Avon River Heritage

Avon River Heritage Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Avon River Heritage, History Museum, 17 Belmont Road, Newport Landing, West Hants, NS.

The Heritage & Culture Centre consists of curative work spaces and public display areas as well as the Planters Sea Chest Gift Shop, the Lydia and Sally Café and Artists Landing Gallery. Our mission is to engage and inspire our community and beyond through preserving, sharing, and celebrating Avon River area stories, heritage, arts, culture, ecology, and interrelationships among all peoples of th

is area and their environment. Our Museum consists of curative work spaces and public display areas as well as the Planters Sea Chest Gift Shop, the Lydia and Sally Café and the Artists Landing Gallery.

Today we bid farewell to our summer staff, Kevin and Will. Together with Sadie, they've done an incredible job engaging ...
08/29/2026

Today we bid farewell to our summer staff, Kevin and Will. Together with Sadie, they've done an incredible job engaging visitors and creating content for social media - which has brought in many new visitors to the centre this season! We will miss having them around and wish them the best of luck as they continue with their studies this fall.

08/29/2026

The Big Ass Art Show ends tomorrow, if you haven't made it out yet to explore this unique exhibit, be sure to make a plan to stop in this afternoon or on Sunday!

September is shaping up to be a great month at the Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre! 🍂📸🎨🍯🎶We’ve got art, music, crea...
08/28/2026

September is shaping up to be a great month at the Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre! 🍂📸🎨🍯🎶

We’ve got art, music, creativity and plenty of community spirit packed into the month:

📸 All Month — Avon Photography Club Group Exhibition
See the world through a local lens with a group exhibition featuring members of the Avon Photography Club. Meet the photographers at the opening reception on September 5th from 2–4 pm. The exhibition runs weekends throughout September, 10 am–5 pm.

✏️ September 19 — Sketch Workshop with Robert Plante
Build confidence in visual expression and creative thinking while exploring sketching techniques with Robert. 1–4 pm | $60 per person. Space is limited, so be sure to reserve your seat!

🎶 September 20 — Sofa Sundays
Settle in for an afternoon of live music featuring Ellen Gibling + The Dusty Halos, hosted by the Full Circle Festival. Music runs from 3–5 pm.

🐝 September 26 — Honey Harvest Festival
Our annual celebration of bees, honey, local food and the harvest returns! Browse 28 vendors, meet local beekeepers and artisans, explore a demonstration hive, enjoy food and drink, and support the Avon Spirit Shipyard at our BBQ fundraiser. 10 am–4 pm.

There’s lots happening in Avondale this September - come for an exhibition, take a workshop, enjoy some live music, celebrate the bees… or join us for all four! 💛

17 Belmont Road, Newport Landing/Avondale, West Hants
Full details at avonriverheritage.com.

08/28/2026

🐴 ADIRA — Donna Smith

The Big Ass Art Show has encouraged our artists to stretch beyond their usual scale, materials and comfort zones—and Donna Smith definitely took that challenge to heart.

Donna has always been creative, first through music and singing and, over the past decade, increasingly through painting in acrylic. She credits the encouragement and shared knowledge of fellow artists at Open Studio with helping her develop new techniques, strengthen her compositions and build the confidence to exhibit her work publicly.

For Adira, Donna decided to try something very different.

This 40" × 50" mixed-media piece combines silk fusion, acrylic paint, wood and photography to create a portrait of a beautiful local Clydesdale mare named Adira.

Donna jokes that she “loves a project”—and that may be a bit of a Big Ass lie, because this one proved to be quite the challenge! But that sense of experimentation, persistence and willingness to try something new is exactly what makes this exhibition so much fun.

Donna Smith
Adira
40" × 50"
Mixed Media

⏳ The Big Ass Art Show closes this Sunday, August 30.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit yet, this weekend is your last opportunity to see Adira and the full exhibition of oversized works by members of the Avon River Arts Society.

Artists Landing Gallery
Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre
Open 10 am–5 pm

08/27/2026

TOTALLY TULIPS — Sara Sheffield 🌷

Bold, bright and bursting with colour, Sara Sheffield’s Totally Tulips brings a joyful splash of the garden into the Big Ass Art Show.

Working from her home studio in West Hants, Sara explores her creativity through acrylic and watercolour painting as well as mosaic. She also enjoys taking her paints outdoors and has participated in Annapolis Royal’s Paint the Town for the past 15 years.

Sara’s creative curiosity extends well beyond the canvas. Inspired by mosaic work she encountered during travels in Europe, she began experimenting with glass and other materials, creating colourful designs on everything from terracotta pots and birdhouses to trays and old wooden windows.

Whether working with paint, glass or found surfaces, Sara embraces the opportunity to explore new ways of making - and Totally Tulips is a wonderful example of her love of colour and the natural world.

Sara Sheffield
Totally Tulips
Acrylic
24" × 36"
$925

🌷 Only a few days remain to see the Big Ass Art Show!

The exhibition closes this Sunday, August 30, so if you’ve been meaning to visit, now is the time to come see Sara’s work alongside an eclectic collection of oversized pieces by members of the Avon River Arts Society.

Artists Landing Gallery
Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre
Wednesday–Sunday | 10 am–5 pm

08/26/2026

🌎 MOMMA EARTH - Tacha Reed

Some works take years to find the space they were always meant to occupy.

Created in 2010, in the months following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Tacha Reed’s Momma Earth began as a response to witnessing unimaginable loss from afar - and to questions about the immense forces beneath our feet.

