MAM After Dark
Hottest ticket in town?
It’s 8:45 on a Friday night.
Just a few hours ago, patrons were walking softly through the galleries at the Milwaukee Art Museum and speaking in hushed tones as they took in the artwork.
Now, after closing at 5 p.m., it’s back open again, transformed into a virtual nightclub. Hundreds of people are dancing in Windhover Hall — the main gathering space in the Calatrava addition — under purple and blue lights. Dressed in jean jackets with teased hair, the crowd belts out “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as the band, Rod Tuffcurls and The Bench Press, wails onstage.
MAM After Dark, a monthly event, draws an average of 1,700 people to the otherwise buttoned-up confines of one of Milwaukee’s signature institutions. Some nights, it is the place to be for millennials. Four times last year, the event sold out — 2,000 attendees — with would-be patrons turned away at the door. Over the course of the last fiscal year, about 17,000 guests attended the 10 MAM After Dark events. About one-quarter
Art museum throws one of city’s best parties
to half of the attendees come every month, museum officials estimate.
Themes drive the crowd. The “Dance Fever” event in January with Salsabrosa Dance Studio and Quimbara Latin Dance Company sold out. So too did the quiet clubbing and the Northwoods themed nights.
Tonight’s event has a retro ’80s theme — “think ‘Caddyshack’ throwback” the invitation advised — so Mackenzie Chiglo, 24, ties her ponytail with a scrunchie, and her boyfriend, Tyler Leikam, 25, wears his country-club best, a pastel blue and pink buttondown. Leikam carries around a white cellphone the size of a brick, which he bought on Amazon for the night.
Near the dance floor, pros and novices practice their swings in a virtual golf game, Kohler Whistling Straits. Down the hallway, visitors color Milwaukee-themed coasters and make tote bags with the Bay View Printing Company or stop at the DIY area to decorate foam visors. There’s even a mini-golf hole; anyone who gets a
hole-in-one can rearrange the obstacles.
“It’s just a different type of night than your average night out in Milwaukee,” said 31-year-old Bree Boettcher, a MAM member who came with Phyllisa Zuehlke. The friends make it to After Dark nearly every month.
“You don’t feel like you have to drink your way through the night,” Zuehlke, 28, said, wearing colorful leggings and a pearl necklace. “You just have fun and chill.”
Before party-goers arrived at 7 p.m. for February’s MAM After Dark, a team of 30 flipped the museum into a space for fun. A lot needs to happen: setting up tables for drinks and conversation, assembling a stage for the band, installing sound and lighting equipment, putting up decorations and signage.
Local food vendors get ready, and bars are set up to sell beer and wine. By the end of the night, the bartenders will have poured two kegs of Spotted Cow, another keg and a half of Miller Lite and even more beer in bottles. They’ll also uncork 122 bottles of wine.
Joseph Weber and his wife, Dayna Geralts, left their 4-month-old baby at home for the night out. Over cocktails, the couple from Bayside search through the galleries to match emojis with art, part of a scavenger hunt directing players through the galleries.
The salsa dancer, grapes and hat emojis lead to “Anne Erving, Mrs. Duncan Stewart” by John Singleton Copley. Emojis of a couple, a kiss and a heart steer players to “The Kiss,” a sculpture by Auguste Rodin.
At 8 and 10 p.m., actress Rana Roman gives tours, escorting people to see the “naughtier” works on view. Each month alternative docents lead party-goers through the museum galleries for “wild card” tours — MAM’s version of the Comedy Central show “Drunk History.” One month, a sommelier gave a tour of an old Italian masters exhibition, sharing how wine would have influenced the artists.
Darting across the dance floor and through the crowd is Krista Renfrew, director of special events at MAM. Renfrew and her special events team of three plan and execute the monthly event. They took over MAM After Dark two years ago, and attendance has doubled.
At 35, Renfrew is the oldest on the team. The youngest is 27. Renfrew believes millennials leading the initiative for millennials is a major part of its success.
The themes are solidified just three months in advance, which Renfrew said gives the team flexibility to stay on top of trends.
An advisory committee of 45 people representing different factions of the city meets every few months to brainstorm ideas for upcoming After Dark nights.
The group lounges on couches in Windhover Hall sipping wine while Renfrew asks: “What are the microtrends? When you go out on a Friday night or you’re going out to different festivals and functions, what do you see that’s cool? What do you walk away going, ‘I want to do that?’ ”
That’s how the idea for quiet clubbing came about. Partiers went onto the silent dance floor wearing headphones, which could be set to either of two DJs playing different music. It was wildly successful and is the only theme the team has repeated.
For Kimberly McGlonn and Asante Cooper, it’s the first visit to the art museum.
“We’ve seen the architecture,” McGlonn, 37, said. “The architecture is amazing.”
It’s also their first date.
The pair met online and have been talking on the phone for weeks. McGlonn, a high school English teacher who grew up on Milwaukee’s north side, is in town visiting from Philadelphia. Cooper, a physician’s assistant, drove up from Chicago. McGlonn heard about the event and thought it would make a good first-date spot.
The pair is making their way from getting drinks in Windhover Hall to the galleries.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” she said. “I want to see the whole thing, as much of it as I can.”
Attorney Christie Carrino, 28, put on her pearls to come out with fiancé Dan Lindberg, 29, who draped a sweater over his shoulders.
“It’s so easy to sit on a couch on a Friday night,” said Lindberg, an analyst at Direct Supply. “We both work a lot, so it’s nice to get to a new place and do something new.” The couple, who live in Bay View, are getting married at the museum in September.
Dan DeMuro, 26, said his first After Dark surpassed expectations.
“I usually think of an art museum as being boring and low-key, just quiet,” DeMuro said. “It flips the idea on its head and makes it a party.”
The band plays one last song at the end of the night — “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” — and then it’s over.
Renfrew coaxes people out the door. Some head to a sponsored afterparty at Cafe Benelux in the Third Ward.
Over the next two hours, linens are taken from tables and bagged for washing, bars and tables are broken down, floors get mopped.
By 10 Saturday morning, when the first patron arrives, there’s no trace of what took place the night before.
That’s exactly the idea of MAM After Dark. Hosting the event isn’t about raising money for the museum, Renfrew said, but rather friends of the museum.
“My job is to make the museum approachable for younger generations,” Renfrew said. “It’s not this hoity-toity thing that you can’t have fun at.”
“My secret agenda is to get people into the galleries and interested in whatever form of art they’re interested in,” Renfrew said.
And if that doesn’t happen, there’s always the next After Dark. This month, it falls on March 17 — St. Patrick’s Day.
“It’s just a different type of night than your average night out in Milwaukee.” BREE BOETTCHER