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This sweet opportunity comes to us from the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Pease Park Conservancy, and Ride Bikes Austin – so we know it's a damned good thing indeed. Take the self-guided Art & Parks Tour to explore the best of what Downtown Austin art and parks have to offer through this selection of curated murals, artworks, and green spaces. You can sign up anytime, so click that URL and get ready to learn the most vibrantly visual parts of your city soon – live and in person.

Use your smartphone to access self-guided tours of the outdoor public art sited by UT's award-winning Landmarks program any time you feel like it. BONUS: There's also a free, docent-led tour starting at Marc Quinn's "Spiral of the Galaxy" (1501 Red River) on Sun., Jan. 8, 11am.

In a gear-up for Independent Bookstore Day on April 27, Bolm Arts offers up a new exhibit, “Ode to the Book.” Musicians Jade Parx, Jac Carson, Amir Neubach, Liz Emme, and Nico Little will play as visitors peruse a diverse collection of illustrations, letterpress prints, book shrine sculptures, art books, and art made from books. “Elevating them beyond their functional purpose, artists Stephen Dubov, Sandra C. Fernandez, Emily Mitchell, Kyle Schlesinger, Jennie Tudor Gray and Beckette Rivera have created their own unique tribute to books,” writes the gallery. For more bookworm content, check out a talk by author Eric Heisner, a Western-loving screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker who will speak on the Austin Book Trail April 27. – Lina Fisher

Traveling in Mexico, you frequently encounter changarritos – portable food carts or tienditas run by hardworking entrepreneurs. The carts usually operate outside of any formal regulation and, in that way, mirror the resilience and creativity of Mexican culture. In 2005, artist Máximo González appropriated the concept of the changarrito as a way for artists to take their work directly to the people. The idea came to Austin’s venerable Mexic-Arte Museum in 2012, with dozens of artists displaying art and interacting with the public outside the Downtown gallery. The concept is back and will run through August. – Brant Bingamon

The first Saturday of every month from 1-4pm, the 72 artists housed at the Canopy complex on Springdale Road open their studios to the public, allowing an intimate look into Austin’s visual art scene. Ivester Contemporary and ICOSA Gallery are also open, giving people a chance to see work in progress and fully realized gallery shows, as well as buy or commission new artwork. Sa-Ten, which recently expanded its hours from 7am-9pm every day, provides tasty Japanese libations worth their own trip, so grab a yuzu lemonade to sip and wander. – Lina Fisher

They say Texas is the gun capital of America; no arguments here. And many gun collectors treat them almost like toys, taking pride in amassing safeloads of the things and procuring the latest gadgets. Internationally acclaimed Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti set out to capture images of American gun owners among their massive collections of weapons for “Ameriguns,” resulting in some stunning imagery. This series is juxtaposed with children showcasing their toy collections for “Toy Stories,” for which Galimberti also made observations about socioeconomic and other factors influencing the subjects’ relationship to their possessions, making for a thoughtful and provocative exhibition. – Kat McNevins

Art conservation can be a contradiction: to destroy to preserve. Thus it is with the HRC and its efforts to restore the Clarkson Stanfield album, one of the most remarkable volumes in the history of art photography. More correctly known as “100 Calotypes by D. O. Hill, R.S.A., and R. Adamson,” the collection of over 100 salted paper prints was collated by the photographers for landscape artist Stanfield and depicts the lords, laborers, clergy, and scientists of 19th-century Scotland and the landscapes in which they lived. Currently undergoing repairs, the center staff are using its deconstructed state to display 39 plates, along with more works from Hill and Adamson, as separate works since the first time they were bound. – Richard Whittaker

Tusa, Sicily, in addition to being a beautiful seaside Italian village, was also birthplace to artist Jeffrey Dell’s newest monotypes. He created the works during an artist’s residency, utilizing traditional printmaking materials to capture the vertical nature of his surroundings. In his artist’s statement, Dell explains his goal with the monotypes as interrogating what happens between seeing and understanding images. “The mind wants and expects to see certain things and is capable of leaping ahead,” Dell writes. “Mostly those leaps are amazingly correct, but sometimes they’re wrong. I’m trying to make work that creates a moment when it’s possible to notice such dynamics while also avoiding the ‘punchline’ of an optical illusion – that is, to deny a moment of ‘getting it.’” – James Scott

How do we experience each singular second of our lives? An enormous question for an event listing, sure, but that’s exactly what artist Karn Knutson tackles in her current exhibition. “Knutson attempts to show us ourselves in moments of reflection,” the show description reads, “contemplating the transitions through life, processing the struggles, finding ways forward with knowledge, sometimes hard lessons from our past, and learning from our choices good and bad. She aims to represent the things we all feel but can’t always express until we see something that lets us talk about it outside ourselves.” Maybe the something that unlocks your inner feelings is waiting just inside Link & Pin, ready to unleash all those singular seconds. – James Scott

This local treasure of a venue, run by those Contemporary Austin folks who also bring us the Jones Center shows Downtown, is all about the outdoors – which is perfect for these trickily navigated times of ours, n'est-ce pas? Recommended: Stop by and breathe in the air, enjoy the lawns and gardens and the many examples of world-class sculpture arrayed across the property, and (as Frankie used to say) r-e-l-a-x.

