NMWA Free Community Day

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is marking Veteran’s Day with a free, interactive community project during the day, and an evening artist talk on the cohesion of culture, migration, performance, and what it means to be an American. The events take place on Wednesday, November 11th, coinciding with a Free Community Day, which offers free admission, all-ages art-making from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., gallery talks and tours.  

From 12 to 4 p.m. Cultural Preserves, a drop-in activation by interdisciplinary artist Holly Bass, invites museum visitors to preserve their thoughts, feelings, and familial stories. The participatory project takes inspiration from the current exhibition Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California, a story of survival and connection told through 120 years of Black quilt-makers from the Second Great Migration to today.

The evening’s Fresh Talk features artist Holly Bass in discussion with Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator at the National Gallery of Art. Their conversation will consider how personal histories of movement and return shape ideas of home, belonging, and identity. Drawing on Bass’s multidimensional practice – as well as her experiences growing up as a military child, moving between military bases, and later returning to the South after years on the West Coast – the discussion will explore how artists use personal and community histories to explore questions of place and cultural identity. A cocktail reception follows.

NMWA Free Community Days take place on the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month. Routed West is on view through January 17, 2027.

What:
Daytime –  Free Community Day, with participatory artist project
Evening – Fresh Talk: Holly Bass and cocktail reception   

When:
Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Free Community Day: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Fresh Talk – 6 to 8 p.m.

Where:
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005

Tickets and Reservations:
Community Day: Free

Fresh Talk: Holly Bass: Tickets Required
General admission: $25 / Students, seniors, DC residents: $22 / Members: $20 

About the artist
Holly Bass is a multidisciplinary performance artist, choreographer and writer whose work explores themes of American history, generational labor and liberation across dance, theater, poetry, photography, installation, video and performance. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Bass is the 2025-2026 Roman J. Witt Visiting Artist at the University of Michigan, a joint program of the Stamps School of Art and Design and University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). She performed at the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat for the U.S. Pavilion. She previously served as National Director for Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program to increase arts access in under-resourced elementary and middle schools, and directed an arts program for adjudicated teens in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. She has been recognized with awards for multiple art forms, including recognition as a 2022 MAP Fund recipient for theater, a 2020 Live Feed Resident Artist at New York Live Arts for choreography and dance, a 2021–22 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and a 2024 Washington Award for art and social justice. She studied modern dance under Viola Farber and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In addition to her artist practice, Bass contributes book reviews to the New York Times and in 1999 was the first journalist to use the term “hip hop theater” in print.