Image: Lobsang Drubjam Tsering. Medicine Buddha Palace (Copy of first painting from the set of the Tibetan Medical Paintings from Mentsikhang Lhasa) Rebgong county, Qinghai Province, China; 2012-2013 Pigments on cloth. Rubin Museum of Art. SC2013.6
Slow looking workshop in Lehigh University Galleries with Dr. Kristin Baxter, 2023.
On April 15, participants were first led by teaching artist, Dr. Kristin Baxter in meditation and grounding exercises. They then spent some time looking slowly at a thangka painting of the Medicine Buddha on display as part of the exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art (pictured above). Following their experience in the gallery, everyone was invited to create their own mindfulness journal to take home.
LUAG also posted short videos on social media to encourage individuals to slow down and take time to view individual works of art, as well as on LUAG@Home – an online listing of resources on their website.
At Slow Art Day HQ we love that Lehigh partnered with the Shanthi Project to bring meditative practices to their event. Meditation and slow looking are closely intwined as demonstrated by what the Rubin Museum of Art, the Phoenix Museum of Art and others have done since the beginning of our movement.
We look forward to whatever Lehigh University Art Galleries come up with for Slow Art Day 2024.
Arlee Theater in Mason City, Illinois, a locally-owned and operated art deco movie theater, which relies on volunteers to stay open, hosted its first Slow Art Day (and the first one we know of in a movie theater – wow!) with great success.
Exterior of the Arlee Theater in Mason City. The photo is from the Arlee website.
Ahead of the event, local residents were invited to submit an artwork to be considered for a slow looking session to be held on the big screen.
Arlee’s volunteer crew selected five artworks (out of the overall twenty that were submitted) to be shown for five minutes each before Saturday night’s movie screening. These replaced the normal pre-show advertisements, and were accompanied by brief contextual information about Slow Art Day to help orient people arriving at different times. You can view the five works below.
Following the event, a timed video of the artworks was uploaded to the Arlee website and Facebook page so people could participate at home as well.
Marcia Maxson Schwartz, who is an Arlee board member and volunteer, reported that they received a lot of positive feedback, including from visitors who rarely go to museums or galleries. In fact, by bringing art into the movie theater, Arlee is showing all of us how to bring art into the lives of *many* more people.
Further, Schwartz and her volunteer team hope to use this year’s success to create a citywide Slow Art Day in Mason next year.
“While we only had a couple of days to get things together, our team considers it a success and is looking forward to next year – we’ve even started the ball rolling with a store owner and the town’s librarian to coordinate events across this little town next year.”
Marcia Maxaon Schwartz
At Slow Art Day HQ, we love the pioneering efforts of the Arlee Theater and hope they start a movement of movie theaters around the world showing art slowly.
We also love the mix of kinds of institutions that are now participating in Slow Art Day – major national museums, regional and university museums, galleries, outdoor sculpture parks, avant garde art spaces, and local movie theaters in small towns. Hurray!
Art needs to be slowly seen *everywhere* and we thank the volunteers at Arlee for innovating a new way to reach more people.
We eagerly anticipate what Arlee and the town of Mason, which may host a citywide Slow Art Day in 2024, come up with for next year.
For their third year, the Sociedade Das Artes in Serra Negra, Brazil held a hybrid Slow Art Week, hosted by artist Henrique Vieira Filho. The Sociedade Das Artes features works by contemporary artists, along with artistic services and products.
Exploring the theme of “Slow Down, Live Long, and Live Well,” the gallery allowed for four visitors at a time and each visitor chose which works of art they wanted to appreciate slowly (note: the gallery asked that visitors RSVP ahead of their visit to secure a time to attend).
Visitors in the gallery space.
Henrique Vieira Filho wrote, as part of the day, “Living at a fast pace certainly has a certain charm (“live fast, die young”), however, I think the alternative is much more interesting: slow down, live a lot, and live well! The Slow Art Movement advocates the experience of time with greater QUALITY for everything and everyone.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Online advertisementHenrique Vieira Filho holding a copy of O Serrano with an article about Slow Art.
The event was advertised online (see above) and there was also an article written in the local press (also see above).
Visit Google Drive or Facebook to view a video that was created to allow people to explore the exhibit virtually.
We love their focus for 2022 and look forward to seeing what they come up with for next year.
Best,
– Robin, Ashley, Phyl, Johanna, and Jessica Jane
P.S. The Sociedade Das Artes can be found on Instagram and Facebook.
For their fifth Slow Art Day, Wanås Konst, a sculpture park located in southern Sweden, offered a hybrid in-person and online experience focused on artist Katarina Löfström’s outdoor installation Open Source (Cinemaskope).
