Mechel Wall feels her family of four made the most of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s children’s and adult programs and events since the Bentonville museum opened more than a year ago.
She and her husband, Barry, attended several of the museum’s Art Night Out events - adult-only outings on select Thursdays that allow patrons to explore the museum after dark and enjoy live music, dancing and hands-on art projects while tasting delectables from the museum’s restaurant, Eleven. The couple’s boys, 10-year-old Jeffrey and 12-year-old Bryce, attended paid art classes at the museum, specifically a home-school program offered on Friday afternoons for three weeks.
“The kids would learn about the art and immediately translate that into creating something,” recalled Wall. “They had enough instruction that they had some skills that they could immediately apply.”
In 2012, more than 17,400 people participated in youth/ family and adult programs at Crystal Bridges, and more than 30,000 attended impromptu programs, such as the museum’s Skyspace, a site-specific art installation designed by world-renowned artist James Turrell, and dropin art studios.
“I’m not surprised that they’re so successful because I think people are craving those kinds of opportunities, where it’s meaningful, entertaining and social, all at the same time,” Wall said.
Museum officials took cues from the first-year’s programming and are improving on it for 2013.
“Because it was our beginning year, everything was considered experimental,” said Diane Carroll, mediarelations manager for Crystal Bridges. “We tested a lot of times and days and age groups and revised our planning based on what was most popular for each segment of our audience.”
“We found that every age group was interested in some sort of offering,” she said.
Art classes will resume this month, though now enhanced as a continuing series of workshops for children and adults. Two drawing classes are offered: Studio Studies’ figure drawing will meet for four evenings, and Drawing Explorations’ botanical studies will meet for three afternoon sessions.
“People liked the opportunity to delve deeper into a particular area,” Carroll added. “So if you’re learning a particular art technique or new type of painting or drawing, it’s just not a one-time hour or couple of hours, it’soffered over several weeks so you can build your learning experiences.”
The Art Night Out series favored by Wall returns Jan. 24, with Immersion, a party with a light theme to correspond with the Jan. 28 closure of the exhibition “See the Light: The Luminist Tradition in American Art” and an exhibition featuring photos, drawings and models of Crystal Bridges architect Moshe Safdie.
“It offers sort of a last look of what’s going on in those temporary exhibitions,” Carroll said.
Tickets to Art Night Out are $25, and with good reason.
“Our goal is always to have these be very reasonable so that we can reach a wide cross section of people interested in attending,” Carroll said.
Visitors also can expect to see more programs that offer a combination of the arts, such as the Wednesdays Over Water events, which focus on certain works along with art-inspired cocktails with unique appetizers created by the culinary crew of Eleven. Once a members-only event, it’s been so popular that it will be now be open to the public, but at a discount for museum members.
“We’re finding that things that occur on Wednesdays and Friday evenings are popular. It gives people a chance to come to the museum who don’t have a chance to come during the daytime and may have weekends full of activities,” Carroll said.
Other new programs include an Art Book Club, a College Ambassadors Program - designed to reach out to college-age audiences interested in art - as well as some performing-arts events including an Afternoon Unwind featuring live music in a gallery. There will be thematic programming around museum exhibitions starting with “American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell,” which opens in March. Eleven will begin offering a monthly chef’s tasting menu of seasonal items plus a new children’s menu designed to draw more families to the museum for dinner.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/03/2013