Art, of course, can be challenging, engaging, uplifting and enlightening. It also can be fun.

On Saturday, Sept. 24, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host Community Day, an all-ages afternoon of games, storytelling, art-making, workshops and tours led by museum curators and Washington University student docents.
The event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., is free and open to the public.

“Community Day is a chance for the museum to welcome both new and regular visitors and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of our new facilities,” says Allison Taylor, manager of education programs.

“It’s also a chance to show off the museum’s permanent collections, which were reinstalled over the summer, as well as a pair of special exhibitions, Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific and Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art From Germany,” Taylor says.
“It will be a day of family friendly fun, with music, art, dance, snacks, tours and much, much more.”

Bubble artist Josh Routh, a founding member of St. Louis’ Circus Kaput, will perform throughout the day. Choreographer Alice Bloch will lead a pair of movement workshops, at 11:30 and 12:30. Rockabilly revivalists The Woo Daddies will perform their effervescent mix of swing, jump-blues, classic country, surf and pop beginning at 1 p.m.

Also at 1 p.m., associate curator Meredith Malone will lead a walkthrough of Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific. The exhibition includes Saraceno’s interactive One Cloud Module (2011), a five-meter-wide tetrahedron-shaped structure that strongly resembles a geodesic balloon and gives visitors a powerful sensation of hovering above the ground.

Other events will include an art-themed scavenger hunt and a storytelling session. The latter, which begins at 2 p.m., will feature When Pigasso Met Mootisse, Nina Laden’s sly homage to Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The light-hearted tale recounts the friendship, aesthetic rivalry and eventual reconciliation between a feisty bull and his neighbor, a prima-donna pig.