Celebrate International Museum Day with These 6 Events

Institutions around the world are celebrating in style.

The front steps and entrance to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images.

Happy International Museum Day! The holiday was introduced in 1977, and is celebrated around the world on May 18, with nearly 30,000 museums participating in the International Council of Museums-run event in recent years. The year’s theme is “Museums and Cultural Landscape.”

Here’s how six institutions around the world are marking the occasion.

Teens Take the Met! Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Teens Take the Met! Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Met is holding off until Friday, May 20, for its official International Museum Day celebration, “Teens Take the Met!

Middle school and high school students will receive free admission. The museum’s artist-in-residence, Peter Hristoff, will host a “mega-weaving activity,” according to the event description, while the New York City Department of Youth and Community will run poetry- and songwriting workshops.

Harvard Art Museums.Photo: Courtesy of Google Maps.

Harvard Art Museums. Courtesy of Google Maps.

2. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The recently-renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums are offering free admission on May 18, and 10% off new memberships.

The day’s events also includes at 12:30 pm.m gallery talk with visiting curator Stephen Gilchrist, who organized the current exhibition “Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia.”

The Amazing Keystone Big Band. © Maxime de Bollivier.

The Amazing Keystone Big Band. © Maxime de Bollivier.

3. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The Musée d’Orsay is staying open until midnight on May 21; after 6:00 p.m., it is waiving ticket fees to the collections and Douanier Rousseaur exhibition.

Headlining the International Museum Day festivities, which have been dubbed “Jazz It Up!,” is the Amazing Keystone Big Band, a group of 17 musicians who, according to the event description, “will be taking on and revisiting the art of 1848–1914 in their own exuberant and virtuoso style.”

The Tabula Affinitatum. Courtesy of the Museo Galileo, Institute and Museum of the History of Science.

The Tabula Affinitatum. Courtesy of the Museo Galileo, Institute and Museum of the History of Science.

4. Museo Galileo, Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Florence
Early scientific discoveries come to life in a special presentation by students from the Liceo Classico Benedetto Varchi in Montevarchi, who have undertaken a comprehensive study of the “Tabula affinitatum,” a table of the properties of chemical substances drawn up in 1766 under commission from the apothecary shop of the Grand Duke of Florence.

To celebrate International Museum Day, the students will perform live experiments based on their research, which has been documented in a film being shown at the museum.

Courtesy the National Gallery of Victoria.

Courtesy the National Gallery of Victoria.

5. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria focused their International Museum Day celebrations on what it means to be a museum in the modern world, holding a series of tours under the theme “The Art of Collecting for the Public.”

Embracing the day’s international reach, the museum offered an hour-long Periscope stream, and a question and answer session on Twitter with museum curators Katie Somerville, Simone LeAmon, and Laurie Benson.

Musica Nigella. Courtesy of the Bahrain National Museum.

Musica Nigella. Courtesy of the Bahrain National Museum.

6. Bahrain National Museum, Bahrain 
The Bahrain National Museum is taking a musical approach to International Museum Day, and is teaming up with the French Embassy to host a concert by Musica Nigella, a musician collective that performs classical and modern music.

Flutist Anne-Cécile Cuniot and pianist Nicolas Ducloux will be accompanied by mezzo-soprano Catherine Trottmann on a selection of post-romantic and modern tunes.


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