An annual weeklong holiday tradition of art programs, activities, and live performances at the Toledo Museum of Art continues this year with a new phone app that will take participants on a treasure hunt through the galleries.

The app, TMAPP, launches on Dec. 27, the first day of the Great Art Escape, with an interactive treasure hunt involving an animal that leaps from a work of art and wreaks havoc on the museum, leaving clues along the way, said Maria Iafelice, the museum’s docent program manager and the project manager for the new app.

Users will be charged with following the clues to find out who did it, she said.

“It’s a fun way for families to go through the galleries and find art, and maybe see some galleries they haven’t before,” Iafelice said.

The app is free and will be available in both the Google Play Store and the iTunes store. The treasure hunt is the first interactive program on the app, but the museum will add others to it, including an audio tour for the Kehinde Wiley exhibit that opens Feb. 10 and runs through May 14.

The Great Art Escape is held at the museum on Monroe Street from Dec. 27-Jan. 1. The week of events also includes flashlight tours, drawing in the gallery events, organ performances, glassblowing demos, and children’s activities.

For visual artists, some of the more interesting events to consider during the week are the opportunity to draw live models every day from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Great Gallery and live glass-blowing demonstrations that will take place in the Glass Pavilion Hot Shop. Those demos will be at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. every day, as well as at 7 and 8 p.m. on Dec. 30.

The museum also has several exhibitions still going on during the Great Art Escape week, including Shakespeare’s Characters: Playing the Part in Gallery 6, an exhibit that celebrates the 400-year anniversary of the playwright’s death; The Libbey Dolls: Fashioning the Story, in Gallery 18, a collection of 78 fashion dolls that were purchased in 1917 by museum founder Edward Drummond Libbey; and Plexus no. 35 by Mexican-born artist Gabriel Dawe, a textile installation of an indoor rainbow that is created for the space it occupies — in this case, the Great Gallery.

Live performances will occur throughout the week as well, including sounds of the season on the museum’s newly restored dutch cabinet organ, African drums by JP Dynasty, and an indie rock performance by the Antiillains.

For more information or a full listing of events during the Great Art Escape, go to toledomuseum.org.

■ The Toledo Zoo and Aquarium is hosting an exhibition of illustrations that feature aquatic animals and underwater scenes provided by the Mazza Museum.

The Findlay-based Mazza houses one of the world’s largest collections of children’s picture book illustrations. The show in the aquarium’s Reflections Gallery includes 24 pieces, and opened last week. It runs through March 1.

Included in the show are “Whale and Giant Squid” from Down, Down, Down in the Ocean, Christopher Canyon’s “Green Sea Turtle,” and Barbara Helen Berger’s cover art from A Lot of Otters.

“All of the artwork in the exhibit portrays an underwater theme,” said Museum Curator Dan Chudzinski. “Viewers will encounter unforgettable characters from a monstrous whale to a multitasking octopus, as the zoo’s real-life aquatic residents swim about them in the same shared space.”

December admission hours for the zoo are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sundays through Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

For more information, go to newsroom.findlay.edu.

The Toledo Zoo & Aquarium will host the exhibit from Dec. 1 through March 1. For more information about Zoo hours and exhibits visit toledozoo.org.

■ The Bowling Green State University Arts Department is having its faculty and staff exhibition through Wednesday in the Dorothy Uber Bryan and Willard Wankelman galleries of the university’s Fine Arts Center. The exhibition is free.

The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

For more information, go to bgsu.edu.

Send news of art items at least two weeks in advance to rgedert@theblade.com or call 419-724-6075.

First Published December 8, 2016, 5:00 a.m.