Update: March 18th, 2020
Added a section on the Virtual Tours that museums offer online.
Update: March 16th, 2020
Well… well.. well… This article hasn’t turned out the way I planned! When I started writing a month ago, I only planned to help gather all the Slow Art resources in one place. Collecting tools, events and communities to help people get more out of every gallery and museum visit.
But as the the new coronavirus swept the world, the galleries and museums are shutting down to the public, and events such as Slow Art Day… while technically still on, will almost certainly be severely diminished once April 4th comes.
And yet now, more than at any other time in history, we no longer need to physically be in front a a painting or sculpture to learn about and appreciate it. While it doesn’t exactly compare to standing at arm’s lengths from the “Do Not Touch” sign, there are more options than ever to appreciate art from afar.
With that in mind, here’s a much edited version of the original post, modified be in line with our new era of closed borders, quarantines, curfews and “Shelter in Place” announcements.
0. The Roads to Slower Art
Slowness has long brought to mind lazy, too-hot summer days, Mediterranean siestas, anything hammock-adjacent… a sort of mental haze that drags your thoughts and actions to a halt. A not unpleasant, but surely unproductive state of being that a lot of our institutions have been designed to discourage and overcome. Like unwitting tourists on a New York street, the slow among us are constantly jostled and told to hurry up or get out of the way, in not as many kind words.
Even in the once serene halls of our art galleries and museums, the advent of timed exhibitions makes us buy tickets to arrive at a certain hour. Even if there’s not always a time limit, the ever shifting torrents of newcomers carry us along until we’re once again spilled out into the estuary of the permanent collection.
Yet just as for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, countercurrents sprung up. We saw it with Slow Food movement, that over the past 30 years rose up in rebellion against the McDonalds’ of the world, with focus on local, high quality ingredients and special attention paid to cooking techniques and educating consumers about what they are putting inside their bodies.
And it’s a movement long-overdue for the art world. Even as the art gallery attendance keeps rising (ed.this was written in February 2020) to the point of being kind of ridiculous… the institutions seem content on herding the crowds through as fast as possible, with BuzzFeedy “Must See Paintings” lists and insultingly boring “Audio Guides”.
That’s where Slow Art comes in. With it’s focus on spending time in front of a painting or sculpture, educating yourself about it’s historical context and putting yourself in the mind of the artist, Slow Art is one of the few ways we can make every visit to a foreign city or local gallery a transformative experience.
Art, in a way, becomes a time machine, a window into the world and emotions of another person, in another place, at another time… and rather than passing by it with nary a glance, Slow Art beckons us to actually approach this view at the world long past with a sense of curiosity and wonder.
As of the hour of this writing, mid-March 2020, a different kind of slowness overcomes the world. With flights cancelled, borders closed, any gatherings of over 10 people being discouraged… everyone is learning how to stay at home for weeks on end with barely a visit to the quickly emptying supermarket or pharmacy.
Yet as the cultural institutions grind to a halt, there are still ways to meditate on cultural significance, aesthetic beauty and rich history of art. Which now somehow feels more significant than ever.
I. Slow Art Day
“Dear Slow Art attendees,
Attached is the list of 10 artworks that we will be paying attention to on Saturday, April 17, 2010.”
Thus begun an email from my friend Karina, as she tried to gather up the bunch of us — Toronto-based artists, designers, marketing & startup 20-somethings — together at Art Gallery of Ontario for the first ever Slow Art Day .
The idea was simple: pay for your own ticket, refer to the list of 10 ‘recommended’ paintings (helpfully marked with the floor and gallery number, and whether there was a bench in front) and use the provided instructions to guide your “seeing”.
Phil Terry started promoting Slow Art Day in 2010 — as an open-source, non-profit event that anyone can participate in — after having his own realization that rushing through an art gallery robs one of a deeper connection and enjoyment of it. Every year, Phil and other volunteers would pick a day in April and encourage art fans to organize gatherings in their local museums and galleries. At the same time they reached out to the art educators, who helped with promoting the event , at times even adding it to the official museum calendar.
The event was slow to start, but after a few years it took off! Last year, 166 galleries had a Slow Art experience happening, all on the same day.
“[Slow Art Day is] counter-cultural to the smartphone and its growing dominance in culture, but also to blockbuster exhibits and the focus on absolute numbers” -Phil Terry (The Art Newsletter)
In 2020, Slow Art Day was to be on April 4th, and while technically it’s still on, the blog post on their official site signs off with “We wish you all a safe, healthy and happy Slow Art Day, either on April 4 or on a date TBD.”
