Category: Connecticut Travel

The Friends of The David M. Hunt Library (63 Main St.) in Falls Village will hold its winter fundraiser, A Midwinter’s Night in the Village, at the library on Saturday, February 17 from 5pm to 8pm. Warm up with old friends and make new friends while enjoying an evening of tasty breads, hors d’oeuvres, and chocolate with music and poetry focused on love and laughter. Wine, beer, and non-alcoholic refreshments are included in the ticket price. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and can be purchased by stopping by the library, visiting http://www.huntlibrary.org or by calling 860-824-7424.

The main feature of A Midwinter’s Night in the Village will be the library’s famous 16-ft long bread board piled high with a variety of homemade breads ranging from sweet dessert loaves to hearty savory breads, delicious hors d’oeuvres and chocolate treats. For entertainment, a roster of local personalities from Falls Village and beyond will perform poetry, song, and comedy focused on love and laughter with a round of the Name that Tune game for good measure.

Mineral collector and Stamford Mineralogical Society president Dr. Howard Heitner will give a talk and demonstration on the importance, properties, and structure of minerals on Sunday, February 4, 2018, (with a snow date of February 11) at Greenwich Point Park. The event is open to all ages and no reservations or beach pass are needed.

Presented as part of the Bruce Museum’s Fred Elser First Sunday Science Series at the Seaside Center, Dr. Heitner’s presentation will begin at 2:00 pm and will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Family friendly activities on the rock-and-mineral theme will also take place from 1:30 to 4:00 pm.

“My objective is to get people interested and to understand more about the minerals they see at exhibits in the Bruce Museum and other collections,” says Dr. Heitner, who has been collecting minerals for over 50 years. He is retired from Cytec Industries, where he worked in new product development and holds a number of patents.

Heitner will answer questions such as “What is a mineral?” and” What is a crystal?” as well as demonstrate some of the physical properties of minerals such as fluorescence, cleavage, fracture, hardness, color and streak, variability of color, specific gravity and flame testing. Participants are welcome to bring samples for identification after the lecture.

The Fred Elser First Sunday Science programs are supported in part by Osprey Private Client and are organized by the Bruce Museum. The event is held at the Innis Arden Cottage/ Seaside Center in Greenwich Point Park, Old Greenwich, CT.

The New England Carousel Museum will be in full New Orleans-style celebration mode during its 28th annual Mardi Gras party on Saturday, February 10, 2018 from 7:30 PM – midnight. Come join us for an evening of fun and frolicking with great music, good food, bourbon, and beads.

The Big Easy evening features music and dancing in the magnificent museum ballroom. Along with a 50/50 raffle and live entertainment that will include face painters, temporary tattoos, balloon twisting and magic, there will be bourbon and wine tastings in the Speakeasy, beads and doubloons, and a catered dinner! This is a BYOB event. “This unique party brings a taste of New Orleans to Bristol.” said Louise DeMars, the museum’s Executive Director. Attendees are encouraged to wear an optional mask or come in full costume. Masks are available to purchase in the museum gift shop.

The evening’s festivities will culminate in the crowning of a king and queen of the ball. Gather your friends and come kick up your heels to help us celebrate our 28th Anniversary year, while supporting the wonderful programming and events produced by the Carousel Museum for the Greater Bristol community.

Tickets are on sale at the Carousel Museum or you may order them by mail, by phone, or on-line. RSVP by Monday, February 5, 2018. The cost is $50 per person and pre-paid tables of 8 may be reserved. The event will be held at the New England Carousel Museum, 95 Riverside Ave, Bristol, CT.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please contact The New England Carousel Museum at (860) 585-5411 or email manager@thecarouselmuseum.org.

BOOK ONLINE:
www.thecarouselmuseum.org/book-online

Calling all little princes and princesses! Stepping Stones is rolling out the red carpet as the museum transforms into a snow-kissed wonderland for its sixth annual Winter Wonderland Children’s Ball on Saturday, February 10 from 4:00 – 8:30 pm.

Children are invited to dress up in their party best for a memorable evening of fun and entertainment. Moms and Dads, sons and daughters will be treated like the princes and princesses that they are as they enjoy a magical wintry celebration featuring dancing and full access to all the exhibits in the museum. Families will enjoy posing for the paparazzi as they arrive, learning ballroom moves from the experts and making wonderful winter crafts.

Be sure you bring your camera. Photo opportunities abound as we celebrate the magic and wonder of the season amidst a whimsical winter backdrop of a lighted courtyard, a play-sized igloo, a life-sized snow globe, spectacular winter murals, snowflake-adorned galleries and a myriad of snow people. Bring your appetite as well. The Stepping Stones Cafe will be open for purchases of their healthy fare.

