The Museum of Art’s annual Family Art Festival will celebrate Japanese culture, inspired by the museum’s current exhibits “Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920–1945” and “Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami.”
The free open house will take place Friday, June 12, from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., and is open to adults and children of all ages.
Partly inspired by the current Japanese exhibit on display at the museum, the festival will also incorporate a tour through the gallery’s almost-200-piece Japanese Deco exhibition.
The Art Deco show pieces are made with ceramics, textiles, glass, jewelry and other inventive materials to bring the Japanese culture to life.
Guests are also free to wander through the origami exhibit. There they will see origami’s influence on current-day engineering and mathematics. The four sections in the exhibit feature “The History of Origami,” “Animals and Angels: Representations of Real and Imagined Realms,” “Angles and Abstractions: Geometric Forms and Conceptual Constructions” and “Inspirational Origami: Impact on Science, Industry, Fashion, and Beyond.”
In addition to being able to see the Japanese-themed exhibits at the museum, guests can also enjoy art projects and demonstrations, origami-making, a scavenger hunt, dance workshops and face painting. For a portion of the event, guests will be able to get their names written in Japanese.
“We’re celebrating the art and culture of Japan,” said Museum of Art Educator Kalisha Grimsman. “So we’re encouraging families to come and explore these exhibitions. It will just be a fun learning experience.”
