Patrons sipped martinis and munched finger food while local band Shane Clouse and Stomping Ground two-stepped through a low-key set of country music. Some visitors wandered through the main gallery of the Museum, where a traveling exhibit of works by African American feminist artist Faith Ringgold splashed wild colors across the white walls. A scattering of young children dashed around underfoot.
On a single balcony of the atrium, a small cluster of gray-haired men and women stood in a semi-circle, chatting amongst themselves.
Indeed, on that night, the stereotypical profile of museum patrons seemed exactly flipped. The overwhelming majority of people in attendance appeared to be in their 20s and 30s. Few appeared to have dressed up for the occasion; one small group conspicuously looked like they'd just finished up a run down the Blackfoot. A young hipster with a Mohawk manned a video camera in the main gallery, taping a lecture on artistic reflections of urban African American identity, while outside a guy in a black T-shirt absentmindedly messed around with his skateboard while talking to a group of friends.
"It's a really cool thing they do here," said 19-year old Catlin Millin, a sophomore at Marquette University who was in town visiting her aunt, MAM director Laura Millin. "I've been to events at museums in Chicago and other places, but I've never seen anything like this. This is a lot more chill, and it seems like everybody's friendly and knows each other.
"It makes (the museum) seem more approachable," she added.
Score another convert to Artini, the monthly series of events aimed at drawing younger audiences - and members - to the MAM. Billed as "an alluring, fresh happening that combines witty perspectives on contemporary art with uncommon performances," Artini debuted in August 2004 as part of a larger effort to counteract the aging of the museum's core audience.
"It started out of a realization that people my own age, my peers, weren't coming to the museum," explains Nici Holt, the 29-year-old membership director of the MAM. "This is contemporary art, which is a record of my culture; and yet it just didn't seem like it was resonating with a pretty big segment of the Missoula community.
"As your membership ages, you've got to replace it with a younger audience," adds Holt. "That seems pretty basic, but it's really a big issue for the arts today."
Indeed, the MAM is hardly alone in its concern about the lack of participation in the arts by people in their 20s and 30s. Study after study supports the perception that audiences are old and growing older, as young adults are less engaged in the arts.
For example, a 2006 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, titled "The Arts and Civic Engagement," found that the median age of adults visiting art museums increased five years, to 45, between 1992-2002. The median age for those attending a classical music concert jumped four years, to 49.
To be sure, some portion of that change can be attributed to a general aging of the population during that period. But according to the same study, participation in the arts did indeed decrease among young people. For example, only 8.5 percent of respondents age 18-34 reported having attended a classical music concert in the previous year, down from 10.2 percent in 1992 and 12.2 percent in 1982.
On a more local note, a recently released survey by the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization Americans for the Arts found that 51 percent of audience members at arts events in Missoula were over the age of 55. Though those results didn't reflect the totality of arts participation in Missoula - the study excluded for-profit concerts and most university-sponsored programming - the findings still seemed to reflect the growing disparity between our town's overall demographic mix and the particular characteristics of arts audiences.
"The study certainly doesn't give you the whole picture of what's happening in Missoula," cautioned Tom Bensen, head of the Missoula Cultural Council, which gathered data for the study. "But it does show that involvement in nonprofit arts such as the museums and MCT and the (Missoula Symphony Orchestra) isn't exactly high among younger adults."
Photo by MARY HAYES/Missoulian
Perhaps nowhere else in Missoula is the advancing age of arts patrons more evident than at concerts by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra. Portable oxygen tanks and wheelchairs far outnumber skateboards and Blackberries as visible accessories among concert attendees. Though a healthy proportion of young people attend the concerts, most aren't there on their own: They are students and grandchildren of the orchestra's core audience.
"I would never say that there are too many gray and bald heads in our audience," says John Driscoll, executive director of the MSO. "What I would say, though, is that there aren't as many young faces as we would like."
For Driscoll, the problem is as personally vexing as it is for the MAM's Holt; after all, at 36 years old, he's a generation younger than many people in the audience at MSO concerts.
"The perception of the orchestra as a gilded society for the old and rich may be true in some communities, but it sure is not what's happening here in Missoula and in many places across the country," says Driscoll. "This is music that I personally find so deeply moving and I just wish I shared that with more people my age in the community."
In fact, the MSO is stacked with young performers and staffers. With the recent hiring of conductor Darko Butorac, the orchestra's public face is now that of a handsome 30-year-old who isn't afraid to admit his love for professional basketball.
