By Jill Draper
Like other board members of the group he founded 25 years ago, John Hoffman keeps his ear to the ground about the local art scene. If something particularly imaginative, engaging or exemplary is happening in the Kansas City area, he usually knows it.
“We’re pretty well connected,” says Hoffman, president of Arts Alive, a nonprofit that offers excursions through corners of a vast network of galleries, studios and dance, theater and music performances around town.
Arts Alive organizes monthly outings that begin with drinks and a catered reception at a museum, gallery or private home. After viewing the artwork, the group heads for some type of performance at a nearby venue. The entire evening costs about $45.
“It’s a great value,” Hoffman says, “and the artists love it. When we bring 80 people to a performance, sometimes we’re 90 percent of the audience.”
Arts Alive was especially adventurous during its earliest days, with trips to places like Mercy Seat Tattoo Parlor, Kansas City Women’s Roller Warriors, Missie B’s nightclub and a farmhouse featuring a private art collection along with a jazz quartet.
More recent outings have included a historic firehouse converted into a gallery and studio, an architecturally significant hotel that served as a premiere men’s club for 80 years, West Bottoms art galleries and various plays, dance shows and concerts.
In the south KC area, Arts Alive attendees have viewed a private collection at a Hallbrook residence in Leawood, a unique assortment of Judaica at a synagogue in Overland Park, and an award-winning musical comedy at the Arts Asylum in Brookside.
Hoffman and his wife Sharon both grew up in Brookside. After raising two kids in a large house on Ward Parkway, they returned to their childhood neighborhood, moving to a row of townhouses on 63rd Street a few blocks west of Troost.
Hoffman and his son-in-law developed those townhouses in addition to other properties in the East Side, including Scholars Row apartments at Troost and 55th Street and various new and restored homes in Manheim Park.
These projects came about after working for 30 years in wealth management, when he had the thought, “I wasn’t giving enough back to the community.” His new goal is rebuilding urban Kansas City.
Hoffman, 83, actually has been giving back throughout his life, beginning in the 1960s when he spent two years in Bogota, Columbia, with the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. He hoped to begin a career with the U.S. Foreign Service, but instead was drafted during the Vietnam War escalation. He spent two years at Fort Riley, Kansas, then found a job in the investment field and got married.
He and Sharon have served on numerous boards related to the local art community and helped drive the restoration of Union Station in the 1990s. They also took a special class at the Nelson-Atkins Museum on how to collect art, establishing an extensive private collection. It was not an entirely new experience for Hoffman. His parents also collected art, including many works by Thomas Hart Benton, a friend of his father.
It was another family connection, however, that led to the founding of Arts Alive. The Hoffman’s daughter, at home during a gap year before she began graduate school in urban planning, came up with the idea.
“There really was no model for it,” Hoffman says. Originally conceived to get young people more involved in the arts, an organization was formed and led by a board whose members ranged in age from their 30s to 50s. Outings were offered starting at $25. But the demographics immediately skewed toward the middle-aged and senior crowd who recognized a bargain and were past the need to juggle babysitters and children’s activities.
Now Arts Alive sends monthly emails to 1,500 people and the most popular events sell out in one or two days.
“Everybody knows about the symphony, the opera, the Nelson-Atkins,” Hoffman says. “But underneath all that there’s this whole second tier of culture. Our goal is to raise understanding of that.”
To join the mailing list see artsalivekc.org.
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