Calendar

Virtual theater packages for families. Enjoy a professional children's theater show at home! 

American Boer Goat Competition.

Military Basketball Association hosts MLK Basketball Tournament to be held at the Dodge Jones Youth Sports Center.

The Original Team Roping Association promotes the sport of team roping by providing a format for roping families in an enjoyable, competitive environment. 

Enjoy live music featuring Brett Patterson.

Enjoy BBQ and live music by Dave Stevens on the patio.

Enjoy tacos, drinks and live music featuring Eric Logan at Fuzzy's.

Enjoy music on the patio featuring Andrew Holmes.

Enjoy dinner, drinks and live music featuring Brett Patterson.

Enjoy drinks, dinner and live music featuring Dayne Pack.

Enjoy food, beverages, golf and live music on the patio featuring Holt Jones.

Enjoy burgers and live music featuring South of Mayhem.

Come out to the Abilene Convention Center parking lot for guest speakers and window decorations followed by a vehicle parade in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Local 4-H and FFA members have shown their prize winning animals at the Taylor County Livestock Show for many years. Raising, caring and showing animals teaches the youth many life skills such as responsibility, financial considerations and showmanship. Shows included the following: goats, heifers, lambs, poultry, rabbits, steers and swine!

Enjoy BBQ and live music by Katelyn and Colton Black on the patio.

Zak Webb & Frank Lopez live at Heff’s in the mall of Abilene! Don’t miss this phenomenal entertainment combined with the best burgers around!

This course fulfills the requirements set forth by the TX DPS for classroom instruction and proficiency demonstration/qualification for first-time CHL/LTC applicants.

This photography workshop will teach you how to finally master your camera and start shooting like a pro! Not only will you get 4 hours of hands-on camera training, guided shooting downtown and editing tips, you’ll also get to connect with some amazing people who are just as passionate about photography as you!

Calling all singers to bring their best songs to perform for the judges!

Join West Texas Rehabilition Center live at the Abilene Convention Center or by tuning in virtually through their live stream of the evenings events.

Enjoy BBQ and live music by Boone Dugan on the patio.

Enjoy music on the patio featuring Morgan Reatherford.

Enjoy food, beverages, golf and live music on the patio featuring Matt Stapp.

Join the South Branch Library for Once Upon A Storytime as they welcome some very special royal sisters who love reading! Dress up like your favorite princess or prince, or character and enjoy stories, songs, games, and crafts at this majestic storytime. Picture opportunity with meet and greet to follow. The whole family is invited!

Join Vagabond for a night of food and wine as they 'travel' through the European countryside. They will be putting a Vagabond spin on traditional fare from five European destinations and pairing it all with a few of their favorite wines.

Enjoy BBQ and live music by Holt Jones on the patio.

The Micro Wrestling Federation is a full-scale, WWE type event supported by an entire cast under five feet tall. It’s going to be pandemonium as the Micro Wrestlers body slam, bear hug, and headlock throughout an evening of nonstop action.

Enjoy music on the patio featuring Keith O'Dell.

Key City Volleyball exists to develop volleyball athletes in Abilene and surrounding communities. Please visit keycityvolleyball.com for more information.

Schönberg Transfigured Night. Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings. Corporate Sponsor: Condley and Company.

Enjoy music on the patio featuring Amelia Presley.

Enjoy food, beverages, golf and live music on the patio featuring Ariel Hutchins.

This event is for 4-H and FFA youth of Texas to show their haired steers one last time before the slick shear season begins.

Men's and women's collegiate cross country invitational hosted by McMurry University. 

The top ten adults and final five juniors announced at the end of auditions will perform to win it all! 

A sinister con man, Roat, and two ex-convicts, Mike and Carlino, are about to meet their match. They have traced the location of a mysterious doll, which they are much interested in, to the Greenwich Village apartment of Sam Hendrix and his blind wife, Susy. The con man and his ex-convicts, through a cleverly constructed deception, convince Susy that the police have implicated Sam in the murder of a woman, and the doll, which she believes is the key to his innocence, is evidence. She refuses to reveal its location, and with the help of a young neighbor, figures out she is the victim of a bizarre charade. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues between and Susy knows the only way to play fair is by her rules, so when darkness falls she turns off all the lights until the game ends.

Abilene Christian University ACU Invitational Softball Tournament. Collegiate softball competition.

A comedic play about misunderstandings, love and deception. Benedick and Beatrice don't love each other but then they do. Claudio and Hero love each other but then they don't but then they do again. Everyone gets married. By William Shakespeare, directed by Amanda Keith.

Based on Truman Capote's novel, this is the story of a young woman in New York City who meets a young man when he moves into her apartment building. He is with an older woman who is very wealthy, but he wants to be a writer. She is working as an expensive escort and searching for a rich, older man to marry.

Enjoy an evening of live music featuring Amelia Presley at Sockdolager Brewing Co.

A multi-facted celebration bringing the HSU community together from across the world.

This 1-mile run/walk organized by the McMurry University Cross Country teams is to remember former McMurry cross country runner, Kristin Mitchell. In doing so, they would like to raise awareness to the importance of mental health and suicide prevention. All entry fees and donations go directly toward New Horizons. 

