What happens when as many beautiful, intelligent twenty-something women as could be found at a five-year Vassar reunion crowd into the open floor of a small regional museum? The air zings and, damn, the air smells good. Male, female, straight, gay, young, not-young, whatever—everyone gets a hormone boost in a room heavily spiced by emergent female beauty and attendant wit.

Perhaps to its own surprise, that's exactly the crowd that the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art found itself hosting at its last Mix event. Intended to lure those crazy young folks into canonized walls, Mix features cocktails and DJs with ample food and a very heady sex appeal. The first Mix of 2009, slated for Feb. 21, is hepped on Japanese food from Shiso restaurant, Paul Hoffman's boutique Atmosphere, Curveball, Headbanger and 401k wines, sake-based cocktails, electronica and an interactive art project inspired by the current exhibit of Gord Peteran's surreal furniture and promising to utilize scraps of wood and, one assumes, hammers. (Obvious "hammered" joke not inserted here.)

For those who remain undaunted by a midnight close, an afterparty at Shiso continues the evening into the morning. A mere $25 gets nonmembers a year's membership to the museum, a free drink and free admission to upcoming Mix events. Even in this economy, that testifies as a straight-ahead deal, and that's before we start counting in the many blessings of the Vassar crowd.

Mix: Art.Music.Cocktails freshens its lipstick on Saturday, Feb. 21, from 8pm. Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway, Sonoma. 707.939.7862.

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