Bubbleology – The Secret World of Bubbles” is a mesmerizing performance for audiences of all ages. Be dazzled by a bubbly Eiffel Tower or a dancing snow-white snow-man, while learning about the art and science of soap bubbles. Bubble artist Keith Michael Johnson uses bubbles—large and small—to explain liquids, solids and gasses, geometry, tension and pressure. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic TV. Performance times are: 5:00 pm, 6:00 and 7:00 pm.

Get your tickets early as this event traditionally sells out. Early bird tickets for Members are $8/person, Non-members $13/person. After Friday, February 2nd, tickets for Members are $10/person, Non-members $15/person. Register online at www.steppingstonesmuseum.org, call 203 899 0606, ext. 264, or visit the Welcome Desk. Reservations are required.

About Stepping Stones Museum for Children

Stepping Stones Museum for Children in Norwalk, Conn., is an award-winning, private, non-profit 501(c)(3) children’s museum committed to broadening and enriching the lives of children and families. Located on five acres in Mathews Park, the LEED Gold certified museum encompasses five hands-on galleries, state-of-the-art Multimedia Gallery, Family and Teacher Resource Center, cafe and retail store. Stepping Stones is located at 303 West Avenue, exit 14N or 15S off I-95 in Norwalk. Museum hours are Monday – Sunday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. Admission is $15 for adults and children. Children under 1 are free. To learn more, call 203 899 0606 or visit http://www.steppingstonesmuseum.org.

​A “Blue Moon” is a fairly infrequent phenomenon involving the appearance of an additional full moon within one month and the next one is on January 31. To celebrate the blue moon the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington is hosting a blue moon hike on the 31st @ 6:30 p.m.- 8:30 p.m. Native Americans followed the cycles of the moon and every month the full moon had a different name.

The Algonquin tribes called January the full wolf moon because when this full moon appeared wolves howled in hunger outside the villages. Traditionally, the January Moon is also known as the Old Moon. The hike concludes at the replicated Algonkian village for hot cocoa around the campfire. Native Americans drew constellations, created a mythology around the stars and built structures in alignment with the sky long before Europeans arrived on American shores. Like other groups, they tracked the motions of the Sun to help them decide when to plant crops, move their camps, or stage sacred rituals.

Their stories contained explanations of the constellations they saw as patterns of bright stars, meteor showers, the Northern Lights, and saw in what we call the Milky Way a pathway to the afterlife.

Some tribes built great circles of stones to help them predict the changing seasons, or ceremonial sites and mounds of earth in alignment with the Sun and stars and to reflect the patterns they saw in the heavens.

Participants on this hike through the Native American Village and surrounding woodland trails will learn about the beliefs and folklore of the Eastern Woodland Indians that made Connecticut their home.

For information about additional programs visit the website​ and facebook page​.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Anissa Mack: Junk Kaleidoscope, a reflection on Mack’s The Fair project, realized in both 1996 and 2006, to be reimagined at the Museum through April 22, 2018. Mack mines Americana, its artifacts, folklore, and rituals, and explores American vernacular traditions, examining their shifting role in a dialogue between the history of art making and the culture of collecting. Through all new objects, Junk Kaleidoscope will re-envision The Fair in a way that weaves together over two decades of work, sixty miles from the Durham Fair fairgrounds that inspired this project.

The Fair was first realized in 1996, when Mack entered all seventy-three craft categories at the Durham Fair, the largest agricultural fair in Connecticut; she had participated in the fair, located near her hometown of Guilford, CT, throughout her childhood. In 2006, she remade the project as The Fair (10th Anniversary Edition) by generating new entries for all of the craft categories available that year. On both occasions, the objects were displayed at the fairs and then (re)presented in a commercial gallery with their winning ribbons. At The Aldrich, Mack will create a layered exhibition that engages fairs in new ways. For Junk Kaleidoscope, she will utilize a self-generated list of seventy categories—comprising actual competition categories collected from various county and state fairs, as well as those of her own invention—to generate and support the works in the show. The list will serve as a catalyst for production and as a framework for understanding the shifting, participatory display that the objects will enjoy at The Aldrich.

For Mack, “fairs serve as fascinatingly complex archives that mirror both ‘America’ and the art world.” Repetition, displacement, and distortion are constant concerns and the act of revisiting is an ongoing theme. Mack attends county and state fairs nationwide, where her experiences fundamentally reshape her approach to the creation and staging of her work. The atmosphere of the local fair and the environment of the artist’s studio share similar outtakes, as both are equally concerned with narrative, arrangement, and (e)valuation. Her appropriation of the fair’s system of categorization attempts to undo or rewrite storylines embedded within local material culture. These objects are symbolic containers of a collective memory that can travel across time. Ultimately, Mack positions herself as both an artist and maker, placing herself inside a subculture and adopting its system of classification for her own (re)invention. This enables Mack to move seamlessly between two distinctive locales and contexts, each of which has its own structure, methodology, and currency. The objects embody these alternating experiences and distinguishing histories.