Jean and David Stafford of Charlton, N.Y., study the collection of Saturday Evening Post covers painted by Norman Rockwell, on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. The whimsical Americana of this museum provides a study in contrasts with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in nearby North Adams.

AP/ MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams is a cavernous temple of modern art, with exceptionally big and provocative works in a variety of media. The Norman Rockwell Museum in nearby Stockbridge, Mass., by contrast, serves up a whole different aesthetic, one filled with soda fountains, family dinners and sweetly nostalgic takes on small-town life.

The two museums stake out opposite positions in the art world. But together they add up to an eye-opening, art-infused weekend trip. Both are in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, which makes for easy back and forth. Both speak to children — Mass MoCA for its sheer eccentricity, the Rockwell museum for its gentle humor. And for adults, there is the pleasure of the contrast between the two.

Mass MoCA is a place of serious whimsy, where unusual artistic ideas are allowed to flourish. Outside the entrance is a stand of upside-down maple trees, held aloft by a large steel-and-timber frame. Created by Natalie Jeremijenko, the sculpture is called Tree Logic. Somehow, the six trees manage to grow, though some branches twist upward in a vain attempt to reach the sun.

It is just the sort of project our 6-year-old son, Sawyer, might have conceived and executed, but for lack of an underwriter. He beamed as he took it in, shooting us a look of mischievous pleasure. Our daughter, Amelia, 9, was beginning to appreciate the elastic boundaries of fine art as well. Inside the museum she pointed to a small recess in the wall, below a label describing a nearby sculpture. “Is that the piece of art?” she asked. “The hole in the wall?”

Her confusion was understandable. After all, in another gallery sat a 42-ton sculpture by the renowned German artist Anselm Kiefer — an undulating mass of concrete some 80 feet in length, sprouting rusty filaments of rebar. Until recently, the sculpture adorned the lawn of a couple in Fairfield, Conn., where it puzzled and ultimately annoyed the neighbors. They thought it looked more like demolition debris than art, and the Historic District Commission of Fairfield insisted on its removal.

The 2002 sculpture, titled Etroits Sont les Vaisseaux, or Narrow Are the Vessels, is on extended loan to the museum, where it looks almost elegant in the center of an artfully lighted gallery. Our children enjoyed the tale of its provenance, appreciating the irony.

But it was the Jenny Holzer installation called Projections, which occupies a gallery the size of a football field, that was the show-stopper for our children. The gallery is vast and dark, except for two powerful beams at either end that project the poetry of the Polish writer and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska. The huge lines of text — “Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton, in every other way they’re light,” for example — elongate and distort as they scroll in opposite directions across the floor and ceiling.

As if this weren’t enough, the artist has sprinkled flying saucer-size bean bags across the floor for ease of viewing, and the guards seemed to discourage only the most outrageous abuses of bean-bag etiquette.

While so much at Mass MoCA is child friendly, the museum nonetheless created a special room called Kidspace. It has tables with art supplies, as well as its own revolving art exhibitions. We saw “It’s Rude to Stare,” a recent show by Richard Criddle, featuring a bevy of creepy figures made from wood, metal and found objects. The sculptures were inspired by Criddle’s childhood fears and stories.

Taking their cue from the exhibition, Will Fairbrother of Barrington, and his son Lucian, 6, were collaborating on a green monster cutout. “I think contemporary art — the scale of it — is really good for kids,” said Fairbrother, an assistant professor of biology at Brown University. “It’s more accessible, and they warm up to it.”

Now on display through summer are Devorah Sperber’s pointillistic interpretations of iconic portraits such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Spools of thread stand in for small dabs of paint, and the images, which hang upside-down, appear upright only when viewed through optical devices.

Not much connects Mass MoCA and the Norman Rockwell Museum. Indeed, it was the dissimilarity of the two that made me want to combine them a single weekend. Just outside Kidspace, however, is a fascinating link, and one that is easily overlooked: a mural by Jarvis Rockwell, a son of Norman Rockwell.

