Thursday evening the Birmingham Museum of Art will bring a public feedback event to Ona’s Music Room in Lakeview’s Pepper Place as part of an effort to plan the institution’s future. The gathering starts at 7 p.m. with it most likely ending before a jazz performance scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. Those in attendance will be rewarded with free beer and an opportunity to participate in the public input portion of an information gathering process with potentially significant effects on what’s becoming a culturally focused section of the city.

The gathering is being done in conjunction with a feasibility study undertaken by the museum and wHY Architecture, a firm with offices in Los Angeles, CA and Louisville, KY.  They were awarded the project after an RFP process slightly delayed by the unexpected effects of last winter’s late January snowfall. wHY has already started conducting focus groups, online surveys, and additional community feedback events to learn more about what the community may want to see from the museum going forward in terms of both programming and physical space.  The museum has found ways to raise awareness about current community outreach via a section on their website highlighting those efforts.

According to an email from the museum’s director of marketing and communications, Cate McCusker Boehm, “the feasibility study will produce options for potential renovations and expansion of the Museum on its current footprint.”