season, which includes three Shakespeare plays, Henry V, The Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, plus the Regional Premiere of Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, and the World Premiere of Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid, starring Tina Packer. In addition, the summer season includes The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza, and opens with the provocative new play by Sarah Treem, The How and the Why. The summer season was announced today by Rick Dildine, his first as Shakespeare & Company’s new Executive Director.

Berkshire Theatre Group announces 2015 Summer Season Musical, the 10th Annual Community Theatre Production, The Fitzpatrick Main Stage productions and a medley of lively acts scheduled to perform at The Colonial Theatre and The Unicorn Theatre. BTG will be announcing a second round of programming, including The Unicorn Theatre's Summer Season, in the next several weeks.