Downtown Dayton Partnership

Tony Foster, Exploring Time: A Painter’s Perspective
2026-03-08, 2026-03-07 | 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.

RESILIENCE
2026-03-08, 2026-03-07 | 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.

Vinyl Vinyl Sundays
2026-03-08 | The Barrel House, 417 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Sunday – Vinyl Vinyl Sunday – bring your records, we’ll play ’em

An American Portrait: Gershwin, Barber & Beyond
2026-03-07 19:30, 2026-03-06 19:30 (America/New_York) | The Benjamin & Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center, 1 West Second Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
This electrifying program celebrates the bold sounds and unmistakable spirit of American music. Gershwin’s “An American In Paris” brims with jazzy swagger, while Adams’ “Absolute Jest” spins Beethoven into a playful whirlwind. Barber’s “Adagio For Strings” offers a moment of breathtaking beauty, and Still’s “Afro-American” symphony blends classical tradition with the soul of the blues in a powerful tale of resilience and joy.
Poiesis Quartet
Keitaro Harada, conductor
Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra
George Gershwin: “An American In Paris”
John Adams: “Absolute Jest”
Samuel Barber: “Adagio For Strings”
William Grant Still: Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American”

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
2026-03-07 19:30, 2026-03-07 17:00, 2026-03-07 14:30, 2026-03-07 12:00, 2026-03-06 19:30 | THE NEON, United States
Birmingham, 1940. Amidst the chaos of WWII, Tommy Shelby is driven back from a self-imposed exile to face his most destructive reckoning yet. With the future of the family and the country at stake, Tommy must face his own demons, and choose whether to confront his legacy, or burn it to the ground. By order of the Peaky Blinders…

Calle Malaga
2026-03-07 14:20 | THE NEON, United States
Maria Angeles, a 79-year-old Spanish woman, lives alone in Tangier, Morocco, and enjoys her daily routine. However, her life is turned upside down when her daughter arrives from Madrid to sell the apartment in which she has always lived. Determined to stay, she does everything she can to get her home and her belongings back and, unexpectedly, rediscovers love and sensuality.

Living Legacy: The Permanent Collection of The Dayton Society of Artists
2026-03-07 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.

Hanging Geometric Terrarium Workshop
2026-03-07 12:00 - 15:00 | Now and Zen DIY Studio, 121 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402
reate a modern, nature-inspired piece designed to elevate your space. In this relaxing, guided workshop, you’ll design a hanging geometric planter using a succulent, natural elements, and clean architectural lines. A perfect balance of calm and contemporary design. All materials included Guided instruction Take-home care information No experience needed. https://www.shopnowandzen.com/open-workshop

Sand Art Air Plant Workshop
2026-03-07 12:00 - 15:00 | Now and Zen DIY Studio, 121 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Unleash your creativity in our Sand Art – Air Plant Workshop! This fun and relaxing experience lets you design a vibrant layered sand creation inside a sleek glass vessel. You’ll then bring it to life with easy-care air plants and an array of embellishments. Perfect for beginners and plant lovers alike. No soil, no mess, and no green thumb needed. You’ll leave with a unique, low-maintenance piece of living art to brighten up your space for give as a thoughtful gift.

Train Dreams
2026-03-07 12:00 | THE NEON, United States
Overview
Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including “Best Picture,” we’re bringing TRAIN DREAMS to the big screen for one special screening on Saturday, March 7. Traditional ticket prices apply.
“A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.”
Director
Clint Bentley
Producer
Will Janowitz, Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Michael Heimler, Ashley Schlaifer
Cast
Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand

Open House at the Front Street Studios
2026-03-07 11:00 - 16:00 | Front Street Galleries, 1001 E. Second St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Let the Front Street Studios be your one-stop-shopping location for art, crafts, photography, vintage retail and so much more. Front Street has 150 studios/stores in 3 different historic buildings. Not only do we have an open-house every first Friday of the month, but we are also open every Saturday from 11AM to 4PM.

