Academy: Have a little culture with that cocktail

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

"Art After Dark" is aimed at attracting a younger crowd Friday evenings. Rick Piper, Megan Callan, Lori Admiral, Natasha Roessler and Allison Higa (in front) will attend tomorrow's event, Kung Fu Friday. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

French Café: This April 30 after-dark event features wine tasting and quick tours of a Paris-themed exhibit.

ARTafterDARK What: Kung Fu Friday kicks off the Honolulu Academy of Arts' ARTafterDARK series of evening events scheduled for the last Friday of each month. When: 5 to 9 p.m. tomorrow Where: The Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St. Web site: www.artafter dark.org Getting in: Free to members (yearly membership is $45), $7 for nonmembers Getting hip: This month's theme is kitschy Kung Fu. You can try Chinese beer or wine, take a 15-minute "zip tour" through galleries or watch kung-fu movies. Getting involved: If you'd like to volunteer to plan or work events, enlist sponsors, or if you're an artist or musician who would like to perform, phone Jessica Osland at 532-8715.

If you're a young professional in the city and you've been to a Honolulu Academy of Arts event in recent years, you've studied the crowd and determined it to be you, a handful of people your age, and a sea of gray-hairs.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you're of a certain age.

It's just that the art museum hasn't been exactly what you would call hip and happening.

Look who's trying to change its image.

Starting tomorrow night, the Academy of Arts is kicking off a project called ARTafterDARK with the first of its monthly social gatherings blending arts and culture into more of a party atmosphere aimed at 20-, 30- and 40-somethings.

"There just isn't anything like this in town," said ARTafterDARK president Rick Piper, who wants to create the buzz that the Academy of Arts is the pau-hana place to be before you go to another night spot.

"A lot of people have not been in the academy since their third- or fourth-grade field trip," said Piper, a 35-year-old real estate salesman who's working with other young professionals to revive Honolulu's arts community. "I think they're going to be really surprised."

'It's about time'

Those in the arts scene have long known something has to be done to attract a younger crowd. It has just taken some places longer than others to do it.

While the art museum has tried to lure families with classes and exhibits, this is the first major effort to entice young professionals such as Leigh Canlis. A fine-art consultant, she married a local artist, looked around at Honolulu arts events and saw them filled with people her parents' age.

Her mom, Dianne Deckert, got something similar to ARTafterDARK started back in 1973, when she and her friends started the Contemporary Art Society at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. They had programs and parties, much like ARTafterDARK. More than 30 years later, Kansas City's museum has one of the most successful programs of its sort. Its monthly events for Young Friends of Arts attract hundreds of young professionals who come straight from rush hour to sip cocktails from a cash bar and make arts and culture part of their social lives.

Canlis, who was part of Seattle's art and social scene, thought Honolulu should catch on to the trend. So she volunteered to be one of the organizers.

"A lot of younger, single people are excited about this happening because it's not a bar scene," she said. And along with the social networking, the goal is to grow a younger membership base for the Academy of Arts.

"It's about time," said Jessica Osland, another organizer who also works at the art museum. The concept started slowly but gained momentum, she said.

The proposal got nods from higher-ups at the Academy of Arts, such as Stephen Little, who last year became director and president, and Carol Fox, the deputy director, whose daughter met her husband through a similar arts event on the Mainland.

A different dynamic

The art museum's past attempts to attract younger crowds with exhibits such as the "Mystery of the Nile" in 2000 didn't captivate young adults as much as organizers had hoped, Osland said.

This time, the approach is different. Organizers are asking young people not just to look at art, but to enjoy the sounds, tastes and atmosphere that go along with it.

ARTafterDARK's debut project, last month's Starlight Ball, was a hit. The sold-out affair raised $10,000, and 300 guests raved about the lavish party in the museum courtyard, complete with an ice sculpture, sushi and martini bars, music, dancing and a black-and-white photo exhibit.

Tomorrow's Kung Fu Friday, sponsored by the Jackie Chan Foundation, is the next test to see whether a younger crowd will bite.

The art museum's courtyards and café will be open for the after-dark events, and monthly themes include a French bistro night in April, complete with wine-tasting, quick tours of an interactive gallery and the exhibit "Japan and Paris: Impressionism, Post-impressionism and the Modern Era," and a "Fellini Friday" in June, paying homage to the quirky Italian director by showing films and having costumes and paparazzi.

Piper, ARTafterDARK's president, wants more than monthly events. He envisions small groups coming after work for museum-vault tours, lectures and other activities. He encourages mixing and mingling in courtyards and galleries viewed through new eyes.

"We wanted to see a different dynamic in the academy," he said. "It's just a fun venue for people to come after work, have a drink and learn something."

Reach Tanya Bricking Leach at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.