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August 24, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Museum District Day brings out the art crowd

Museum District Day brings out the art crowd

By Matthew McKee | Thresher Editorial Staff

At times, one can forget how wonderful the neighbors really are. Caught up as Rice students are in campus work and life, the Museum District next door can easily slip through the cracks in entertainment plans.

Proving how much they deserve attention and favor, 14 art venues opened their arms wide to the Houston public last Saturday in the 11th annual Museum District Day. Museums large and small eschewed admission fees for the day and saw thousands of visitors come to view exhibitions, participate in activities and interact with working artists. The day allowed art lovers to revisit big galleries and discover oft-hidden gems in the district’s smaller exhibition spaces.

It was a good day for art in Houston. The Menil Collection alone received more than 3,000 visitors, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston received about 18,000 visitors and the Children’s Museum of Houston received about 9,600 visitors.

Even with the hot and sticky weather, visitors inundated almost every space available. The district worked hard to accommodate the large tide: Free shuttle buses, often filled to capacity at every stop, ran to the different locations, and street vendors helped to mitigate the effects of the Houston heat.

Houston Museum District Executive Director Susan Young said this year’s event was one of the best.

“This is the event that brings everyone together at once,” Young said. “[Museum administrators] say that they are really pleased to have the opportunity to reach people who don’t already know about them.”

Young said Museum District Day draws many families and people of all ages. Rice students were in attendance, as well.

Wiess College senior Caroline Chiu went to the Museum District Day for the first time. She took friends from high school and other universities and said they all had a blast. Her group was able to go to the MFAH, the Houston Holocaust Museum, the Menil Collection and the Children’s Museum with help from the shuttle service. She only wishes that she had had more time to take advantage of more of the free offerings.

“I thought the MFA was the best because of the Red Hot exhibit,” Chio said. “It had artists from China, and there were Japanese paintings, too. It was so different from the other artworks. It was just really neat to see that kind of culture.”

Chiu said free admission — which is always available to Rice students at most of the district’s large venues — gave her leverage to encourage friends to come. She said the group appreciated all the offerings they were able to see, even the Children’s Museum.

“The friends that I brought with me probably would not have gone to [the museums] if I had not asked them to come,” Chiu said. “The free admission encouraged them, as did the activities. They probably wouldn’t have gone, and now they’re exposed and say they want to go back.”

Young said she sees many benefits of such an event on an individual level, as when groups on buses communicate the experiences they had to each other. This snowball, word-of-mouth effect is what the District wanted to accomplish on Museum District Day, Menil Collection Communications Director Vance Muse said.

It was a good day for ART in Houston.

“We all kind of live in this inner loop Museum District bubble, and we think that everyone knows where we are,” Muse said. “I do think it is a great day for the Museum District, because it’s not just the Museum District neighborhood people that come. It is a broader cross-section of what the city is.”

Every venue offered something special Saturday. The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft showcased its basket weaving exhibit, set out tables for area craft vendors and provided many demonstrations. Outside, Dave Koenig of Tudor Forge joked with visitors as he made metal tools with an anvil and hammers.

The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston displayed the exhibit Nexus Texas which features Texas artists. The artists in the exhibit gave talks to a crowded room of visitors and stayed to answer many questions about the wide variety of artworks.

Dallas’ Paul Slocum received much attention for his unorthodox choice of artworks. In one piece, he altered an old dot matrix printer’s loud noises to make almost hummable melodies. Beside a panel of eight buttons that activated different parts of the printer, an official-looking sign sported an amusing message, reading, “Push buttons to rock out.”

At the Lawndale Art Center, crowds of people could use tubs of chalk to draw all over one wall on the museum, resulting in a graffiti collage with names and messages such as “Vive la France!” Volunteers said the museum did not have to worry too much about the wall, as Houston rain would clean it up soon.

The smaller museums benefited from the shared crowd and bundles of activities enormously. The John C. Freeman Weather Museum, which opened April 2006, received more then 1,000 visitors in its small space. The Weather Museum is the only one of it kind in the country, and its staff of working meteorologists offer professional tours and classes, yet it is one of the smaller, off-the-road venues in the large district. At last year’s Museum District Day the museum was not prepared for the crowds, but it handled things well this time around, Weather Museum Director Maureen Maiuri said.

“This is great event for us to get exposed to the public because we are a newer museum,” she said. “Allowing a big group of people to come in will show them what kind of programs that we offer and allow them to come back. I think it’s sort of a rolling effect.”

For residents of Houston who had not experienced the Museum District to its fullest, the day provided a great start. Chiu said she spent the next day telling her friends how great the event was and how sorry she was some could not attend.

“There’s something in the air,” Muse said. “Maybe there’s this critical mass building. People seem to be turning on to the fact that Houston has an arts scene that’s open to all.”

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