International Women’s Day Celebration
2026-03-07 11:00 - 14:00 | Dayton Metro Library – Main Library, 215 E. Third Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
Welcome Dayton, in partnership with Dayton Metro Library and Miami Valley Meals, will host an International Women’s Day Celebration on Saturday, March 7. International Women’s Day is a global acknowledgement of the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The community is invited to join the celebration at Dayton Metro Library (215 E. Third St.) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Eichelberger Forum, main floor). The event is free and open to the public. Participants can get hands-on with crafts and art projects while sharing conversations with women of diverse backgrounds, exploring volunteer opportunities, participating in a fun movement session hosted by the City of Dayton Department of Recreation, and sampling delicious bites from local, immigrant-women-owned businesses. For more information, contact Sanghyun Lee, community engagement specialist with Welcome Dayton, at 937-333-3295 or Sanghyun.Lee@daytonohio.gov.

Saturday Art Workshops
2026-03-07 11:00 - 13:00 | K12 Gallery & TEJAS, 341 S. Jefferson St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Saturday Art Workshops for Kindergarten-12th Grade and Adults. Each month explore a different art medium (Clay, Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, Mosaics, Drawing, Photography, in a different theme/artistic style (K-12th grade). For Adults classes in Mosaics, Stained Glass, and Glassblowing. Saturday Classes run from September 2025-May 2026. 11:00am-1:00pm. Call for Costs.

International Women’s Day 2026
2026-03-07 11:00 | The Barrel House, 417 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Join us on Saturday, March 7th as we celebrate women taking up space in the overtly male dominated world of craft beer! We’re featuring a tap list of beer brewed by women and from breweries owned by women!
10% of all draft sales from open to close will be donated to the incredible folks at the Dayton YWCA.
Margot is back 1-5pm slinging Girl Scout Cookies, and DJ Kim L is setting the night vibe 8pm-12am.
Dayton Street Snacks will be on-site to keep your bellies full and happy.

FREE Yoga – Arcade Arts & Wellness
2026-03-07 10:00 - 11:00 | Dayton Arcade, 35 W. Fourth St., Dayton, OH, 45402
FREE Rotunda yoga classes return to the Arcade in early 2026 as part of our ongoing Arcade Arts & Wellness series. Yoga Flow with Tori Reynolds of Speakeasy Yoga The Arcade’s Rotunda, 35 W. Fourth St. Saturday, January 3 – 10 to 11:00 AM Saturday, January 31 – 10 to 11:00 AM Saturday, March 7 – 10 to 11:00 AM FREE and open to all but participating in yoga may require Eventbrite pre-registration and on-site waivers. After your practice ends, plan to grab brunch at Lucho, Table 33, the Garden Grille & Bar at the Hilton Garden Inn, or the 6888 Kitchen Incubator! Series Presented by: The Contemporary Dayton, Friends of the Dayton Arcade, and The Hub Powered by PNC

Arcade Commons – March
2026-03-07 09:00 - 15:00 | Dayton Arcade, 35 W. Fourth St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Experience March Arcade Commons at the Dayton Arcade! Get ready to move, explore, and connect at this month’s Arcade Commons, featuring a Fitness Sampler alongside local shopping, art, and community fun inside one of Dayton’s most iconic spaces. Date: Saturday, March 7 Time: 9 AM – 3 PM Location: Dayton Arcade What to Expect: Retail tenants in the North Arcade Free Bottlecap Magnet Collage craftivity with Pink Moon Goods, Too Fitness Sampler sessions in the Rotunda — drop in and try mini classes with downtown Dayton instructors! 10 AM – Yoga with Speakeasy Yoga (SOLD OUT, but walk-in space is likely) 12 PM – BootyBarre with Space Three 1 PM – Mat Pilates with Soleil Movement Studio 2 PM – Senior Fit with Dayton YMCA Brunch at Table 33, Lucho, 6888 Kitchen, or Garden Grille & Bar Come shop local, break a sweat, and experience the vibrant energy of Arcade Commons!

Let’s Talk Electric Cars
2026-03-07 09:00 - 15:00 | 2nd Street Market, 600 E. Second St., Dayton, OH, 45402, USA
Visit the Market today and meet representatives from Drive Electric Dayton. They will have their Electric Vehicle’s (EV) lined up outside the Market for you to look over and ask questions. This organization supports EV and are also a driving force in this region, pushing for EV infrastructure that will be accessible to everyone, especially those in under-served communities.

