Plenty of venues compete for space on people’s weekend agendas, and the Institute of Contemporary Art is no exception. Starting Friday, the museum is hoping to get more visitors and college students in the door with ICA After 5, a new event series featuring artsy and tasty activities each week.
Every Friday from 5 to 8 p.m., a different activity, taste testing or DIY demonstration will be available in the museum’s Water Café. Visitors can explore the galleries at the museum and drop by at any time to participate in the weeks’ activities. Admission to the event series is included in museum admission — $15 for the general public, but free for Boston University students — and open to the public.
“We’re always forming new ways to bring people to the museum, especially if it introduces them to the museum for the first time,” said Hannah Gathman, associate director of special events and outreach at the ICA. “We want to give them a reason to come and check us out.”
The kick-off event for the series, “Bubbles + Bedazzling,” will take place Friday, where guests can sip on different champagnes, bring items of their own to bedazzle and watch a demonstration and receive tips from Boston-based artist Melissa Thyden. Other events will include “Ocean Flow Yoga,” “Instagram Latte Art” and “Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice,” a tasting of pumpkin-flavored beers and foods.
The idea for the weekly event series came from the success and popularity of the ICA’s First Fridays, in which the museum hosts a large, high-energy dance party on the first Friday of every month, featuring DJs, live music and specialty drinks.
First Fridays typically draw between 700 and 1,400 people to the museum, Gathman said. Those behind planning the events had ideas they wanted to incorporate into First Fridays but which would have worked better for smaller scale programming, thus creating ICA After 5.
“We had a lot of these crazy ideas stored up that just fell into place with [ICA After 5],” said Kate Ryan, special events and outreach coordinator at the ICA. “For a lot of these events, we also wanted to do an unexpected combination, like pairing bedazzling and champagne. You wouldn’t necessarily think of them together, but they’re two fun things that people can pop in to do and then go back up to the galleries. That’s generally how we combined them.”
Recently, BU renewed its university membership with the ICA, which allows all BU students to visit the museum for free with a BU ID. This means that the museum’s programming is more accessible to students who are looking to take advantage of Boston’s cultural hubs.
“Going to museums in Boston is one of my favorite things to do. I probably go to one a month,” said Matt Erdos, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I’ve already been to the ICA, but I think of the events as an incentive to go back … The Instagram Latte Art event is intriguing to me because I’ll never pass up an opportunity to ‘Insta’ my coffee.”
Gathman hopes that Boston residents look at the new event series in the same light — as an extra form of encouragement to visit the museum.
“There are so many people who say they’ve been meaning to go to the ICA but haven’t gotten to go yet,” she said. “I love when a program or event like this is the tipping point to get a visitor to come for the first time.”
