Each week’s Create Playdate offers a fresh and fun theme featuring an artwork on view, an art making activity to do at the Museum, and kids’ projects to extend the fun at home!
Create Playdate is included in general admission and no registration is required. Drop in any Saturday between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM.
January 2025
Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Incendiary (2023) is a vibrantly colored, large-scale tipi work from a recent series that explores the adaptability and versatility of the nomadic structure as a metaphor for the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of settler-colonial violence. The painted and shaped canvas is a significant addition to the Museum’s contemporary art collection and furthers the Museum’s efforts to collect and display art that reflects a diversity of voices from the Southwest region and Arizona. Using the shapes provided, visitors will create their own collage design inspired by Incendiary and the moments that have shaped them.
Saturday, January 4 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, January 11 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, January 18 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, January 25 | 10 am – 2 pm
February 2025
Charles Gaines: Numbers and Trees (Arizona Series) debuts the complete series of Gaines’ most recent body of work, Numbers and Trees: Arizona Trees 1, 2023, a demonstrate of his approach to transforming images into a distinct visual language. Numbers and Trees: Arizona Trees 1 uses photography, math, and numeric systems to create soft, numbered marks in ink on a grid, with each drawing built upon the calculations of the last. Using graph paper and colored pencils, visitors will create their own images using a grid system and explore the relationship between systems and art.
Saturday, February 1 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, February 8 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, February 15 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, February 22 | 10 am – 2 pm
March 2025
With more than 80 garments and accessories, Greatest Fits (Vol. 1): The Art of Archiving Fashion traces the evolution of Phoenix Art Museum’s collection from its founding in 1966 to the present day. To highlight the vignettes of significant fashion “happenings” and themes, Arizona-based artist Stacey Eden has created wearable, metal art accessories. Using pipe cleaners and string, visitors will create their own wearable art accessories and find new ways to express themselves.
Saturday, March 1 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, March 8 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, March 15 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, March 22 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, March 29 | 10 am – 2 pm
April 2025
Contemporary photography exhibition Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape highlights how photography has altered our access to, understanding of, and impact on the natural world and our role within the landscape. Inspired by Justine Kurland’s utopian photographs of American landscapes, such as Field Trip (1999) and Snow Angels (2000), visitors will reflect on how their own memories are shaped by the landscape they took place in. Visitors will then have an opportunity to draw their own landscape scene inspired by a core memory.
Saturday, April 5 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, April 12 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, April 19 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, April 26 | 10 am – 2 pm
May 2025
Inspired by the annual migration of monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico, Carlos Amorales conceived Black Cloud as a “swarm” of moths that take over museum spaces, rising to envelop the viewer. Made up of 25,000 black paper moths and butterflies of 30 different species, the installation forms a surreal, yet sublime gathering of insects delicately poised in sculptural formations. Visitors will create their own black paper moth and butterfly covered artwork.
Saturday, May 3 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, May 10 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, May 17 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, May 24 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, May 31 | 10 am – 2 pm
June 2025
American fashion designer Anna Sui reinvented pop culture fashion with her signature rock-and-roll romantic label in the 1990s and has remained a design icon ever since. Sui’s unique approach to creating narratives through her work is legendary: a self-taught historian of culture, art, and fashion, she samples music, books, exhibitions, movies, time periods, photography, and art movements in her designs. Inspired by the exhibition The World of Anna Sui, visitors will have an opportunity to create their own fashion designs using fashion plates and colored pencils.
Saturday, June 7 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, June 14 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, June 21 | 10 am – 2 pm
Saturday, June 28 | 10 am – 2 pm
