Family Programs at the Blanton are designed to promote slowing down, encourage close looking, inspire curiosity, and foster positive interaction and collaboration between intergenerational audiences.
Special Programs
Coming May 2024—MAKEwild
MAKEwild is an artwork, an environment, and an activity designed to provide Blanton visitors (of all ages!) time and space to create their own artworks at the museum. The MAKEwild open studio space will be free with museum admission, available on the second floor of the Michener Gallery Building during regular museum hours.
About MAKEwild
What is wild? For most of us, the wild and the wilderness it occupies is a distant concept – a thing of legend and memory. We navigate a regulated world of rules and deadlines, and few aspects of our lives contain even a hint of the wild. But perhaps art is a place that remains wild? People need spaces to express themselves and experiment, places to share new ideas and embrace the unknown. Inspired by the exploratory quality of nature and art, MAKEwild is an artwork, an environment, and an activity that provides museumgoers time and space to discuss, reflect, and ultimately, make. An open studio space built for the Blanton Museum of Art, MAKEwild presents museumgoers of all ages with an opportunity to be a little wild through hands-on creation.
Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchler conceived of MAKEwild as a participatory installation – an active site for creative inquiry, communication, and collaboration. The stations facilitate face-to-face making through open-ended project prompts and limited, curated materials that invite participants to explore what it means to make in serendipitous and wild ways.
About the artists
JASON URBAN and LESLIE MUTCHLER (JULMstudios) have been working collaboratively since 2012; they live and work in Brooklyn, New York. As a collaborative duo, they exercise a coequal approach to art and life that focuses on research and problem-solving. With a relationship of physical to metaphysical in mind, their practice is increasingly about the natural world and the way digital technologies influence and distort our relationship to nature.
The pair has had solo exhibitions at Eastern Edge (St. Johns, Canada), Center for Book Arts (New York, NY), Monaco (St. Louis, MO), the Delaware Contemporary (Wilmington, DE), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY), Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia, PA), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA), Centre for Fine Print Research (Bristol, UK), Space Gallery (Portland, ME), Atelier Circulaire (Montreal, Canada), among others. They have been awarded numerous residencies including Edition/Basel in Basel, Switzerland, Cork Printmakers International Visiting Artist Residency in Cork, Ireland and Dieu Donne Workspace Residency in Brooklyn. From 2008 to 2018, the pair taught in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. Both are currently affiliated with Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where Mutchler is Chair of the Foundation Program and Urban teaches in the Communication Design program.
Instagram: @julmstudios
Website: http://julmstudios.com
Family Membership
Members at the Family level enjoy all benefits of regular Members for two adults at the same address (or for one adult and one guest) and children 17 and under. They also receive exclusive access to our monthly newsletter, “Families at the Blanton”, which features updates on coming family events and programs, downloadable activities and resources, monthly book recommendations, and more!
Family Activity Boxes
Explore the galleries with your family using our Family Activity Boxes! These dynamic kits feature art supplies, prompts to guide your looking, and other interactive materials to encourage imaginative exploration and meaningful conversation with you and your family. Ask our Visitor Services Team to borrow a box for free when you check in at the museum.
Fun at Home
Continue your museum experience at home! Try out some art activities by checking out our #ArtWhereYouAre video series or download a selection of #ColorTheBlanton art pages.
#ArtWhereYouAre Studio Video Series
Enjoy this video series featuring previous Blanton educator Monique Piñón O’Neil leading easy, make-at-home art activities inspired by works in the museum collection. Each activity includes a downloadable supply list and instructions.
#ColorTheBlanton Art Pages
Fun and relaxing for all ages, these downloadable art pages feature works of art from the Blanton collection and are a lovely way to color the day away!
Post your colorful creations on social media and remember to tag them with #ColorTheBlanton and @blantonmuseum so we can re-share!
DELIGHTFUL DESIGN
Ooh and aah over these “Delightful Design” pages, taken from etchings and engravings in our prints and drawings collection.
FABULOUS FASHION
Ready for your creative coloring, these “Fabulous Fashion” pages show a variety of the clothes folks wore in days of yore – as found in our prints and drawings collection.
FANTASTICALLY FRENCH!
This special selection was taken from our 2022 Paper Vault show Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th- to 18th-Century Prints.
FEATHERED & FURRY FRIENDS
In honor of Earth Day on April 22, our first group of pages, “Feathered and Furry Friends,” features an assortment of animalia from our prints and drawings collection.
MEDIEVAL X MODERN
Add some color to these ornate etchings featured in our 2023 Paper Vault show Medieval X Modern.
NATURAL BEAUTY
Lush landscapes and fantastic flora bring the outdoors to you with these “Natural Beauty” pages from our prints and drawings collection.
Credit
Generous support for Family Programs at the Blanton is provided by Malú Alvarez, and The Bingham Group, LLC