Last Saturday, Gund Gallery was bustling with people, from newborns to octogenarians, eager to experience art and wildlife at Family Day. The Gallery collaborated with the Brown Family Environmental Center to host a day of arts and crafts, gallery tours and a live animal program featuring flying squirrels and other common-to-Ohio species. 

This semester’s Family Day drew inspiration from the Gallery’s current exhibition, “Color: Theories and Structures.” In the lobby, kids and parents alike flocked to craft tables to make prints and get their hands messy with color. Upstairs, families wandered through the Gallery and attended an interactive demonstration on color theory.

“[Family Day] is for children to interact with art, getting them to see it as they think it is, and we’re here to help them make connections between what they see and what they think,” said Jenna Wendler ’17, a Gund Gallery Associate.

Downstairs in the Community Foundation Theater, families could learn about Ohio’s wildlife and how humans have affected it throughout history. Maron Van Schoyck of Ohio Nature Education, who introduced herself as “Mrs. Van,” gave a dynamic presentation combining the state’s political and natural history — Ohio’s early residents could pay their taxes in squirrel pelts as a part of the State’s efforts to reduce a rampant squirrel population — and tied her lesson in with the theme of the day by explaining how animals perceive color.

“When we go out and teach, we are hoping to plant seeds in your hearts to be better students of the earth,” Van Schoyck told her young audience. The highlight for much of the audience, young and old alike, was the animals that accompanied Mrs. Van in her teaching, including Marsi the opossum and Falco the kestrel.