Art: What is art's place in the picture?

When the James A. Michener Art Museum recently announced the impending construction of yet another addition, I couldn't resist ragging director Bruce Katsiff about building the country's first "art-free" museum wing.

As its name indicates, the glass-walled Edgar N. Putman Event Pavilion, designed by Philadelphia architects Kieran Timberlake, will be used for concerts, lectures, and exhibition openings. It will also generate revenue through rentals for weddings and private parties.

To be fair, the Michener added a lot of gallery and other art-related space in its previous expansions; the 2,700-square-foot Putman wing is the final phase of a long-range development plan.

And it won't be entirely art-free. "I expect to place some sculpture in the building," Katsiff said. "It is a museum building and art belongs everywhere it can be safely exhibited."

Point taken. Yet the Michener project emphasizes a trend that has been evident in the museum world for some time. It was neatly summarized by Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, when she told the New York Times: "We can't just be about art anymore. Museums are the new community centers."

Art museums "not just about art" - how pathetically sad. Yet the evidence is all around us that this mind-set has become firmly rooted, in activities such as jazz Fridays at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and yoga classes at the Museum of Modern Art.

The cultural shift isn't confined to programming. Museums in this area and elsewhere are dedicating spaces to non-art cultural use as well as to making money.

All museums now need the rental income that spaces like the Michener's glass-walled Putman pavilion can generate. Katsiff said he and his board believe the addition, which the museum hopes will be finished by fall 2011, could produce $150,000 to $250,000 a year in income.

Beyond that, the new space will provide more opportunities to attract new visitors. "We're looking for all kinds of devices to get people in the doors," Katsiff said.

These days, most museums are doing likewise. The National Museum of American Jewish History, which expects to open its new building in mid-November, will include a large events space on its fifth floor, overlooking Independence Mall.

Museum spokesman Jay Nachman said the space is designed so that half can be used for special exhibitions. For events, it can accommodate 600 guests for banquets and 800 in theater seating.

While the new Barnes Foundation on the Parkway won't have a purpose-built events space, it will include a large atrium, with an outdoor patio at one end, that will be able to accommodate the kinds of social events that founder Dr. Albert C. Barnes so despised.

My colleague Inga Saffron also points out that the Barnes atrium should put visitors at ease by providing a transition zone between the outside world and the rigorous Barnes art experience.

Many people are put off by art museums, I suspect in large part because their knowledge of art is limited. An aspect of the "community-center" ambience museums are striving for involves making all visitors feel comfortable, either by expanding programming beyond art, even into popular culture, and by providing amenities that provide a break from art.

The new Barnes will have a cafe where visitors can relax and digest, as will the Allentown Art Museum after it expands. The museum will begin construction in November on a 7,900-square-foot addition designed by the Philadelphia firm of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.

For the main part of the expansion, the architects have pushed the front of the main museum building out to the sidewalk to form a continuous facade with the former Presbyterian church at Fifth and Court Streets, the museum's original home, which houses its European works.

Director Brooks Joyner says that only about 40 percent of the new space, or 3,100 square feet, will be galleries. Besides two classrooms, the addition will provide an expanded reception and visitor area, a larger shop, and a corner cafe overlooking the new arts park across Fifth Street.

(The museum will be closed from Nov. 15 until construction is finished, scheduled for Sept. 1, 2011. The Michener museum expects to maintain normal operations during its project.)

The major concern about "community-center" repositioning is whether it's a progressive development or potentially counterproductive, in that core values could be compromised for short-term popularity.

Certainly the added revenue brought in by outside events is a real benefit; one can't chide museums for making a buck however they can. But does attracting previously art-resistant visitors for non-art events increase museum memberships, or result in permanent attendance gains?

The evidence either way is spotty, yet a report in the New York Times several months ago about the Brooklyn Museum's popularization efforts was discouraging.

The Brooklyn Museum owns some of America's finest collections of Egyptian and American art, among others, yet it has been sharply criticized in recent years for mounting pop-culture exhibitions such as "Star Wars," "Hip-Hop Nation," and "Who Shot Rock and Roll?"

These attractions obviously were intended to bring in younger visitors whose experience of high art might be limited or nonexistent. Yet last year, the Times reported, the museum's attendance dropped 23 percent from the year before.

The Michener and Allentown museums have built solid reputations for exhibitions that are enlightening and appealing without pandering, so I don't expect either to carry the museum-as-community-center concept to extremes.

As for the Barnes Foundation, who can say what form it will take when it becomes Just Another Museum in 2012? It certainly will be under considerable pressure to make money so it won't fall into deficit again.

The Barnes hasn't been able to popularize in Merion, but by adding a special exhibitions space it will have some latitude to do so in its new quarters.

One presumes, too, that the atrium linking the two halves of the building will come to function like the Art Museum's Great Stair Hall, as a public events venue.

It's difficult to imagine the no-nonsense, art-is-everything Barnes Foundation of today becoming "a new community center," but economic pressure could push it in that direction.

The Barnes is gambling that its "museum mile" location will attract more tourists and other art lovers, who, in more comfortable and less intimidating surroundings, will usher in a new era of prosperity. It might even attract customers who don't care beans for art but just like to hang out in classy surroundings.