Austin Museum Day 2025

The City of Austin's Office of Arts, Culture, Music & Entertainment is proud to participate in the 28th annual Austin Museum Day. On this special day, our four historic museums will join dozens of museums in the Austin area to celebrate art, history, community, and culture. All of our museums are free to attend year-round. 

This event is free for everyone

Evento es gratis para todos

Austin Museum Day is a community initiative funded by the Austin Museum Partnership. This annual event includes special programs and activities at dozens of local museums and cultural institutions across the area.

Our participating sites include: 

The Old Bakery & Emporium

1006 Congress Ave. Austin, TX 78701

Noon - 3:00 pm

The Old Bakery & Artisan Emporium is a historic landmark located in downtown Austin. Local artists and craftspeople keep our artisan shop full of unique, handmade items. Our Art Gallery features the work of local artists who are 50+ years old. We provide Visitor Center information and have a history exhibit that explores Austin's immigrant history through the Lundberg-Maerki Historical Collection.

On Museum Day, we will have live music by Los Autenticos, and artist Rick Hernandez will give an artist talk about his work in his current exhibit, "Raised to Engage". 

Learn more and RSVP for FREE

Elisabet Ney Museum

Umlauf Sculpture Garden, 605 Azie Morton Rd, Austin, TX 78704

11:00 am - 4:00 pm

Join the Elisabet Ney Museum for an art activation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum on Austin Museum Day! Experience the historic life of our local 19th-century pioneer, artist, naturalist, and women’s rights advocate, Elisabet Ney, through the voices of Austin contemporary female artist, Tammie Rubin.  

Visitors will explore a variety of sculpting activities that include plaster casting, soap carving and clay portraiture. All the projects are part of the Ney's brand-new program, Breaking the Mold: Mobile Hands-On Art Crates. For this traveling program, three distinct art crates filled with activities and arts curriculum were developed by local artist Tammie Rubin, Virginia L Montgomery and Beili Liu within the artists’ personal studio environments in the same manner that Elisabet Ney would have worked within her own Formosa studio, now the Elisabet Ney Museum. Each crate has been transformed into unique works of art and speak back to the Neoclassic artwork that Ney herself shipped back and forth between Texas and Italy.

Visitors will also be able to explore the UMLAUF's current exhibitions, Black Bird Redemption Song by Sedrick Huckaby and Suspended at the UMLAUF: Totems by Tara Goolsby, and their permanent outdoor sculpture collection.

This project has been funded by a grant from the Dorothy C. Radgowski Learning Through Women’s Achievement in the Arts Grant Program, provided through the Where Women Made History and the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios programs of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Summerlee Foundation.

*Please note the Elisabet Ney Museum is currently closed for renovations; this event will take place at the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum. 

Brush Square Museums

409 East 5th Street, Austin, TX 78701

Noon - 5:00 pm

Sitting at the corner of Fifth and Neches Streets under the shade of Brush Square Park's live oak trees are two of Austin’s most beloved museums, the O. Henry Museum and Susanna Dickinson Museum. Collectively known as Brush Square Museums, the two historic homes tell the stories of their previous inhabitants, William S. Porter (better known as short-story author O. Henry) and Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson. 

Museum Day activities include light refreshments, beeswax candle-making, collaging, and a scavenger hunt within the exhibit Rebuilding A Home for Her Story, which chronicles the many iterations of the house that is now the Susanna Dickinson Museum.

George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center

1165 Angelina Street, Austin, TX 78702

10 am - 4 pm

Through the preservation and exhibition of African American material culture, history, and aesthetic expression, the Carver Museum works to create a space where the global contributions of all Black people are celebrated. We accomplish this by telling stories about our local community and connecting those histories to larger narratives about Blackness. The Carver Museum is free and open to the public.

During Austin Museum Day, the Carver’s galleries will be open to the public from 10 am-4 pm. Our core exhibition, The African-American Presence in 19th Century Texas, succeeds the previous exhibit, Juneteenth: a Celebration of Freedom (installed in 2005), and highlights the transition from African civilizations, to bonded servitude, to a precious but ever so fragile freedom in the United States of America.

The Carver's rotating art gallery currently features a solo exhibition by Riley Holloway, What I Carry.

“The paintings reflect scenes many will recognize—like a bouquet toss frozen midair or the communal joy of a family reunion. These images are more than memory; they’re markers of shared experience. I lean heavily on nostalgia, not just to preserve the past, but to find connections—hoping viewers will recognize a part of their own story in mine.” – Riley Holloway 

Dougherty Arts Center

1110 Barton Springs Rd, Austin, TX 78704 

Noon - 4 pm

ADA and Language Access Information:

Request a language interpreter by calling 3-1-1 no later than five days before the meeting you wish to attend

The City of Austin is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please contact ada@austintexas.gov or call (512) 974-3256 to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. Click here for more information.