Yearly Archives: 2024
2023 Slow Art Day Annual Report – Get Inspired!
We are proud to publish our 2023 Annual Report, representing hundreds of hours of work by volunteers to research, compile, and write-up the thousands of hours of creative work of educators and curators around the world.
More than 193 museums and galleries participated in 2023 (plus many more that ran Slow Art Day sessions but did not register with us).
And we researched, wrote, and published reports from 41 of these museums and galleries, which is what you will find in this report.
So, read this and get inspired by what a wide range of museums and galleries did last year including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Sweden’s Nationalmuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Europe’s largest museum complex), The Frederiksberg Museum in Copenhagen, the 15-site citywide Slow Art Day in Bloomington, Illinois, to name just a few.
And please join me in thanking the volunteer team who worked tirelessly all year long to produce this report: Ashley, Jessica Jane, and Johanna. This global team deserve much thanks (please comment or write to me so I can share with them your appreciation ;-).
Thanks!
Phyl
P.S. Read earlier annual reports including: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 (we only started producing these in 2019, nine years after the official launch of Slow Art Day).
Dublin, Ireland – Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts
Oxford, England – Ashmolean Museum
Philadelphia, PA – Barnes Foundation
Lidköping, Sweden – Lidköpings Konsthall
Corridor Contemporary’s First Slow Art Day in Philadelphia, PA
On April 15, Corridor Contemporary, located in the vibrant Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA, hosted their first Slow Art Day in conjunction with the debut of their exhibition Printed Perspectives.
The location in Philadelphia is a sister gallery to owner Erez Zemach’s main gallery in Tel Aviv, both of which exhibit emerging and established Israeli and international artists. They showcase a range of contemporary art from figurative and photorealism to fresh contributions of graffiti and the wider street art vibe.
They kept the design of their Slow Art Day event simple, and recommended that participants choose at least 3 artworks and view them slowly for 5 minutes (perhaps even using a timer). They prompted viewers to consider what other areas of their life might benefit from intentionally slowing down.
The gallery reported that they had quite a successful event with about 100 visitors attending throughout the day. I had the pleasure of being one of those participants, and was particularly drawn to the work of West Philadelphia artist King Saladeen in his solo exhibition: No Middle Cla$$. I found myself taking in his works for much longer than 5 minutes, and I wasn’t alone. They drew quite an audience.
Corridor Contemporary has three floors of galleries, and I found the small, winding staircase to be a perfect intimate spot to look slowly at skateboards adorned with art by Keith Haring from The Skateroom.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we love to see the breadth of institutions that participate in Slow Art Day, from local galleries such as this to the larger museums. It proves that Slow Art is truly accessible to all. I am particularly delighted to have discovered Corridor Contemporary’s gallery in my own neighborhood, and can’t wait for their event in 2024.
– Ashley, with Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. – You can visit their social media here: Instagram | Facebook | X | Pinterest
First Turkish Slow Art Day at Ayzeradant Art Gallery
Ayzeradant Gallery in the city of Izmir hosted Slow Art Day in April of 2023 bringing the slow art movement to Turkey for the first time.
Performance artist and medical doctor Pınar Derin Gençer, based in Istanbul and Stockholm, was invited to perform her work “Watching the Waves”.
Derin works mainly on performance art, visual arts, installation, writing and objects. According to Performance Art Weekly, her art “studies the relationship between the physical, psychological, historical field of the life, of the nature, of the city and the human.”
Derin is the founder/creative director of Istanbul Performance Art, Stockholm Performance Art and 24 Hours Art, and chief curator of Open Performance Space.
In “Watching the Waves”, the viewer experiences ways of thinking about the times between self and world, sensitive knowledge, and the space between object and world.
After the performance, the art director of the gallery, Nihat Özdal, hosted a conversation with the gallery visitors on “Slow Art”, in which participants also got the opportunity to reflect together on the performance.
Below are photos showing some of the stages in the performance by Pınar Derin Gençer. Although seemingly simple, the process of actively following the artist drawing lines on the wall becomes an immersive experience.
The name of the gallery, “Ayzeradant”, comes from the “temple of wisdom” sign that the Armenian poet Tıngır hung at the entrance of his house in Buca in the 1800s. Tıngır was found dead in the grave he dug himself in 1881.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we are excited to see Slow Art Day gaining a foothold in Turkey. We look forward to future events from Ayzeradant Gallery, and hope that they will host a Slow Art Day also in 2024.
-Johanna, Jessica Jane, Phyl and Ashley
PS. Stay updated with events at Ayzeradant Gallery via their Instagram page.