Boston-area college students looking for an activity on the night before Halloween were in luck this past Thursday. Approximately 3,300 students from 30 schools flocked to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for College Night: MFA After Dark.

The event invited students to “explore the dark side of the Museum’s Collection,” just in time for Halloween. Decked out in costumes, students had the option of taking a self-guided tour throughout the museum of its creepiest, strangest artwork or just looking at the open exhibits.  Special attractions included a photo booth, free gelato in the museum’s Taste Cafe and a performance from a Berklee College School of Music folk-rock band called Grey Season.

Students came from schools that are university members of the museum, including Brandeis, Boston University, Northeastern University, Boston College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University. 

One featured exhibit on the tour was Goya: Order and Disorder—an eerie collection of Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s work. The exhibit opened last month and features famous paintings such as “Witches’ Sabbath” and “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” 

Also highlighted on the tour were the dark works of American realist painter Jamie Wyeth from an exhibit of the same name. Works included “The Seven Deadly Sins,” “Raven” and “Mischief Night.” The Egyptian funeral arts gallery, containing mummies and other funeral artifacts, was also featured along with the museum’s darkest gallery, the Buddhist Temple Room.

The band, Grey Season, wearing festive hats—to keep with the costumed audience—performed original songs as well as some Halloween-themed ones, including “Monster Mash.” 

“We definitely wanted a band from one of the local schools since this event was catered to college students. We got in touch with some of our colleagues at Berklee, and came upon Grey Season through a referral,” communications coordinator Bobby Schrader said in a phone interview with the Justice. “The band had a crowd listening at all points throughout the night and kept the energy going straight through to the end,” he explained.

Schrader planned the event with MFA’s Senior Sirector of Communications Dawn Griffin. Planning started in the last week of September and details were finalized in the last few weeks of October, he told the Justice.

“I did a walk-through during the event and was impressed with the amount of students in our galleries, especially in the Goya exhibit, which has some terrifying works that fit in with the Halloween theme,” he said.

Throughout most of the event, the line of students went around the side of the museum, and students kept coming. Schrader says the high turnout was “due to the fact that it was the night before Halloween, and we had a lot of offerings for students.”

Some of the night’s standout costumes included a pair of skeletons, a flapper and an Elsa from Disney’s Frozen, Minions from Despicable Me and Iron Man and Black Widow from The Avengers. 

Eighty-seven students came from Brandeis, according to Schrader. 

“The museum itself was breathtaking as always, and the event was a fun way to draw a huge crowd of students through the doors,” Joshua Rathburn ’16 said. “And nothing beats free gelato!”

MFA’s Student Ambassadors from attending schools were on hand to assist with the event, showing students to the various attractions and galleries. The ambassadors represent the MFA at their respective universities and also help at the museum itself.

Funding for the event came from the museum’s marketing and communications budget. “It is part of our mission to allocate resources to reaching the community,” Schrader said.

The museum is interested in holding more events like this in the future. “We have had college nights like this before but not always on this scale,” Schrader said, “We have learned from this event and are thinking about adding a second photo booth and extending the time of the event so that students can experience more.” 

He said, “We are already planning another for the fall but are so happy with the results of this event that we might hold another this spring.” 

Whether students were dancing to the band in the atrium, admiring each other’s costumes, enjoying gelato or exploring the galleries, the event brought attendees together. 

The event gave the museum a social aspect that allowed art to connect students with their peers from different schools in the area.