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Art Pop Up Day Comes Back to Campus

One of McDonogh's more colorful and creative traditions is Art Pop-Up Day—a showcase of visual and performing arts. Normally, the day features pop-up performances, art installations, and hands-on activities on the Rosenberg Campus Green as well as in other outdoor spaces. However, the last two years have tested the School's creativity, forcing the Arts Department to reimagine new and fun ways to keep art popping up in the McDonogh community.

Last year the pandemic turned the Art Pop-Up Day into a fully virtual event and this year, thunderstorms on Wednesday, May 5, forced students inside. Despite the obstacle, performances found their way into classrooms and living rooms via a non-stop livestream. While dancers, singers, actors, and instrumentalists from every division hoped to share their talents with both a live and virtual audience, they were delighted to perform together. 

Visual art was also on display with multiple installations and activities around campus. The Senior Capstone Art Show was hung in Tuttle Gallery as well as throughout the Edward St. John Student Center and Allan Building (hear from the artists here), freshmen combined art and ingenuity to build art-making robots that doodled throughout the day, and lower schoolers enjoyed jewelry-making with supplies delivered to their classrooms. Lower schoolers also installed a rainbow that wrapped around their outdoor classroom as well as colorful wings that encouraged passersby to take a photo (including Head of School Dave Farace).

The goal of Art Pop Up Day is to make art inclusive, accessible, public, and fun so that everyone at McDonogh School can tap into their inner artist. It is the hope of the Arts Department that sharing these performances and works of visual art will spark the imagination of everyone in the community and inspire even more creativity.