(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Arts Council of Princeton is partnering with the Princeton University Art Museum to provide free, online art-making experiences. Drawing from the Collections features weekly classes taught by Arts Council artist-instructor Barbara DiLorenzo over Zoom, so participants can join live from home. Each week's lesson features works from the Museum’s collections and is introduced by an Art Museum Student Tour Guide. All classes, which include closed captions in both English and Spanish, are held on Thursday nights through November 12, and begin at 8:00pm.

Free registration for the drawing classes: artmuseum.princeton.edu. Each live-streamed class is available online weekly and participants can take part using materials they already have at home.

October 29 - The Effects of Light: This live art-making class is inspired by Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge. This painting represents two of Monet’s greatest achievements: his gardens at Giverny and the series of paintings they inspired. Monet’s determination to capture ever-shifting atmospheric conditions came to be a hallmark of the Impressionist style. In this class we will explore drawing the same subject at different times of day, in different weather conditions, or during different times of the year. 

November 5 - Protest Posters: This live art-making class is inspired by posters designed by the Guerilla Girls, a collective of anonymous women artists whose work focuses on exposing gender and racial discrimination in the art world through various projects, particularly the dozens of posters they have produced, originally intended for public spaces.

November 12 - Capturing Movement: This live art-making class is inspired by Edgar Degas’s Dancers. Degas painted, drew, and sculpted ballerinas frequently, capturing their energy and movement.

“Sharing my love of drawing with a wider group of people is exciting. I love getting notes from families that tell me they draw together – or even families that watched together from different geographical locations,” says instructor Barbara DiLorenzo. “Sometime folks write to tell me they haven’t picked up a pencil to draw in decades – but now make time to do so regularly as part of this program. And some are surprisingly young. There are so many ways for people to be creative, regardless of age, familiarity with material, or experience. If students learn one thing from me, it’s that art belongs to everyone.”

Events are part of the Museum’s Late Thursdays programming, made possible in part by Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970. Spanish-language live closed-captioning for this program is made possible by the Rapid Response Magic Project of the Princeton University Humanities Council.

With origins dating to 1755, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the world's leading university art museums, with collections of more than 110,000 works of art ranging from ancient to contemporary and spanning the globe. Committed to advancing Princeton's teaching and research missions, the Art Museum is intimate in scale yet expansive in scope, offering a respite from the rush of daily life, a revitalizing experience of extraordinary works of art and an opportunity to delve deeply into the study of art and culture.  

The Arts Council of Princeton, a non-profit organization founded in 1967, fulfills its mission of building community through the arts by presenting a wide range of programs including public art projects, exhibitions, performances, free community cultural events, and studio-based classes and workshops. Arts Council of Princeton programs are designed to be high-quality, engaging, affordable and accessible for the diverse population in the greater Princeton region.   

photo: drawing courtesy of Barbara DiLorenzo