Free Day @ MASS MoCA
SCHEDULE
10:00am
KIDSPACE ART-MAKING
Kidspace, Building 10, 2nd Floor
Join Museum Educators for art-making in Kidspace! Contribute your creativity to a community project and make an individual art piece to take home. All ages are welcome to participate.
EDEN ROBINS: REMEMBER YOU WILL DIE
The Research & Development Store
Join us in the R&D Store for a discussion, reading, and book-signing with author Eden Robins. Remember You Will Die is a genre-bending story told in linked obituaries and news feeds over 300 years about one AI woman grappling with both her grief after the mysterious death of her human daughter and what it really means to be human.
10:30am
FAMILY STORYTIME
Meet in Kidspace, Building 10, 2nd Floor
Families with children up to 6 years old are invited to join MASS MoCA Museum Educators for a storytime and related exploration in the galleries. Each storytime will feature a different children’s book about contemporary art, creativity, and/or the themes of the exhibitions on display. The Free Day 2025 Family Storytime exhibition is Gunnar Schonbeck: No Experience Required.
11:00am
PUBLIC HIGHLIGHTS TOUR
Join Museum Educators for one-hour highlight tours exploring exhibitions throughout the museum, each featuring a different theme connecting the art on display.
ARTIST WORKSHOP: FRITZ HORSTMAN
Fritz Horstman, author of Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers’s Color Experiments, joins us in Club B10 for a presentation and discussion of Albers’ color experiments. Following Horstman’s presentation, we’ll shift into a hands-on workshop led by the author, in which you’ll use Color-aid paper to try some of the experiments featured in Interacting with Color.
HOT CORNERS ACTIVATION WITH AMY YOES
Explore Yoes’ drawing implements in a drop-in style activation to create artworks on paper in Yoes’ Hot Corners exhibition.
11:30am
CREATIVE SOUL DANCE CLASS
Join Creative Soul for a family-friendly Creative Dance class focusing on movement exploration, improvisation, and collaborative dance-making.
1:00pm
PUBLIC HIGHLIGHTS TOUR
LAURA ORTMAN PERFORMANCE IN JEFFREY GIBSON: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT
Building 5
Laura Ortman is a solo musician, composer, and frequent creative collaborator of White Mountain Apache descent. Her multi-platform musical practice exists within and without the recording studio, and encompasses live and recorded music, film scores, and performance. She is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboard, and amplified violin, among other instruments. Ortman was invited by Jeffrey Gibson to engage with his exhibition POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT; she will take field recordings to create new compositions performed within the exhibition on MASS MoCA’s Free Day.
2:00pm
DEREK DELLINGER: THE JOY OF WINTER HIKING
The Research & Development Store
The Joy of Winter Hiking is your ultimate guide to getting outdoors in the most underrated season. Author Derek Dellinger believes you should be seeking outdoor adventure in colder months, not just in spite of snow and cloudy days, but because of these factors! Join us in the R&D Store for this author talk and book-signing.
SELF-SELECTION TOURS
Location?
Join Museum Educators for a new self-selection tour of the museum! Educators will be stationed throughout the galleries on a thematic tour that examines stories and histories. Be sure to grab a map; then choose your own route and move at your own pace to discover surprising connections and enlightening information about the art on display.
3:00pm
THE FIRE NEXT TIME, ANAÏS DUPLAN READS JAMES BALDWIN
Building 6, 2nd Floor
In reflection of Steve Locke’s exhibition of the same name, poet Anaïs Duplan reads from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.
LAURA ORTMAN PERFORMANCE IN JEFFREY GIBSON: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT
4:00pm
SUSAN WEISS: THE ORCHARD
The Research & Development Store
Photographer Susan Weiss joins us in the R&D Store to launch the publication of THE ORCHARD.
5:30pm
GUIDED ACTIVE IMAGINATION SESSION WITH PETRA SZILAGYI
Building 4, 2nd floor
Join us for a guided active imagination session in this special Free Day activation of Petra Szilagyi’s installation “Bless Your Hard Drive” within Like Magic. Free and open to the public. Registration required. Artist workshop capped at 20 people.
5:00–6:00pm
MEET THE ARTISTS & AUTHORS RECEPTION WITH NICK OF SWORDS
The Research & Development Store
It takes a village to deliver on the high bar set for this community FREE DAY. As a hearty THANKS to everyone who helped activate this chock-full event, please join MASS MoCA team members in the R&D Store for a reception with the many participating authors and artists, in addition to a performance by local ambient electronic artist Nick of Swords.
Free Day is presented by MASS MoCA’s Lead Community Sponsor, MountainOne.