Tag Archives: Historic Arkansas Museum

2nd Friday Art Night – Historic Arkansas Museum features 49th annual Mid-Southern Watercolorists Juried Exhibition

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Tonight (April 12), Historic Arkansas Museum marks 2nd Friday Art Night with more art, music, and beer!
Opening reception for the 49th Annual Mid-Southern Watercolorists Juried Exhibition with live music by Charlotte Taylor and #ArkansasMade beer from Lost 40 Brewing

The 49th Annual Mid-Southern Watercolorists Juried Exhibition showcases the wide range of techniques and approaches now available to artists working in water-based media.

Out of 159 paintings submitted from 12 states and Puerto Rico, juror Michael Bailey selected only 33 exceptional pieces.  Artists include Daven Anderson, David Belling, Matthew Bird, Selma Blackburn, Catherine Caldwell, Judi Coffee, Marie Echols, L. S. Eldridge, B. Jeannie Fry, Susan Gibson, Virginia Haines, Lance Hunter, Gary Johnson, Cheryl Kellar, Ronald Kinkaid, Shirley Kleppe, Jeannie Knod-Edwards, Sandra Marson, Glenda McCune, Monika Pate, Charlotte Rierson, Carol Roberts, Maureen Rousseau, Cynthia Schanink, Gary Simmons, Cary Smith,k Eileen Stearman, Richard Stephens, Luanne Stone, Donna Twyford, Kathryn Wedge, Beth Woessner, and Valdoris Wright.
A brief awards ceremony will be held at 5:30 pm in Ottenheimer Theater during 2nd Friday Art Night. This exhibit will be on view in Trinity Gallery through July 7, 2019.

Tartan Day, celebrate all things Scottish, visit the Brownlee House at HAM

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Photo by Larry Pennington

Today is Tartan Day, designated to celebrate the contributions of Scots everywhere.

One of Little Rock’s oldest structures, the Brownlee House was built by a Scotsman.  The Brownlee House is one of the restored structures at Historic Arkansas Museum.

Robert Brownlee built this Federal style brick house in the late 1840s for his brother and sister-in-law. A Scottish stonemason, Brownlee came to Little Rock in 1837 to help build the State House (now the Old State House Museum). He pursued a number of careers before leaving for California in the 1849 Gold Rush. From the late 1840s through 1852, the home’s residents were James and Isabelle Brownlee and Tabby, a woman enslaved by James Brownlee.

Brownlee had the wooden mantels in the parlor and bedroom marbleized, a popular decorative art of the time. The home’s furnishings reflect the mid-19th century.

This house is a project of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Arkansas.

Historic Arkansas Museum is open seven days a week.  The galleries are free, but the tours of the historic structures have a nominal fee.  It is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

Final 2018-2019 Evening with History focuses on End of Reconstruction

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Join the UA Little Rock History Department for the last lecture in this year’s Evenings with History series!

In his last public lecture before retirement, Dr. Carl Moneyhon will present “The End of Reconstruction and the Long-Term Cost of Conservative Redemption.” His talk will examine the tactics of Conservative and Democratic opponents of biracial governments during Reconstruction and the long-term social and economic impacts on the South and nation.

The program starts at 7pm at Historic Arkansas Museum.

Cultural Spring Break in Little Rock

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Image result for spring break kids

It is Spring Break week! Several Little Rock museums have special activities planned.

Museum of Discovery
March 18 – March 22 • 10 am to 4 pm
Monday, March 18 – Meet and have your photo taken with Jet Propulsion from “Ready Jet Go!”  Enjoy hands-on activities that teach about space and more.
Tuesday, March 19 – Meet and have your photo taken with Nature Cat, the star o PBS Kids’ “Nature Cat”!  Enjoy hands-on activities about the wonderful outdoors and meet some of nature’s coolest animals!
All Days
Tesla Shows: 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m. & 3 p.m.
Awesome Science Demos: 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m. & 2:30 p.m.
Meet Museum Animals: 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.

Historic Arkansas Museum
Spring Break 2019: Settling in Arkansas
March 18 – March 22 • 10 am to 4 pm
In celebration of Arkansas’s Territorial Bicentennial, our Spring Break activities will focus on settling this state. The museum’s historic block has countless stories of making a life in early Arkansas, from just after becoming a territory to a decade after Statehood. Visitors can spend each day learning about a different person’s path to Arkansas. We will cook Pioneer food, make hands-on crafts, and share a few pioneer skills.

Little Rock Zoo
March 18 – March 22 • 9:30am to 4:00pm
See daily feedings of the penguins, interact with education exhibits, attend a meet and greet with animals, go to the Party in the Plaza, have a special meet and greet at the Arkansas Heritage Farm, and chat with animal keepers.

