Calendar of Events
Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.
Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.
Around The Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
The National Arts Club: On Demand
Founded in 1898, The National Arts Club boasts more than 150 free programs to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings. Current and archived videos are available and are updated weekly.
Staff Picks From Around the Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
Classical Music
and Animation
Enjoy examples of the relationship between classical music and animation aimed at audiences of all ages.

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.
Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.
Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.
Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.
Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.
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Around The Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
The National Arts Club: On Demand
Founded in 1898, The National Arts Club boasts more than 150 free programs to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings. Current and archived videos are available and are updated weekly.
Staff Picks From Around the Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
Classical Music
and Animation
Enjoy examples of the relationship between classical music and animation aimed at audiences of all ages.

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.
Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.
Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.
Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.
Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.
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Across the Atlantic

Across the Atlantic
American Impressionism Through the French Lens
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the 19th century in France. The show examines the sometimes complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than 65 paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the “new style” of painting which developed at the end of the 19th century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life, including both urban and rural settings when artists preferred to paint outdoors and capture changing effects of light during different times of day and seasons of the year.
Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and The Maurer Family Foundation.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.
Shelby Lee Adams, Southern Baptist, 1975, gelatin silver print on paper, 12 ½ × 9 ¾ inches. Gift of an anonymous donor, 2003.03.91. © Shelby Lee Adams.
This program takes place via Zoom. Space is limited, and registration is required. To register, click here.
CONNECTIONS
Connections is a new arts-based program serving community-dwelling adults with mild to moderate memory loss and their care partners. Led by specially trained Museum staff, contractors, and volunteers, each monthly Connections program includes a guided gallery conversation and a related activity. Space is limited, and reservations are required; call 828.253.3227 x122. Read more about Connections here.

What You Don’t Know: A Story of Liberated Childhood (Dottir Press, JAN 26, 2021), is Higginbotham’s latest book about being young. It illustrates how families, teachers, counselors, and other “stars” are already beaming love at queer, gender nonconforming, and trans children, to protect and bless them as they are. The Roller-skating Party Collage Workshop lets kids put their community in the rink with them—real life people they know and trust, as well as strangers or historical figures whose radiant and genuine presence (even in spirit) is liberation.
RSVP here to receive a PDF of the roller rink back drop and the link to attend the event by email.
Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase books we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by making a donation or purchasing a gift card below. Thank you!
When you purchase What You Don’t Know: A Story of Liberated Childhood from Malaprop’s below, you will also recieve a pre-printed roller rink backdrop.
SUPPLIES for the Workshop:
• Pens and pencils
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Squares or rectangles of plain brown grocery bag (or flattened out packing paper or construction paper) for creating faces, bodies, and hands
• Images from magazines and catalogs to make clothes, hair, jewelry, hats, shoes, skates, wheelchairs, and assistive devices. Nothing has to be like it is in real life. Your people can have wings and tails, dress in actual flowers, have hair made of fire! Animals can skate!
• IMPORTANT—There are no rules about the materials! A pencil or pen and paper is enough! The back of an envelope or some newspaper is enough! Stick figures are enough! You can write “my rebel auntie” and “my gay uncle” on a couple of popsicle sticks and skate them all over the rink.

Taught by Tom Chalmers and Kim Mako
This online course is offered as a primer in the craft of scripted performance, exploring the steps to submitting audition tapes, sustaining connected scene work through a screen, and creating three-dimensional characters on a two-dimensional medium. Learn how people see you and what you convey when you are on stage, and now on screen. Armed with that awareness, learn how to best choose and deliver the monologue to land you the parts that are perfect for you. If given material to audition with, learn how to break down the sides, how to discover the beats of the scene, and how to offer varied options. And when you land the part, learn how to attack the script, build the arc of your character, and establish the thoughts behind the lines. This course will culminate with a streamed showcase of the best work created in the class.
A limited number of scholarships are available for this class. CLICK HERE TO APPLY. Please do not purchase registration prior to applying. Applications must be received by 2:00 pm on Monday, January 11, 2021 for consideration. Please contact Amanda at [email protected] with questions.
6 Week Session: January 20 – February 24, 2021
Wednesdays, 6:30-7:45 pm