Katarina Löfström, Open Source (Cinemaskope), 2018/2021, photo courtesy of Erika Alm
Katarina Löfström sees her works as paintings of light and movement. Open Source (Cinemaskope) consists of a screen made from sequins on a tall metal frame. This screen “reflects the surrounding nature and creates a continuous, transforming abstract film”. Read more about Katarina on Wanas Konst’s website.
Over a hundred visitors slowly looked at Löfström’s work, and host Erika Alm shared elements of the exhibit via Instagram, allowing for remote participation.
We at Slow Art Day HQ are really glad to have this museum, whose mission is to produce and communicate art that challenges and changes ways of seeing, involved in our global movement.
We can’t wait to see what they come up with for next year!
Beatrice, photo courtesy of Averie Shaughnessy-Comfort
Each in-person visitor was given a journal in which to record their thoughts, observations, and ideas with the following attached label:
Through guided observation, visitors were asked to think about the following:
Spend a few moments being present with this piece. Pay attention to thoughts/emotions. As you gaze at the piece, notice your breath and your body.
Describe: What do you see?
Analyze: Think of 4 emotions or words that you associate with this piece.
Inquire: What does this piece tell you about yourself?
As you reflect on these photos, jot down a memory in this shared journal that comes to mind.
Out of Many, photo courtesy of Averie Shaughnessy-Comfort
For visitors who couldn’t make it to the museum, art therapy students at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania held a Virtual Open Studio. An aspiring art therapist guided visitors through slow looking techniques.
At Slow Art Day HQ we love seeing the use of art therapy techniques for Slow Art Day and look forward to what the Erie Art Museum comes up with, perhaps again in partnership with Edinboro, for their fourth Slow Art Day
For their second Slow Art Day, the Atelier delle Fate in Calvagese della Riviera, Italy, hosted a week of hybrid in-person and virtual slow looking events.
Atelier della Fate Slow Art Day poster 2022Artwork by Lorenzo Bianchini • Samuel Maccarinelli • Lorena Bianchini. Photo: Lorena Bianchini.
During the week, visitors to the gallery were able to slowly look at a series of 15 artworks by different artists. They were encouraged to write a written response to each of the artworks, including reflection about the emotions or memories evoked by each painting.
The event was also made virtual, and images of each work were shared in staggered intervals to the event page on Facebook, where people also shared their thoughts in the comments.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we especially like that participants who could not visit the gallery in person could still join online. The idea of staggering images to be released across a week allows people to make slow looking part of each day — a practice we love to see.
We look forward to what the Atelier delle Fate comes up with in 2023.
For the online session, which took place on April 1, the eight participants received three artworks by email the day before of the event so that they could look slowly on their own and then come and present their thoughts during the session.
For the in-person event, organizers presented the three artworks at the beginning of the session, then they left the 20 participants to look slowly for 45 minutes.
Participants were given some prompts to think about while looking:
Which elements strike you the most?
Which positive or/and negative emotions do you feel looking at this artwork?
Do you like this artwork asethetically?
Does it evoke you memories? If so, which ones?
They also asked participants to do the following:
Rate their emotional and aesthetic responses with a scale of of 0 to 5 points.
Assign a title for each work of art (we recommend other educators consider adding this fun element).
Think of a common thread connecting the three artworks.
Once their slow looking was done, the museum then divided the participants into small discussion groups of four people each.
Photos from the in-person session can be viewed below.
Gino Severini, Cannoni in azione, 1915 oil on canvas, 50 x 61,5 cm, Mart, Collezione VAF-Stiftung
On the left: Participants engaging with a piece of art. In the middle and on the right: participants working in groups.
Organizers collected the participants feedback and shared with us a few snippets (translated from Italian).
Admiring, observing and talking in a group about the individual and personal sensations that the works made on us was very beautiful, instructive and formative. Feeling how each participant had his own point of view and his impression and how the various impressions intertwined with each other was very welcome and was appreciated by all.
Renzo – Slow Art Day participant
I think we all had a great desire to live this moment, in which physical closeness, looks, voice, were finally used as “normal” means of communication and expression simply belonging to our human race. After these two years of restrictions [for Covid] I think we all felt happy to get to know and re-know each other in a close way and to make a group. Looking together, exchanging opinions and impressions, sharing the different possibilities of reading and interpreting the works was an enriching experience and, let me say, at least for me, even moving.”
Maddalena – Slow Art Day participant
We’d like to add that Denise Bernabè, Membership Coordinator at MART, and Piero Consolati, MART member for several years, have been organizing Slow Art monthly meetings in addition to the annual events. And, due to the pandemic, April 2 was the first time they ran an in-person slow looking session – and they did great!
