Slow Art Day: Leaning Towards a Different Way of Looking at and Loving Art
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's EyeLevel blog interviews Phil Terry about Slow Art Day, an event he founded:
Why focus on slow? When we look slowly at art we make discoveries. One of the most important discoveries we make is that we can see and experience art on our own. And that's exciting. It unlocks passion and creativity and helps to create more art fans. At Slow Art Day, we like to say that we are in the business of making more art fans: by helping people discover their own ability to look at and love art.
I came up with the idea while looking at Hans Hoffman's Fantasia for an hour during the 2008 Action/Abstraction exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York. It was such a different experience to look at that one artwork for an hour that I decided that slow looking was the "secret" that would transform the visitor experience for the typical museumgoer like myself who was not an expert and didn't have the training in how to look.