Around The Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
The National Arts Club: On Demand
Founded in 1898, The National Arts Club boasts more than 150 free programs to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, lectures, and readings. Current and archived videos are available and are updated weekly.
Staff Picks From Around the Web
Live-streamed performances, resources, and activities we love from around the web, updated regularly.
Classical Music
and Animation
Enjoy examples of the relationship between classical music and animation aimed at audiences of all ages.
Hosts Kimala Luna from Dogwood Alliance and Elizabeth Lashay from SlayTheMic talk with artist Allison Maria Rodriguez about her artwork and how she creates immersive experiential spaces to challenge conventional ways of understanding the world. Her work delves into climate change, species extinction, humanity’s relationship to nature, and the pervasive sense of loss for that which can never be recovered.

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.
Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.
Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.
Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.
Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.
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|
Across the Atlantic

Across the Atlantic
American Impressionism Through the French Lens
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the 19th century in France. The show examines the sometimes complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than 65 paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the “new style” of painting which developed at the end of the 19th century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life, including both urban and rural settings when artists preferred to paint outdoors and capture changing effects of light during different times of day and seasons of the year.
Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and The Maurer Family Foundation.

This exhibition features archival objects from the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection presented alongside artworks from the Museum’s Black Mountain College Collection to explore the connections between artworks and ephemera. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by lydia see, fall 2020 curatorial fellow, with support from a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant through the Council on Library and Information Resources.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.
Thank you Suzanne Camarata of The Gallery at Flat Rock whose Porch Portraits sessions raised $2835 for the Playhouse! Suzanne began this series when the pandemic made traditional photo sessions a challenge and inspired photographers used social distancing to create a new way to capture memories. “Porch Portraits by Suzanne brings the fun of a casual, light-hearted photoshoot right to your home – literally to your front porch or in your front yard. ” Suzanne is continuing her sessions this year, so make sure to visit the link below to get (or gift) a session today.


Robert Longo, Untitled (Eric, from the series Men in the Cities), 1980 (printed 1998), silver dye bleach print, 41 7/8 × 29 5/8 inches. © Robert Longo, image courtesy the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York.
The Museum is thrilled to present a special evening program with Robert Longo, an American artist of international renown whose works are currently on view in Vantage Points and recently in Reverberations. With a 40+ year career as an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and musician, Longo is best known for his detailed photorealistic drawings of jumping figures, sharks, tigers, and guns. For this program, Longo discusses his body of work—including five photographs from his Men in the Cities series on view in Vantage Points—then joins Museum staff for a conversation about the narrative power of art and audience Q&A.
Join me for this 4-week intensive program where you will dive into intuitive drawings, aura drawings and auragraphs.
Intuitive Art
Doodling your Feelings. Intuitive drawings can begin as simple doodle that will become more eloquent as you practice. You can use ballpoint pens, markers, gel pens or pastels. Draw for the surprise and joy of the process, without knowing in advance how each drawing will turn out.
Aura Drawings
Your energy field contains massive information about your life. The oval field surrounding you can reveal the energetic memory of your life before conception and to present day.
Auragraphs
An auragraph is a beautiful way of giving a psychic reading. It is a representation of a person’s life story, their past, present and potential future. A Psychic or Medium will tune into the auric field and draw a symbolic representation.
Each week we will discuss a different type of soul work. Each student will draw, read another student and receive a reading. Each reading is unique and contains information that your sitter is ready to hear, and the information Spirit wants you to have.
Be sure to bring paper and colored pencils or crayons (or anything that you would like to use to draw with).
This workshop will take place Thursday evenings at 7:30PM – for 4 weeks and 2 hours each. January 7 – 28, 2021
$90/person payable via paypal.me/mediumrobyn or Venmo (@Robyn-Wolf-11).








