Tag Archives: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Art, Community, and the Job Search: A New Movement Begins

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A new kind of partnership is taking shape — one that connects art and the job search in a powerful way.

Slow Art Day and Never Search Alone are working together to support both museums and job seekers.

Why this partnership matters:

  • For museums: It brings in new and more diverse visitors — something many are working hard to do.
  • For job seekers: It creates a space to pause, reflect, and feel connected during what can be a very isolating time.

On Monday, May 19, 2025, Never Search Alone members Stuart Ridgway and Caitlin Thistle hosted one of these special events at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Forty job seekers took part.

They started outside the museum (see photos below), then split into groups of four. Each group moved through the galleries together. One person at a time picked a piece of art. Everyone looked at it slowly — for ten minutes — then they talked about what they saw.

Afterward, everyone met back in the courtyard. They kept talking for hours — forming new friendships and reconnecting with something often lost in the job search: the simple, human experience of looking at art and being with others.

Caitlin, pictured in the left foreground of the group photo above, and Stuart both reported that the group left feeling energized and connected — lifted by the simple yet profound act of looking at art together.

Because the participants meet outside the museums, and break up into groups of four, and buy their own tickets, this is a scalable program that also doesn’t involve complicated group tour arrangements with museums. 50 or 100 job seekers just meet up, get divided into groups of 4, and go slow looking.

I hosted recent events as well at the Brooklyn Museum, with 50 participants, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art where more than 120 Never Search Alone members came together.

Below are photos from the Metropolitan Museum of Art outing.

Already, Never Search Alone members around the country are beginning to plan more events including one coming up at the Seattle Art Museum (more on that in a separate post).

Stay tuned. This is only the beginning.

– Phyl, Ashley, Johanna, and Jessica Jane

P.S. More information about Never Search Alone can be found at Phyl.org.

Reflections on the Life and Death of Artist Wayne Thiebaud

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Host Essay by Hedy Buzan

Wayne Thiebaud died on Christmas Day 2021 at the age of 101.

Thiebaud was one of the most important American artists of our generation. Mis-described as a “Pop Artist”, Thiebaud’s work was simultaneously accessible and deep, rooted in art history and slyly funny, idiosyncratic yet universal. His work, accessible in print and online but always best seen in person, was thick with glorious impasto and color nuance.

American in his subject matter – he famously painted still lifes of cakes and pies, but also archetypal figures and landscapes of the vertiginous hills of San Francisco and the rolling Sacramento Delta. Thiebaud was eclectic in his influences: there is as much Matisse, Daumier and Cezanne in his works as there is the influence of Hopper and Disney. Moreover, Thiebaud had a brilliant mind, as evidenced in this 1981 essay A Fellow Painter’s View of Georgio Morandi.

Thiebaud was always looking, looking, looking, and open to the new. This brief video by the Morgan Library gives some insight to his constant evolution as an artist (as well as a look at some of his great work).

At the end of his life he did a series of paintings of the most hackneyed subject in American art – clown paintings – and made them into a transcendental experience.

An exhibition of his work was shown last year at Laguna Art Museum. While Covid restrictions prevented a Slow Art Day there, my review for the local paper can be read here.

Moreover, Thiebaud the man was humble, approachable and kind.

You can see that in this video below where he takes a slow look at Rosa Bonheur’s “outstanding” painting, The Horse Fair.

Thiebaud had a second home in Laguna Beach and loaned and gave works to the local museum, as well as mentoring artists up to the final year of his life. He liked to work in the mornings, play tennis, take a nap and work again in the afternoons. He drew daily. He loved to teach and each of the three times I’ve heard him lecture he repeated the same anecdote:

“I love to ask students, especially beginning students one question: ‘Who is painting the painting – you or the painting?’ They invariably answer ‘I am painting the painting’ To which I say ‘Wrong answer! You need to follow the painting and see where it takes you.”

What wonderful words of advice, as regards painting and life. 

Hedy Buźan
Founding Host, Slow Art Day

Hedy Buzan is an artist and founding host of Slow Art Day. She also helped launch the Laguna Beach Sawdust Festival, an annual arts festival in Southern California. 

Slow Art Day is committed to publishing posts like this from our hosts around the world. Here are some tips.

The art of looking at art – Met Director Thomas Campbell

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Metropolitan Museum of Art Director, Thomas P. Campbell, talks about the art of asking basic questions and of really looking at art.

Of interest, he refers to an Italian art professor, a passionate teacher, who reminded him that “all art was once contemporary” and implored him not to get caught up in art world jargon but rather to use his eyes, to really look, to ask basic questions and to try to *see* the art.