In the News: MOTAC and SoFAB forge closer relationship

By Todd A. Price
on October 10, 2012 at 3:32 PM
http://www.nola.com/drink/index.ssf/2012/10/motac_and_sofab_forge_closer_r.html#

In early December, the Museum of the American Cocktail will close temporarily and box up its collection, now located inside the Southern Food and Beverage Museum at the Riverwalk Mall. As food editor Judy Walker reported, the cocktail museum will follow SoFAB to its new location in Central City on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. When MOTAC reopens in 2013, its collection will be reorganized to be more closely integrated into the exhibits at SoFAB. The two institutions also will share a leader, with SoFAB President Liz Williams assuming the position of MOTAC's managing director.

 "Right now (MOTAC) is perceived as a gallery," Williams said, "and we want to make it seem more active and have more changing exhibits."
At SoFAB's new 30,000-square-foot space, there will be areas devoted to each of the Southern states, and the cocktail collection will be part of those exhibits. Williams also is working on ways to highlight aspects of cocktail history that do not fit SoFAB's geographic focus. All the items in the current MOTAC collection, which are on loan from the museum's board of directors, will remain in New Orleans.
MOTAC and SoFAB began discussing a closer relationship last July during Tales of the Cocktail. Although Williams will lead both museums and was appointed a board member of the Museum of the American Cocktail, the two institutions remain legally separate entities.
"We're hoping," said Laura McMillian, MOTAC's current managing director, "that we'll be able to get more funding, support and notice."
McMillian will become the assistant managing director of MOTAC and focus on programing and special events.
While the museums are closed, McMillian will hold events around the city, including a cocktail hour at Loa on Nov. 6 and a "spirited dinner" at the Windsor Court on Dec. 3. In a letter that MOTAC board president Dale DeGroff sent to "friends of the museum," he said that, in the interim, monthly seminars would move to the restaurant SoBou, which already displays items from the museum's collection.
McMillian noted that due to the expense MOTAC will end its popular Mixology Monday seminars, which every month brought some of the most distinguished bartenders and cocktail scholars to New Orleans. Each seminar cost $3,000–$4,000. Instead, MOTAC will launch a monthly series of presentations by local bartenders.
According to Williams, the integration of the two museums is part of a fundamental shift in the mission of SoFAB. The food museum has increasingly focused on providing information about issues such as food law and policy along with creating and supporting food exhibits outside the South. SoFAB and MOTAC, for example, are exploring a joint opportunity for a second exhibit in Chicago. To reflect those changes, the organization that oversees SoFAB has been renamed the SoFAB Institute.
"We can have exhibits, museums and other activities around the country," Williams said. "We're not wedded to the South except in this particular location."