Clinton Presidential Center
March 18 – March 22 • 10:00am to 2:00pm
The Clinton Presidential Center invites children of all ages to enjoy FREE Spring Break activities on March 18 – 22, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Join us for FREE craft activities for the entire family! We’ll offer an instructional glass fusion project, led by Little Rock School District art specialist Sharon Boyd-Struthers, in conjunction with our White House Collection of American Crafts: 25th Anniversary Exhibit. Spring Break activities are FREE; however, admission fees to tour the Museum apply.


Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre
March 19 – March 22 • 2:00pm
Special Spring Break matinee performances of Charlotte’s Web on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.

Wilbur the piglet is the runt of his litter. But under the loving care of eight-year-old Fern Arable—and due in no small part to the delicious and plentiful slops on her Uncle Homer’s farm—Wilbur grows up into a fine specimen of a pig.  Wilbur is no ordinary pig, and thanks to the acrobatic web-writing of his friend Charlotte, a kindly barn spider, the world soon learns just how “terrific” and “radiant” he is. Come join in this heart-warming barnyard adventure and marvel at the wonder of Charlotte’s web.

Women Making History – Louise Loughborough

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Louise Loughborough was the first woman to serve on the Little Rock Planning Commission.  Not only was the she first woman to serve on this body, she was the first to serve on any City commission other than the Board of Censors or Library Board.

Born Louisa Watkins Wright in Little Rock 1881, her ancestors included many early Arkansas leaders including Little Rock Mayor David Fulton, who had been born in Ireland.

In 1935, Loughborough was appointed to the Little Rock Planning Commission, and it was in this role that she first heard about the plan to condemn the half-block of houses that she had grown up admiring on Cumberland and East Third streets. Although the neighborhood had fallen on hard times, becoming a red-light district and slum, Loughborough feared the loss of several historic structures, including the Hinderliter House, the oldest building in Little Rock and thought to be Arkansas’s last territorial capitol. She mobilized a group of civic leaders to save these buildings. She enlisted the aid of prominent architect Max Mayer and coined the term “town of three capitols” to try to capture the imagination of potential supporters, grouping the “Territorial Capitol” with the Old State House and the State Capitol.

The Arkansas Territorial Restoration opened on July 19, 1941. The project was the first Arkansas agency committed to both the restoration of structures and the interpretation of their history, and it served as a model and inspiration for historic preservation in the state. Around the same time, she was a moving force behind the creation of a museum at the Old State House as well.  Today both Historic Arkansas Museum (as the Territorial Restoration is now known) and the Old State House Museum are agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

As founding Chairman of the Arkansas Territorial Restoration Commission, Louise Loughborough provided daily direction for the museum house complex through the first twenty years of its existence. She died in Little Rock on December 10, 1962 and was buried at Mount Holly Cemetery.

Celebrate National Quilting Day on March 16 at Historic Arkansas Museum

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On Saturday, March 16, Celebrate National Quilting Day at the museum with the Arkansas Quilters Guild. There will be several quilters demonstrating basic quilting techniques and working together to create a twin size quilt to donate to Dorcas House Women & Children’s Shelter. This will run from 10am to 4pm.

Quilts in the Museum Store
The museum just got in several new wall quilts by Arkansas fiber artist Barbara Carlson. Carlson’s bright and whimsical wall quilts have been featured in museums and shows across the country. Her quilting work is non-traditional, utilizing hand-painted fabrics, beads, feathers, upholstery fabrics and other materials in her pieces. Come take a look — and maybe take one home!

2nd Friday Art Night – Bicentennial Bash at Historic Arkansas Museum

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In conjunction with the 200th anniversary of the creation of the Arkansas Territory, Historic Arkansas Museum is hosting a Bicentennial Bash.

Join them from 5 – 8 pm, for 2nd Friday Art Night, with live music by Two Larks in the Morning and #ArkansasMade beer from 6 Mile Brewing of Ozark

Life in the Western Country: Arkansaw Territory from 1819-1836
This exhibit celebrates the 200th anniversary of the creation of “Arkansaw” Territory. Historical documents, like the deed to the first newspaper print shop west of the Mississippi, provide context for stories of opportunity and westward migration, while a needlework sampler stitched by a young Cherokee girl at the Presbyterian school known as Dwight Mission speaks to the displacement and cultural assimilation of Native Americans.
In the Theater
Celebrate 200 Years of Pulaski County with a talk in HAM’s Ottenheimer Theater at 6 pm, featuring Jim Metzger, a representative from the Pulaski County Historical Society, with an introduction by Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde.

#5WomenArtists
Through their social media campaign #5WomenArtists, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) asks, “Can you name five women artists?” HAM is participating by exhibiting the work of five forward-thinking, female Arkansas artists: Martha Barber, Jenny Delony, Louise Halsey, Elsie Freund, and Natalie Henry.