As noted perceptively in this Saturday Globe op-ed on classical music, our city's many fine arts institutions have both challenge and opportunity in the young audience. A challenge to get them inside the great halls, alongside the dependable but rapidly aging traditional audience. And an opportunity to secure the future if that challenge is met successfully. Thus it is we come to the 5th annual Museum of Fine Arts College Night, set for Sept. 24, 7 to midnight.
Most of the museum's big-bucks benefactors are safely tucked into their beds on Beacon or 
Chestnut Hill by midnight, but the college crowd is just gearing up, so staying open late is a smart move - and 2 or 3 a.m. would be better. The entertainment includes music by Love in Stockholm and Liz Longley, plus a dance party with DJ Ghostdad. But of course those things - and the raffle and the foods and whatnot - are just a lure to get the kids into the galleries and peruse everything from the Copley portraits to the current exhibit of Mexican printmakers.
The trick of course is getting them in there, and when I asked, a museum publicist responded via email: "We’re putting out the word in a few different ways—on Facebook (where a few hundred kids have RSVP’d that they’re coming), handing out flyers at back-to-college events and in dorms, contacting college administrators and activity coordinators, and good old-fashioned media outreach to college papers and Boston press. This is our fifth annual College Night so colleges are starting to expect it—a few of the farther-flung schools are sending busloads of students." She also sent along those two pictures of students enjoying previous college nights.
We won't know for years whether such events really have a long-term impact on museum attendance, but maybe in the year 2525, some Twitter-app gazillionaire will write Museum Director Malcolm Rogers a fat check for the next MFA wing and say he or she first got interested in the museum while dancing to DJ Ghostdad. Just please God don't let Malcolm vogue again.
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