Here's a two-person exhibition that features painting, installation, videography, and sculpture by Moll Brau and Wes Thompson. It's a deep dive into a pool of loneliness, triumph, and rebirth. It's a forest of mazes where fireflies provide the light. It's a show of creations from a pair of terrific, hardworking local artists and you don't want to miss it.

New works by Kelly Breez, Simone Thornton, and Sarah Murphy.

A piece of Dallas artist Molly Sydnor lives in Austin this spring thanks to “After the Rain Part I,” a Big Medium pop-up exhibition of bright textiles. Like a touchable rainbow, the multicolor weavings run ceiling-to-floor in a tiny room of the arts organization’s South Congress Avenue gallery space. The claustrophobic container may “evoke anxiety,” the artist notes, but for Sydnor, the act of weaving is a meditative process. Catch the display from 7 to 9pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or weekends from 11am to 4pm. – Carys Anderson

Enter the fascinating world of illusions in this new venue that boasts a stunning array of intriguing visual, sensory, and educational experiences among new, unexplored optical wonderments.

This multimedia exhibition is a comprehensive exploration of the beauty of botanical forms, expressed realistically and in the abstract, featuring the work of local artist Francine Funke.

This exhibition of new work by Kate Breakey showcases hand-colored photography of the natural world, particularly of Texan and Australian landscapes, animals, and insects.

The opportunity to witness, in person, the creative expression of different times and diverse cultures is one of the perks of city-dwellers everywhere – and exemplified by the collections and traveling exhibitions hosted by UT’s acclaimed Blanton Museum of Art. The Blanton’s newest show displays masterpieces from Edo-period Japan, on loan from the Worcester Art Museum through June 30. These “pictures of the floating world” depict the lifestyle, pleasures, and interests of the urban population – samurais, geishas, kabuki actors, boat parties, palaces, and lush landscapes. As then, so now: Much of who we are is what we do with our lives. – Wayne Alan Brenner

This place, ah, it's one of our favorite places in the entire city; and of course they're properly corona-closed. But check 'em out online right now – it's a rich, wonder-filled website – to whet your appetite for when things get back to … uh … are we still calling it "normal," these days?

Yes, the SARF is welcoming visitors every Saturday – to say hello, apply to adopt special stuffies who need homes, and be dazzled by "the creative endeavors of the most talented stuffed minds ever assembled."

Over six decades, internationally acclaimed artist Hunt Slonem has created his own universe, with pieces in the Met, the Whitney, Guggenheim, et al. and celeb collectors from Sharon Stone to the Kardashian clan. Known for vibrant neo-expressionist works starring the three B’s – bunnies, birds, and butterflies – the New Yorker even paints with a bird or two from his personal aviary perched on his shoulder. This comprehensive display brings together over 100 works spanning oil paintings to blown glass, and is presented in conjunction with “Huntopia,” opening May 4 at San Antonio Botanical Garden. – Kat McNevins

Minneapolis-born and -raised, Elizabeth Olds lived to a sturdy 94 but didn’t get the attention she deserved in her lifetime. The Harry Ransom Center’s new exhibit, which opened Feb. 3 and runs through July 14, aims to rectify that with a first-of-its-kind look back at more than 100 of her prints, paintings, drawings, and illustrations from the 1920s to the 1960s. Of particular note: her depictions of social and political change from her time as a Works Progress Administration printmaker. Want to go deeper? Drop in for one of the daily docent tours. – Kimberley Jones

This is Ray Donley's gallery of art by Native Americans, located in that company of artistic glory called Canopy and resplendent with creations from the original people of our struggling country.

Accenting soft, blurred pastels with sharp acrylics, Yamin Li’s “Gnortsma” exhibit reflects the uncertainty of life as an immigrant. Nothing is quite right in the series’ 20 paintings; the Chinese artist blends “habitual objects” – houses, trees, toys – with more unexpected ones, like a figure rendered with childlike collage bearing a medieval spear and sword. Li debuts her works at a May 2 opening ceremony, which runs from 5:30 to 7:30pm. Afterward, the Central Library will display the exhibit until July 14. – Carys Anderson

Yard Dog presents the vibrant works of Paul Rodriguez, a printmaker from San Miguel de Allende. "And some very cool new paintings by Harry Underwood."

Alejandra Almuelle has been responsible for some of the most compelling works of clay sculpture ever created in this city, many of them predicated on the human body and its potential as a record of experience. This latest exhibition of her artistry, a solo show at Women & Their Work, brings the human form front and center, clayborne with additions of graphite, beeswax, paper, resin, and gold and silver leaf. Adorned, embellished, emboldened, the flesh created from clay comes full circle, a cycle of memory and magic powered by beauty, the viewing of it an experience we recommend recording via your own wonder-hungry rods and cones. – Wayne Alan Brenner

The local powerhouse of figurative painting, the art school that's the smart school for artists of all kinds, they've got a painting-along-at-home series going to help you keep your skills honed in these socially restrictive times, featuring live costumed models posing on camera and a thriving community of creatives rendering that lovely human biotecture from their separate studios. "Join us for a three-hour costumed-model drawing session. Use any supplies you wish, listen to music, share your work, chat with others. It’s a great way to stay connected with your art community!"