Upcoming Events

11:00am–11:45am Enrich your experience of our current exhibitions through an insightful docent-led tour of the galleries. Docent tours are an excellent way to learn more about the artworks and objects on display, in addition to the stories they tell. Interaction and questions are encouraged and visitors of all ages are welcome. The tour is free with museum admission, no registration required. Please meet in the museum atrium main level near the admission desk before the tour begins.

12:00pm–4:00pm Art for All is free with museum admission every Saturday from 12–4PM. All ages are welcome to participate. Enjoy your visit to the museum and explore your artistic side with a hands-on project inspired by the museum's exhibitions and collections. Participants will create masks that reflect something meaningful to them, inspired by the culturally significant Mexican masks found in many of Phyllis Galembo's photographs in the exhibition, Mexico Mask/Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Using a blank mask template, participants will use multiple types of media to make their vision come to life. This project may include gluing, drawing, and cutting.

2:00pm–3:30pm Free with museum admission. In this demonstration, artist Lauren Sansaricq will show and explain the painting practices of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School painters. She will discuss the artists' process from sketching outdoors to creating epic, large paintings in the studio. She will also touch on the Hudson River School's unique compositional and philosophical ideas in painting. Sansaricq has spent more than 20 years studying the techniques of the Hudson River School and has taught at several prestigious institutions. This program is open to all who may be interested in the Hudson River School and is not exclusive to artists and craftspeople. The program creates an open dialogue and invites questions along the way. Program support is provided by Donald and Ann Eberle. Additional support is provided by Jennifer Krieger and Eric Siegel.

10:00am–5:00pm Enjoy free admission and free activities for visitors of all ages this Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples' Day! Bring the whole family to enjoy hands-on artmaking, guided gallery tours, live music, and interactive activities themed around our current exhibitions: Inspired Landscapes: Women of the Hudson River School and Mexico Masks / Rituals: Photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Don't forget to visit our featured Community Partners: New York Folklore, the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies at the University at Albany, and Herencia Cultural Mexicana!  

6:00pm–8:30pm Free; advance registration is not required, but encouraged via this online form. Donations in support of the program are welcome and may be made at the Admission Desk on the day of the event.   Join Director Ilana Trachtman for a screening of her award-winning film AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND, followed by a Q&A. A free kosher reception will conclude the program. AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND is the untold story of the first organized interracial civil rights protest in U.S. history. When 5 Howard University students sat on a Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the white community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, an extraordinary history-making partnership was born. The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressman, and a press avalanche. Picketing together over the sweltering summer led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. Ten 1961Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were incubated on the Glen Echo picket line, and the carousel arrests were challenged in the Supreme Court case. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman (Praying with Lior, Black in Latin America, The Pursuit), four living protesters rescue this forgotten history, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND includes voiceover by noted actors Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner and Tracie Thom.