This month’s musical guest for 2nd Friday Art Night at the Old State House Museum will be Runaway Planet, the 2019 Bluegrass Artist of the Year winner at the Arkansas Country Music Awards! You’ll love the sound of the band’s unique “mix of hard-driving bluegrass, three-part harmonies, complex arrangements and original songs.”
Arkansas and Mexico each became political entities in the first decades of the 19th century. Both before and after Mexican Independence, Arkansans looked for commercial and political opportunities in Mexico.
Join the Old State House Museum on Thursday, Sept. 12, from 12 to 1 p.m., as Dr. Kristin Dutcher Mann explores the first 100 years of relationships between Arkansas and Mexico.
Dr. Kristin Dutcher Mann is professor of history and social studies education coordinator at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
She is a specialist in the history of colonial Latin America and the U.S./Mexico Borderlands. In addition, she frequently works with teachers and students on public and local history projects and grants.
Step back into the ‘70s at the Old State House Museum’s next Nights at the Museum event Thursday, Sept. 5, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.!
Get hip to the groove to some disco and soul tunes from DJ Brae Leni (from Brae Leni and The Blackout), or play along with game shows, like “Name That Tune” or “Soul Train” Scrabble.
Come dressed in your trendiest ’70s threads!
As always, there will be plenty of food and libations available to purchase.
Nights at the Museum is an event for ages 21+ on the museum’s iconic front lawn that takes place the first Thursday of each month seasonally, March-October. (In case of inclement weather, the event will be indoors at the museum.)
Arkansas State House Society – Friends of the Old State House Museum, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting OSHM and its programs, hosts the Nights at the Museum.
Admission is $5; food and beverages will be available for purchase at the event. Tickets may be purchased in advance at https://squareup.com/store/ArkansasStateHouseSociety/ or at the gate.
The museum can validate parking at the DoubleTree hotel; metered parking near the hotel is free after 6 p.m.
Get a preview of Tinkerfest 2019 at tomorrow night’s Science After Dark: Tinkering and Drinkering from 6 – 9 p.m. Admission is only $5 or free for members. Here are all the tinkering and making activities you can enjoy with a drink in your hand:
Wind Tunnel Flying Machines
Fairy Houses
Plastic Panel Polygons
Historic Quilling – Old State House Museum
Cardboard Guitars – Old State House Museum
Sewing 101
Wood Cinging (Pyrography)
Native American Tools – The State Parks of Arkansas
Hydrobot Arms
Aluminum Can WWI Trench Art – MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History
Free Tesla Shows at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Gondola Design and Zip Lines
Shrinky Dinks
Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub
Large Linker Logs
Needle Felting
Perler Beads
Game Goblins
LEGO Windup Critters and Linkages
Zoetropes & Kaleidoscopes
Chain Reaction
Be sure to bring an appetite to purchase food from our presenting sponsor Fassler Hall Little Rock as well as Damgoode Pies. Sponsors Stone’s Throw Brewing and Rock Town Distillery will also sell beer and cocktails! Tickets can be purchased at the door or online at https://sales.museumofdiscovery.org/generaladmission.aspx. You must be at least 21 to enter.
Join the Old State House Museum for some dino-sized fun Thursday, Aug. 1, from 6 to 9 p.m. for their next Night at the Museum!
Join the Old State House Museum for Second Friday Art Night, Friday, July 12, from 5 to 8 p.m., as they showcase and celebrate their current exhibit, A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans.
A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans, is a curated selection of the museum’s collection of more than 200 quilts from the post-Reconstruction era to the present, representing a variety of different types of quilts many of which were created by multi-generational families.
These quilts are a profoundly important part of Arkansas’s history — through their patterns, material, stitching, and family oral histories, these special bedcovers reveal the lives of late 19th and early 20th century Arkansas families
“Crescent Moons, Catalogues, and Corn Cobs: A Contemplative Look at Arkansas’s Privies and Outhouses”
No matter what they’ve been called — an outhouse, privy, necessary, loo, or even other, more vulgar names, the outhouse has long been the “butt” of puns and jokes.
And because in the post-World War II era they were often associated with rural and poor regions of the country, for many years pairing Arkansas (as well as much of the South) with outhouses was an easy source for a joke or a barb.
Of course, the history of the outhouse goes a lot deeper than that, so join us on Thursday, June 27, from Noon – 1:00 pm, as Rachel Whitaker, a research specialist with the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, shares a lighthearted, yet informative look at this most “necessary” structure!
Admission is free. Bring your lunch; we’ll provide soft drinks and water. Parking is available in the garage beneath the DoubleTree Hotel.
Little Rock Culture Vulture 