Downtown Dayton Partnership

Pillion
2026-02-27 14:40, 2026-02-27 12:10 (America/New_York) | THE NEON, United States
Overview
“Colin, a timid man, is swept off his feet when Ray, an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker takes him on as his submissive.”
This kinky little gem from the UK, currently rated “99% Fresh” on rottentomatoes, is an uninhibited and non-judgmental BDSM romantic comedy-drama that stars Harry Melling & Alexander Skarsgård. IndieWire calls it “a deeply moving love story…chains, gags, and all.”
On Mondays during the run of its engagement, this film will be presented with Open Captions (captions presented on the screen).
No one under 18 will be admitted.
Director
Harry Lighton
Producer
Ed Guiney, Emma Norton, Andrew Lowe, Lee Groombridge
Cast
Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Lesley Sharp

Living Legacy: The Permanent Collection of The Dayton Society of Artists
2026-02-27 12:00 - 17:00 | Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street, Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Founded in 1938, the Dayton Society of Artists (DSA) has been a vital part of the Miami Valley’s cultural landscape for more than eight decades, dedicated to connecting, supporting, and educating artists and the community. The DSA Permanent Collection reflects this enduring legacy, preserving works by past and present members whose practices span generations, media, and artistic approaches. Featuring artists such as Edward Burroughs, Rosalie Lowery, Jane Reese, Gerald Jerry Page, Siegfried Weng, and Robert Koepnick, this exhibition offers a glimpse into the creative voices that have shaped the organization over time. Together, these works function not only as individual expressions, but as a living record of the Dayton Society of Artists’ ongoing commitment to artistic excellence, experimentation, and community engagement.

Tai Chi & Qigong
2026-02-27 12:00 - 13:00 | 2nd Street Market, 600 E. Second St., Dayton, OH, 45402, USA
Offered by Immortal Tree Qigong. Each hour-long Tai Chi & Qigong session will start with breathing exercises, warm up, and gentle stretching. You will then be guided through flowing movements mixed with short standing meditation. We will end with a slightly longer guided standing (or sitting) meditation. This should leave a few minutes to answer questions or discuss any insights. Qigong doesn’t require any special skills (other than breathing) or equipment (other than your body). Find “Immortal Tree Qigong” on Facebook or Instagram for more information!

Tony Foster, Exploring Time: A Painter’s Perspective
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | The Dayton Art Institute, 456 Belmonte Park N, Dayton, OH, 45405, United States
Tony Foster, Exploring Time: A Painter’s Perspective
February 21–May 17, 2026, Gallery 120
Between 2007 and 2025, Tony Foster embarked on his 19th Journey, building it around a profound and layered theme: time. Across this body of work, he investigates how time shapes the land—from the quick shifts of light and weather, to the slow rhythms of seasons, to the immense scales of biological and geological transformation. As Foster explains, his aim is “to draw attention to the unseen forces that create place.”
Exploring Time brings together a remarkable series of watercolor diaries that capture nature in motion. His paintings reveal signs of change on multiple fronts: geological upheavals, biological cycles and the marks left by human activity. With a discerning eye, Foster records not only nature’s strength and resilience but also its vulnerability, even in landscapes once dominated by industry and later reclaimed.
In a world where environmental change is often conveyed through striking images of global warming, Foster offers a different perspective, one that considers Earth’s continual evolution and the visible traces of time’s passage. Organized into four themes: geological, biological, human and the fleeting, this exhibition invites viewers to engage with time at every scale, from the span of a moment to the stretch of millennia, while reflecting on the enduring impact of human presence.

Gretchen Durst Jacobs: What the Body Carries
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | The Contemporary Dayton, 25 W. Fourth St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Gretchen Durst Jacobs: What the Body Carries
February 4 – 28, 2026
Opening Reception: February 4, 6 – 8 pm
Closing Reception: February 28, 4 – 6 pm

