This post is based on an eblast sent in early January 2026.
A warm thank you as we wrap up our 30th year
The Board of the Sandisfield Arts Center thanks you for a wonderful 2025, whether you attended or showed in an art show in our spiffed up Garfield Family Gallery; came to or gave a workshop or performance or reading; or made a donation of time or money. Or cookies.
As we look forward to 2026, your engagement as well as donations from several foundations (Homestead, 1776, Feigenbaum) and the Mass Cultural Council Cultural Facilities Fund mean that we’ll be opening in the spring with a handicap-accessible kitchen, a long-needed storage shed, and additional gallery and other improvements. As well as air conditioning, of course.
Reflecting on our mission—To preserve our historic building and provide cultural and educational programs for our community–we realize that the historic building we are commited to preserving represents something intangible, a historic heritage of diversity over almost 200 years.
How many cultural institutions have roots that are Christian, Jewish, and, since our 1995 founding, joyfully and intentionally multicultural and inclusive? That’s the unique inheritance you are helping us carry into the next 30 years, and beyond. It’s also a great theme for our country’s 250th anniversary.
A few treats
A YouTube recording of Josh Luxon-Robinson’s 2025 Thanksgiving recital
We weren’t sure if people would venture out the day after Thanksgiving, but almost 60 of you did, and the warmth and community were palpable.
Turn up the volume and skip ahead to the piano playing (the introductions are hard to hear)and you’ll be able to enjoy Josh’s playing of Liszt (Vallée d’Obermann), Medtner (Sonata Reminisicenza), Beethoven (Sonata in A flat Major, Op. 110), and as an encore, “I’ll Remember April.”
A YouTube recording of Val Coleman’s poem celebrating years of spirited
diversity on our stage
Arts Center stalwart Val Coleman (1930-2020) reads his poem celebrating our heritage and all that’s happened on our stage. Video by Peter Baiamonte.
Thomas Hardy’s magical poem, “Snow in the Suburbs”
We recommend reading the poem aloud, if possible to children. The last line captures the spirit we want to take into 2026.
Thomas Hardy
Snow in the Suburbs
Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
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