Annual Community Day event to be held May 8 at Reynolda House
Family-friendly event includes free museum admission, take home art activities and a virtual pollination station
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (April 28, 2021) — Reynolda’s annual free Community Day event will return as an in-person and virtual hybrid “Pollination Station” program this year on Saturday, May 8, from 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m on the front lawn of Reynolda House, inside the museum, and online for those more comfortable exploring digitally or who would like to connect further after their visit to Reynolda. Free event registration includes museum admission and take home art activities (while supplies last).
Visitors to the museum will be able to view the intersection of art and nature in Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment on view in the museum’s Babcock Gallery, which also serves as inspiration for this year’s event, and self-tour the historic 34,000 sq. foot home 1917 home of R.J. and Katharine Reynolds. Along with the museum’s collection of American fine art and decorative arts, special exhibitions on view in the historic house bedroom galleries include The Uncertainty of the Times and Paul Cadmus: Etchings.
Outdoors, visitors will be offered take-home art activities as well as an opportunity to participate in Growga, family-friendly yoga for all ages (with advance registration). Online, Reynolda will offer virtual pollination stations that explore the world of pollination as featured in Cross Pollination. The online pollination stations will offer learning opportunities for attendees of all ages to engage with Reynolda team members, including a horticulturist from Reynolda Gardens and members of the museum’s teaching and learning team.
To register for Community Day, visit reynoldahouse.org. Unless the event reaches capacity, free tickets will be available at the front desk of Reynolda House on May 8. Advance registration is encouraged to ensure admission, but not required.
Parking is free and available on-site in designated parking lots. Food and beverage will be available at Reynolda Village Shops and Restaurants. Admission to Reynolda Gardens is always free. For more information, visit reynolda.org or call 336.758.5150.
Support for “Pollination Station” Community Day at Reynolda has been provided by Art Bridges.
About Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment
Taking flight from Martin Johnson Heade’s unprecedented series The Gems of Brazil, Cross Pollination creates dialogues between paintings, sketches, and natural specimen collections of fellow Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. Heade was influenced by and connected to this group of painters working in the nineteenth century, who in various ways all shared a fascination with art and the natural world. The relationships among these artists influenced new thinking and work by future generations, beginning with Cole and Church’s own daughters, Emily and Isabel.
Like their nineteenth-century counterparts, contemporary artists featured in this exhibition, such as Maya Lin and Roxy Paine, find inspiration in art and science. They engage in multiple disciplines and media and rely on close observations of nature to address diverse themes. These range from wonder and fascination with nature to questions about its fragility and how to balance the built and natural worlds. A number of artists explore cross-species connections, while others use shifts in scale and perspective to examine how nature is a complex cultural construction. Together, these artists offer new visions and possibilities that imagine a future on Earth based on interconnection, balance, and reciprocity.
Developed with artists and scholars across disciplines, the exhibition addresses the continuing relevance of close observations of nature and the critical interconnections between pollinators and their habitats today.
The exhibition’s focus on the beauty and wonder of nature is a prominent theme reflected throughout Reynolda and its 170-acre estate. Visitors to Cross Pollination are invited to explore their own connections between art and nature on visits to Reynolda’s greater and formal gardens, which include birding and nature trails, where visitors can look for the objects and specimens featured in the exhibition, including hummingbirds.
Cross Pollination was created by The Olana Partnership at Olana State Historic Site, Thomas Cole National Historical Site, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark. Its tour is organized by Crystal Bridges. Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by Art Bridges. Additional major support has been provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.
The exhibition closes May 23 at Reynolda. To purchase tickets, visit reynoldahouse.org/crosspollination.
Hours and Admission
Reynolda House, located at 2250 Reynolda Rd., is open to visitors Tuesday-Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Museum members, children 18 and under, students, military personnel, first responders, and employees of Wake Forest University and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center with valid ID receive free admission to the museum. Passes to Reynolda House in English and Spanish are available to check out from every branch of the Forsyth County Public Library free of charge.
Reynolda Gardens is open from dawn to dusk daily free of charge. The greenhouse is currently closed. Visit reynoldavillage.org for more information on shopping and dining.
About Reynolda
Reynolda, in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a rare gem among the nation’s cultural institutions and historic greenspaces. The 53-year-old museum at the center of Reynolda’s 170 acres, Reynolda House Museum of American Art presents a renowned art collection in a historic and incomparable setting: the original 1917 interiors of Katharine and R. J. Reynolds’s historic home. Spanning 250 years, the collection is an uncompromisingly selective one, a chronology of American art, with each artist represented by one work of major significance. The Reynolda experience includes a free app called Reynolda Revealed; touring exhibitions in the museum’s Mary and Charlie Babcock Wing; formal gardens, conservatory and walking trails of Reynolda Gardens; and more than 25 of the estate’s original buildings repurposed as shops and restaurants in Reynolda Village. Reynolda, located at 2250 Reynolda Road, is part of Wake Forest University. For more information, please visit reynolda.org.
Connect at facebook.com/rhmaa and @CurateReynolda on Instagram.
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Media Contact
Kaci Baez
336.758.5524 or kaci@reynolda.org