Five Major Museums And OAAA To Organize Art Everywhere US
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Approximately 50 recognized masterworks of American art from five top museums’ collections will pop up for a month on as many as 50,000 displays nationwide, including static and digital billboards, subway platforms and trains, buses and bus shelters beginning Aug.4/14.
And those 50 works of art will be chosen by the public through online voting now underway following the announcement launch earlier this week.
While we’ve seen individual art initiatives in North America such as Art in Transit, Times Square Moment Digital Gallery, the L.A. Mobile Arts Festival and the Patron ‘Simply Perfect’ Arts Project, among others, Art Everywhere US is believed to be by far the largest outdoor art show ever conceived in North America.
A nationwide celebration of America’s artistic legacy, Art Everywhere is organized through a collaboration among five major museums: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art plus the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, and artists, estates, foundations, and rights agencies.
For one month, everyone in the U.S. is invited to view 100 American artworks nominated by the museums and vote for the ones on the Art Everywhere US website that he/she would most like to see reproduced outdoors. The final list of some 50 Art Everywhere US works will be announced June 20.
Maxwell Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, speaking for the consortium of five museums, says, “The works you’ll see in Art Everywhere US tell the story of America, express our creativity and reflect who we are – and this is our chance to make them a part of the American landscape, and everybody’s life. We hope Art Everywhere US will inspire all of us to learn more about America’s artistic treasures, past and present, and discover many more of the great works in our nation’s museums.”
“Art Everywhere US is the latest chapter, and perhaps the most spectacular, in our members’ long history of contributing their resources to public service,” says Nancy Fletcher, president and CEO of the OAAA. “At OAAA, we are always mindful of our responsibility toward the spaces we share as citizens. We are thrilled that five extraordinary museums are now enabling us to make this unprecedented contribution to the public sphere by bringing America’s artistic heritage directly to the people.”
Artworks nominated by the five museums range in date from 1767 to 2008 and include paintings, photographs, works on paper, decorative objects and multimedia works. The 100 nominated works are all accessible on the website.
Art Everywhere US can also be found live on a full range of social media channels. Twitter users can share their impressions with the hashtag #ArtEverywhereUs. On Facebook, members of the public will be encouraged to share their votes and later will be able to post their own collages of works on view. Instagram will highlight artists, museums and viewing opportunities and will enable people to share the photos taken at multiple sites on ‘art crawls’. On Pinterest, nominated and selected works will be pinned on a dedicated board, and after August 4, photos of the displays will be pinned and organized by both artist and location.
There will also be an interactive feature for mobile devices. Once the displays are up in August, users of the Blippar application can access augmented reality features through their smart phones, including more background information about the artworks shown in selected displays and recordings that add to the understanding of each work.
Art Everywhere is now a global movement, originally conceived in the U.K. by Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks. Inaugurated in the UK in Aug,/13 to showcase works created by British artists and owned by the nation, it is now an annual event realized through a collaboration of the Art Fund, Tate and the U.K. out-of-home advertising industry.
April 24th, 2014 at 21:47 @949
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