Top Shelf: Corridor museums cultivate sense of community

Area museum officials are looking outside their doors to lure more visitors through their doors.

— Guided meditation in the Grant Wood Studio, where 'American Gothic' was painted, just three blocks from the downtown Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

— Orchestra Iowa on the front lawn, Cabaret in the Courtyard and plays in the amphitheater on the historic 19th-century Brucemore estate in southeast Cedar Rapids.

— Paranormal programs and Victorian teas at the Granger House Museum in Marion.

— Jazz at the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, as well as June 13 walking tour of the Oakhill neighborhood — steeped in African-American, Syrian and Bohemian history — in partnership with The History Center (details at Historycenter.org).

— The annual BrewNost beer festival and Farewell to Old Mother Winter at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids.

— Cricket on the lawn from 1 to 5 p.m. May 28 at Plum Grove Historic Home in Iowa City (details at Johnsoncountyhistory.org).

— Summer camp at the 1876 Coralville Schoolhouse.

— Hayrack rides at Ushers Ferry Historic Village in Cedar Rapids.

All are examples of the creative ways Corridor museums are expanding their reach.

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'Certainly part of any nonprofit's mission is to broaden awareness and reach as many people as possible,' said David Janssen, Brucemore's executive director.

'There's also a point at which you have to accept that you're not going to be all things to all people. There is wisdom in knowing which audiences derive the most benefit from what you do, and what you do well.'

The staff at the 19th century estate have been working over the past three decades to find new ways to use the property and its resources, cycling in new events to replace the ones that no longer fill their niche.

'The smartest thing a museum can do is to loop into the community,' Sean Ulmer, executive director of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, said in 2014, when launching a series of public forums to help steer the museum's programming in new directions.

That statement holds true today, with an even more critical objective.

STAYING RELEVANT

'Museums and all arts and cultural organizations need to remain relevant,' Ulmer said this spring. 'As our world is changing — and changing more rapidly than ever before — the question of relevancy is even more important.'

Over the past three years, some of the new ideas worked, and some didn't, like stroller tours, where adults could bring infants for specially tailored tours before the museum opened for the day. If the kids were noisy, it didn't matter.

'It gave parents the opportunity to network and interact with other people who are going through many of the same things, because they have a child of the same age,' Ulmer said.

It also expanded the museum's educational reach, building on data showing that children learn visually from the time they're born. What event organizers hadn't considered is that oftentimes, families with infants also have older children who aren't yet in school. Nothing was available for older siblings to do during the stroller tours, Ulmer noted, so as the number of participants dwindled, the program was discontinued.

The popular Art Bites lunchtime program in the galleries evolved from an earlier lunchtime brown bag lecture in the upper level auditorium, which had run its course.

COLLABORATION

Partnerships with other area sites also have taken art into the community, from Grant Wood guided walks and painting sessions at the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids to a field trip during the recent Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition to see Cedar Rock, the house and boathouse the celebrated architect designed in the late 1940s on the river bluff near Quasqueton.

A free Family Fun Day on printmaking in February also gave the museum a chance to bring in printmaking activities, equipment and expertise from the African American Museum of Iowa, the University of Iowa's art education department and the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, which held silk screen activities during last summer's Andy Warhol exhibition.

The dialogue is ongoing for developing new programming.

'We're interested in hearing from the community on what they want and how the museum might be able to fulfill that desire,' Ulmer said.

EMBRACING TRENDS

'Staying the same is not a good choice,' said Barb Trujillo, board president for the Granger House in Marion, a historic site showcasing the lifestyle of a late-19th century middle-class family. 'We have to be aware and up-to-date on what some trending issues are and trending interests are.'

And so a leap of faith has led to some spirited discussions, through a new series of paranormal lectures.

'We have heard, over and over and over again, about this supposed White Lady in the window, who only appears at midnight,' Trujillo said. 'If you go on the web, you can see that 'Granger House is haunted — there's a White Lady.' Well, it's a mannequin, and sometimes we'll wave her arms in the window. You gotta have a sense of humor. History is not serious — history is pretty funny.'

TOP SHELF: A complete list of 2017 Top Shelf EAT, DRINK and PLAY winners can be found at hooplanow.com/topshelf

Since every tour groups asks about it, and since Spiritualism, mediums and mysticism were some of the Victorian era's biggest fads, the Granger House jumped onboard, she said.

'It is a part of history. Mary Todd Lincoln had seances in the White House,' Trujillo said. 'It would have been something the Grangers would have talked about.'

So the paranormal programming is a new way to appeal to younger audiences.

'We love the people that come to see us, no matter what age they are,' she said. 'But frankly, museums skew older. What are we going to do to get younger people to come visit us? We think once they come in and see how cool this place is, they're going to want to continue to come. That's what we want.'

Brainstorming is a constant, as the board dreams up other ways to bring audiences to the front lawn, the carriage house and into the family home. Talks on royal scandals and Victorian diseases have been popular, and a Halloween program on serial killers 'packed the house,' Trujillo said. Board member Chad Todd had everyone in tears when he told his late father's firsthand account of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

'There's so many things we want to do,' Trujillo said, like bringing in smaller performing arts groups.

'Community involvement is another key. We want people to know that they're very welcome to come. It was a home, and we want it to be like that. We tell people we work very hard on being hospitable because this was a home. They all come in and say, 'It feels like my grandma's house.' Of course it does.'

She's also making a concerted effort to visit other area museums to say, 'United we stand.'

'The grant money is drying up, people don't want to go on a museum tour because they think it's going to be boring,' she said. 'We really all need to all work together to try and figure out ways to increase tourism, to make it regional and sometimes national destinations that are right here,' she said.

'Just because we're here in Iowa, we don't need to think small. We need to think big. We need to make these other connections.'

TECHNOLOGY

Brucemore, rooted in history, also is looking toward the future, where emerging technology is beginning to be a factor.

'We're looking very intently in the last two or three years at redefining the Brucemore tour experience — not to replace anything we currently do, but to give the guides some added tools,' Janssen said, citing a touchable 3D replica of Grant Wood's bas-relief plaster mural on the second floor, as well as a touch screen loaded with video content about the famed artist's work at the mansion and around Cedar Rapids.

TOP SHELF: A complete list of 2017 Top Shelf EAT, DRINK and PLAY winners can be found at hooplanow.com/topshelf

'It's fun to go through it, and we tried to install it in a way that's respectful to the authenticity of the space. We do not want to plop an exhibit down in the middle of a historic house,' he said.

'And yet, Brucemore has a unique opportunity to really build some muscle in redefining how people experience house museum tours,' Janssen said. 'This Grant Wood porch exhibit is a prototype for us. It stands alone, and it's been received very well.

'Behind the scenes, we are now looking at other things, like audio in the walls, where you hear a poem written by one of the family members, that a guide could trigger,' he said. 'Can we, with the push of a button, play the 1929 Skinner player pipe organ, so people can hear what a Wagnerian opera sounded like in the 1930s, when Mrs. Douglas could push a button and the entire house would be a concert hall.

'You could even go as far as holograms and Harry Potter talking paintings. Without wanting to un-dignify the place too much, I think there are opportunities to really do some exciting things still based on our stories about business, and migration and immigration, and philanthropy, and arts and culture — our core themes — and do it in such a way that you have fun and have this remarkable experience while you're picking up a sense of place, a sense of Cedar Rapids, a sense of Eastern Iowa. That's an audience that we hope to grow in the next decade,' he said.

'Brucemore is not just stories about the Halls and Douglases and their staff and generations,' Janssen said. 'Brucemore's story is an ongoing story.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com