Arts

Thinking ahead

UT's Blanton Museum leans toward mass appeal in its new space

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS CRITIC
Friday, March 03, 2006

Thomas Hoving coined the term: "Making the mummies dance."

The inventor of the blockbuster exhibit, who launched the popular King Tut show and toured it around the nation in the 1970s, applied the phrase to the dilemma faced by stodgy, traditional museums.

When he interviewed for the job as director of New York's venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967, he told the trustees that the place had an identity crisis, that it "needed to be made more popular." For all the treasures in its galleries, Hoving said, the nation's largest art musem needed a "surge of energy, that bang," that it had to "speak directly to all art lovers in way they can understand. Don't be ivory tower."

In Austin, the leaders of the Blanton Museum of Art, which opens its expansive new building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard next month, face a similar identity crisis.

Beyond the fact that many Central Texans aren't aware the Blanton exists, those who do know about the University of Texas art museum and its new facility aren't sure what to make of it. For starters, will it be a traditional art museum or will it focus more on being a teaching space? Or will it be something unlike Austin has ever seen before?

Blanton leaders are determined to resolve this identity crisis. After all, it will be the third-largest art museum in Texas and the largest university museum in the country. Its new location, across the street from the Bullock Texas State History Museum, will give it the potential to create a marketable museum district attractive to visitors. And its collections in some cases rival those of the venerable Met itself.

Striving for rich and compelling

When it was born as the University Art Museum in 1963, it was tucked inside the Art Building, deep in the heart of the University of Texas campus at San Jacinto Boulevard and 23rd Street. Later, as collections, especially the signature James and Mari Michener donation of American art, were added, satellite galleries opened on the other end of campus in the Harry Ransom Center, the university's literary archive. In short, it was ensconced in the ivory tower.

No wonder people had a hard time finding the place — or places.

And as museum audiences grew savvier and more demanding, they were even less inclined to visit, especially if there was no gift shop, café, reading lounge or late-night parties — the kind of offerings today's culture vultures expect.

In the new millennium, art museums can't be quiet mausoleums anymore. Not if they want to be heard among the ever-growing clamor for people's attention.

Today's museum has to make itself a destination in what economists Joseph Pine and James Gilmore in 1999 dubbed the "experience economy." Offering goods and services — or the best collection of contemporary Latin American art outside Latin America, just one of the Blanton's many strengths — isn't quite enough anymore, Pine and Gilmore argue. To survive, a business — and yes, even a university art museum — must "stage a rich, compelling experience."

So as construction got under way on its new $83.5 million two-building museum complex — after a decades-long struggle with half-realized proposals, fundraising peaks and valleys, as well as high-profile design controversies — the Blanton was forced to morph from a demure academic gallery into a friendly, visitor-oriented, 180,000-square-feet cultural hot spot.

But first it had to appear on the average person's radar. Big time.

Moving from restrained to hip

In focus groups assembled last year — just part of an extensive marketing research and brand development process the Blanton conducted — nine out of 10 Central Texans ages 40 and older said they had never even heard of the UT art museum. And these were people who described themselves as "arts interested."

Nearly ditto with the focus group of "arts interested" 25- to-39-year-olds.

And never mind the national headlines spreading news that the Blanton acquired, among other great windfalls, the $35 million Suida-Manning Collection of Baroque and Renaissance paintings, drawings and prints.

"It really wasn't that surprising," says Anne Manning, the Blanton's curator of education and academic affairs. "People just honestly didn't know us."

So last fall, the museum launched its first-ever major marketing campaign. Clever billboards designed by hip Austin advertising agency Milkshake Media sprouted up around town. Matching print ads and direct mail followed.

But while Austinities needed acquainting with the Blanton, they did know they didn't want a stuffy, intimidating vault where stern guards barked warnings and questions were met with condescending stares.

