Uptown art museums unveil a common welcome mat

Five years after opening in the same block, Charlotte’s Big-Three art museums – artistically collegial in public, aggressively competitive in private – announced a collaborative marketing blitz Monday that includes a $20 common pass and free lunch-hour tours.

While the three centers – Mint Museum Uptown, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art – have worked together on some projects and quietly cross-marketed to attract visitors, the new partnership brings the neighbors into coordinated orbits for the first time and leverages each one’s strength to build all.

Coming at the beginning of the busy autumn seasons for all the venues, the initiative follows a down year in attendance for the Mint and the Bechtler, both of which were off about 9 percent year-to-year in the last fiscal year. At the Gantt, attendance rose in the last fiscal year by 20 percent.

Included in the initiative is Blumenthal Performing Arts, which manages the Knight Theater, part of the Levine Center for the Arts in the 500 block of South Tryon Street, the largest and most diverse cultural complex in the Carolinas.

Under the partnership, enabled by a $250,000 grant from the philanthropic Thrive Fund, launched by former Bank of America chairman Hugh McColl:

▪  Free tours of the museums will be led by docents during the noon hour on the third Thursday of each month beginning in early 2016.

▪  A single $20 ticket will provide admission for 48 hours to the three museums (and the Mint’s Randolph Road galleries).

▪  All three museums will be free for a community celebration and block party May 21, 2016.

▪  A single creative agency will handle advertising, marketing and public relations to promote the various attractions at the Levine Center for the Arts.

Rivalries aside

Sealing the deal with a group selfie patterned on the one Ellen DeGeneres snapped at the 2014 Oscars, leaders of the institutions made an eclipse-rare appearance at the Wells Fargo auditorium at the Knight Theater.

It was the first time all four – John Boyer of the Bechtler, Tom Gabbard of the Blumenthal, Kathleen Jameson of the Mint and David Taylor of the Gantt – had been on the same stage for a joint public presentation since the Levine campus was finished in 2010.

Jameson said the Thrive grant, administered by the Mint, gave the venues the opportunity to cross-market in a significant way, although the museums had cooperated in the past in such areas as membership and holiday gift-shop discounts.

Through the joint campaign, the museums expect to build traffic, membership and support, said Hillary Cooper, the Mint’s advancement director.

A second project, being administered by the Bechtler, is aimed at training development staffs at the art museums and working with databases to bring in more financial backing.

Orbital Socket, a new Charlotte agency led by Greg Johnson, will lead the marketing effort.

Free Thursdays

It is difficult to estimate how many people will take advantage of the monthly free-Thursday program, said Sidonie Webber of the Mint, who is coordinating the docent tours at the museums.

But about 85,000 people work within a half-mile of Trade and Tryon Streets, according to Charlotte Center City Partners, creating a large potential audience.

“We encourage all to come out and take a bite out of art,” Taylor said.

Boyer said the museums, some of which offer free-admission events already, do not expect the lunch program to cannibalize any paying visitors.

“Our objective is draw people from their cubicles and draw them from Mellow Mushroom (pizza), not that I have anything against Mellow Mushroom,” he said.

Boyer said the proximity of the three museums in the same block offers enhanced value to visitors.

“It’s destination shopping,” he said. “We have a program that provides a significant economy of time.”

Standard admission to the museums vary. At the Mint, it is $12, the Gantt is $9 and the Bechtler is $8.

Gantt collaboration

Programs are planned between the Gantt and the Knight Theater when the Dance Theater of Harlem comes to Charlotte in January, including a Gantt exhibition of historic costumes, set pieces and videos from the ballet company.

Taylor also said that the Gantt’s Sunday programs featuring African Americans in cinema have been growing in popularity. They feature discussions led by curator and host Felix Curtis on the significance of the movies shown.

Levine Center for the Arts was created as part of the $600 million, 48-story Wachovia/Wells Fargo and Duke Energy tower project and was financed in part by a tax on rental cars and reinvestment of property taxes from the site. A major donor was the Leon Levine Foundation. In October 2010, the Mint Uptown opened, the last of the new cultural facilities on the campus.

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Uptown art museums unveil a common welcome mat."