Nevada Museum of Art - Hands ON! Second Saturdays - Reno

I've always got my eyes open for our next adventure, so when I saw something on Facebook about the Hands-ON! Second Saturday event at the Nevada Museum of Art I knew we had to go check it out. Any chance to expose our kids to fine art is always fun, but then you add in FREE kid-friendly activities and a musical presentation and we are there! We had so much fun this time around that there is an excellent chance we will be back often, and I hope you will check it out too! 

These Hands ON! Second Saturday events happen every month (on the second Saturday in case you were wondering) and change every month to reflect the current exhibits in the museum. Admission is free for the whole household and includes access to the museum in general. Parking is somewhat limited, so you may need to come prepared to feed a meter somewhere nearby.

There are nice bathrooms, and drinking fountains available on several floors of the museum, as well as a gift shop and cafe on the ground floor.

The theme for the March event was centered around Aboriginal art, inspired by the collection of contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles they currently have on display (pictured above). We started off by heading over to the craft station to make rain sticks. The kids had fun decorating them and they worked better than I expected them to.

We had just enough time to finish our craft before we headed into the theater to watch a presentation by David Blonski about the history of music in general, with a focus on the didgeridoo. He showed everyone a variety of instruments, and played each one for us. He talked a lot about the history behind aboriginal music and did some really fun things with his didgeridoos. By the end of the presentation he was showing us how he creates contemporary musical pieces with a variety of instruments/techniques and it was really fun to watch. There's a YouTube video here that is quite similar to what he did for us that day.

After the show we got to go down in the front of the theater and he had enough didgeridoos for everyone to try their hand at it. My kids were enthralled!

When we finished up with the show, we headed over to the second craft station to paint postcards. The museum had all the supplies, including aprons, for the project. We were able to hang our painting on the wall to dry and come back for them later when we were ready to leave.

After we'd completed all the activities (Well, almost all. Our visit didn't quite line up with the story time schedule so we missed that.) we wandered the rest of the museum. There was some really amazing art there! I loved this exhibit of quilts. They were unlike any quilts I'd ever seen and the detail was amazing!

Essential Details:
Nevada Museum of Art
160 W Liberty St, Reno, NV 89501
Website