With 2018 coming to a close, community stories will be focusing on the importance of arts education in Milwaukee. For some of our audio and video community stories, we’ll highlight the people and organizations providing arts education to the Milwaukee community.
This week, we stop at the Milwaukee Art Museum to learn about Kohl’s Art Generation: Family Sundays.
Listen to the audio story below to hear from Emily Sullivan, the Director of Youth and Family programs at the museum, as well as fifth grader Edmund, who has visited the museum countless times with his father for Family Sundays.
A partnership between Kohl’s Cares and the Milwaukee Art Museum is bringing families into the art museum five Sundays a year for interactive and educational art activities. The program has existed nearly 10 years, and Sullivan has been a part of planning Family Sundays for the last eight years.
Hundreds of families turned out for the last Family Sunday of the year. The theme was ‘The Joys of Toys," which is inspired the museum’s current feature exhibition, Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America.
Hands-on craft activities are set up all throughout the museum for families to collaborate on. Families could stop at stations to decorate puppets and puzzles, design toys with special guest toy designer Emily Schoenfelder, or they could explore and help decorate Carton City – a miniature cityscape built from cardboard boxes.
Family Sundays is all about infusing different art disciplines for families to explore. Oriole Lane Elementary School kicked off Sunday's festivities with a live performance by their youth orchestra. Families were invited to tour the feature exhibit for inspiration, and try their hand at creating different toys.
The Milwaukee Art Museum's next Family Sunday will be Sunday, March 10. For details on Family Sundays and the next theme, visit the website here.