The Art Center offers free educational resources for families, individuals, and educators. Explore artist talks, gallery guides, hands-on activities, and more.
Inspire learning through a step-by-step exploration of art at the Des Moines Art Center. Bring the galleries into your home or classroom, igniting your students’ imaginations and creativity. All lesson plans are open ended, adaptable,...
Download
I am launching myself into 2025 with a renewed sense of purpose, ever more confident in the necessity and importance of the Des Moines Art Center. We accomplished a great deal in 2024. Many of...
Download
Recorded on December 15, 2024 at the Des Moines Art Center. Luke Williams is a scholar, artist, organizer, and critic of 20th and 21st century Black performance and visual cultures. His work, which spans embodiment,...
Watch
I have always found the end of summer and the beginning of fall to be a particularly bittersweet time of the year. It is a moment of transition, as the weather begins to change and...
Download
Iowa’s 2023 census data cites that of the 3,207,004 people in the state, 84.4% or 2,702,598 of the population are white. Growing up in a state with such low rates of racial diversity is an...
Watch
Des Moines Art Center’s 2024 Iowa Artist, b. Robert Moore delivers a lecture, “Art should be felt, not just seen,” filled with intimate details about his solo exhibition “In Loving Memory.” The event begins with...
Watch
Performed in the Des Moines Art Center’s exhibition “Hurricane Season: Caribbean Art + Climate Change” on July 11 and 12, 2024. About the Artist: Inspired by the poetry of Celia Sorhaindo, N’Jelle Gage Thorne embodies...
Watch
Teresita Fernández delivered the 34th installment of the Fingerman Lecture at the Des Moines Art Center on June 6, 2024 in concert with the exhibition “Hurricane Season: Caribbean Art and Climate Change” (June 8 –...
Watch
I’m recently back from an exhilarating trip to New York with sixteen of our trustees, members, and guests. We were thrilled to see our masterpiece “Woman in White” (1946), by Henri Matisse, on view in...
Download
Watch as Helina Metaferia performs a newly commissioned live work from her Refiguring the Canon series. In this series, Metaferia transforms history into mythology, and interrogates its emphasis on western male exceptionalism. Transforming iconic abstract...
Watch