Gretchen Durst Jacobs: What the Body Carries features new work from the Dayton-based artist. These encaustic monotypes, which merge painting with printmaking, emanate from the body, using gesture, scale, and repetition to explore how experience is physically and emotionally carried. Her abstract compositions balance intuition and structure, with grids often acting as quiet frameworks that hold movement, memory, and sensation in tension. Each encaustic monotype, created through a process that uses hot wax and pigment transferred onto a surface, is unique, and invites viewers to contemplate how feeling takes shape through mark, color, and rhythm.
Artist Statement
My paintings and prints begin with the body. Rooted in somatic experience and attentive to the inner life, the work explores how feeling is carried, processed, and transformed through physical gesture. I often work at a scale that matches my full reach—fingertip to fingertip—so each mark records movement, presence, and intuition. At times a grid enters the work as a quiet stabilizing force, allowing chaos, memory, and motion to coexist within a shared structure.
Although abstract, the work is grounded in more than twenty-five years of painting from direct observation. What has long drawn me to the landscape is how closely it mirrors human experience—its resilience and adaptation, its tenderness, and its moments of tension. Through color, gesture, and layered marks, I move through lived experience as a continuum, allowing feeling to take shape. Each work is an attempt to reconcile emotion with form, to honor what we carry, and to give shape to what cannot always be spoken.
All artworks in this exhibition are available for purchase. Please visit the reception desk or speak to a Staff member to purchase. Proceeds support both the artist and The Contemporary Dayton’s mission to connect artists and audiences through accessible, engaging contemporary art experiences.

About the Artist

Gretchen Durst Jacobs creates abstract paintings and prints, often utilizing a grid and bold, gestural marks to explore our relationship with the self and the natural world. She received her MFA from the University of Cincinnati in 2008 and her BFA from Wright State University in 2000. She attended the New York Studio School for Drawing and Painting Marathons and Summer Sessions in 2000 and 2003. In 2024, she received the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District Individual Artist Grant.
Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Internationally. Regional exhibitions include the Dayton Museum of Art; Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; Dana L. Wiley Gallery, Dayton, OH; University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH; the Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland, OH; and Ohio Northern University, Ada, OH. Her international exhibitions include the Lambton Heritage Museum, Ontario, Canada; Alten Feuerwache Loschwitz and Grafikwerkstatt, Dresden, Germany; and the Dayton/Kyoto Print Exchange, Kyoto, Japan. She has permanent public art installations on view at the Dayton Metro Library and the Kettering Government Center.
She is represented by the Dana L. Wiley Gallery. Durst Jacobs works full time in her studio in Dayton, Ohio, and also maintains a studio in Ontario, Canada. Since 2017, she has served as the President of the Dayton Printmakers Cooperative.

Temporary Exhibit: Ordinary Lives
2026-02-27 | The International Peace Museum, 10 N. Ludlow St., Dayton, OH, 45402
“Ordinary Lives imagines Palestinian existence as an unbroken continuum—a lineage of care, memory, and everyday beauty that stretches from ancient ritual to the present moment. Across the gallery, Mona Gazala’s photographic works and George Harb’s intimate family archive come together to affirm that Palestinian life is shaped not solely by survival, but by an enduring inheritance of joy, dignity, and deep interior worlds.

In Gazala’s images, ancestral echoes surface through gestures and objects that bridge archaeology and lived experience. Portraits that invoke ancient forms of veneration and photographs that draw on the quiet symbolism of archaeological fragments work in concert to honor the overlooked, the ordinary, and the deeply rooted. Whether reimagining the visual language of early ancestral practices or elevating humble shards as vessels of story, these works collectively underscore a truth that stretches across millennia: what persists is reverence—reverence for family, land, and the accumulated layers of Palestinian life.

These themes resonate through the collage of George Harb’s archival videos and photographs spanning the diaspora, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and greater Palestine. His extensive family documentation—childhood scenes, celebrations, rites of passage, and landscapes of home—reveals generations living with tenderness, intuition, and grounded connection. It offers a glimpse of Palestinian joy and interiority, sustained independently of external forces and carried forward despite trauma.

Together, Gazala’s contemporary works and Harb’s historical archive form a unified narrative of continuity: a testament to the ancient and ongoing pulse of Palestinian life. Their stories—rooted in ritual, memory, everyday gestures, and deep familial ties—assert that Palestinian presence has never been broken.”

