MFA Lures Hipsters with Underground Sounds

At first glance, the Museum of Fine Arts seems one of the least likely venues for cutting-edge indie concerts. Many cringe after imagining chest-high Bermuda blue-hairs dragging pants-wetting grandchildren through room after room of faded pictures of this or that aged, plump noblewoman.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) recognizes this untrendy baggage, and so they’re doing something about it. Recognizing an obvious disconnect with much of the younger, hipper population in the Boston area, particularly its large student population, the MFA has begun an innovative outreach program to change students’ perception of the museum, reeling them in with the best hook available: their playlists.

The MFA has launched a string of indie-rock concerts designed to draw younger, hipper crowds to the museum. Concert Coordinator Dan Hirsch, the man behind the plan, has selected a number of new, exciting musicians he hopes will continue to draw in young music fans. Antony and the Johnsons and favorite folk-poppers Ida both played sets in February to wide acclaim.

Burgeoning indie-folk star M. Ward followed in March, whose country-folk-through-the-family-radio sound fit the intimate venue perfectly. “You could hear every note, without any noise coming in from a bar,” Hirsch says. With even more exciting and well-known acts lined up for April and beyond, it is obvious that Hirsch is familiar with the vinyl collections of your average hipster.

Indeed, this new setting is the appeal the MFA is hoping concert-goers will latch onto. The museum’s 380-seat theatre, part of a modern expansion designed by I.M. Pei in 1981, provides an intimate, seated space in which to enjoy serene sounds.

Although plans are in the works for food and drink down the line, Hirsch emphasizes that the theatre is a venue “focused on listening.” This focus, as well as the general atmosphere of the auditorium and the unavoidable fact that it is situated in a museum, lends a sort of artistic credibility to the performers.

Sure, these indie-rockers are entertainers, and good ones at that, but placing them in a museum setting reminds listeners that they are artists, first and foremost, and paints them in just such a light. “Having them perform outside the clubs gives them a different framework,” notes Hirsch, delighting in the obvious truth of his statement.

Since its inception in the mid 1870s, the MFA has been in a constant state of change and expansion. Quickly outgrowing its original Copley Square location, the museum has been adding wings intermittently ever since relocating to its current Huntington Avenue location at the turn of the century. Constantly expanding to keep up with the times, the museum features exhibitions and concerts in all forms...all, that is, except indie-rock. Until now.

When Hirsch came on board last November, he knew exactly what the museum had in mind in hiring him: with seven years experience in booking indie and experimental concerts, he is an expert at attracting cutting-edge, intellectual music to shows. In 2001, Hirsch co-founded Non-Event, a promotional entity that brings experimental and electronic music to Boston audiences, and this eye for contemporary music epitomized the museum’s hopes for in its new concert organizer.

“There is a recognition that the museum needs to reach out to the broader population,” says Hirsch, “but a lot of the concerts hadn’t been reaching out age-wise.” Now they are. The M. Ward show in March was sold out much earlier than expected, which can only lead to even higher expectations for more well-known farm-tool favorites like Magnolia Electric Co., Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and the Books coming up in April.

But how to tie the two entities together, to get these new, younger visitors interested in the museum as a whole? Holding concerts on weekend evenings, when the museum is relatively quiet and empty, will certainly alter its normal scheme. Looking to the future, concerts will be coordinated with exhibits in a way that will attract concert-goers to the visual parts of the museum as well. The Books (see related review, Page B4) famous for shows that fuse images and music, they are an excellent example of contemporary multimedia artistic fusion, and the hope is to keep it open to such syntheses in the future.

Hirsch maintains his shift in intended audience has been in the books for awhile, as evidenced by a concert series in the courtyard last summer, which he has plans to repeat. “We’re working on a new dynamic as to how we’re perceived,” Hirsch says, “so it’s important to have music that reflects that.”

For now, as audiences walk to and from the theatre, other exhibits will be made accessible in the form of items and pamphlets they can pick up and take with them, in the hopes that the initial visits will ultimately lead to visits to other wings of the museum.

Although some may not be interested, Hirsch is confident that the concerts will establish new connections, and that a reconceptualization of the MFA is taking place even now. If nothing else, this series of shows and its obvious outreach to the younger, hipper generation of college-age audiences indicates the museum’s good intentions.

In Hirsch’s scheme, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and those of his ilk, can do the MFA no harm, and are likely to give it a new, fresher facade. This musical shift is another remodeling of sorts, a process not new to the museum by any means, but it is an expansion in an essentially new direction, and, as such, will carry with it broad new consequences that will help to shape this generation’s conception of ancient institutions of this sort. See you at the MFA show? Cool.