Mixing performing and visual arts? Not a bad idea. In fact, in graduate school I wrote a long research paper on the subject of museum spaces being used for the performing arts. On the rare occasion that people listen to you and take your suggestion, one should dance a brief jig – preferably in an art gallery.

The Hunter Museum of American Art hosted the Choral Arts of Chattanooga last Thursday evening in a merging of two of the city’s premier arts organizations. It was actually a fortuitous blending of diverse art forms. Choral Arts sang a program in the atrium of the new Flying Nun wing of the museum and filled the large space with its prim selections of vocal music. The large sculptures perched overhead seemed to glisten more than usual from the audio stimulation.

The concept of the evening was to pick a selection of American songs that correlated to a variety of works of art in the museum’s American collection. After the concert, the audience could tour the museum to view the sources of the choices, as well as the other works of art housed therein.

A full house was guaranteed (extra seats had to be set up right before starting the concert) by the inclusion of a large group of inner city school children to mix with the Choral Arts’ and Hunter’s regular audience of blue hairs, long hairs, and no hairs. All the mixing – of media and audiences – made at least for a slyly interesting evening, if not one of soaring musical heights. It was a definite “cultural experience,” and one can only hope that some seeds were planted for future artistic endeavors. This sort of multiple combination upon combination is something only the arts can achieve, and the city should exploit the ability for its arts organizations to pull this sort of thing off with nary a hitch.

Songs from several well-known American composers, such as Stephen Foster, Charles Ives, and Aaron Copland, were presented, but the veritable hit of the evening was a musical version of the nursery rhyme “There Was a Little Girl.” This contains perhaps the greatest false rhyme usage in the entire English language canon – “with a curl in the middle of her forehead,/and when she was good, she was very, very good,/and when she was bad, she was horrid.” The humorous nature of the song got the entire audience involved and should have been a clue to the evening’s planners that it should have been sung near the beginning, not near the end, and that there should have been more like it. It’s just like the speaker who is going to give a long-winded, potentially boring speech to the Rotary Club starting off with a few pithy jokes to get everyone loosened up. Maybe next time.

The regular art song fare of contrapuntal rhythms and dissonant harmonies are not really suitable for popular consumption, and it might serve the Choral Arts well to loosen its black tie on occasion. The trio of alienating effects – material, dress, and environment – may have been lost on the school children. It’s hard to say. For many it was their first trip to the Hunter Museum, and since it is a significant artistic jewel in the crown of downtown’s renaissance, it needs to do everything possible to create popular interest and reduce the idea that it is only a place that the comfortable aesthetics and their dragged-along spouses dare to tread.

One interesting development in the Hunter’s recent renovation is that the new wing has made the old new wing look like nothing more than an abandoned gas station. One would have to assume that it will soon be history, much like the old baseball stadiums of various cities like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati which were all built with that utilitarian Bauhaus-inspired lack of appeal around the same time. People friendly stadiums have replaced them. The old Hunter mansion has done very well and maintains its stateliness next to the very modern look of the newer new wing. If the Arts District is to be more than an enclave for the well-heeled, then let’s hope the design folks continue on the course of both physical and mental accessibility.

Bart Whiteman
Bartwhiteman@aol.com