Community Day at Kemper Art Museum Oct. 20

Free event includes art-making, readings and Community Design Challenge

Families enjoying the fall 2011 Community Day. Photo by Whitney Curtis.

Good design can help solve community problems.

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES, a major survey exhibition now on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, collects dozens of smart, collaborative projects from around the globe, from personal water purifiers to a bicycle-powered cell phone charger.

On Saturday, Oct. 20, six St. Louis non-profit organizations will visit the Kemper Art Museum to present their own community design challenges.

Organized by Alicia Ajayi, Colleen Dougherty and Michelle Wiegand, all students in WUSTL’s Brown School, the event will allow each non-profit to solicit advice about its particular design needs, from branding campaigns and wayfinding signage to building and office restoration.

The “Community Design Challenge” comes as part of the museum’s fall Community Day, a free afternoon of all-ages activities, which takes place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Other events will include scavenger hunts, art-making, button-making and readings of the children’s books Ish by Peter H. Reynolds (11:30 a.m.) and Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beaty (2:30 p.m.).

Local artists Tom and Lori Hunt will lead a series of drawing activities inspired by Notations: Contemporary Drawing as Idea and Process. Artist Maria Ojascastro will lead an all-day workshop on the “recycled city,” while dancer Alice Bloch will lead movement activities inspired by Design with the Other 90%: CITIES (12:30 and 1:30 p.m.).

At 1 p.m., curator Peter MacKeith, associate dean and associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will lead a tour of Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.

All events are free and open to the public. The Kemper Art Museum is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Refreshments will be served throught the day.

Community Day is made possible by a generous gift from the estate of L. Max Lippman Jr.

For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.