Member’s Spotlight Exhibition: Elisha Frontz: vernal equinox
2026-03-07 | The Contemporary Dayton, 25 W. Fourth St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
Elisha Frontz: vernal equinox March 4 – 28, 2026 Opening Reception: March 4, 6 – 8 pm Closing Reception: March 28, 4 – 6 pm
Elisha Frontz: vernal equinox features recent work by a Dayton-based artist, musician, and poet. Working with an interdisciplinary sensibility, Frontz allows material investigation and musicality to inform one another. Her process balances technical precision with intuitive gesture, resulting in compositions that feel at once deliberate and emergent. These mixed-media paintings—watercolor on paper combined with sewing patterns, string, and brass tacks—celebrate the vernal equinox, the astronomical beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. As the sun crosses the celestial equator, day and night reach near equilibrium, marking a moment of balance, transition, and renewal that resonates through Frontz’s layered materials and luminous palette. All artworks in this exhibition are available for purchase. Please visit the reception desk or speak to a staff member for more information. Proceeds support both the artist and The Contemporary Dayton’s mission to connect artists and audiences through accessible, engaging contemporary art experiences.

Becoming: 70 Years of Growth, Expression, and Possibility
2026-03-07 | Dayton Metro Library – Main Library, 215 E. Third Street, Dayton, OH, 45402
Dayton Metro Library’s newest art exhibit, Becoming: 70 Years of Growth, Expression, and Possibility, will be on display Sunday, March 1 – Tuesday, March 31, in the Main Library’s The 2nd Floor Gallery.
Becoming celebrates the artists of United Rehabilitation Services (URS) and the ways creativity serves as a powerful form of communication, identity, and connection.
For 70 years, URS has supported children and adults with developmental and acquired disabilities as they grow, explore independence, and express who they are. Their artwork reflects a journey of becoming, not as a fixed destination but an ongoing process shaped by experience, curiosity, collaboration, and self-expression.
The exhibit features a wide range of abilities, styles, and mediums. Some pieces were created individually, while others were created collaboratively, emphasizing the importance of community, shared effort, and collective voice. The scale of the work is intentionally varied, ranging from small, intimate pieces to large-format installations, mirroring the diversity of expression within the disability community.
Presented during Disabilities Awareness Month, Becoming invites viewers to look beyond labels and assumptions to see creativity, agency, and possibility. Each piece tells a story, not of limitation, but of growth, imagination, and presence.
For more information, visit DaytonMetroLibrary.org/Exhibits or call the Library’s Ask Me Line at 937.463.2665.

Temporary Exhibit: Ordinary Lives
2026-03-07 | 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
2026-03-07 | 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.

Drum Tao – The Best
2026-03-06 19:30 | Victoria Theatre, 138 N. Main St., Dayton, OH, 45402, United States
DRUM TAO explodes on stage with a captivating performance full of flash and fire! Renowned for powerful and athletic drumming, their newest show, THE BEST, blends traditional “Wadaiko” (Japanese drums) with modern energy and theatrical flair. Seen by 10 million spectators across the globe, DRUM TAO shows feature vibrant costumes, dramatic synchronized drumming and movement with a variety of traditional Japanese instruments including flutes and harps alongside the massive taiko drums. They have captivated audiences worldwide – selling out shows in 26 countries – garnering critical acclaim and accolades along the way.

Scythian – Celtic Rock
2026-03-06 19:00 - 22:30 | The Brightside, 905 E. Third St., Dayton, OH, 45402
Get ready for an amazing live experience with SCYTHIAN at The Brightside in Dayton! SCYTHIAN returns to The Brightside to shamrock the house and get Dayton cranked for St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t miss out on a night filled with great tunes, good company, and unforgettable memories. Make sure to swing by and enjoy the show in person—it’s gonna be epic! UPGRADE to VIP experience with MEET n’ GREET HAPPY HOUR with the band and get GUARANTEED PREMIUM SEATING. Tickets $20/advance, $27 day of show, ALL AGES (chaperone under 16). HOW TO GO? Friday, March 6, 2026 5pm – VIP Doors 6pm – General Admission Doors General Admission $20 in advance General Admission $27 at the door VIP $60 Get advance tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scythian-at-the-brightside-in-dayton-tickets-1977307467864 ALL AGES SHOW!
