Thu, 11/22/2012 - 11:45am

Kay Stephens

Georgia O’Keeffe, Special No. 38, Canna Leaves, (photo: Farnsworth Art Museum)

Here's the thing about the Farnsworth Art Museum. It is the home of internationally renowned paintings and art works, yes. But as locals, we don't tend to go out of our way to check it out, because many think of it as a tourist's destination. With our Cheap Dates series, the point is to look at the Midcoast with new eyes, be a tourist sometimes, or try things "that have always been there."

Here's your chance, because it's free on Saturday November 24.

From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the museum’s traditional holiday family festival will feature passport stations; Breakers Jazz performing holiday classics in the library; a puppet show by Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers in the auditorium; cookie decorating as well as a special hands-on craft activity in the Gamble Center; horse-drawn carriage rides around the campus; and the Share the Wonder train display at the Wyeth Center. This program is free to the public as well as free museum admission for all.

So grab your best bud or your honey and go on the best kind of date there is--a free one with horse-drawn carriage rides, jazz in the Farnsworth's handsome and regal library or check out their latest collections, such as the urban, contemporary The Homestead Project or their recent acquistions such as new paintings by twentieth-century artists Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Rockwell Kent, Marguerite and William Zorach, Elaine de Kooning and of course...

Andrew Wyeth. You know you can't leave without getting your Wyeth fix.

For more information visit: farnsworthmuseum.org/current-exhibitions

Cheap Dates is a new series dedicated to scrounging the most amount of fun out of the Midcoast on the fewest dollars.

Kay Stephens can be reached at kaystephens@penbaypilot.com.