36 Hours in the Berkshires, Massachusetts: Things to Do and See

In the town of North Adams, explore Greylock Works, a 240,000-square-foot former cotton mill, now home to shops, artists’ studios, a distillery, a cafe and, more recently, loft condos. Before they sell out, order a pistachio sweet roll or a feta-and-hot-honey croissant (around $6 each) at the newly opened State Food + Drink. Then shop for potted plants, abstract paintings and Vietnamese condiments at the 328North Studio (owned by State’s chef Tu Le), before heading next door to Your Neighbor Studio, a used-clothing and furniture shop. Its owners live part time in Brooklyn, so the space runs on an honor system when it’s unstaffed, although fellow shopkeepers look in (simply Venmo them for the Picasso print or Issey Miyake leather jacket you might find there). Douglas Gilbert, another New York transplant, offers drawing classes in his studio, which is lined with his crosshatch artwork.

Like Herman Melville, who wrote “Moby-Dick” in the whale-shaped shadow of Mount Greylock, countless others have discovered the region’s wellspring of creativity by taking a hike. Just outside downtown North Adams, the Cascades Trail (one of around 250 hiking trails in the Berkshires, according to the new outdoor resource BerkshiresOutside.org) is a roughly two-mile out-and-back trip that would have vanished if not for a community petition in 1938 that saved the area from deforestation. Infused with the scent of pine and wet rocks, the path meanders along Notch Brook and up verdant woods tinged with gold leaves. Stepping over roots and muddy patches, you’ll climb a short bend and suddenly see a deep gorge and a 45-foot waterfall. Even on a spectacular fall day, you will most likely have the glen all to yourself.

How do you represent 25 years of a museum’s journey? MASS MoCA, which opened in a complex of abandoned mill buildings in downtown North Adams in 1999, has grown into one of North America’s largest contemporary art museums. The anniversary exhibition “MASS M0CA by the NUMB3R5” (through May 2025) presents a dazzling display of data, including 8,640 gallons of paint used in exhibitions, the 5,750 pencils Sol LeWitt used for 105 large-scale drawings, and 2.5 million attendance stickers issued. Also don’t miss Gunnar Schonbeck’s interactive “No Experience Required” music room; Amy Podmore’s blinking “Audience,” in which motorized eyeballs hold your gaze; Louise Bourgeois’s “Untitled” marble sculpture, a U.S. debut; and a James Turrell retrospective that includes a 40-by-40-foot freestanding Skyspace, the largest of the artist’s series of immersive light chambers around the world, built beside the Hoosic River.