From the Gibson Girl to the Flapper, women's fashion evolution from the early 1900s to the 1920s in the United States was due to new economic and social factors for women. These three decades were a defining time as many women fought for the right to vote, joined the work force during World War I, and changed the traditional social norms for women from the previous century.

Capturing a likeness goes back to the earliest of times, however, with the invention of cameras in the 1800s, portraits became more popular and easily attainable. Cartes-de-visite and Cabinet Cards were albumen prints mounted on small cards, typically portraits of the subject. The Cartes-de-visite, invented in France, were smaller cards made between the 1860s and 1870s. A larger portrait, called the Cabinet Card, was popular up until the late 1900s. Professional photographers typically took photographs in their studios and made several copies of the cards for the individual to give to friends and family. Tintypes, popular from the 1850s until the 1890s, were sometimes a cheaper option than earlier daguerreotypes for those part of the working classes.

The photographs in this exhibition are from the permanent collection of The Grace Museum. Although most of the individuals in the photographs (besides those of the royal family) are anonymous, their clothing, their pose, their gaze, all are signs of the Victorian Era they lived in.

Photographer David H. Gibson met David McManaway in 1964. A long friendship followed and in 1993 Gibson began documenting McManaway’s extraordinary studio. A visit to McManaway’s studio was akin to stepping into one of McManaway’s works of art; walls, ceilings and table tops covered with carefully selected cultural castoffs silently awaiting a second chance as fine art. Gibson’s photographs of the studio, dismantled after McManaway’s death in 2010, are as close as we can get to walking into McManaway’s unique, (Mojo) Jomo themed amusement park.

The fine art of found objects defied the status quo to become a major art movement in the last decades of the 20th century. Inspired by Picasso and Braque’s 1912 experiments with paper and print and Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades”, Dada and Surrealism made anything and everything a medium for serious art making. Appropriation of images from popular culture took the form in realistic paintings of objects, collage work and printmaking. Subsequently, the appropriation of found objects into two and three-dimensional mixed media assemblage work became the bedrock of 21st century, interactive, art installations. This exhibition presents a selection of art work based on appropriated found objects in a variety of media selected from The Grace Museum permanent collection by Kirk Hayes, Robert Rauschenberg, Vernon Fisher, Linda Ridgway, Martin Delabano, William Farr, and Clint Hamilton.

The story of women's suffrage is a story of voting rights, of inclusion in and exclusion from the franchise, and of our civic development as a nation. Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence, a poster exhibition from the Smithsonian, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and explores the complexity of the women's suffrage movement and the relevance of this history to Americans' lives today.

Christian Robinson, emerging, millennial, Black illustrator, [and] all around incredible human is passionate about telling stories with pictures. Born in Hollywood, California, in 1986, he grew up in a small one-bedroom apartment with his brother, two cousins, aunt, and grandmother. Drawing became a way to make space for himself in a world crowded with loving others. 'Picture books especially are many children’s first introduction to the world. Seeing yourself is almost like a message, it’s saying: you matter, you are visible, and you’re valuable.' – Christian Robinson

This exhibition will highlight the early history of the State Epileptic Colony in Abilene through over 50 photographs from The Grace’s permanent history collection. In 1904, the institution was founded to help individuals with epilepsy through research, care, isolation, and offering a place to work and live. The complex consisted of an administration building, a power plant, a women’s and men’s hospital, four cottages, and a home for the superintendent. The hospital was a state of the art facility and housed 200 patients by the fall of 1904. By the 1920s, the state of Texas expressed the desire to include individuals with mental health disabilities and renamed the colony the Abilene State Hospital and added a recreation building, x-ray laboratories, twin dormitories, and a warehouse. The named changed to Abilene State School in the 1950s and later the Abilene State Supported Living Center. The current living center is dedicated to treatment, rehabilitation, independence, and helping individuals feel safe and healthy.

In 2018, The Grace Museum was privileged to acquire Margo Sawyer’s acclaimed 1998 sculptural installation BLUE through an unprecedented collaboration with The Contemporary Austin and the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas Austin. For this exhibition Sawyer installs BLUE in response to The Grace Museum’s unique historical galleries and creates REFLECT featuring new work as an ongoing conversation with the past and present. The site-specific installation BLUE was originally created during Sawyer’s 1998 Austin Museum of Art residency program at Laguna Gloria. BLUE has been described as a miniature city, an Oriental carpet, an ocean and a garden just out of reach with thousands of hand crafted elements arranged to reference Sawyer’s world travels to exotic places like the Indian city of Jodhpur, where blue doors, windows and steps follow the Brahmin tradition. Upon closer inspection, universal visions of blue skies and bodies of water are interrupted with earth elements, objects and reflective surfaces that tease the eye and broaden focus to include the beauty and transcendence of abundance, diversity and individuality of the complex world we inhabit.

Celebrate the power of story and value of children’s picture book art at the 6th annual Storybook Ball. This event honors those who passionately work for our mission and vision. Join us for a magical night of dining, dancing, and celebration surrounded by the playful artwork of illustrator

Kick off the new year with a virtual Art Like a Local! Mary K. Huff will lead everyone in creating a Found Object masterpiece. Sponsored by: Iron + Olive Household Refurb'd.

David Small works with watercolor, pen and ink, and pastels. His later works have a much softer look, but they continue to include his trademark attention to small details that beg to be poured over again and again. This 2021 exhibition will be the last public display of Small’s work before it transitions to a private collection.