Covering four walls from floor to ceiling, the mural looks like the work of a compulsive doodler: an endless, intricate pencil drawing of interconnected orbs. Jarvis Rockwell, who is better known for his dioramas of toy action figures, created a similar drawing in a restaurant in nearby Williamstown.

The landscape surrounding the Norman Rockwell Museum is as pastoral as Mass MoCA’s is gritty. The 36-acre property — on the outskirts of Stockbridge, where Rockwell spent his last 25 years — includes his studio, which was moved to the site. (The studio is open May through October.) Overlooking the Housatonic River, the grounds also feature sculptures by Peter Rockwell, another son.

Founded in 1969 with input from Norman and Molly Rockwell, the museum houses the world’s largest collection of Rockwell art. It also exhibits works by other prominent illustrators; on view through May 26 is “LitGraphic: the World of the Graphic Novel.”

At first, the sumptuous galleries seem to send a hush-hush message to children, a tacit warning that they are in the presence of serious art. But, of course, humor infuses so many of Rockwell’s canvases and Saturday Evening Post covers — all 323 are on view — that our children were almost taken by surprise.

Amelia’s favorite was The Gossips, a 1948 oil painting for a Post cover in which Rockwell shows a series of women and men passing on some scandalous tidbit of news. The gossip appears to be about Norman Rockwell himself, and in the final row of talking heads, we see Rockwell in profile, scolding the woman who started it.

Rockwell’s work was often dipped in treacle as it romanticized American life, and in the art world, he inspires both respect and contempt. A 2002 retrospective of his work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, for instance, drew comparisons to Vermeer, as well as howls of derision.

Still, Rockwell, who died in 1978 at 84, was an American institution, and so was the Saturday Evening Post, which provided him with a singular platform, from his first cover in 1916 to his last in 1963. Before our visit, Amelia and Sawyer had heard of neither Rockwell nor the Post, and I viewed the introduction as accomplishment enough.

But Rockwell also confronted difficult subjects such as race, and a few days after our visit, Amelia bounded home with a flier about an upcoming event at school. The flier had a tiny picture of a large oil we had just studied at the museum: The Problem We All Live With, depicting a black girl in a bright white dress, escorted by federal marshals. A tomato had been hurled near the girl, its red juices splattered against the wall.

The painting was based on the real-life experience of Ruby Bridges, one of the first black children to attend a white school in Louisiana. At the museum, the painting, which Rockwell did for Look magazine in 1964, prompted a talk with Amelia about racism and segregation. Now grown up, Ruby Bridges Hall was going to visit our daughter’s elementary school to share her story.

That, to me, seemed a nearly perfect illustration of the power of art to educate and inspire.If you go

FROM PROVIDENCE: To reach the Norman Rockwell Museum, at 9 Glendale Rd. (Route 183) in Stockbridge, Mass., take 146 North to the Mass Pike (Route I-90) and follow it West to Exit 2 (Lee). At the light at the end of the ramp, turn left onto Route 20 East and then immediately right onto Route 102 West. Follow 102 West into Stockbridge Center (about five miles). Continue going west on Route 102 (Main Street). Shortly after going through town, you will veer to the right to stay on Route 102 West for approximately 1.8 miles. At the flashing light, make a left onto Route 183 South and the museum entrance is 0.6 miles on the left.

The Lee exit is also the departure point for Mass MoCA, at 87 Marshall St. in North Adams. Take a right at the bottom of the ramp toward Lee center (Route 20). This will lead to Route 7 North to Williamstown, where it joins Route 2 East (at a rotary). Follow Route 2 East 5.2 miles to the center of North Adams, where you will bear right onto an off-ramp marked “exit for downtown business district, Route 8.” At the bottom of the exit ramp (at the traffic light), take a left onto Marshall Street. Drive under the overpass, and MASS MoCA will be directly on your left.

VISITOR INFORMATION:

Mass Moca:

Open every day, except Tuesday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. From the beginning of July to early September, hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. (Kidspace is open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.) Admission: $12.50 for adults, with discounts for children and students. More information at (413) 662-2111 or www.massmoca.org.

Norman Rockwell Museum:

From May to October, hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission: $12.50 for adults, free for those 18 and under. Information: (413) 298-4100; www.nrm.org.