The annual event celebrating art.
Slow Art Day is Saturday, April 5, 2025 Join Us!
Photo by Greg Neville
Italian Slow Art Club Visits Venice
March 14th, 2025For their second Slow Art Day, Piero Consolati’s Slow Art Club, an independent group of slow looking art lovers in Italy, decided to focus on the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is packed with amazing 20th-century European and North American art, all thanks to Peggy Guggenheim‘s passion for collecting art and running galleries. The museum itself, once Peggy’s home, is in the stunning Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal.
For the event, the Slow Art Club decided to focus on five works that they had selected from the museum’s website (below you can see the images of three of them).
After slow looking at the selected artworks, participants shared their thoughts and rated the pieces using a subjective scoring system. Participants were thrilled to see the wide range of emotions and aesthetic opinions that slow looking brings out in everyone engaging with art. They really enjoyed discussing what they had observed, but what they appreciated the most was museum visitors joining their discussions and wanting to share their thoughts too.
Over the past 18 months, Piero Consolati’s Slow Art Club has visited nine different museums practicing the art of slow looking, and he reports that their membership is steadily growing.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we celebrate Piero and his Slow Art Club. We love what they are doing not just on Slow Art Day but throughout the year. Amazing!
– Jessica Jane, Johanna, Ashley and Phyl
P.S. Slow Art Day 2025 is coming up on April 5. If you have not done so, please register your museum, gallery, church, sculpture park or movie theater here: https://www.slowartday.com/be-a-host/
Haliburton’s Rails End Gallery Hosts Again in 2024
March 12th, 2025For their 4th Slow Art Day, held in 2024, Rails End Gallery and Arts Center in Haliburton, Canada, invited visitors to look slowly at art from their annual local artist exhibition and then vote for their favorite.
Slow Art Day coincided with the final day of their annual exhibition, making the Slow Art Day event their finale.
For Slow Art Day 2024, staff at the Gallery prepared cards with leading questions that visitors could reference while they looked.
A magnifying glass was also provided to visitors to take a (literal) close look at the art. Ahead of time, each artist had been asked to write a statement which was placed in a binder. Much to the surprise of the Gallery staff, one mother who took part in the event even read aloud from the binder for her children.
Note that Rails End Gallery is a registered nonprofit with an active and arts-minded volunteer community.
Many large museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Gallery of Toronto (Canada’s largest museum) lead the Slow Art Day movement, but we also have a growing number of smaller locations like Rails End Gallery.
We look forward to seeing whatever Rails End Gallery and Arts Center come up with for Slow Art Day this year.
-Johanna, Ashley, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Stay up to date with events at Rails End Gallery and Arts Center through their Instagram
Slow Looking and Dance at the University of Navarra’s Museum
March 11th, 2025For their second Slow Art Day, the University of Navarra’s Museum located in Pamplona, Spain invited visitors to look slowly at “De este paraíso” (“Of this paradise”), 1969, by Manolo Millares. Present at the event were also a professional dancer and a choreographer for a body expression session.
Ahead of Slow Art Day, the event was published to the Museum’s website, and an invitation newsletter was sent to subscribers.
The Slow Art Day session on April 13 took place from 5 to 7 p.m. It was free and there were 20 places available. Between 5 to 6 pm, all participants first looked slowly at the artwork together, followed by a discussion.
From 6 to 7 pm the group moved into another room for the body expression workshop. It was led by the dancer and choreographer Itsaso Álvarez Cano, and visitors were invited to respond to the artwork through dance (Unfortunately there are no pictures from this part of the event).
At Slow Art Day HQ we love the inclusion of the body expression session. We experience art with several of the senses, and moving our bodies seems like a perfect way to extend slow looking into an embodied response.
We can’t wait to see what the Museum at the University of Navarra comes up with for Slow Art Day this year.
-Johanna, Ashley, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Slow Art Day 2025 is coming up on April 5. If you have not done so, please register your museum, gallery, church, sculpture park or movie theater here: https://www.slowartday.com/be-a-host/
P.P.S. Stay up to date with the Museum at the University of Navarra through their Instagram or Facebook.
Bloomington Citywide Slow Art Day
March 10th, 2025For their 5th Slow Art Day, Eaton Studio Gallery in Bloomington, IL., spearhead another citywide Slow Art Day in 2024, and as one of the *18* locations, invited participants to a sip-n-view followed by a conversation with artist Herb Eaton.
Slow Art Day has become a prominent force across Bloomington during the past few years, and Pamela Eaton, who has spearheaded the citywide Slow Art Day, told us that the whole multi-venue celebration has been transformative for art in Bloomington.
“Collaborating with the other artists and galleries in our community for Slow Art Day has given our local art scene more visibility and we are now attracting more local and out of town visitors to our art locations.”
Pamela Eaton
The citywide event received a promotion grant to help cover the cost of printing promotional materials, and Eaton Gallery itself received an Illinois Tourism grant to promote the Art Trail on Route 66 for Slow Art Day.
To conclude the festivities, all Slow Art Day goers across the 18-venue city-wide Slow Art Day event were invited to a closing reception with a prize giveaway at The Hangar Art Company from 2 to 4 p.m. in Downtown Bloomington.
At Slow Art Day HQ we have been delighted to follow the events by Eaton Studio Gallery since they joined the Slow Art Day movement during the Covid19 Pandemic. From designing a drive-by exhibition in 2020 to now leading a city-wide phenomenon — we can’t wait to see how Slow Art Day grows in Bloomington during the years to come.
-Johanna, Ashley, Jessica Jane, and Phyl