Tag Archives: Denise Bernabe

Slow Art and Slow Food Come Together in Italy

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For their third Slow Art Day, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART), Italy organized a two-stage event in collaboration with a local Slow Food collective, which specializes in cheese, jam, wine and bread.

For the first-stage, MART invited the Slow Food producers to a private event in order to experience slow looking with the works of art shown below.

  • “Spiralando sull’Arena di Verona”, by Renato Di Bosso, 1935 (from the permanent collection)
  • “L’incantesimo dell’amore e la primavera della vita” by Galileo Chini, 1914 (from the temporary exhibition on Klimt and Italian Art)

“Spiralando sull’Arena di Verona”, by Renato Di Bosso. 1935.
Left panel detail from “L’incantesimo dell’amore e la primavera della vita” by Galileo Chini. 1914.
Right panel detail from “L’incantesimo dell’amore e la primavera della vita” by Galileo Chini. 1914.
Visitors looking at “L’incantesimo dell’amore e la primavera della vita” by Galileo Chini (1914) for Slow Art Day at MART 2023

For the second stage held about a week later, MART invited the public to the same slow looking experience with the same works of art.

This time, however, the Slow Food producers held a food tasting afterwards that featured foods they chose to pair with the art based on things like color and emotion. During the tasting, the Slow Food collective talked about their choices in the pairings.

Wow! What a great design for Slow Art Day.

We encourage museums around the world to do something similar: partner with a local Slow Food organization.

Slow Art collaboration with Slow Food at MART 2023
Slow Food tasting as part of MART’s Slow Art Day 2023

Not surprisingly, the MART hosts (Monica Sperandio, Social Media Representative, and Denise Bernabe, Membership Coordinator), reported that the event was a success on all fronts:

We were very satisfied with the experience and the collaboration as Slow Art and Slow Food have very similar ethics and visions, and we were able to combine two different but similar pleasures of life such as art and quality food.

Monica Sperandio

At Slow Art Day HQ, we love the partnership with Slow Food.

We (one of us is based in Italy) hope to visit MART in the future, and get a chance to see and taste the art and food ourselves.

And, of course, we are eager to see what unique design MART comes up with for Slow Art Day 2024.

-Johanna, Ashley, Jessica Jane and Phyl

P.S. Stay up to date with upcoming events at MART via their Instagram and Facebook pages.

What’s in a Name? Titles and Emotions at MART

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On April 10th, the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART) in Rovereto, Italy, organized a virtual Slow Art Day event that focused on re-titling artworks based on participants’ emotional experiences of slow looking.

Images of three artworks from the MART collection were emailed to the 15 registered participants ahead of joining a Zoom session. Once in the virtual session, participants were given 45 minutes to look slowly at three artworks. They then split into 3 discussion groups, each led by a coordinator, that focused on the emotions and observations of the participants while viewing the works. Participants were then asked to give each artwork their own title based on emotions experienced during the slow looking. The day after the session, participants were sent a brief profile of each artwork that included the emotional titles, the actual title, and the name of the artist, date, and art movement.

Below is one of the artworks along with a word cloud of the emotional titles given by the participants. Some of these translate to: “Disgust”, “Towards tomorrow?”, “Artist’s self-portrait”, “Who am I?”.

Arnulf Rainer, Splitter, 1971
Pastel and oil on photography, cm 60,5 x 50,5, Mart
Titles assigned to the artwork by the participants.

The event was well recieved by all the attendees, with one participant commenting:

“See how this way of following art stimulates a lot of creativity in us. Beautiful. We are like amateur jazz improvisers, extemporizing on a score!”

Participant Quote

That’s right. Slow looking is like jazz improvisation. We love this design of MART’s first official Slow Art Day event and hope that others decide to copy this.

Note that their Slow Art Day was not their first slow looking series. In 2020, local art enthusiast and MART member Piero Consolati approached Denise Bernabe, the Membership Coordinator at MART, about the possibility of organizing slow art sessions. Thanks to their initiative, MART has hosted nine slow art sessions since May 2020, which are now held monthly at the museum (so far, mostly virtually).

At Slow Art Day HQ we are delighted that slow looking has become a staple activity for the MART Museum. Denise Bernabe and Piero Consolati share updates with us about the status of slow art at MART throughout the year.

We look forward to MART’s continued events throughout the year, and their celebration of Slow Art Day in 2022.

– Johanna, Jessica and Ashley

Experimental Slow Looking Session with MART in Italy

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The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rovereto and Trento (MART), Italy, hosted its first experimental Slow Art Day session via Zoom.

The virtual session was attended by a select group of MART members who discussed 4 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection, including Osvaldo Licini’s Bilico (1933) and Fortunato Depero’s Chiesa di Lizzana (1923).

Osvaldo Licini, Bilico, 1933. Part of the Augusto and Francesca Giovanardi Collection: “La Magnifica Ossessione”, MART.
Fortunato Depero, Chiesa di Lizzana (Lizzana), 1923, MART, Fondo Depero. Photo: MART Photographic Archive and Media Library.

Five days before the session, Denise Bernabe, Membership Coordinator at MART, emailed participants images of the artworks along with a brief explanation of slow looking (without disclosing the artists or the titles of the works).

During the hour and a half session, Bernabe facilitated a relaxed discussion in which participants made personal and emotional remarks about the artworks based solely on their immediate slow-looking responses. All participants loved the experience and, as a direct result of this session, the MART is planning to continue integrating slow-looking with future events.

The event was instigated by local art enthusiast Piero Consolati, who has been a MART member for several years and frequently participates in museum events. The session was made possible through his interest in slow looking, which prompted him to approach the staff at MART about hosting an event.

Public engagement with both art and museums is something that Slow Art Day strongly promotes, and the MART event is a beautiful example of the important role art enthusiasts can play in initiating events and furthering the slow art movement throughout the community. At Slow Art Day HQ, we are very excited to hear about the MART’s slow-looking Zoom session, and are thankful to Consolati for reaching out to us with the details.

We look forward to hearing about future slow looking events hosted by MART — hopefully also for Slow Art Day 2021.

– Johanna