Make It Free (and Have Some Hip Hop) and They Will Come

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, the big East Coast Big City museums were all free yesterday. We went to the Art Museum, where even on a Saturday, one's footfalls usually echo through the empty galleries (I exaggerate for effect, but you get the picture, so to speak). Yesterday, though, the Art Musuem was the place to be.

It was free, for one thing. And they'd booked this awesome hip-hop dance troupe, for another thing. And the hip-hop dance troupe was the featured event in the newspaper's listing of the day's events, for a third thing.

Needless to say, when we arrived, just as the hip-hop dance troupe was about to begin its performance, we did not get in. Nor did a couple of hundred other people. As far as I could tell, though, everyone was peaceful about it and just headed out to enjoy the museum. They did the activities for kids (drawing in the African galleries, a scavenger hunt at the exhibit of West African gold, making "gold" pendants), and then they checked out the art. At least that's what we did (19th-century American: great for kids). Given the crowds not just in the galleries with activities but all over the place, that's what everyone else did too.

We're talking the preppiest of blond families next to Black toddlers with beads in their braids. Hand-holding college students of different races, and grandparents and grandkids of all races. It was diversity and community and art, that is, exactly what a big city art museum should be.

Let's hope the Art Museum learned something.