Sandra Aska, Andy Holliday, & Paul Rienzo Exhibits
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | Galleries at Sinclair College, 444 W. Third St., Bldg. 13, Dayton, OH, 45402
The Sinclair Community College Art Department is pleased to present works by Sandra Aska, Andy Holliday, and Paul Rienzo in the Burnell R. Roberts Triangle Gallery and Works on Paper Gallery. Capturing moments of perplexity, quirkiness, thoughtfulness, and beauty, Aska gives clay life through her figurative sculptures. Toolmarks and fingerprints left in the works imbue an expressionistic looseness to the forms. She works intuitively by allowing each form to emerge from the clay and invites the viewer to offer their own interpretation. Holliday’s non-representational prints stem from images that are observed, recorded, and repeatedly reprocessed through systems to alter them. Exploring the idea of attention as a measure of value, he gathers an archive of media to process, builds complexity, and subsequently creates the final work through traditional printmaking techniques. Rienzo’s photorealistic still life paintings explore archetypal themes found across cultures and historical periods. The depicted objects are laden with symbolic power and when combined with others from differing cultures and eras, explore the idea of untold myths and interconnectivity. There will be a virtual artist talk via Zoom on February 20, 2026, at 12pm. Visit www.sinclair.edu/artgalleries for details. The exhibitions will be on display from February 10 – March 13, 2026. Galleries are located on the fourth floor of building 13 (located at West Fifth and Perry Streets). The galleries are free and open to the public from 8am–6pm Monday–Friday and 9am–12pm Saturdays. Free and accessible parking is located in Parking Lot K.

RESILIENCE
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | Edward A. Dixon Gallery, 222 N. St. Clair St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Resilience opens at the Edward A. Dixon Gallery on February 5th featuring several local artists ranging from a University Student to 30 year career artists. This exhibition is the gallery’s response to Black History month and features images that are powerful, regal and positive. Please, mark your calendars for the Opening Reception on Thursday, February 5th from 5pm-8pm. The exhibition dates are February 5th through March 15th.

Ice Skating
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | RiverScape MetroPark, 237 E Monument Ave, Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Sheltered under the covered pavilion, the MetroParks Ice Rink sets the scene as a perfect winter wonderland in downtown Dayton. While the rink is open, you can enjoy delicious treats from the concession area, including a cup of hot chocolate. Take advantage of fun skating activities, such as lessons, themed skating nights and more. Visit metroparks.org/ice-rink to learn more, find daily open hours, and see a schedule of events. Admission: $7 daily, ice skate rental: $3 daily. Season passes available. Ages 3 and under are free with a paying adult. 278-2607.

Polar Bear Express
2026-02-27, 2026-02-26 | Downtown Dayton
Book a ride on the abominably decorated Pedal Wagon for a 2-hour pedaling adventure through the fest streets of Dayton and to the best bars and restaurants. Reservations required. pedalwagon.com/dayton

Music Bingo Thursdays
2026-02-26 20:00 | The Trolley Stop, 530 E. Fifth St., Dayton, OH, 45402, USA
We have music bingo every Thursday! It’s free to play, lots of fun, hosted by KG, and there are prizes galore. Come check it out!

Open Mic Night
2026-02-26 19:30 - 22:30 | The Barrel House, 417 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Open Mic Night – sign up online, then show up and show out.

Midwinter Break
2026-02-26 19:30, 2026-02-26 17:15, 2026-02-26 15:10 | THE NEON, United States
Longtime retired couple Stella and Gerry realize that their relationship has reached a crossroads while on holiday in Amsterdam. After so much time and so many memories, long-held promises and deeply concealed wounds threaten to come to light and force them to confront their future.
A stirring meditation on faith, commitment, and the enduring power of love.
Director
Polly Findlay
Producer
Guy Heeley, Floor Onrust
Cast
Lesley Manville, Julie Lamberton, Ciarán Hinds

Oscar Shorts 2026 Live Action
2026-02-26 19:20, 2026-02-26 14:50 | THE NEON, United States
Overview
All five Oscar nominees for “Best Live Action Short Film” will head to THE NEON starting Feb. 20.
Here are this year’s contenders:
THE SINGERS – Dir. Sam A. Davis | United States | 18min
BUTCHER’S STAIN – Dir. Meyer Levinson-Blount | Israel | 26min
A FRIEND OF DOROTHY – Dir. Lee Knight | United Kingdom | 21min
TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA – Dir. Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata | France, United States | 36min
JANE AUSTEN’S PERIOD DRAMA – Dir. Julia Aks and Steve Pinder | United States | 12min
Some films in this program contain adult language, adult themes, and sensual images. Recommended for persons 17 and up.

