Families are invited to participate in a variety of art activities inspired by the current exhibitions including chalk pastels, portraits, print etchings, collage and more.

The ninth annual College Invitational will open at the Figge Art Museum on Saturday, November 5 in the second floor Mary Waterman Gildehaus Community Gallery.

Celebrate the rich cultural traditions of El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) at the Figge Art Museum in downtown Davenport on Sunday, October 30 with art projects, live performances, music and food. Admission will be free.

​Thanks to the generous support of the Bechtel Trusts and John Deere Classic, admission to the Figge Art Museum will be free to all from June 12-September 25.

Artist Rose Frantzen’s Portrait of Maquoketa will be on view at the Figge Art Museum for the first time since it was acquired for the permanent collection beginning Saturday, October 1.

The exhibition is a visual exploration in drawings and monotypes of the lives of two legendary musicians: the 19th-century violinist and guitarist Nicolo Paganini and his 20th-century counterpart, blues guitar legend Robert Johnson. Though their lives were divided by a century, both shared a restless intellectual and emotional urge to master their instruments and, according to legend, sold their souls to the devil to achieve perfection.

Opening Saturday in the second floor Lewis Gallery, the exhibition features recent acquisitions and important works on paper from the Figge collection portraying rural and urban America during the first half of the 20th century.

Living Proof Exhibit: Cancer Survivor Art will open on Saturday, September 10 at the Figge Art Museum in the second floor Mary Waterman Gildehaus Community Gallery. An Opening Reception will take place on Thursday, September 8 beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Families will be invited to make storyboard scenes, create the yellow brick road on the plaza with chalk, explore the art cart in the Haitian gallery, participate in a twirling tornado activity, make a night-time on the prairie art project, try a Tin Man activity or experience a David Plowden gallery search. Guests can also pop into the auditorium for a selection of Oz-themed documentaries and animated shorts.

The exhibition will include more than 70 images that carefully follow Plowden’s exploration of the medium’s 20th century evolution, from a modern vision of the sublime to a postmodern obsession with an increasingly urbanized landscape. Even in the presence of suburban sprawl, the exhibition will display how Plowden manages to capture a kind of beauty in the landscape that the passerby might overlook.

Drawn from the largest collection of materials relating to The Wizard of Oz stories and characters, the exhibition will feature 110 objects, from the finest known copy of the first edition/first state “green imprint” of Baum and Denslow’s 1900 book, to original sketches, costumes and props from MGM’s beloved 1939 movie starring Judy Garland, to Oz spinoffs such as puppets, toys and posters from numerous other productions like “Wicked” and “The Wiz.”

The exhibition features six artists living in the Midwest Region including photographers Terry Evans, Jin Lee, Randy Richmond and Radim Schreiber, botanical artist George Olson, and fiber sculptor Mary Merkel-Hess. Their work explores the biodiversity and unique beauty of the endangered tallgrass prairie that stretched from Texas to Canada 150 years ago, covering millions of acres of land. Today less than four percent of tallgrass prairie survives in isolated patches.

Art Museum Day celebrates the value of the visual arts and the important role art museums play in their communities. Visitors are encouraged to share their experiences on Art Museum Day via social media, with the hashtag #ArtMuseumDay.

What originally began as a Sunday morning sketch group in the 1950s has turned into a small but mighty organization dedicated to promoting the arts in the Quad Cities. Since its inception in 1953, the Beaux Arts Fund Committee (BAFC) has contributed $600,000 to the Figge and its predecessors, with the majority of the funds coming from two outdoor fairs each year.

The Figge Art Museum will be offering free admission all day for Free Family Day on Saturday, sponsored by the Quad-City Times.