For his part, Butorac recognizes the reasons behind the cultural shift away from classical music and other traditional forms of art among his generational peers.
"If we look culturally at the peak audiences (for classical music) that took place 50 years ago or so, those were people who grew up without the distractions of television and video games and such," says Butorac. "For a lot of those people, participation in creating music was oftentimes a part of their childhood in a way that we don't see as commonly today. Even if playing music did not remain a part of their life, it played a role in the beginning; and it's well established that, if someone has a great experience with music early, it remains a source of enjoyment later in life."
Plenty of studies have supported Butorac's point of view in this regard. A 1995 Rand Corporation report, summarizing prior research, stated that, "education is by far the most closely correlated" factor in determining whether a person will attend or participate in the arts, and that "factors such as arts education and contact with the arts as a child" are also paramount.
Given the fact that arts education programs have been slashed across the country during the past 30 years, it should thus come as no surprise that young adults educated during that period have little motive to attend or participate in the arts - especially now that they're in the midst of the most hectic period of adulthood.
"When young people get married and start their career trajectory - especially in a community like Missoula, where it's tough to make a living and both spouses are working their tails off and raising their children and building their life - all luxuries often get put on the back burner, including even just general socialization with friends," says Driscoll.
"So if a 35-year-old couple with two children under the age of 10 finds that they don't have the energy even to just go to the other side of town to have a barbecue with friends, it's even more daunting for them to find a baby sitter and do all they need to do in order to come to a concert six or seven times a year.
"That's just the reality of life and we have to figure out how to help them deal with that."
Two young women enjoy martinis at the June 21 Artini. As part of Artini, Shane Clouse and Stomping Ground played on the third floor and University of Montana Professor George Price gave a talk titled “Black Art, Black Identity: The World from Which Faith Ringgold Emerged.”
MARY HAYES/Missoulian
Andrew Taylor knows a thing or two about how changing demographics are challenging arts organizations today. As director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin, and author of "The Artful Manager," a blog on the business of art and culture, Taylor has watched as wave after wave of arts organizations have struggled with efforts to engage younger audiences in their programming.
"There was a huge boom of growth in arts organizations and audiences in the '70s and '80s, but now their management and donors and such are moving on; and by and large they're not being fully replaced by younger people," says Taylor. "So now there's this gap in the leadership and the audiences to sustain this vast infrastructure of arts organizations that we've created over the past 30 years."
But despite the studies that say the next generation isn't buying into the arts, Taylor sees reasons for hope.
"There's a healthy and engaged audience still that's older than 25, so there's good reason to suspect that there'll be people interested in the traditional way of engaging in the arts for years to come," says Taylor. "It's not like every arts organization is going to vanish the minute the last baby boomer is too old to go out to a concert. That's one positive note.
"The other is that organizations are responding. They're realizing it isn't about shifting the deck chairs or slapping lipstick on the old stuff and calling it new; it's about inviting young people to be on their boards and be involved in programming choices, and it's about exercising the creativity that is at the root of what they are about in the first place."
In that respect, both the MAM and the MSO are getting the first steps right. Both have, in recent years, initiated efforts to bring younger members on their respective boards of directors. Both have created subcommittees stacked with young adults, whose aim is to bring younger audiences in the door.
Artini is the most visible reflection of that movement; and from the outset - when the first Artini event in August of 2005 drew more than 900 attendees - Artini has had a visible effect on attendance and new memberships at the museum.
In 2005, people who joined the museum during Artini events accounted for 40 percent of overall membership income and 26 percent of membership numbers. From appearances, it wasn't simply that people who already intended to join the MAM that year chose to do so at an Artini event: Total new memberships in 2005 more than doubled the total in 2004.
In 2006, the number of members who joined at Artini events increased slightly; and overall, attendance at the 23 events so far has totaled nearly 8,000 people.
"I've worked at the museum for five years and I know that the people I see at Artini are not the same people I'd seen here before we started that event," says Holt. "It's definitely had a positive impact on the diversity of people we see coming through the door, and that was the whole point."
Artini tonight
This month's Artini event, titled “Show Us You Love Us,” takes place tonight, Thursday, July 19, from 5:30-9 p.m. The event features music by the Joan Zen Trio, a gallery talk with Sandra Koelle, and a cash bar provided by the Old Post Pub and Liquid Planet. Admission is free.
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