Current Events

The tenth annual Unglued Craft Fest is an inspired day of creative fun and celebration – and takes care of that cabin fever in February! The event features around 70 carefully curated modern handmade maker, artist, and crafter booths at Plains Art Museum. As well the Unglued Craft Fest offers free workshops for kids and adults, live music, free gallery admission, and fun in the great dead of winter!

Saturday is totally free to attend. Friday is a ticketed event to allow for a more laid back shopping environment and includes all kinds of goodness to make the night completely awesome. For more information, visit ungluedmarket.com.

The tenth annual Unglued Craft Fest is an inspired day of creative fun and celebration – and takes care of that cabin fever in February! The event features around 70 carefully curated modern handmade maker, artist, and crafter booths at Plains Art Museum. As well the Unglued Craft Fest offers free workshops for kids and adults, live music, free gallery admission, and fun in the great dead of winter!

Saturday is totally free to attend. Friday is a ticketed event to allow for a more laid back shopping environment and includes all kinds of goodness to make the night completely awesome. For more information, visit ungluedmarket.com.

Interested in applying for Buzz Lab? Join us for the 2020 Buzz Lab Launch Party! At this meeting, we will launch the Buzz Lab 7.0 internship application and will discuss the history and goals of Buzz Lab, the Museum’s paid summer internship program for youth ages 12–18. Create a community art project, sample pollinated foods, and get started on your Buzz Lab 7.0 application. Open to interested youth, families, and community members.

We embrace the unique qualities of all who walk through our doors and appreciate that many visitors need to explore the Museum in different ways. For individuals and families who prefer a quiet, less sensory-stimulating environment we offer Low-Sensory Mondays on the first Monday afternoon of every month. At each event, loud gallery sounds and bright lights are turned down and attendance is limited. Fidget bags will be available for checkout. Please contact Carol Prafcke at 701.551.6147 with any questions.

The Plains School of Abstract Painting and the Museum are proud to host a free evening of artist demonstrations and discussions celebrating the power and complexities of abstract painting. Demonstrations will be led by Marjorie Schlossman and many of the other highly regarded members of the School, and discussion will be centered on a talk titled “The Abstract Arts” by renowned philosopher Theodore Gracyk. When we think about abstract art, we often think that it dates to the early 20th century and the work of such painters as Wassily Kandinsky. Gracyk’s illustrated talk begins in a surprising place, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and then takes note of some nineteenth-century speculation on abstraction before taking up the case of twentieth-century painting. Comparing several distinct but familiar sets of criteria for distinguishing the arts, the talk explores the possibility that there are multiple abstract arts. Currently, in his fourth decade of teaching at Minnesota State University Moorhead, Gracyk is the author of seven books on art and music and is co-editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Free and open to the public.

This panel discussion with Generation artists Tina Tavera, Gail Kendall, and Laura Youngbird, moderated by Professor Anna Arnar, will explore issues of gender, representation, and legacy. Free and open to the public.

We embrace the unique qualities of all who walk through our doors and appreciate that many visitors need to explore the Museum in different ways. For individuals and families who prefer a quiet, less sensory-stimulating environment we offer Low-Sensory Mondays on the first Monday afternoon of every month. At each event, loud gallery sounds and bright lights are turned down and attendance is limited. Fidget bags will be available for checkout. Please contact Carol Prafcke at 701.551.6147 with any questions.

With Colleen Sheehy, Executive Director, Public Art Saint Paul

Public art today can be more than sculptures and murals. In this talk and workshop, Colleen Sheehy will cover the use of language, poetry, and texts in public art. She will provide more depth on her organization’s Sidewalk Poetry Program, which has been ongoing for 11 years, and a temporary project called “Dakotah Wordscapes on the River.” Explore the potential to engage people who live in Fargo-Moorhead in writing short poems or other texts that can enliven everyday landscapes. How can texts reveal local histories, involve diverse communities, and show the expressive potential of our public spaces?  After hearing about sample projects, participants will spend some time in small groups brainstorming ideas for Fargo-Moorhead and generating questions about how to take next steps. The program is aimed at writers, poets, English teachers at all education levels, visual artists, city staff, public art curators, and art advocates. Free and open to the public.

Stop by Plains Art Museum to try your hand (mind) at a variety of “games” developed by Surrealists in the early 20th Century. From Exquisite Corpse to automatic drawing to collage, we invite you to drop in and reassemble reality with us. Artistic skills are not necessary to participate – all you need is your creativity. All art and writing utensils will be provided and a cash bar will be open. Free.

We embrace the unique qualities of all who walk through our doors and appreciate that many visitors need to explore the Museum in different ways. For individuals and families who prefer a quiet, less sensory-stimulating environment we offer Low-Sensory Mondays on the first Monday afternoon of every month. At each event, loud gallery sounds and bright lights are turned down and attendance is limited. Fidget bags will be available for checkout. Please contact Carol Prafcke at 701.551.6147 with any questions.

We embrace the unique qualities of all who walk through our doors and appreciate that many visitors need to explore the Museum in different ways. For individuals and families who prefer a quiet, less sensory-stimulating environment we offer Low-Sensory Mondays on the first Monday afternoon of every month. At each event, loud gallery sounds and bright lights are turned down and attendance is limited. Fidget bags will be available for checkout. Please contact Carol Prafcke at 701.551.6147 with any questions.