To be sure, with its university educational mission, the Blanton will continue as a locus for teaching, publishing and research. But to reach a wider audience, it had to go from restrained to hip.

"We are reinventing ourselves," says Manning. "It's a radical transformation, not just a slight shift."

It's a shift that included increasing staff numbers from 25 to 50, with many of the new positions concentrated in a new visitor services department dedicated to friendly customer service with every front-desk encounter and exhibit tour. (The move into the big new building and major increase in activities will also double the museum's budget from $2.5 million last fiscal year to $4.6 million this year to just more than $5 million next.)

The shift also meant shaking up what visitors will do once they get to the museum.

"We have to be an active forum, not a passive temple of knowledge," says Manning. "And, here in Austin, we have do that in ways that aren't expected. "

Like having a 24-hour grand opening. Come April 29, the museum will open its doors to the public at 9 p.m. for 24-hours of nonstop art gazing, performances and all-around partying.

And like inviting a Buddhist-inspired choreographer to ruminate on a Buddha-themed contemporary sculpture for a guided audio tour and also asking the editor of Texas Monthly to respond to an imaginative painting of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. As all museum educators do these days, Manning and her colleagues needed to produce an audio guide. But in addition to hearing remarks by curators, listeners to the Blanton's "Uncommon Commentary" will also be treated to the thoughts of dance creator Deborah Hay and Editor Evan Smith, among others.

"The audio guide is a way to both capture the creativity that Austin embodies and to suggest to people that there are many different ways of approaching art," says Manning.

Like gliding through yoga poses in front of it.

"As a city we don't like to be predictable," says Manning. Hence the Art Fix program was designed to offer 45 minutes of eclectic encounters such as a yoga class in the galleries that are home to 1960s minimalist and conceptual art. On the first Friday of the month, the B Scene party series will offer late-night live music and the Blanton's signature rum-based cocktail, the Blantini.

And forget about snarling guards. For the past year, security manager David Kazmirski has been shaping a staff of "gallery guides." Sporting relaxed uniforms of khaki pants and navy blue polo shirts, they'll be roaming the building to make sure art is not threatened, but Kazmirski has put them under orders to "be as pleasant as they possibly can," he says. They've been trained to kindly say "we'd prefer if you step back" instead barking "get back from the painting." They've also been schooled on the artwork, and those who don't already speak Spanish have been taught essential phrases.

None of this is cutting-edge museum practice, Kazmirski explains. "We're just catching up with museums everywhere. It's about customer service. We want the museum to be a cool, friendly place to hang out," he says.

Manning points out that the paradigm shift hasn't meant ideas will be watered down, just presented differently.

"We just needed to find ways to break down the boundaries between the fine art within the museum and the way people connect to ideas in the rest of their lives," she says. "We just want people to come here and be excited."

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In some respects, the Blanton Museum of Arts' new facilities are as big as Texas

The new Blanton Museum of Art, when both buildings are completed in 2007, will be the largest university art museum in the nation and the third largest art museum in Texas. Here's how it compares with other museums in terms of square feet of floor space, which includes galleries, offices, classrooms, conservation and storage rooms:

Five largest university art museums in the U.S.

• Blanton Museum of Art, UT — 180,000
• The Wexner Art Center, Ohio State University — 162,200
• Harvard University Museums— 150,697
• Brigham Young University Museum of Art — 143,980
• Berkeley Art Museum — 141,990

Five largest university art museums in Texas

• Blanton Museum of Art, UT — 180,000
• Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University — 66,000
• J. Wayne Stark Galleries, Texas A&M University — 20,000
• Rubin Center, University of Texas-El Paso — 14,700
• Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston — 11,275

Five largest Texas art museums

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 573,941
• Dallas Museum of Art — 510,520
• Blanton Museum of Art — 180,000
• San Antonio Museum of Art — 162,964
• Museum of Modern Art-Fort Worth — 156,000

Sources: Association of Art Museum Directors, 2005 Survey; staff research

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699