Countdown to the Blanton opening

Central Austin has the makings of a museum district

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Saturday, April 01, 2006

Imagine doing all this in one day: gazing at the state Capitol dome, catching an IMAX movie, reveling in a room-sized work of art by a Brazilian master, pondering a Gutenberg Bible, ogling a replica of the Oval Office, then puzzling over some dinosaur footprints.

When the new Blanton Museum of Art opens in four weeks, energetic culture vultures conceivably could visit half a dozen high-impact Central Austin sites in a day. The Texas Capitol, the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Blanton, the Ransom Center, the LBJ Library and Museum and the Texas Memorial Museum clump together within the same pedestrian-friendly square mile.

Indeed, the new University of Texas art museum at North Congress Avenue and East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — directly across from the popular Bullock museum — will co-anchor the core of what some are beginning to call Austin's emerging museum district.

"We're very mindful that with all the cultural institutions clustered around UT, we're at the beginning of something," says Ann Wilson, associate director of the Blanton. "And with the proper nurturing, that something can be an enormous source of pride and recognition for the university and the city."

Part of that cultivation has meant that Wilson and her colleagues at the neighboring institutions are comparing calendars and considering communal promotion. A museum district brochure and Web page, dovetailed or shared events, discounted joint admission and cooperative advertising are just a few of the strategies under development — a natural extension of the already well-established, 34-member Austin Museum Partnership.

"It's really marketing 101," Wilson says. "We're not inventing a new kind of cultural tourism, but the idea of a museum district is new for Austin and we have to get people to wrap their minds around it."

Organized in 1998, the Museum Partnership, a consortium of nature preserves, libraries, museums and historic sites, promotes an annual Austin Museum Day with free admission and other collaborative activities. And Capital Metro launched the Tour the Town Dillo route that, on weekends, travels a path starting at the LBJ Library, then past the Bullock and UT museums to Barton Springs before looping back again.

For the past few years, the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau has promoted the idea of a museum district to convention and travel planners.

"Any time we can position Austin at the same level culturally as some Houston or Dallas, we'll do it," says Adriana McWilliams, the bureau's director of tourism.

The Bayou City has been at it for years. The Houston Museum District Association formed in 1997 as an independent nonprofit organization aimed at promoting the cultural destinations near Hermann Park. Now with 16 member institutions, the association annually distributes 250,000 brochures, travels on tourism marketing junkets with the Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and hosts an annual open house that attracts 45,000 visits in one day. Together, member institutions count 7 million annual visits, said Susan Young, the association's executive director.

More informally, five major Fort Worth museums assembled near downtown— the Amon Carter Museum, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History — organize joint advertising on an ad hoc basis, sometimes with the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau participating.

In Austin, Bullock museum director Lynn Denton predicts that the market is ripe for museum hopping.

"Our visitors are definitely on an outing; they're not just stopping by on a whim," Denton says. "And if they have an opportunity to go multiple places nearby, I think they'll do it."

The Bullock averages almost 10,000 visitors a week. During busy times — in particular spring break when University Interscholastic League state competitions, the Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo, and other events bring thousands of Texans to the capital city — more than 20,000 check out the Lone Star history exhibits. And they're not just in and out. The average Bullock visitor stays between 3 1/2 and four hours, Denton reports.

"We now have a critical mass of major cultural destinations in one area in Austin," says Wilson says. "Now we hope we can offer a critical mass of experience."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699