Jacksonville, FL – Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
Mexico City, Mexico – Museo de Arte Popular
Saltillo, Mexico – Centro Cultural La Besana
Mexico City, Mexico – Museo del Objeto
Slow Art Day 15th Anniversary Annual Report
Slow Art Day 2026 is coming up Saturday, April 11, and I’m happy to announce today the publication of our 2025 Annual Report, which details many of the events held last year.
Read it and get inspired to plan your 2026 events (register your museum, gallery, church, sculpture park or movie theater for 2026, if you have not yet done so).
Over 15 years, educators and curators at museums and galleries around the world have built something extraordinary:
– More than 1,500 events across every continent — including Antarctica
– Endless creativity in how people experience art slowly
– The rise of citywide events — Mexico City had 37 venues in 2025 and is growing to 55+ in 2026 – to Central Illinois, which helped pioneer the citywide model and this year is producing a region-wide Slow Art Day/weekend of events up and down Route 66
– Expansion into churches, hospitals, and community spaces
– New collaborations, including with Never Search Alone, bringing job seekers together through art and community
At its core, the idea remains simple: help people slow down and really see.
But there is a second idea — to open up the art world.
No expertise required. No background assumed. Just people, looking at art, together.
This movement is built locally, event by event, by people like you.
And in a time of growing division and isolation, that matters more than ever.
When people gather to look slowly at art — and then talk about what they see — they connect. They build trust. They remember their shared humanity.
That is what thousands have helped to create.
We look forward to our next 15 years when we believe art will be ever more important.
Thank you.
Phyl Terry
P.S. I want to give special thanks to the Slow Art Day Annual Report team led by Ashley Moran, Editor, and writers Johanna Bokedal, and Jessica Jane Nocella. They work tirelessly to produce this Annual Report and volunteer weekends, mornings, evenings throughout the year.
They fit this in between their full-time job (Ashley Moran at Comcast in the United States), full-time job/PhD student (Johanna Bokedal in Norway), and full-time post-doc work (Jessica Jane in Italy).
And while we are at it, let’s celebrate volunteer Maggie Freeman who is the global director and registrar for Slow Art Day. Maggie started volunteering 10 years ago when she was a sophomore at Mills College. Today, she is finishing her PhD in Islamic Art and Architecture at MIT and somehow, like the others, still finds time to volunteer.
A “Very Slow Viewing Tour” at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion in Estonia
For their first Slow Art Day, Tallinn Art Hall Lasnamäe Pavilion in Estonia hosted a contemplative “very slow viewing tour” within the exhibition featuring works by artists Vladimir Yankilevsky and Valeri Vinogradov.
Led by curator and guide Aljona Tubaleva, the session invited visitors to enter the exhibition space as a spiritual and emotional landscape—a place where human feelings, perceptions, and ideas unfold beyond what is immediately visible.
The tour began with a grounding exercise that helped participants slow down and focus inward before turning their attention to the artworks around them. In this calm atmosphere, visitors explored the relationships between colors, shapes, and emotional undertones within the works.
Participants were encouraged to notice how their interpretations evolved as they learned more about the exhibition’s curatorial concept and the artists’ intentions. By consciously shifting their focus—sometimes inward toward their own emotional responses and sometimes outward toward the artwork—visitors discovered how meaning can change through attentive observation.
The slow tour emphasized curiosity and personal reflection. Rather than rushing through the exhibition, participants were invited to think about how their feelings might take shape within the “artistic landscape” created by the works on view.
We at Slow Art Day HQ are grateful to Aljona Tubaleva and the team at Tallinn Art Hall for creating such a thoughtful and meditative slow looking experience at the Lasnamäe Pavilion.
We look forward to what they come up with for Slow Art Day 2026, which is coming up April 11, 2026.
— Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. If you have not yet registered your museum of gallery for Slow Art Day 2026, please do.