We very much look forward to what they come up with for 2023.
The Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara campus, located in Zapopan, Mexico, held their first Slow Art Week as a part of their Lead Creative Festival. Lead Creative is a festival that invites young people to seek change through art, and was hosted by Andrea Guadalupe Covarrubias. For the festival, art is broadly defined to include the visual arts, along with instrumental and vocal music, dance, and theater.
With over 1800 participants, this hybrid event had both in-person engagement and social media posts on Facebook and Instagram with an average reach of 700 people per post.
Based on the success of their first Slow Art Day, they plan to hold slow looking sessions throughout the year and not just with visual art, but also with the choir, theater group, and dance artists.
The event was advertised as a part of the Lead Creative festival with the below flyer.
More information can be found on their website, along with videos from past events on their YouTube channel.
We can’t wait to see how Slow Art and Slow Looking are featured in next year’s Lead Creative festival!
To celebrate Slow Art Day 2021 when museums were locked down in England, artist Jo Essen, based in Birmingham, UK, organized a slow looking bike ride to Sarehole Mill.
The historical mill, today a museum and bakery, is well-known for its connection with J. R. R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He once lived across the road from the Mill, and it inspired his writings about Middle-earth.
Picture from the surroundings of Birmingham. Photo credits: Jo Essen.
Picture of nature. Photo credits: Jo Essen.
Essen shared an online video from the bike ride, and encouraged others in the pandemic lockdown to get out and do some slow looking. “It was wonderful to be involved in slow looking even when we were not able to visit museums,” said Jo Essen.
So, while the British Museum, Tate Modern, the Norton Simon Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and many other large museums ran virtual (or in-person events), and while a number of smaller museums and galleries also ran Slow Art Day sessions, 2021 also included Jo Essen and her family looking slowly at nature and architecture.
Love that!
This report is a fitting final post for 2021, especially as we and the world struggle through yet another wave of the coronavirus. (Note: you can read all of our 2021 published reports, or wait for our 2021 annual report to be published in February of 2022.)
We hope you have a wonderful new year wherever you are in the world. And perhaps take some inspiration from Essen and go out and do some slow looking at nature, architecture, public art, or in museums and galleries, if they are open in your area.
Stay safe and healthy and get ready for yet another year of building the slow looking movement.
For their first Slow Art Day, Casa Regis, a non-profit association and centre for culture and contemporary art in Valdilana, Italy, featured local artists in a video and social-media-based event.
Casa Regis’ Facebook post of the event. In the picture, Achill(a)/Frame, sculpture by Daniele Basso.
On April 10, 2021, art photographer and founder of Casa Regis, Mikelle Standbridge, uploaded a series of short videos of different artistic installations on the organization’s Instagram page.
The videos featured a soundscape of birds chirping, as Mikelle briefly introduces works by local artists Sissi Castellano, Daniele Basso, Carla Crosio, Michela Cavagna and herself. Note: the artists were selected and chosen in part because of the interesting juxtaposition of their work against the backdrop of the eighteenth-century building in which Casa Regis is located.
Below you can find pictures of the featured installations, links to the videos, and a brief description of each.
Screenshot from the short video of Sissi Castellano’s installation I AM NOT AN ARTIST
Sissi Castellano‘s silkworm cocoon installation entitled‘ ‘I AM NOT AN ARTIST‘, is based on the Japanese Mingei philosophy of objects, which the artist follows. The Mingei approach simulatenaously focuses on the function and aesthetic value of common household objects.
You can view the installation and the above video here.
Daniele Basso.Hawk. Steel and white bronze sculpure. Picture taken from Casa Regis’ IG page.
Sculptor and artist Daniele Basso‘s ‘Hawk’, which comes from a series called Frames, is a stainless steel and white bronze sculpture. The artist plays with effects of mirroring, showing the complexity and the different levels of reality.
You can find a brief explanation and watch above video here.
Carla Crosio. Cancer. Picture taken from Casa Regis’ IG page.
Artist Carla Crosio‘s installation, entitled Cancer, is made of of marble, bronze and glass and it takes inspiration from her personal life.
At Slow Art Day HQ, we love the use of video for creating slow looking environments. We recommend that our museum educator and curator friends around the world watch some of the short videos that Mikelle created.
We are also happy to report that their inaugural event was so successful that they then planned in-person Slow Art day events for the rest of 2021. Excellent!
We look forward to whatever Casa Regis comes up with for Slow Art Day 2022.
Jessica, Johanna, Ashley, and Phyl
PS: A press release of the event is available in Italian here.
