Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design

Throughout the Elmhurst Art Museum’s 25th year of inspiring its community, the Museum will host a year-long celebration, with a focus on the three major hallmarks of its mission: architecture (Spring), education (Summer), and art (Fall). Central to the Summer season is the interactive, family-friendly exhibition, Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design, open June 17 – August 14, 2022. Tickets available at elmhurstartmuseum.org.

Nature’s Blueprints features interactive learning stations that explore ways one can be inspired by nature’s incredibly resourceful designs. Families will enjoy hands-on stations about natural emulation in art and design such as: how burrs from a forest informed velcro, the shape of a beetle’s teeth helped an inventor create a more efficient chainsaw, bird and bat wing shapes aided the early flight tests, spiderwebs have inspired suspension bridges, and more.

Several STEAM workshops scheduled in conjunction with this exhibition invite the public to discover how art, design, and environmental science can lead to extraordinary inventions that improve lives. 

Curated especially for Elmhurst Art Museum is a special section that includes work by local architect Alicia Ponce, Founder and Principal of APMonarch, and author of Latinas in Architecture: Stories of raising the 1% one Latina at a time. Ponce is an architect who uses sustainable building practices and often utilizes techniques of biomimicry in her designs.

Nature’s Blueprints is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition first debuted in September 2021 at Putnam Museum and Science Center, a Smithsonian Affiliate.

The Museum is open Wednesdays through Thursdays from 12 – 5 pm and Friday through Sundays from 11 am – 5 pm. Free admission takes place the first Friday of every month.

Location: Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois 

Tickets: Free for students/kids; Seniors $12; Adults $15

About Elmhurst Art Museum

Throughout the Elmhurst Art Museum’s 25th year of inspiring its community, the Museum will host a year-long celebration, with a focus on the three major hallmarks of its mission: architecture (Spring), education (Summer), and art (Fall). The Elmhurst Art Museum is located at 150 South Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst (IL), 25 minutes from downtown Chicago by car or public transportation (Metra). On the museum’s campus is the McCormick House, a single-family home designed in 1952 by Mies van der Rohe, one of the great architects of the 20th Century. The McCormick House is one of only three residences designed and built by Mies in the United States – and one of only two open to the public. 

For more information, call 630.834.0202 or visit elmhurstartmuseum.org.