Looking for something to do this weekend in DC, Maryland, and Virginia? Check out our selection of events guaranteed to inspire your inner-artist, right here in your own backyard!
Looking for an event inspired by the holiday season? Be sure to check out THIS post compiling the best seasonal events in the area.
Unleash your creativity with a masterpiece.
Face it—you and the kids need a break from the holidays. Why not get artsy? To top it off, why not make it free? Well, it’s a package deal at the Baltimore Museum of Art’s weekly Free Family Sunday. So put down that wrapping paper and schlep the entire clan to this world-class institution. You’ll enjoy an afternoon of art-making with an interactive gallery 
tour to boot.
This month’s theme “Looking Forward: Make a Right-Side, Wrong-Side Composition”, encourages budding contemporary artists to get adventurous.
Sunday, 2-5pm
Cost: Free
Baltimore Museum of Arts 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, Maryland
It was an itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie work of art that they displayed in the gallery.
Just because an exhibition is a big deal, doesn’t mean it’s big. In fact, the Torpedo Factory Target Gallery’s 5x5(x5) is all about the small. No piece measures more than 5 inches in any direction! Back by popular demand, this juried show features 112 tiny works by 68 artists from across the nation. It’s also Target Gallery’s last show of the year, so don’t miss it.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 10am–6pm
Cost: Free
Torpedo Factory 105 N. Union St., Alexandria, Virginia
Select films opening today:
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WORLDS AWAY (PG)
From the big top to the big screen, visionary filmmaker James Cameron and director Andrew Adamson (SHREK, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA) invite you and your family on an all new 3D adventure: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WORLDS AWAY. A young couple who is separated, must journey through the astonishing and dreamlike worlds of Cirque du Soleil to find each other, as audiences experience the immersive 3D technology that will allow them to leap, soar, swim, and dance with the performers.
RUST AND BONE (R)
Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard (LA VIE EN ROSE, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) plays Stéphanie, a free-spirited whale trainer at a marineland on the French Riviera, who suffers a devastating injury. Macho Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts, BULLHEAD), sullen, impulsive and broke, has just been given custody of his five-year-old son and is struggling to care for him. Both are struggling to overcome injuries and rebuild their lives, and their relationship reaches the extremes of physical and emotional intensity. WETA Around Town critics call this the “best film of the year”. Watch the entire review here!
BARBARA (PG-13)
East Germany, 1980. Barbara Wolff is a talented young doctor who has applied for an exit visa from the GDR and, as punishment, has been transferred from her prestigious post in Berlin to a small pediatric hospital in the country. Even though she is constantly aware of the shadowy presence of, and overwhelming numbers of Stasi officers chronicling her every move, every waking hour, she arrives at her new post having already planned a series of dangerous assignations with her lover, with whom she plans to escape to the West, to Poland. A story of self-sacrifice and freedom and quiet heroism at a time and place when such values are at a premium. It is also about a healer whose morality and set of personal ethics are being called into questions by circumstances specific to that same time and place in history. Opening at West End and Angelika Mosaic.
Watch the trailer here!
THE IMPOSSIBLE (PG-13)
Based on the true story of one family's survival of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, THE IMPOSSIBLE stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor and is directed by J.A. Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE). Maria (Watts), Henry (McGregor) and their three sons begin their winter vacation in Thailand, looking forward to a few days in tropical paradise. But on the morning of December 26th, as the family relaxes around the pool after their Christmas festivities the night before, a terrifying roar rises up from the center of the earth.
a traditional Japanese drum troupe, as they take over the DAR Constitution Hall. Kodo uses ancient and modern compositions to achieve physical and musical versatility that surpasses language barriers. Kodo is known for its performers not only playing the drums, but also using their bodies to tell a story. Experience how the power of sound can create emotions ranging from laughter to aggression to even fear. This show will be an unforgettable experience for all of your senses! 
Celebrate the outdoors with the first weekend of the Environmental Film Festival in the nation’s capital, running March 12 through 24 at museums, embassies, universities, libraries and local theaters. The theme of this year’s festival is the role of rivers and watersheds in the global environment. 190 documentary, narrative, animated, archival, experimental and children’s films were selected to highlight this and many other ecological issues. The festival will feature 110 Washington, D.C. area premieres, including this weekend’s Amazon Gold, on Friday at the National Geographic Society, Cinderella Moon, on Saturday and Sunday at the National Gallery of Art, and More Than Honey on Sunday at AFI Silver Theater. Discover the wonders of the world and the perils that endanger them this weekend through next.