Tag Archives: Smithsonian American Art Museum

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.

Is this the future of museum art education? A discussion with Laurel Fehrenbach

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We recently caught up with Laurel Fehrenbach, public programs coordinator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, to discuss “Is This Art?”, a museum initiative with several programs that slows visitors down and asks them to focus on only one or two pieces of modern or contemporary art.

We discussed in-depth one of the “Is this Art?” programs, the “Open Discussion” series, which starts by asking people to quietly look at a single piece of art. There is no introduction or curatorial discussion. Then after a while – about 5 minutes – Laurel starts a dialogue with a few questions, like “what are your first impressions?” or “what do you see?”  Throughout the 45 to 60 minutes sessions, Laurel is more of a participant than a moderator.

Laurel has found what we have found in our Slow Art Day events around the world – i.e. that this simple experience of asking people to slow down and look has a big impact. “People don’t often get the opportunity to unplug from their smartphones and cell phones and sit in front of artwork for 10 minutes or an hour. But when they do, the experience is transformative, refreshing and thought provoking.” We agree.

Laurel, who is passionate about helping people see the art without guided experts, is still experimenting with different ways of running the program.

We shared with her the design for Slow Art Day events, particularly the decision to invite people to look slowly on their own without any guide from the museum, though some Slow Art Day events do have a curator or educator come along in a way similar to what Laurel  does. She’s considering bringing Slow Art Day back to the Smithsonian American Art Museum next April (the museum had participated in earlier years) and, in the meantime, is looking to connect with more people like us and others.

We are really happy to see this innovative initiative at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and look forward to continuing a conversation with Laurel as her program evolves. And, like Laurel, we are interested in identifying more museums doing similar programming. In fact, part of our mission at Slow Art Day is to support and inspire these kinds of events.

If you know of a museum or gallery pursuing programming we should know about, please comment here on this blog post or contact us.

And if you are in the DC area next week, stop by and look slowly at some art with Laurel and other participants at the next Open Discussion event, Tuesday, December 4, from 12pm – 1pm.

– Naomi Kuo, Slow Art Day intern, with Dana-Marie Lemmer, Slow Art Day Coordinator