For a break from the hotel ballroom, having an event at a museum is a great move. Almost every town, large or small, has at least one — there are, after all, 35,000 museums in the U.S., according to the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences. And many museums happily open their doors to after-hours events. By offering their spaces for private functions, they bring in funds to support their efforts — essential since most operate as nonprofits — and they expose more people to their missions and their collections. Museums are a colorful bunch, no two ever the same, celebrating everything from masterpieces to mustards.
Here are a few ways museums can provide inspiration for your events.
Be bedazzled by art
You don’t have to travel to New York, Chicago or Washington to drink and dine amid fine art. At the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, for example, ornately framed oil paintings by European masters in the Great Gallery are a sophisticated backdrop for presentations, while dinners and receptions take on a medieval mood in a stone courtyard fringed by colonnades. The bonus at this museum is its ultra-modern Glass Pavilion, a glass box where event spaces sparkle, and a glass-blowing demo is an after-dinner entertainment option. Other possibilities? In Richmond, Virginia, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s Marble Hall, with its pink marble, angled modern architecture, and easy access to artworks, and, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, near Latrobe, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, a LEED certified museum with a modern cantilevered wing and sculpture dotted gardens of native plants.
For fun, go quirky
Americans’ passion for collecting has brought us museums packed with quirky collections of dolls, condiments, barbed wire, Spam and other oddities.
Some of these museums are small and don’t always accommodate afterhours events, but they can be fun free-time forays. For instance, at the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, tours with a company historian can be topped off with a trip to the lab to concoct sodas. And, for sweet treats at off-site events, groups can book the museum’s float cart.
Some quirky museums do welcome event business, like the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City, home to the world’s largest public display of banjos, where a reception can kick off with a banjo picker in the museum’s 1960s style “club.” In Rochester, New York, the Strong National Museum of Play is America’s most comprehensive toy box, a fun place for all ages, where spaces like the Toy Hall of Fame add a playful dimension to events.
Seek something new
Everyone likes to be the first to experience something, so be on the lookout for new museums. In March, the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, will open, honoring the 3,519 recipients of this country’s highest military honor. Its event spaces will work for everything from board meetings to black-tie balls. Buffalo’s AKG Art Museum has reopened after the largest expansion project in its 160 years, and meeting areas and green spaces are among the additions.
In Charleston, South Carolina, the new International African American Museum, built on the site where almost half of enslaved Africans first set foot in America, has indoor and outdoor event venues. And in September, Omaha’s art museum, now called The Joslyn, showed what a $100 million can do when it unveiled its renovation and expansion. Among the changes are a new building designed by Norwegian architects and gardens planted with Nebraska native plants. Diners can drink in the museum’s elegance around the splashing fountain in the museum’s art deco Fountain Court.
Salute those who’ve served
Military service isn’t required to appreciate stories of sacrifice and heroism that military museums share. Four walls don’t always enclose these collections; instead, dinners might stretch out on ship’s deck or in a hangar, beneath a plane’s wings. Imagine a sunset reception in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the hangar deck of the USS Lexington, the last World War II Essex Class aircraft carrier to be retired from service.
During events at the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, Virginia, arrange for an airshow involving its vintage aircraft before a reception in an historic building. The museum houses one of the largest collections of flyable World War I and World War II planes. Aviation innovation is on display at the Evergreen Space and Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. Among the interesting planes housed in its striking and ultra-modern buildings is the Spruce Goose — a massive, all-wood plane built as a prototype for transport during World War II with Howard Hughes’s backing. It didn’t fly well, and the war ended, so the Spruce Goose is the only plane of its kind.
Be transported
Americans are enamored of the machines that move us, as a wealth of transportation-related museums proves. Cars top the list, with many museums, like the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, devoted to a single automaker.
The museum is a knockout, from its eye-catching Skydome and shiny lineup of sleek ‘Vettes to popular event spaces like Corvette Boulevard. There’s a lot of history too, including the famous 2014 sinkhole that opened in the museum’s main exhibit space and swallowed several Corvettes, which have since been restored.
At the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, more than 1,000 motorcycles are displayed on multiple levels and in two multistory glass towers. Beyond the main museum, the Barber offers smaller conference spaces with walls of glass that overlook its Barber Road Course and landscaped grounds.
And although few of us travel by rail, trains continue to fascinate people. At the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, California, locomotives surround diners in the Roundhouse, and costumed interpreters add historical perspective. Smaller groups might opt for dinner aboard the museum’s restored dining cars.
