Tag Archives: David Zambrano Reyes

Slow Art Day Annual Report – 2024

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The 15th Anniversary Slow Art Day is coming up Saturday, April 5, 2025 and I’m happy to announce today the publication of our 2024 Annual Report, which details many of the events held last year.

Read it and get inspired to plan your 15th Anniversary Slow Art Day 2025 events (register your museum, gallery, church, sculpture park or movie theater for 2025, if you have not yet done so).

More than 180 museums and galleries participated in 2024 (plus many more that ran Slow Art Day sessions but did not register with us). The Slow Art Day volunteer team spent hundreds of hours throughout 2024 and early 2025 researching, writing, and publishing individual reports from 45 of these museums and galleries, all so that curators and educators like you can take inspiration from each other.

Read the report and you will see the impressive citywide event held in Bloomington, Illinois (more than 20 galleries, museums, libraries and other sites participated in 2024). This is the same event that has now inspired Mexico City to host a 33-venue Slow Art Day in 2025.

You’ll see how The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Cloisters hosted again while Mass MoCA in North Adams celebrated Slow Art Day for the 10th time or so. The beautiful and wonderful Athenaeum in Boston hosted for the first time while Philadelphia’s The Barnes Foundation, Glenn Foerd, and the Magic Gardens all hosted Slow Art Day events.

In Washington D.C., the National Museum of Women in the Arts hosted yet again (they are one the founding museums for Slow Art Day) while Florida hosted 7 different venues including the Frost Art Museum and the Lowe Art Museum both in Miami.

Antwerp’s church-based Slow Art movement grew to four churches – and we hope will grow into a global movement of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations.

St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne continued to innovate the art and patient experience (hint: they designed six “slow art cards” with photos of works from their St Vincent’s Art Collection) and in 2025 are reaching out to more hospitals to get them involved.

The Ur Mara Museo in Spain’s Basque country held its 9th Slow Art Day with another full day of slow looking, cooking, eating, and dancing (though we don’t have a report from them this year).

While Ur Mara Museo has been celebrating Slow Art Day for nine years in the Basque country, The Altes Museum (English: Old Museum), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the heart of Berlin’s museum island, held their Slow Art Day. And check this – the “prerequisite” for participation in this workshop was “curiosity and goodwill towards yourself.”

The Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens held the first Slow Art Day in the Greek capital (other Greek cities have hosted – but this year is a first for Athens) while The AGO in Toronto, one of the largest museums in North America, hosted their 9th Slow Art Day.

Europe held three citywide Slow Art Days – Antwerp, Belgium (8 locations), Reims, France (4 locations), Rome, Italy (3 museums).

Belgium hosted 11 locations, Sweden 8, Italy 7, England 6, Germany 5. Read on to get inspired about all the various events around the world.

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.

They all do this amazing work for one reason: to grow the Slow Art Day movement around the world so that more people can learn to look at and love art.

Please join me in giving thanks and appreciation to them. They deserve all the kudos we can give them and more.

And have a great 15th anniversary Slow Art Day coming up April 5.

Best,

Phyl and the Slow Art Day team

P.S. Again, if you have not yet registered your 2025 Slow Art Day with us, please do so.

Slowing Down at Museo MARCO

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[Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 hosts and volunteers to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.]

After looking around the Museo Marco, I chose the artwork The Fuck Off Project by Daniel Ruanova to examine patiently as part of the initiative of Slow Art Day. There were, no doubt, other pieces that called my attention, but the idea of examining this particular piece interested me the most. This artwork consists of a series of metallic rods that are assembled into a set of pointy extrusions. It almost looks like a “wire frame” (like those seen in animation programs) of the back of a porcupine.


Daniel Ruanova. The Fuck Off Project. 1976

At first glance the work certainly seemed aggressive. Although not insulting (at least until you read the title), I initially did not want to get near it. Each of the protrusions appear to be directed toward the viewer, independent of the viewing angle. Judging by the name, I thought that this was precisely the motive of the artist – i.e. to portray aggression.  That made me think of similar shaped things in nature that convey the exact same defensive idea, like pufferfish or the porcupine, and I concluded that the artist may have been inspired by such animals.

Despite my apprehension, I decided to slowly approach the piece. As I got nearer, I noticed that the feeling of aggression became stronger.  I decided to actually walk into it and that changed my experience of the piece completely. There, inside it, I felt protected. The metallic arms were no longer pointed towards me but towards everyone else. It’s as if now their sole purpose was my defense. I sat down to be able to immerse myself deeper, and, as expected, the sense of security was intensified. There, in the midst of all those metal rods, I felt comfortable.

The next thing I noticed was the facial expressions of the people in the museum when they noticed me there. Assuming they shared the feeling I had felt while looking at the sculpture from the outside, I could understand why. I sat there for awhile, watching people pass looking bewildered.

I now understand the Slow Art Day initiative in a better way and can see how slow looking can really transform the experience.  Looking slowly and taking the time to move in and around this artwork completely changed my perception – and – this insightful episode reaffirmed my decision to be a host during the Slow Art Day for Museo Marco in Monterrey on April 27.

– David Zambrano Reyes, Volunteer at MARCO

[Make sure to check out Museo MARCO’s Slow Art Day event in Monterrey, Mexico.]