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First, Nina Simon’s radical, post-Post Modern, Weil lecture challenged MAAM 2011 attendees to re-think everything they thought they already re-thought. Just when you thought it was safe to start a blog and social media-ify your museum, Simon advocated putting all those Web 2.0 concepts into practice not on the web, but in real life. Thus Simon’s museum embraces a new identity of art-museum-as-community-center, attracting locals to such radical partcipatory activities as sitting on sofas and doing jigsaw puzzles.

For the record, I’m pro-sofa.

Monday evening, the anti-establishment baton was passed to Baltimore’s 14 Karat Kabaret, to the entertainment of MAAM emerging professionals. Surprisingly similar to the picture Nina Simon painted of her museum, the Kabaret has been bringing Baltimoreans together since the late 80s to sit around on comfy chairs to encounter and, yes, even partcipate in, whacky performance art and musical numbers. And hey, it works. The abstract video displays, feline acrobats, and the best cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” I’ve ever heard, forced the intimate audience to pay attention and to care. Even if we didn’t like every act, we engaged.

Was this all MAAM’s secret plan? Ply us with alcohol and burlesque, then drive home the challenging ideas that were being batted around throughout the day’s sessons?

I say whether or not it was intentional, it was effective. Thank you, MAAM, for a mind-blowing Monday.