School Tours 2025-26 at the MAC
Bring Your School to the MAC!
The MAC is always happy to work with schools and teachers to schedule field trips to visit our gallery spaces. Our center is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10:00am-5:00pm, but we are always willing to work with teachers to schedule tours that arrive before 10:00am or on Mondays.
Please email Visual Arts & Education Manager llisanti@mcconnellarts.org with potential dates that you are interested in touring the galleries and what grade level students you are planning on bringing. If interested, we can provide activity guides that correlate to Ohio State Fine Arts Standards to assist in lesson planning for the visit. Tours for grade levels 1 through 8 typically involve dividing students into 3-4 smaller groups and engaging in discussions with a volunteer or staff member while touring the exhibition.
Tours typically last around 45 minutes to an hour without a hands-on activity, but we are able to host groups for up to an hour and a half when we host a hands-on art activity in conjunction with the tour. Activities are available only on select exhibitions (see below), with a small supply fee for the entire group.
For middle to high school-aged groups, we are sometimes able to arrange for the exhibiting artist to come and speak to the class as a group here at the MAC. This is typically recommended for older age groups that are able to engage in thoughtful Q&A sessions with the artist. A small fee for the artist time is requested.
Interested in making the field trip day longer?
Field Trips can be combined with a visit to a local Worthington Historical Society site, such as the Orange Johnson House or the Doll Museum at the Old Rectory, or the Old Worthington Library.
To schedule a tour at the Orange Johnson House please contact Director Kate LaLonde at info@worthingtonhistory.org or (614) 885-1247
To schedule a tour, book talk or storytime at the Old Worthington Library please contact Meredith Richards, Lead Librarian (mrichards@worthingtonlibraries.org)
Need resources to assist with getting here?
Please look into the Ohio Arts Council’s Big Yellow School Bus grant! Applicants may request up to $500 for transportation costs. No match is required. Applications are accepted year-round, at least eight weeks prior to planned travel.
Please browse the 2025-26 Exhibitions and dates below:
September 18, 2025 – November 6, 2025
Quantifying Care: Lily Glass – Ceramics
Lily Glass’ art practice is interested in the deep spiritual connection of the feminine experience and the natural world. While exploring the varied evolution of the individual woman’s journey, she utilizes repetition and symbols from past matriarchal cultures to honor the resilience of the collective whole. Throughout her work, the language of motherhood is used to deconstruct society’s held value and treatment of women and the work of care, especially within two of our cultures most highly valued realms: religion and capitalism. Methodically crafted pieces echo the unceasing rhythms of care, posing the questions: Is the value that we assign the work different depending on who is providing or receiving the care? What are the variables that make one act holy and another simply the day’s duty? At which point does routine become ritual? At which point does our caring become sacred? Can the work of caring for another individual be quantified? It seems we do not have to assign value if we consider a resource to be expendable. Our survival is contingent upon the nurture that we receive from the earth and one another yet we’ve grown accustomed to extracting what is necessary without reciprocating.
September 18, 2025 – November 6, 2025
Intertwined: Margarita Vilshanetskaya– Fiber Art/Weaving
Intertwined, a series of contemporary fiber and mixed media works that examines our intimate relationship with fiber and textile and the perpetual desire to touch it. Fiber is overtly tactile and plays a major role in everyday life, but as an art form, often made inaccessible for guests to touch and experience in a traditional gallery setting. This exhibition closes the gap and brings fiber back to its original purpose: to be touched, felt, and caressed. As guests explore the exhibition, they experience the work in a more haptic and familiar way. The softness of the fiber begs to be touched while the vinyl and specialty paper illuminates for a closer, more intimate look. With the light reflecting off the different materials, the viewer is invited to experience the works from a myriad of perspectives.
