Feb 18 Wednesday
Stories are shaped by the ways we tell them. In Shaping the Story: Designs for the Theatre by Carey Wong, go behind the scenes to see how theatre sets bring stories to life. During a career spanning over 50 years, Carey Wong has designed sets and costumes for more than 300 productions, including operas, plays, musicals, and ballets.
This exhibition features scale models of his designs in addition to costumes, set pieces, and stories of Washington’s rich entertainment history. From sketches of an idea to fully realized sets, explore how a designer’s decisions craft the world of a story.
LeMay – America’s Car Museum proudly presents The Birth of the American Supercar, a groundbreaking exhibition guest curated by renowned automotive innovator Steve Saleen. This one-of-a-kind display invites guests on an exhilarating journey through the evolution of American supercars. From early speed pioneers to cutting-edge modern marvels, visitors will experience a stunning lineup of vehicles that have redefined engineering, speed, and style, built by a wide range of American automotive manufacturers like Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Saleen himself, and even some more obscure ones like Vector, Cunningham, and Hennessey. From roaring V8s to sleek carbon-fiber bodies, discover how American automakers pushed boundaries, challenged European rivals, and redefined what a supercar could be. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see some of the most thrilling and historically significant American-made performance vehicles ever built—all under one roof.
Discover how a new Nordic food movement has sparked interest in local ingredients and natural materials across borders and artistic disciplines.
New Nordic Cuisine is a movement that started in the Nordic countries in the early 2000s and has since grown into an international phenomenon.
With its interpretations of wild nature, the Nordic climate, local foodstuffs and culinary traditions, the movement spawned a distinctive aesthetic that was expressed in meals, tableware and restaurant interiors. Locally-sourced natural materials, animal skins and untreated wood, handmade ceramics and the use of wild vegetation as raw ingredients and for decoration all featured prominently.
"New Nordic: Cuisine, Aesthetics and Place" shows how this food movement merged with other contemporary cultural trends.
Through architecture, contemporary art, design and crafts from the museum’s collection, and objects loaned from various restaurants, the exhibition examines the “new Nordic” concept as a broad aesthetic development defined by the interaction between materials, people and landscape.
Childhood’s End Gallery presents its annual Studio Sale, featuring discounted and rarely seen works by beloved local artists including Jon Bradham, Sara Gettys, Kathy Gore-Fuss, Chuck Gumpert, Carla Paine, and Mimi Williams. The sale also includes a selection of unique, limited works by Marc Chagall, William Winden, and others. Begin the year with an exceptional find at a rare discount.
Jan 17 - Feb 22, 2026
Free
Childhood’s End Gallery222 4th Ave WOlympia WA 98501
360-943-3724
info@childhoods-end-gallery.com
Curated by a panel of art jurists, the exhibition features work by more than 20 South Sound artists. With media including painting, drawing, photography and glass art, some of the exhibition’s works provide windows into personal history and collective culture. Other pieces are non-representational.
Taken as a whole, the exhibition challenges us to take an expansive view of Black art as an abundance of unique expressions drawn from the deep well of vibrant community.
The exhibition will run from Feb. 11 - March 13, 2026. Admission is free to the public.
LOCATION:
The Gallery is located in Bldg. 4 at Tacoma Community College, near the corner of 12th and Mildred streets. Visitor Parking is available in Lot G.
HOURS:
Monday: Closed Tuesday - Thursday: 10am-4pmThird Thursday of each month: 10am-8pmFriday: 10am-3pmSaturday - Sunday: Closed
In celebration of its 30th anniversary, the Washington State Historical Society invites you to explore the history of building the State History Museum. 30 Years and Counting: The Making of the Washington State History Museum is a special exhibition that uncovers the vision, effort, and community spirit that brought this iconic Tacoma landmark to life.
Discover the bold ideas and architectural ingenuity that shaped the museum’s distinctive look. From early sketches to final blueprints, see how the building’s design reflects both innovation and reverence for Washington’s past. Go behind the scenes of the museum’s construction. Through photographs and artifacts from the building process, witness how a dream took shape—brick by brick, beam by beam.
Staff Picks: 30 Objects for 30 Years
In a special feature area, museum staff share their favorite objects from the collection—each one a personal reflection on the power of history to inspire, surprise, and connect us.
Join us for CASINO de SALSA with the incredible Takechi Ruiz, Wednesdays at 6 PM! No partner? No problem. Just bring your energy and we’ll bring the rhythm. 💥
Let’s make some 🔥 moves together.
Location: Tacoma - 1105 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, WADay: Every WednesdayTime: 6:00 – 7:00 PMAges: Ages 12+Registration Link: https://app.jackrabbitclass.com/regv2.asp?id=532322&preLoadClassID=20477009
Contact: 253-327-1873
AfroCuban Dance is HERE and you’re invited!
Experience the roots, rhythms, and soul of AfroCuban dance with the phenomenal Takechi Ruiz every Wednesday at 7:15 PM.
This is more than a class, it’s a celebration of culture, community, and movement. Perfect for all levels. Let’s move!
Location: Tacoma -1105 Martin Luther King Jr. WayDay: WednesdaysTimed: 7:15 – 8:15 PMAge: Ages 12+Contact: 253-327-1783
Registration Link: https://app.jackrabbitclass.com/regv2.asp?id=532322&preLoadClassID=20477009
Get your deerstalker cap on—the play’s afoot! From multi-award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig (Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood) comes a fast-paced adventure about everyone’s favorite detective solving his most notorious case. The male heirs of the Baskerville line are being dispatched one by one. To find their killer, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson must crack the mystery of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” before a family curse dooms its newest heir. Watch as our intrepid investigators try to escape a dizzying web of clues, silly accents, disguises and deceit as five actors deftly portray more than 40 characters. Does a wild hellhound prowl the moors of Devonshire? Can our heroes discover the truth in time? Join the fun and see how far from elementary the truth can be.
Supported by KNKX. Kobe-born, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Takuya Kuroda is dedicated, and his eighth studio record, Everyday (Feb. 28, 2025) is proof of that. Since the release of his soulful seventh effort, 2022’s Midnight Crisp –– a record praised by PopMatters as a “future classic” –– Kuroda has not missed a beat. In his desire to achieve the “perfect blend of production and organic performance” the 45-year-old musician has continued to throw himself into his practice daily, nearly thirty years into his musical life. Everyday builds on and dives ever deeper into the hip hop and neo-soul elements of his previous work. It is a deliciously rhythmic enterprise and a triumph of genre-blending modern jazz. Kuroda’s playing is sure-footed and pure –– whether on the horn, synth, or Rhodes–– and he virtuosically dances among infectious rhythms of his own creation.
Kuroda’s twenty-one years in the United States have been fruitful. After studying composition at The New School, he threw himself into work, playing with DJ Premier’s Badder Band and Akoya Afrobeat and recording as a sideman and bandleader for records on the likes of Blue Note and Concord. But as Kuroda himself says,“the only way to make the music that I want to make is to work hard, every day.” And so we have Everyday, a title which reflects, as Kuroda puts it, “that simple message.”
There is a certain duality to the title that taps into something profound about this music. “Everyday” of course means both daily and commonplace. While Kuroda’s music is anything but average, there is something about the intrinsic and embedded nature of the day-to-day, the incidental rhythms of life, that is reflected and seductively expounded on here. Kuroda describes the process of recording Everyday like this: “Make tracks at home, bring them to the studio, add or replace sounds, invite musicians, repeat the process to polish the track –– as I hear it.”