The monumental figure is both woman and world. Continents stretch across her body as she appears to cradle the Earth itself, conveying vulnerability and exhaustion, but also strength, resilience and care.

For Tacha, the piece also represents an important point in her own artistic journey.

What began with a fascination with tectonic plates, earthquakes and the shifting surface of our planet developed into a much longer exploration of the relationship between people and place. Those same questions continue to surface in her work today through the landscapes of the Avon River and Bay of Fundy, changing coastlines, tidal rivers, endangered ecosystems and the ways human actions intersect with the natural world.

Sixteen years after creating Momma Earth, the Big Ass Art Show finally provided the opportunity to install the work at the scale originally envisioned - standing approximately nine feet tall.

Monumental, contemplative and quietly powerful, Momma Earth reminds us that the Earth is not simply the backdrop to our lives. It is alive, dynamic and constantly reshaping itself - and we are part of it.

Tacha Reed
Momma Earth
2010

🌎 The Big Ass Art Show closes this Sunday, August 30.

There are only a few days left to experience Momma Earth and the oversized works created and exhibited by members of the Avon River Arts Society.

Artists Landing Gallery
Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre
Wednesday–Sunday | 10 am–5 pm

08/26/2026

🌸 COMING & GOING — Titia Jetten 🌿

There are just a few days left to catch the Big Ass Art Show, and Titia Jetten’s Coming and Going is a piece you’ll definitely want to see from both sides!

Trained in graphic design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Titia has spent her creative life as a designer, illustrator, curator and maker. Her work is unmistakably her own - bright, bold, colourful and wonderfully bohemian, yet always grounded by a keen eye for design.

Titia is also drawn to giving unexpected materials a new life. Scrap paper, cardboard, old books, textiles, driftwood and found objects can all become part of her creative vocabulary.

For Coming and Going, the canvas is particularly unusual: a solid pine, late Victorian interior door.

On one side, Coming: Smelling the Roses 🌹
Turn it around and discover Going: Bindweed: Nature’s Rebel 🌿

Using oil pastel, tinted beeswax and shellac over the door’s existing undercoat, Titia transforms an everyday architectural object into a playful, two-sided work of art—one that feels perfectly at home in a show where artists were encouraged to think BIG.

Titia Jetten
Coming and Going — two-sided
Coming: Smelling the Roses
Going: Bindweed: Nature’s Rebel
Late Victorian solid pine interior door, existing undercoat, oil pastel, tinted beeswax & shellac
$285

⏳ The Big Ass Art Show ends this Sunday!

If you’ve been meaning to visit—or come back for another look—this is your last week to explore these oversized works by members of the Avon River Arts Society.

Artists Landing Gallery
Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre
Open Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm

08/25/2026

Wednesday is our ParticipACTION Community Celebration in Victoria Park and we are starting the event early with a SENSORY TIME from 4:00-5:00 pm.

This is a time for individuals who require smaller crowds and quieter spaces, so they can feel comfortable joining in on the fun!

During this time, you will be able to access all of the FREE things that we will be having for the main event from 5-7, including the BBQ, Snacks, Face Painting, Games and Bouncy Castles!

08/25/2026

We’re all about the HONEY! 🍯🐝 

If you joined us for last year’s Honey Harvest Festival, you’ll know there’s something pretty special about seeing the Avon Spirit Shipyard filled with local makers, growers, bakers, beekeepers - and a whole lot of honey! 💛

On Saturday, September 26, we’re doing it all again, and this year’s market will feature 28 fantastic vendors from across our region!

Expect plenty of local honey, preserves, baking, pottery, natural products, farm-fresh goods, handcrafted treasures and bee-inspired creations, along with opportunities to meet local beekeepers and learn a little more about the remarkable pollinators behind it all.

And, of course, come hungry! We’ll have food on site throughout the day, including a special honey-inspired menu from Lydia & Sally Cafe and our BBQ fundraiser in support of the Avon River Heritage & Culture Centre.

Honey Harvest Festival
Saturday, September 26, 2026
10 am - 4 pm
Avon Spirit Shipyard & Newport Landing Waterfront Park
Avondale/Newport Landing, West Hants

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing you to this year’s vendors and sharing a peek at some of the honey and bee-inspired goodies they’re bringing along.

For now, here’s a little look back at the fun we had last year. 🍯🌻

Mark your calendar - and bring your appetite!

08/24/2026

🎨 Cut, tear, layer, create!

Remember the colourful, wonderfully textured illustrations in Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar? 🐛 Those iconic images were created using hand-painted papers, cut and layered together to bring his characters to life.

On Saturday, August 29, artist Titia Jetten will show you how to explore this playful approach for yourself during Collage Illustration!

You’ll create your own colourful papers, combine them with found textures and patterns, and experiment with colour, composition and texture as you build an illustration or mosaic of your own.

✨ No special experience needed.
✨ All supplies are included.
✨ Artists of all ages are welcome.

Whether you’re a painter looking to shake up your practice, a collage lover eager to try something new, or someone who simply wants to spend a creative morning making art, this workshop is a wonderful opportunity to play and experiment.

And who knows? You might even leave with the beginnings of your own unique picture book. 📚❤️

Saturday, August 29, 2026
10:30 am–12:30 pm
$45 — all supplies included

We’d love to fill the table for Titia, so if this sounds like your kind of creative morning, please register and join us! And consider inviting a friend - collage is even more fun around a table full of creative people. ✂️

Address

17 Belmont Road, Newport Landing
West Hants, NS
B0N2A0

Opening Hours

Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

(May – October) 902-757-1718

Website

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