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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.

Slow Art Day with Soup at Caloundra Regional Gallery

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For their third Slow Art Day, the Caloundra Regional Gallery in Caloundra, Australia, featured the following five works from “The Local Contemporary Art Prize” exhibition, selected by Gallery Collections Curator Nina Shadforth:

  • Itamar Freed, “Tears and Time I Lost” (2023-2024). Kinetic sculpture, water from Maroochy River, artist tears, glass, wood, and metal. 35 x 50 x 47cm.
  • Erin Van Der Wyk, “Biodiverse” (2024). Relief print and embossing. Ed. 1/30. 50.8x61cm.
  • Michael Civarella, “Cross?” (2023). Acrylic paint, board, hardwood timber frame. 80x70cm.
  • Nicole Voevodin-Cash, “Dying Bed” (2023). LANDscan-digital footage, digital print. Ed 1/5. 120x90cm.
  • Andrew Bryant, “Fractal Form” (2023). Wheel-thrown sculptural clay, satin matte Crystal Glaze over colored porcelain slips, stoneware fired. 45x50x8cm.

“The Local Contemporary Art Prize” competition started in 2014 and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024. It is open to artists living within the Sunshine Coast and Noosa regions, who are invited each year to submit 2D and 3D works across all mediums.

Slow looking at one of the selected artworks.

For this year’s Slow Art Day, participants were first welcomed and given an overview of the 2 hour-long event. They were then invited to look slowly at the five artworks for 5-10 minutes each, and then write down their observations.

Below is the multi-page handout they designed for the session. We encourage educators and curators to look at what they’ve done here. It’s worth considering copying.

Caloundra Regional Gallery Slow Art Day BookletDownload

During the event, music was played on the harp and guitar by local musicians, Graham and Rowena.

Graham and Rowena, local musicians.

Participants getting refreshments ahead of the group discussion.

Following the individual experience with the artworks, the group gathered in a circle with refreshments to share their observations (pictured below). Slow cooked soups and focaccia were provided, courtesy of the Friends of the Gallery. They also provided a bar with bubbles and wine for purchase. The free event was well-attended, with 38 booked attendees.

Slow looking participants in a discussion circle with refreshments during the second part of the event.

At Slow Art Day HQ we appreciate the caring they put into every aspect of this event and love the idea of having soup and bread during the discussion (how cozy!).

We look forward to whatever the Caloundra Regional Gallery team comes up with for Slow Art Day in 2025

-Johanna, Ashley, Jessica Jane, and Phyl

P.S. Stay up to date with events at the Gallery through their Instagram.

P.S.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 here: https://www.slowartday.com/be-a-host/