There are few better places to be on a warm summer evening than perched atop the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, taking in picturesque aerial views of the surrounding skyline with a cold drink in hand.
For years, OKCMOA has welcomed guests onto its Roof Terrace Thursday nights for drinks and live music coinciding with Art After 5, its weekly night of extended hours and reduced admission. But beginning this year, guests will only have one night a month to enjoy the sunny rooftop bar.
While OKCMOA still offers extended hours every Thursday night, it is rebranding its weekly Roof Terrace series as the monthly, museumwide event Third Thursday. The first night of the new series, given the theme My Life/My Movie, runs 5-9 p.m. Thursday. Admission, which includes a museum ticket and access to the rooftop bar, is $5 (free for museum members). The next Third Thursday will be June 21.
Becky Weintz, OKCMOA’s director of marketing and communications, said the move to a monthly series will allow the museum to more intently focus on making each night a special experience.
“We’re consolidating into one really great, really exciting event that will happen once a month,” Weintz said.
There has always been a live music component to the Roof Terrace series, but OKCMOA hopes to further emphasize local music through its Third Thursdays. R&B, neo soul and hip-hop duo Adam & Kizzie perform for the first night of the series. The husband-wife combo recently progressed to the final round of R&B star Usher’s $1 million Megastar competition. Their highly anticipated new album The Book of EEDO Vol. 3 is set for a June 3 release.
OKCMOA is also incorporating a focus on local visual artists into the series. This Thursday’s event features artist Nicole Emmons-Willis, who will be doing a stop-motion collaborative art project in the museum lobby. Guests are welcome to participate, watch or go on to view the museum’s other galleries and exhibitions.
Weintz said the museum wants to use Third Thursdays to spotlight great things going on in the local community.
“We’re viewing this as an opportunity to partner with local artists and local musicians,” she said.
Many of the artists and musicians OKCMOA will partner with in future months are still to be determined. Weintz said guests can keep up to date on monthly themes and programming on the museum’s website and social media accounts.
The Third Thursday series is sponsored through at least the next 12 months, and Weintz said OKCMOA would like to extend the event into other years as well.
While the Roof Terrace series has been a summer and early fall event in the past, the museum is toying with the idea of keeping the roof open for Third Thursdays in the colder months as well. Weintz said the roof is usually open for New Year’s Eve celebrations, which are popular and well attended. Still, no final decision has been made on whether the roof will be open for winter and, as always, the availability of the roof remains weather-dependent.
Aside from local music and art presentations, Third Thursdays will also be a time for guests to enjoy the rest of the museum, including possibly catching a film screening in its theater or dining at Museum Café, which offers a special menu on Thursday nights.
There are plenty of art districts in the metro area that have special monthly art nights that bring a lot of people into one part of town at one time, and OKCMOA is hoping its new series can become something similar.
“Hopefully we will turn downtown into a destination on Third Thursdays,” Weintz said.
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