UMMA Explorer

After lots of construction and activity last year the UMMA welcomes you back again - enjoy the fresh exterior digs to view the sculptures our front! UMMA stands for the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Museum is located at 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor 48109. You can find directions and parking info at umma.umich.edu. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 12–5 p.m., closed Mondays. Free parking downtown on Sundays PLUS free bus rides on WEEKENDS all summer long when you show your library card!

This badge is 100% wheelchair and stroller accessible!

Thanks to our friends at UMMA for creating this badge!

Immerse yourself in a watery world and earn an Ann Arbor District Library Summer Game badge at UMMA. Cool off in the ultra-air-conditioned galleries and collect clues about ice, oceans, and sea creatures. Dive in! NOTE: the game codes will be printed and posted on the walls near the exhibits you are directed to in the text below - you don't have to guess!

Enter UMMA through the Frankel Family Wing by the large metal swing sculpture. We call this entrance area the Forum and it’s right next to the UMMA Store (ask a helpful store associate about an additional game code in the UMMA Store while you’re there OR as you enter the museum locate the shop window to the left of the doors, and look down low in their window of their game code). Once inside turn left and continue toward the paintings of smoke rings near the bright red wall - turn right and head towards the commons area and the location for the new UMMA Cafe .  You will find your first game code here! The cafe will open very soon, but even if it's not open yet the game code IS visible! The hours 11AM-3PM daily.

Now turn around and head back a little bit and then take the red diamond elevator to level 2. You are in The Power Family Program for Inuit Art: Tillirnanngittuq exhibition. After orienting yourself follow the exhibit to the left and then have a seat and find yourself in front of a wall of stone cut and stencil prints by Inuit artists from Kinngait, Canada. Water looms large in the arctic landscape and so does this creature of land and sea. I am the whiskered, tusked animal in the middle of this wall! 

Turn around and go back to the red diamond elevator and take it up to level M. Take a right (you will now you are going the right way when you see the red, neon art on the wall) and enter the Joan and Bob Tisch Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. As you enter the first room of the gallery, imagine yourself looking at the Green Sea by the coast. Pretend you can fly like birds on high, hear the waves lapping at the golden sands, and smell saltwater in the air. You might even be able to see the (invisible) ships that go sailing. 

Back to the red diamond elevator! Take it to level 2R. When you exit, go through the Robert and Lillian Montalto Bohlen Gallery of African Art, the A. Alfred Taubman II Gallery (you will be going through this room diagonally), and be on the lookout for the Abstraction Color & Politics Exhibit and keep going into the Tiffany collection gallery and go through the Tiffany doors. Take a left onto the balcony and proceed to the curved end. Here you’ll find a painting that will take you back to January 30, 2019. Remember the windchill? Remember the frozen Huron? TOO COLD. Ice is back!

Continue along the balcony and turn left at the corner to take the blue circle elevator down to level 1. You are in historic Alumni Memorial Hall and the recently installed Collection Ensemble! This reinstallation features works across the Museum’s collections; one grouping is titled Water Protocols. Walk around the Hall (the collections all have black walls behind them) and locate Water Protocols. This continues our theme and is where you will find your final AADL Summer Game clue. We hope your visit to UMMA is as memorable as this clue! Make it a habit and come back again and again and again and again and again.