Community Workshop – Flourish and Flow: An Oil Painting Journey
2026-02-26 17:30 - 19:30 | The Dayton Art Institute, 456 Belmonte Park N, Dayton, OH, 45405, United States
Our artist-led workshops are designed to make community connections between our guests, local artists, and The Dayton Art Institute through conversation and artmaking. Flourish and Flow: An Oil Painting Journey Date: Thursdays, April 10, 17 and 24, and May 1 and 8 – 5:30–7:30 p.m Cost: $100 for museum members; $125 for non-members Ages: 18+ In this multi-session workshop series, local artist Jamaal Durr leads participants through an exploration of the fundamentals of oil painting. Sessions will focus on layering, blending, and texture while developing skills through the creation of personalized artwork featuring birth flowers. Jamaal Durr, a Contemporary Artist, is recognized for his figurative works that intimately blend reality and the surreal. Using materials like oil paint, charcoal, and graphite, he explores themes of identity and self-reflection through his timely narratives. Jamaal has expanded his capacity within the realm of Art, having also gained experience as a Curator, Teacher, and Muralist. Jamaal is primarily self-taught, having only received a couple of years of formal training at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton, OH and a brief stint studying architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Oscar Shorts 2026 Animation
2026-02-26 17:20 | THE NEON, United States
We’re delighted to once again bring all the Oscar nominees for “Best Animated Short Film” (plus one additional film that was shortlisted) starting Feb. 20.
Here are this year’s films:
THE THREE SISTERS – Dir. Konstantin Bronzit | Israel, Cyprus | 14min
FOREVERGREEN – Dir. Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears | United States | 13min
THE GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS – Dir. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski | Canada | 17min
BUTTERFLY – Dir. Florence Miailhe | France | 15min
RETIREMENT PLAN – Dir. John Kelly | Ireland | 7min
ÉIRU **Shortlisted- Dir. Giovanna Ferrari | Ireland | 13min
Some films in this program include some disturbing and mature content and may not be suitable for young children.

From Page to screen: Beloved, Morrison, and Memory – America 250
2026-02-26 17:00 - 20:30 | Dayton Metro Library – Main Library, 215 E. Third Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
From Page to screen: Beloved, Morrison, and Memory – America 250, Thursday, February 26, 5-8:30 pm, Main Library, Bassani Theater Off Third, 3rd Floor: Reflect and engage in conversation as segments of Beloved (Rated R), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ohio native Toni Morrison, are shown and discussed by guest panelists and the audience. Discussion may explore the film’s major themes, its relationship to the novel, and its cultural impact. Registration is required. Adults

Be My Neighbor Day
2026-02-26 17:00 - 18:00 | Dayton Metro Library – Main Library, 215 E. Third Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
Be My Neighbor Days will feature stories, songs, clips from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and hands-on activities. PreK-Kindergartener children will explore themes of kindness, sharing, and being a good neighbor. Registration is not required. The program is offered in partnership with ThinkTV/PBS. For more information, visit DaytonMetroLibrary.org or call the Library’s Ask Me Line at 937.463.2665.

February sessions:

Monday, February 2, 11 am-12 pm, Miami Township Branch
Thursday, February 5, 5-6 pm, Main Library, Children’s Creativity Space
Tuesday, February 10, 1-2 pm, Kettering-Moraine Branch
Thursday, February 12, 5-6 pm, Main Library, Children’s Creativity Space
Thursday, February 18, 11 am-12 pm, Huber Heights Branch
Thursday, February 19, 5-6 pm, Main Library, Children’s Creativity Space
Monday, February 23, 11 am-12 pm, Vandalia Branch
Thursday, February 26, 5-6 pm, Main Library, Children’s Creativity Space

From Page to Screen: Beloved, Morrison, and Memory Reception
2026-02-26 16:00 - 17:00 | Dayton Metro Library – Main Library, 215 E. Third Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
From Page to Screen: Beloved, Morrison, and Memory Reception, Thursday, February 26, 4-5 pm, Main Library, Bassani Theater Off Third, 3rd Floor: This opening reception for From Page to Screen: Beloved, Morrison, and Memory – America 250 offers an opportunity to gather, connect, and enjoy light refreshments. Presented in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Registration suggested. Adults

Magic Carpet Concerts: Hansel & Gretel
2026-02-26 11:30 | Dayton Masonic Center, 525 W. Riverview Ave., Dayton, OH, 45405-4702, United States
Join Hansel and Gretel as they navigate a magical forest, encountering a delectable gingerbread house and triumphantly defeating a wicked witch in this engaging adaptation of the classic fairy tale. This performance, created specifically for young audiences, blends the orchestral music of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and the artistry of the Dayton Opera Artists-in-Residence with narration and dialogue.
