Arts editor HELEN MUSA leads this week’s Artsweek column with details of the National Museum’s Community Day on Friday. 

The National Museum of Australia has framed its January 26 celebrations as Community Day 2024, billed as a morning of culturally diverse programs, activities, music performances and weaving demonstrations. There will be free entry to the Tim and Gina Fairfax Discovery Centre and a line-up of top First Nations, Pacific and multicultural musos. Lawson Crescent Acton Peninsula, Friday morning.

Brilliant 24-year-old Turkish pianist Korkmaz Can Sağlam will be performing music by Bach, Shostakovich, Chopin and Liszt, Wesley Music Centre in Forrest, January 30.

The Ovations are the newish Canberra/Queanbeyan performing arts awards established a couple of years ago when theatrical and dance communities called for alternative awards specifically acknowledging local independent performing arts. With their big Ovations Awards Dinner coming up at the Hellenic Club, Woden, on February 2, nominations for a superstar Standing Ovation recipient are still open until January 29, visit ovations.org.au then click on “Standing Ovation Nomination.”

ANU has announced that the AD Hope Building will need to be temporarily closed for hail remediation works, meaning that the Classics Museum will have to bunker down in a temporary work and teaching space in the Banks Building with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology before the expected reopening of the museum around the end of June. None of this will impact upon the Friends’ AGM, to be held in the nearby Research School of Social Sciences Auditorium at 5.30pm on February 8.

The NFSA is taking a deep, dark  look at Australian culture in its  choice of films this week at the Arc Cinema, NewActon: The Nightingale, January 25; The Babadook, January 25; Winhanganha, January 26;   Romper Stomper, January 27; Nitram, January 28 and Mystery Road, January 31.

Galleries

• Florisma is an exhibition of large acrylic abstract paintings and ceramics painted en plein air in Caroline Reid’s Canberra garden in spring 2023. Opens at the ANCA Gallery, Dickson, January 31 and runs to February 18.
• Simon Ward, from Scotland, has been artist-in-residence at Canberra Potters since October and his three-day farewell exhibition will display the works made on-site over the past three months. Works will be for sale on a “cash & carry” basis.  January 23-25, closing/farewell 6pm, January 25.
• M16 Artspace, Griffith, has three new exhibitions and a Chutespace installation opening on January 25: Trans(ap)parencies by Anthea Da Silva, un/spoken by Saskia Haalebos, Glyph by Clare Martin and in Chutespace, There Is No Lead Mine Here by Andrew Robards, Gus Armstrong and Jo Albany. Until February 18.
• PhotoAccess launches VIEW2024, featuring Caleb Arcifa, Juncture Collective, Rose Hartley, Brittany Hefren, Emma Phillips and George Pople. PhotoAccess Gardens, Griffith, January 25-March 9.