It’s very likely that many of the major art museums will remain closed through April, so instead I recommend you all to maintain the spirit of the Slow Art Day and use the resources below and mark April 4th by reading, listening, watching, and learning about the art that you were curious about or smitten with!
II. Museio.org
Whereas the Slow Art Day experience is akin to a group meditation, visiting the gallery with Museio is more like having a storyteller in your ear, guiding your exploration of art history, symbolism and technique that make a particular piece of art special.
Another upside, is that if the gallery is closed due to a global pandemic, there’s still plenty of stories to discover from the comfort of your own couch (a hammock in my case).
Upon entering The Metropolitan Museum of Art in November 2018, I didn’t come empty handed.
A year earlier, Nate DiMeo — of the popular podcast The Memory Palace — has done an artist residence in the museum, researching the American Wing and recording nine sublime stories, each best experienced while standing in a specific room within the MET.
I walked the halls, listening to these fascinating histories of people, objects and lands hidden among the paintings and sculptures of the collection.
Something clicked. As soon as I got home, I started collecting every podcast, audio story and YouTube video where curators, educators, artists and fans talk at length about art they admire. One minute blurb of the museum audio guide was no longer enough; I wanted personal perspectives, subversive opinions, expert views. Over time, together with a group of like-minded friends, we build Museio.org to house for all these found stories.
It’s hard to make people stop and really look at something for even five minutes in a museum; especially when the whole institution is designed to move you through the crowded halls as quickly as possible.
By opening Museio.org on your phone as you enter a gallery, you can see what stories are available within, and it will guide you to the correct floor and room to hear an engrossing narration while you immerse yourself inside a painting or a sculpture in front of you.
Even as the museums are being temporarily closed, I still find solace spending 30–60 minutes each day finding new art stories and adding them to Museio, knowing that they will still be there once everything returns back to normal. (ed. will it??)
Museio.org is free and open-source and you can reach-out to us if you would like to be involved in the project.
III. Slow Looking TV
It should be obvious by now that the main disadvantage of the above approaches is that few people live inside cities with world-famous art museums, and while the slow art approach can work just as well in any neighbourhood gallery, sometimes you just want to explore the classics from the comfort of your home.
An interesting tool for digital slow looking is being explored by Gavin Mallory and Coggapp (a UK based agency that worked on projects for National Portrait Gallery, MoMA & Qatar Museums).
The idea behind the Slow Looking TV is that you can pick a painting that you’re interested in and it would pull up a super-high-resolution scan of that painting and over the course of several minutes help focus your attention, guiding you as you delve deeper into the details.
For anyone who gets yelled at by museum security for coming way too close to a painting just to see the brushstrokes, this is a god sent.
In the Four Seasons Of Slow Looking, Pat Hadley went as far as pairing each selected piece of art with a chosen soundtrack to help you set the mood. Spring is my favourite, with Barbara Morgan’s Spring on Madison Square being studied while listening to Bach.
I love slow looking because it is an immediate, low-barrier way to experience art more deeply, and because I am sure that digital can deliver a strong slow looking experience.
- Gavin Mallory
IV. Virtual Museum Tours
Museums and galleries have also not been sitting still and there are many interesting experiments and attempts for them to digitize their collection and use technology to provide online visitors with novel ways to experience art. Many of the older ones are still based on Flash, which is a non-starter at this point unfortunately.
Here’s a few of my favourite virtual museum tours:
- British Museum’s “The Museum of the World” which nicked its navigation UI from Guitar Hero.
- Five-hour tour of the Hermitage — Shot by Apple on an iPhone in 4K, it’s a one-take journey through Russia’s iconic museum. A Russian Ark of sorts, with more focus on the art (there’s still dancing though)
- “Picture Gallery in Transformation” in the Sao Paulo Museum of Art… the navigation is a bit confusing, but this just reminds me that I haven’t visited MASP since the renovations.
- Google Street View — In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, various museums have opened their galleries to be explored using street view. Among them: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Musée d’Orsay, and Rijksmuseum
V. Podcasts & Youtube Channels
Originally this last section was all about live-drawing/copying events and classes museums often offer to help you get an even closer look at their collection. Particularly I focused on the work that the artist Alison Kushner has been doing at the National Portrait Gallery (London) hosting Drop In Drawing sessions.
Yet seeing that it might be hard to attend any gallery events over the next few months, here is the list of many of my favourite podcasts and YouTube channels that we have featured in Museio.org so far:
