Culture
"...the world outside, which my brother and I soon discovered was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana." So wrote Norman Maclean in his classic A River Runs Through It, which takes place during the early 20th Century. The novel is full of references to Missoula's natural surroundings, which along with its logging-town beginnings and location as the state's first university has continued to give Missoula an eclectic mix of cowboys and loggers co-existing with holdover hippies and college students, not to mention sports fans and retirees. Community events overwhelmingly take place Downtown either outdoors or in one of the several Downtown buildings listed on the National Historic Registry.
Since its beginnings in 2006, the River City Roots Festival has demonstrated itself as Missoula's signature celebration of city and now attracts more than 10,000 individuals. The longest standing event Downtown has been the Missoula Farmers' Market that was founded in 1972, which provides a weekly outlet for Western Montana produce during the spring and summer. Since then, an arts and crafts People's Market and a Clark Fork Market have been added nearby and run concurrently. Downtown also hosts a First Friday Gallery Night to showcase local art from museums and galleries such as that of Monte Dolack the first Friday of every Month and a New Year's Eve with New Year's Eve's First Night Missoula celebration also including food and live entertainment. The Humanities Montana Festival of the Book is held every October to celebrate the literature of the west, and Missoula's two historic theatres both hold annual film festivals with the Roxy hosting the International Wildlife Film Festival, established in 1977 as the first juried wildlife film festival in the world and the Wilma since 2003 accommodating the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, the largest film event in Montana. In performance arts, the Missoula Community Theatre has held performances of musical and non-musical plays since 1977 with its affiliated Missoula Children's Theatre also acting as an international touring program that visits nearly 1,000 communities per year around the world.
The Montana Museum of Arts and Culture, which officially became a state museum in 2001 and housed in a former Carnegie library, is one Montana's oldest cultural reserves with its permanent collection of more than 10,000 original works begun in 1894. Historic Fort Missoula is home to the Historic Museum dedicated to preserving the history of Western Montana and the Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History and the Northern Rockies Heritage Center. It was announced by the National Museum of Forest Service History in 2009 that it plans to build a National Conservation Legacy and Education Center in Missoula as well.
Opened in 1987, Missoula's Bayern Brewing, Inc. is the oldest active brewery in Montana and bills itself as "the only German microbrewery in the Rockies". Big Sky Brewing was opened eight years later and, with a production of over 38,000 barrels, is by far Montana's largest brewery and produces the best selling beer brewed in Montana, Moose Drool Brown Ale. Missoula has also been home to Kettle House Brewing Company since 1995 and Draught Works opened in 2011. Big Sky, Bayern, and Kettlehouse represent the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd largest breweries respectively in the state of Montana. Also in 2011, Tamarack Brewing and Flathead Lake Brewing Company from nearby Lake County opened pub houses at Downtown Missoula locations. The city also holds annual the Garden City Brewfest and Winterfest, and also periodically hosts the Montana Brewers Festival.
Missoula's celebration of the outdoor can also be seen in notable non-profits based in the city such as the Adventure Cycling Association, the conservationist-hunting organizations Boone and Crockett Club and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and the Outdoor Writers Association of America. In an attempt to reduce harmful emissions, the non-profit Missoula in Motion promotes and encourages sustainable transportation options (walking, biking, car/vanpooling, riding the bus and telecommuting) for commuters to and from the work place. Other non-profits display Missoula's state reputation for promoting more liberal social causes. Promoter of marijuana law reform NORML has its state chapter in Missoula, as does the Montana Hemp Council. Forward Montana is an organization dedicated to "electing a new generation of progressive leaders in Montana." The Montana Justice Foundation, founded in 1979, is charitable organization that purports to make justice accessible while the Western Montana Gay & Lesbian Community Center and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center focus on sustainable community. Likewise, also located in Missoula is the Poverello Center, the largest emergency homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Montana.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Unthinking people will often try to teach you how to do the things which you can do better than you can be taught to do them. If you are sure of all this, you can start to add to your value as a mother by learning the things that can be taught, for the best of our civilization and culture offers much that is of value, if you can take it without loss of what comes to you naturally.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)