Free: ArtNight Pasadena

Call upon "18 participating cultural institutions" and savor a spectacle of sound, vision and ideas.

A rather obvious statement to make when the spooky season rolls around is about to follow: People like to be transported. And that transportive moment can arrive via a neighborhood haunted house, or a ghostly bit of symphonic music, or a classic horror film.

There are other avenues, though, to walking through the doors of one's mind. More than anything, art seems to have a knack for opening brain doors, and inviting the person seeking a fresh outlook with a new notion, an intriguing angle, or something to chew upon, contemplatively.

Imagine all of the new-notion-ing you'll do, without spending any money, in Pasadena on Friday, Oct. 21. ArtNight Pasadena is back, the keep-your-cash-stowed event, unless-you-want-a-nosh-from-a-food-truck to-do, the happening that includes a caboodle of stellar institutions.

Is it really a caboodle, though, or have we walked through some door in our own mind to a different, exaggeration-prone reality?

Nope, we stand by the word, firmly: Eighteen museums and galleries and art-cool destinations are on board, and if you can visit the entire caboodle from 6 to 10 o'clock in the evening, well, we do doff our cap. (Of course we're wearing a cap, because it is now fall, despite what the thermometer says.)

ArtCenter College of Design, the Armory Center for the Arts, the Jackie Robinson Community Center, Norton Simon Museum, the Pasadena Conservatory of Music, and several other crown jewels of the Crown City have a part to play in the popular must-do.

How popular? And how must-do-y? Check it out: Some 28,000 art aficionados and music mavens and fans of sauntering about the lovely historic city called upon ArtNight Pasadena in the fall of 2015.

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That sounds like a lot of people (and it is), but don't be dissuaded. You can take the Metro Gold Line, and be semi-adjacent to the thick of the action, and plus? There's a sizable spread of goings-on, meaning you and your 27,999 BFFs won't all be calling upon the same location at the same time.

It's solid art appreciation, it is cockles-warming community-style sweetness, and it is a fall tradition around a town that does dearly love tradition. But expect works that aren't too traditional, at many places, in addition to classical paintings and such.

Will you walk through a new door in your mind and leave with a different way of thinking? Autumn has a way of transporting a person, whether via a scary flick or a host of fantastic pieces and sounds, savored on a fall night, without paying for the savoring.

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