Pick and Paint a Pumpkin Turns Free First Saturday Into a Fall Family Day at Lyman Allyn

Pick and Paint a Pumpkin Turns Free First Saturday Into a Fall Family Day at Lyman Allyn Oct. 3, combining the New London museum’s monthly free-admission day with pumpkins, paint, live animals, and dancing witches.

The pumpkin painting itself runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., but there’s an important distinction in the schedule: admission to the Lyman Allyn Art Museum is free for the entire day, from its 10 a.m. opening until 5 p.m.

That makes this considerably more than a two-hour children’s craft project. Families can paint a pumpkin, meet some animals, and then spend the rest of the visit exploring the museum without paying regular admission.

And there happens to be quite a bit to see inside right now.

The Pumpkins Are for the Kids

This is Lyman Allyn’s annual Pick and Paint a Pumpkin edition of Free First Saturday.

Children get a pumpkin to decorate in the museum’s art studio, with the museum providing the artmaking activity. There is one catch worth knowing before promising a pumpkin on the drive over: pumpkins are reserved for children and are available first come, first served.

The museum also advises families to dress for mess, which seems like sound advice anytime children, paint and pumpkins are put in the same room.

The art project runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

There Are Animals and Dancing Witches, Too

This year’s event expands beyond the art studio.

Xen’s Critters will bring its mobile petting zoo to the museum, adding live animals to the afternoon, while the Wayward Witches are scheduled to provide dancing as part of the festivities.

That gives younger visitors several things to move between rather than asking them to spend two hours working on a single craft.

The entire program is free.

Free First Saturdays are supported by Chelsea Groton Bank and Dime Bank, and they’re part of a larger effort by Lyman Allyn to make the museum approachable as a place where families can actually do something rather than simply walk through galleries.

The museum regularly schedules artmaking on the first and third Saturdays of the month, with Free First Saturday occupying the first weekend and other family programming appearing throughout the calendar.

Don’t Leave After the Pumpkin Is Painted

The timing of this particular Free First Saturday makes the free museum admission especially useful.

Two temporary exhibitions will be open Oct. 3, including one that’s entering its final weekend.

Howard McCalebb: The Golden Mean closes the following day, Oct. 4.

McCalebb’s exhibition explores the artist’s long fascination with the Golden Ratio through sculpture and other work. The mathematical proportion has appeared repeatedly in discussions of art, architecture and design, but McCalebb approaches geometry as a working visual language, building compositions from proportion, form and spatial relationships.

So a child can spend part of the morning freely covering a pumpkin with paint and then encounter an artist upstairs doing almost the opposite: carefully constructing work around geometry and proportion.

The exhibition has been on view since June 27. Oct. 3 is the next-to-last opportunity to see it.

New London’s Whaling Families Are Looking Back From the Walls

The museum’s other major temporary exhibition is much more closely tied to New London itself.

Isaac Sheffield: Portraits from New London’s Whaling Era, which opened Sept. 12, is the first exhibition devoted specifically to Sheffield’s work.

Sheffield painted portraits and portrait miniatures during the 1830s and 1840s, placing his career directly inside the period when New London’s fortunes were increasingly connected to whaling and maritime commerce.

The exhibition uses those portraits to put faces to that era rather than treating whaling simply as ships, harpoons and statistics.

It remains on view through Jan. 3, 2027.

There’s a Surprisingly Good Children’s Gallery Downstairs

Families coming specifically for pumpkin painting should also know about Playthings of the Past, one of the museum’s permanent family spaces.

Designed particularly with children ages 3 to 10 in mind, the gallery explores childhood through historic toys, dolls and playthings from the museum’s collection.

Among its highlights is an elaborate Victorian dollhouse constructed for the museum in 1962, with miniature furnishings representing domestic life from the Victorian period into the early 20th century.

It’s an unusually good fit for Free First Saturday because it gives younger children somewhere inside the museum that was created with them specifically in mind.

Elsewhere, adults can explore American Perspectives, which follows American art and decorative arts from the colonial period through the 20th century, often through the particular history of Connecticut and New London County.

The museum’s permanent Louis Comfort Tiffany in New London exhibition also examines Tiffany’s connections to the region through stained glass, lamps, Favrile glass, jewelry, paintings, silver and archival material.

A Museum That’s Been Here Since 1932

The Lyman Allyn itself is approaching a century in New London.

The museum opened in 1932 and today holds a broad collection particularly strong in American painting and decorative arts while also presenting changing historical and contemporary exhibitions.

Its imposing neoclassical building sits at 625 Williams Street, adjacent to Connecticut College.

The grounds outside are currently undergoing a major transformation of their own. The museum is developing Lyman Allyn Park, a planned 12-acre public urban art park surrounding the institution.

The museum remains open during construction, although visitors may encounter construction activity and noise while entering and leaving the building.

That is worth knowing for families arriving expecting the grounds to look exactly as they may remember them from previous visits.

Free Really Does Mean Free

Regular adult admission to Lyman Allyn is currently $12, with seniors paying $9 and active military $7. Children 12 and younger, New London residents and museum members are among those who already qualify for free admission.

On the first Saturday, those distinctions disappear: general museum admission is free for everyone.

That means there’s little reason to treat the pumpkin activity as the entire visit.

Come for the pumpkin. Let the kids meet the animals and watch the witches. Then head into the galleries, find the children’s collection downstairs, look at Tiffany glass, meet some of the faces of New London’s whaling era and catch The Golden Mean before it closes the following afternoon.

Special event traveling and parking information:

• Entrance to the museum grounds is at 625 Williams Street.
• The museum driveway will be single lane, one way, driving heading towards. One side of the driveway will be available for parallel parking.
• Main activities will take place in the museum’s new parking lot. The other half will be available for parking.
• Overflow parking will be located at the Connecticut College South Lot.
• Attendees can exit the event back to Williams Street via the Connecticut College service road.
• We appreciate everyone’s efforts to drive carefully and watch out for children!

Details

Event: Free First Saturday – Pick and Paint a Pumpkin
Date: Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026
Location: Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Address: 625 Williams Street, New London, CT 06320
Museum Hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; last admission at 4 p.m.
Special Activities: 11 a.m.–1 p.m.
Admission: Free all day
Pumpkin Painting: Children only; pumpkins available first come, first served
Other Activities: Xen’s Critters mobile petting zoo and dancing with the Wayward Witches
What to Wear: Clothing appropriate for potentially messy artmaking
Current Exhibitions: Isaac Sheffield: Portraits from New London’s Whaling Era and Howard McCalebb: The Golden Mean
Last Weekend: Howard McCalebb: The Golden Mean closes Sunday, Oct. 4
Accessibility: Public museum areas are wheelchair accessible; a side-entrance ramp is available, and the museum has one wheelchair available to borrow on a first-come basis
Strollers: Public areas are stroller accessible
Construction: The museum remains open while work continues on Lyman Allyn Park; visitors may encounter construction activity or noise around the grounds
Phone: 860-443-2545

 

 

Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.