Free Museum Day

Today was free museum day in Austin. Thirty-one museums in the Austin area offered free admission plus many off them had bonus activities and exhibits. We decided to go to six of them and we opted to walk so I carefully planned our route and we began the day at the Butridge Gallery at the Dougherty Arts Center. The exhibit featured photos from the Texas Photographic Society and we found some good and some not so good. From there, we walked through Butler Park, over the 1st Street Bridge and on to the Austin Children's Museum. Total mayhem. Couldn't even figure out if it is a cool place because the noisy-kid quotient was at peak levels.

We made our way over to Congress and headed north to the Mexic-Arte Museum at 4th & Congress. They were featuring the Aztec and Maya Revival exhibition and offered hands-on arts activites. Heather created her own piece of Mex-inspired art.

At 7th & Congress we entered the Arthouse At The Jones Center. Their exhibit, entitled Reset/Replay, was a critical exploration of art inspired by video games. While some of the work was odd, a few items were pretty cool, like the 'painting' that was a working Atari 2600. Down the street was the Austin Museum Of Art. We were floored to see big names on display. Works from Picasso, Manet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Renoir and others were available for our viewing pleasure.

The final museum on our magical mystery tour was the Capitol Visitors Center. Located on lush property next to the Capitol Building, the center was featuring it's new exhibit called 'Land Of My Dreams: Settling The Republic Of Texas.' It featured many artifacts from early Texas and even a piece of the original Capitol Building. The Capitol Visitors Center building is also a piece of Texas history as it was where the original map of Texas was drawn 150 years ago.

It was another cool and free event in this great city. A lot of people don't realize, or don't care to look for themselves, that Austin is more than just a bar and music town. While it's no NYC or Paris, it does have some culture and hopefully this day opened some people's eyes.