September 18, 2025 – November 6, 2025
Power of Growth: Weiting Wei– Sculpture/Polymer Clay
Weiting Wei’s identity of motherhood is entangled with being an artist, knowing how materials work, using processes that are similar to domestic life allows familiarity with the forms, and muscle memory, so that she is able to engage with the subtleties of the materials. How it moves and responds to her hands and the kitchen tools that she utilizes to create the work. This reminds Wei in many ways of engaging with her children and family. That Wei’s behavior, or response to her family and their needs shifts with each incident, and due to their personality they too respond to the same action in different ways. In Wei’s artwork this is reflected through the way that some clay remains very flat, and thin, while other pieces have a wave, curve or frill. The gathering of these actions over and over reflects in some ways the moments accumulated each day and each year building into something beautiful.
November 13, 2025 – January 8, 2026
Painting the Light in Transparent Watercolor: Central Ohio Watercolor Society
Founded in 1964, the Central Ohio Watercolor Society remains dedicated to its original purpose to promote and preserve the unique character of transparent watercolor for its unparalleled ability to portray light. No opaque paint is used, but rather the white of the paper conveys the lightest areas of the painting. Subject matter in this particular exhibition includes portraiture, landscapes and florals.
*Hands-on watercolor activity is available
January 15, 2026 – March 19, 2026
Divine Blue: Suki Kwon
Kwon’s artistic practice represents the ways in which she observes, explores, and expresses who she is in this world. Experimenting with various crafts and mediums throughout her artistic career with a focus around her admiration for nature and longing for her native Korean heritage, Kwon is interested in nature-themed design, ecologically driven materials and methods. After motherhood, Kwon discovered traditional Korean needle crafts and natural dye methods and adopted natural dye and textiles as her main method and materials. Kwon, in the past has collaborated with a colleague to create liturgical banners incorporating natural indigo dye, hand-stitching, and rich symbolism as a means of cross-religious dialogue.
Divine Blue showcases installations that abstractly capture the landscape of Korea through natural indigo dyeing. These textile pieces embody the nostalgic landscape of the Kwon’s homeland – mountains, rivers, blossoms, and meandering mountain paths – rendered in the hues and textures of natural indigo dye. Crafted from natural fibers like cotton, hemp, and raw silk, each installation in Divine Blue utilizes geometric shapes and gradation to vividly represent natural elements. Textiles will flow from ceilings, drape walls, and rise from the floor, creating a dynamic environment that transforms the gallery into a reflective landscape, inviting viewers into a spiritually resonant experience.
March 26, 2026 – May 2, 2026
Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition Selections of Region 1
An annual showcase of all the regional selections for the Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition. This exhibition features works from high school students from all around central Ohio and is a beloved exhibition here at the MAC. The show typically features a wide variety of mediums such as ceramics, fiber, drawing, painting, and more.
May 7, 2026 – July 1, 2026
If it’s not okay then it’s not the end: Morgan Rose Free – Mixed Media Installation; Main Gallery
Morgan Rose Free’s mixed media works confronts contemporary climate anxieties while celebrating the allure of the natural world, serving as a mirror to our multifaceted and conflicting emotional responses to our climate crisis. Offering solace, reflection, and critique, Free’s sculptures blend woven portals, ceramics, found objects, and other diverse materials to depict the complex interplay between human desires and our planet's needs.
May 7, 2026 – July 1, 2026
Mystery and Memories: Susan Steiner – Painting: Corridor Galleries
Steiner’s paintings draw inspiration from the natural world, particularly landscapes. By abstracting elements from these landscapes, she aims to capture the essence of the inner landscape - the emotions, thoughts, and memories that shape our individual experiences. Steiner invites viewers to reflect on their own inner worlds and the interconnectedness of our shared experiences. Her art serves as a visual representation of the complexities and beauty found within the depths of our minds and memories.
May 7, 2026 – July 1, 2026
Luminosity: Cee Elbert- Mixed Media Installation: Lobby
Luminosity a mixed media installation by Elbert that will sparkle and change from subtle green to subtle pink and will gently sway and twirl in the air, made from basketry reeds and iridescent fabrics and coils. Elbert uses these because they come to life in the sunlight, and change colors, representing the human spirit. Cee Elbert has long been interested in the apparent line between material and spiritual, life and death, and her work Luminosity explores these ideas.