Community Day at Kemper Art Museum

Art, of course, can be challenging, engaging, uplifting and enlightening. It also can be fun.

On Saturday, Sept. 24, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host Community Day, an all-ages afternoon of games, storytelling, art-making, workshops and tours led by museum curators and Washington University student docents.

The event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., is free and open to the public. The Kemper Art Museum is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.

“Community Day is a chance for the museum to welcome both new and regular visitors and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our new facilities,” says Allison Taylor, manager of education programs.

“It’s also a chance to show off the museum’s permanent collections, which were reinstalled over the summer, as well as a pair of special exhibitions, Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific and Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art From Germany,” Taylor says.

“It will be a day of family-friendly fun, with music, art, dance, snacks, tours and much, much more.”

Bubble artist Josh Routh, a founding member of St. Louis’ Circus Kaput, will perform throughout the day. Choreographer Alice Bloch will lead a pair of movement workshops, at 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Rockabilly revivalists The Woo Daddies will perform their effervescent mix of swing, jump-blues, classic country, surf and pop beginning at 1 p.m.

Also at 1 p.m., associate curator Meredith Malone will lead a walkthrough of Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific. The exhibition includes Saraceno’s interactive Large Cloud Module (2011), a five-meter-wide tetrahedron-shaped structure that strongly resembles a geodesic balloon and gives visitors a powerful sensation of hovering above the ground.

Other events will include an art-themed scavenger hunt and a storytelling session. The latter, which begins at 2 p.m., will feature When Pigasso Met Mootisse, Nina Laden’s sly homage to Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The light-hearted tale recounts the friendship, aesthetic rivalry and eventual reconciliation between a feisty bull and his neighbor, a prima-donna pig.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is committed to furthering critical thinking and visual literacy through a vital program of exhibitions, publications and accompanying events. The museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Today, it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United States.

Regular museum hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.