NOTE: The following was written by Sheela Clary on behalf of the Berkshire Hills Regional School District.
Toward the end of every October, scores of students from Monument Mountain Regional High School and W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School fill Great Barrington’s downtown storefronts with Halloween-themed paintings, which are judged by three community members in various categories. Maybe you already knew that. What you might not know—as we at Berkshire Hills Regional School District did not know until recently—is that 2024 is the 75th year of this local tradition.
According to artist Eunice Agar, 1952 graduate of the former Searles High School on Bridge Street, it was her hardworking art teacher Doris Whittaker Grey who kicked off the tradition in 1949.
Ms. Agar, age 90, wrote what she remembered of that era in an email:
For the first three years until I graduated from high school my partners and I won first prize for the non-Halloween subject. We painted directly on the windows with an opaque poster paint, using step ladders to reach the top … Eventually a window cracked when the paint was washed off on a particularly cold day and the contest switched to using paper designs, later attached to the windows. My partners were Beverley Scherrer (Polly) Pulver—Beverley’s father was a well known pianist—and Jean Baldyga Kay. I painted the fall landscape backgrounds and each of them at various times did an animal, a deer, a horse, and a hunting dog.
At that time there was only one art teacher and there were three separate grammar schools, eight grades each, so Ms. Grey had to go to twenty-four classes a week, carrying supplies to each class, usually 9×12 paper and crayola crayons. It must have been a difficult job.
The Halloween window-painting project is a big undertaking, and its longevity is likely thanks to the community collaborations that have endured through the years. The school district provides the 80 or so artists and their artist supervisors; Steve Foley of Onyx Speciality Paper provides the paper; 50 or so local businesses generously offer up their windows; and the Great Barrington Rotary Club sponsors arts supplies and cash prizes and invites winners to lunch. There is a Grand Prize winner, along with First, Second, Third, and Honorable Mentions, with the judges choosing the final category based on that year’s inspirations. (In recent years, the judges have selected Most Creative and Most Political.)
Organizer Webber would like to put out the word that he is still in need of downtown businesses willing to make their windows available for this year’s artists! Any business owner interested in joining in our 75th year of window painting in Great Barrington, please contact Neel Webber directly at neel.webber@bhrsd.org.
