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GRAM’s new Creative Learning Center to open June 17

Steve Hall
/
Wikimedia Commons

The Grand Rapids Art Museum’s Creative Learning Center is set to open next weekend. The new space is aimed at offering a safe place for the community to actively engage with art.

The center is 4,500 square feet and is designed for creative exploration.

The reimagined space includes an interactive discovery gallery, two new studio workshop classrooms, and an expanded orientation area for school groups, tours, and group meetings.

Christopher Bruce is GRAM’s Deputy Director for Art, Learning and Engagement. He said he hopes the center is a space where everyone feels there’s something for them, and is a place where people can relax, reenergize and escape.

“To just have fun, to play, to see beautiful objects, to see the world a little bit differently than they did before in a space they know that they can come back to, because it is their place in the city,” he said.

Bruce said the Creative Learning Center is a game changer for how the art museum engages with the community and will help meet growing interest.

"This new space is designed for the potential to triple our capacity, so we can bring more students through the building, we can do public programming, we can run programs simultaneously," he said.

"We've created a space that is flexible and dynamic that meets the needs of our community today, the needs that we anticipate tomorrow, and is flexible enough to hopefully meet needs that we have no idea that are coming down the road," Bruce said.

GRAM will host an Opening Party next week to mark the occasion and welcome the museum's new Executive Director Cindy Meyers Foley.

The free event is scheduled for Saturday, June 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. RSVP information can be found here.