Helena, Montana, is a very lovely, very small capital city. More a town in many ways. Our official population stands at 33,000, though surrounding suburbs now account for another 20,000 or so. We began life as a mining camp in the 1860s. Then after a transcontinental railway came to town, morphed into a finance and business center, a capital, a sedate and wealthy baby city. Victorian mansions and then small bungalows of multiple styles soon replaced false-fronted mining shacks. Over time, our diverse mining and rail population included African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Jewish. We slowly became more homogenized. The State of Montana, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and the hospital now employ the most Helenans. We’re stubbornly middle class in income and taste.
Five other Montana cities are now larger and more sophisticated, at least in shopping and restaurants. And, as noted in the previous essay, some are a little less isolated by air transportation than we are. But not by much.
Helena, though, is truly at the end of the line. And to my way of thinking we’ve compensated, maybe even over compensated for our little-sister, our relatively lonely, Plain Jane place in the world. We are a hotbed of culture. Of art, music, history, and literature. Of quirky creativity.
Take the Archie Bray Foundation. Which was once a brick and tile manufacturing business that the farsighted son of an owner saw as the perfect place for potters and sculptors to work. A world already built for transforming clay into art. The incredible buildings—some new, some historic, some falling into oblivion—have hosted an international set of students and instructors since the early 1950s. They have found their way—however awkward the route—to studios that inspire and a town that welcomes them. In fact, the Bray stays as firmly centered in Helena as it does the world. Bray students create flower pots for Mother’s Day “Pots and Plants” extravaganza. And bowls for an “Empty Bowls” nonprofit soup fundraiser. We wander among the new and old buildings at the Bray as well, alive with 70 years, now, of cast-off pieces, seconds hidden among historic bricks and clay pipes, and alarmingly wonderful masterworks.
Our little Holter Museum of Art often teams up with the Bray. The museum/gallery is housed in a historic thick-walled stone warehouse built to store mining explosives. Early in Helena’s history, the Holter family founded a freighting empire, transported ore overland and down the Missouri River to St. Louis and returned with mining, milling, and lumber supplies and hardware for a booming territory. Third generation Norman “Jeff” Holter participated in creating and testing atomic weapons in the 1950s and then, in a small Helena laboratory, developed the Holter Heart Monitor. His widow Joan, herself a chemist, sparked and funded the creation of the Art Museum in the family’s name. Although there are years when the Holter hangs on to existence by a thread, it has survived—offering a wide array of changing shows, classes for kids and seniors, and lovely space for receptions and programs. A freighting fortune transformed into art.
Helena’s independent movie theater, Second Story Cinema, began in the 1970s—literally in a business block’s upper story. New York born Arnie Malina—attracted to Montana’s hideaways and mountains–remembers, “We bought the seats from an old theater in Fort Benton and found an old popcorn machine. . . . made the projection booth in what used to be a closet for a secretarial school.” Malina and his partners booked two independent films a week in the 88 seat, jerry-rigged space, along with live programming. And then, in an even more daring move, rustled up the funds to acquire Lewis and Clark County’s 1880s jail and renovate it into an astonishingly contemporary 200 plus seat performance center—the Myrna Loy Center.
Which thrives still with two film showings an evening and a host of local and national performers. Those performers, of course, command hefty fees, but the theater’s managers have mastered the art of piggy-backing Helena shows with those in neighboring towns. And securing donated motel space. We fill the theater. All of us, thumbing our noses at our isolation. Myrna Loy, by the way, grew up in Helena and is buried in one of our cemeteries.
You will have seen the pattern already: our blessed propensity to situate cultural organizations in Helena’s historic buildings. Once more consider our local, grassroots Grandstreet Theater. The building began in 1901 as a Unitarian Church, morphed into the community library after an earthquake decimated its early home. Then in the 1970s a tiny local theater company received the funds to convert the church/library back into an auditorium. Grandstreet fills its seats throughout the year with locally produced shows and runs a children’s theater school.
So that library, the Lewis and Clark library, had moved from pillar to post before local citizens funded a new building in an area razed by Helena’s urban renewal—early home to our Chinese residents, a red light district, and tiny miners’ cabins. Pure luck has brought us powerful, invested library directors who are always a step ahead of great ways to serve the community. We are rich in programming, book clubs, children’s services, technology assistance, community reads, and meeting space available for many organizations. Like the Myrna, the library and its board lure well-known authors to town. Our independent book store reaps the rewards. We lean into world-renown word masters.
Though a state institution, the Montana Historical Society museum, library, archives, photo archives and galleries offer the best of Montana history and art. While currently waiting for the completion of a brand new space, the staff still arranges a wide array of programming and school resources. The Society helps Montanans and travelers from around the world understand that Charlie Russell’s art defines this place before ANY transportation allowed European Americans to settle.
The Montana Jewish Project has just reclaimed the earliest synagogue built in the West as an educational center. Four- year Catholic Carroll College provides superb music and theatrical performances—along with guest lecturers and the unrefined gold of senior papers. Helena supports a symphony and a chorale—even as we fundraise to bring in musicians and a conductor from urban areas–trying hard to find vocalists and musicians only one airline hop away.
I cannot accurately compare Montana with other states. But I’m inclined to believe that what I know in Helena defines the rest of this place: a summer stock, sold-out theater in the most unlikely spot in far northeastern Montana. Museums in virtually every county many of them administered by volunteers who have taken time to secure training. Significant art and history galleries in every major city. A wildly vigorous humanities program that sends speakers to the corners of the state in all weathers—the honorariums lean but the travel reimbursements generous. Equally vigorous statewide public radio and television programs.
And then there’s literature and artistry. Montana steadily produces dazzling authors and photographers and artists. Beyond the end of all the planes, trains, and automobiles—beyond easy access—in this enormous, rugged landscape, we birth and nurture people with a bent for the right word and the right camera angle and the glint of sun on mountains. These artists flourish in part because they encourage and celebrate each other. They value the community they find in small university towns and abandoned gold camps. And every last one of them thrives in and takes inspiration from the empty beauty of our landscapes. Being at the end of the line seems to set their skills on fire.
I’m thinking tonight of the price of tickets for Broadway shows or the Metropolitan Opera. Or the cost of getting to Washington D. C. to visit the National Gallery of Art or the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian. Much less flying to Europe or India. It’s not that we are homebodies by nature or that we’ll turn down travel opportunities. It just isn’t easy. Money alone doesn’t mitigate flights caught in Denver snowstorms or missed connections in Seattle. Or 18 hour jet lag. So thank goodness for all the energetic, starry-eyed folks who’ve built and supported the magic of the bright lights and ball gowns, the brilliant imagery and the best writing—right here. ©
