Donuts & Design
Donuts & Design brings artmaking, donuts, coffee, and a little end-of-summer fun to the museum’s riverfront patio on Sunday, September 13. The 90-minute family program runs from 10:30 a.m. to noon and is designed for both families already familiar with the museum and newcomers looking for an easy way to introduce children to art.
The morning combines hands-on creative activities with time to explore the museum. Families can make art together, use bubbles and chalk, enjoy donuts and coffee, and visit Luxe CT: Velvet Mills to Modern Runways, Mystic Museum of Art’s summer exhibition exploring Connecticut’s long relationship with textiles, craftsmanship, and fashion.
The event takes place at Mystic Museum of Art at 9 Water Street in downtown Mystic. Rather than setting up a formal children’s class where adults watch from the sidelines, Donuts & Design is being presented as a family morning, with creative activities meant to be shared by children and the adults who bring them.
Admission is priced per family rather than per person: $25 for Mystic Museum of Art member families and $35 for nonmember families. Space is limited and advance registration is encouraged.
Donuts, Coffee and Artmaking by the Mystic River
The morning starts with two things that should make getting the family out of the house on a Sunday a little easier: donuts and coffee.
Donuts for the event come from Deviant Donuts, the Mystic shop known for elaborate small-batch creations and frequently changing specialty flavors. Deviant began in 2017 as a pop-up inside its sister business, Vault Coffee, before developing into its own shop at Olde Mistick Village. The bakery makes its fillings, glazes and garnishes by hand and has built its menu around rotating flavors rather than a fixed lineup of conventional donuts.
Coffee comes from Wakin’ Up Waggin’, a Pawcatuck-based mobile coffee and kombucha business founded by Tim and Erika Lebling. The mobile operation serves organic nitro coffee, kombucha and other nonalcoholic drinks and has become a familiar sight at southeastern Connecticut events, including the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival.
Once everyone is sufficiently caffeinated and sugared, the art begins.
Mystic Museum of Art staff and educators will lead creative activities, while families will also have access to bubbles, chalk and opportunities to spend time together on the museum grounds. The museum specifically welcomes its summer camp families and workshop participants back for the morning but has made clear that newcomers are invited as well.
A Family Introduction to Mystic Museum of Art
Donuts & Design also offers families who haven’t visited Mystic Museum of Art an informal introduction to what happens there beyond its gallery exhibitions.
Art education is a significant part of the museum’s work. Its programming ranges from classes and camps to family programs, school visits and hands-on studio experiences for children, teens and adults. The museum describes its broader mission as fostering the creation, understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of art, with education programs intended to encourage creativity, observation and critical thinking.
That makes Donuts & Design somewhat different from simply taking children through an art museum.
Kids get something to do with their hands. Parents and caregivers can participate rather than spending the morning reminding everyone not to touch anything. And the museum’s location along the Mystic River gives families room to move between art, food and outdoor activities during the 90-minute program.
Explore Luxe CT: Velvet Mills to Modern Runways
Families can also explore Luxe CT: Velvet Mills to Modern Runways, the museum’s major summer exhibition, which remains on view through October 11.
The exhibition looks at Connecticut’s textile history from the precolonial period through contemporary fashion, with particular attention paid to southeastern Connecticut’s once-important velvet industry.
Historic and contemporary beadwork, embroidery, quilts, velvet and fashion are used to tell stories about the people behind the objects, including labor, immigration, cultural identity and the changing meaning of luxury.
The exhibition was developed with Historic Stonington, Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, Mystic Seaport Museum and the Connecticut Region of Studio Art Quilt Associates. It also brings the story into the present through work by contemporary fashion designers with Connecticut connections, including Christian Siriano, Peter Som, Xarea Lockhart and Toriana Sauro.
For families attending Donuts & Design, that creates a natural bridge between making something themselves and then seeing how materials, design and craft are used by working artists and designers.
More Than a Century of Art in Mystic
Mystic Museum of Art’s roots stretch back well before the current museum took its name.
The institution grew from the Mystic Art Colony and Mystic Art Association, founded in 1913 by artists who had been drawn to Mystic and the surrounding shoreline. The organization later operated as the Mystic Arts Center before adopting the Mystic Museum of Art name in 2016.
Today, the museum occupies a riverfront location just west of the Mystic River Bascule Bridge, a short walk from the center of downtown Mystic. Along with exhibitions, its calendar includes studio classes, children’s programming, workshops, gallery talks and community events.
Donuts & Design fits neatly into that community side of the museum: less of a formal museum visit, more of a Sunday morning where a child can draw, make something, wander through a gallery and leave with a little evidence of the morning on their hands.
Donuts & Design Details
Event: Donuts & Design: A Family Morning at Mystic Museum of Art
Date: Sunday, September 13, 2026
Time: 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.
Location: Mystic Museum of Art
Address: 9 Water Street, Mystic, CT 06355
Admission: $25 per member family; $35 per nonmember family
Registration: Advance registration is recommended; space is limited
Food & Drink: Donuts from Deviant Donuts and coffee from Wakin’ Up Waggin’
Activities: Family artmaking, creative activities, coloring, bubbles, chalk and more
Also Included: Access to Luxe CT: Velvet Mills to Modern Runways
Who Can Attend: Families, including newcomers as well as museum members, previous workshop participants and summer camp families
Event Contact: Mystic Museum of Art, 860-536-7601
More information is available at the Event Website link below.
To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.
Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.