The annual event celebrating art.
Slow Art Day is Saturday, April 11, 2026 Join Us!
Photo by Greg Neville
Slow Walking Video at Gorgas House Museum
January 23rd, 2026For Slow Art Day 2025, students at the University of Alabama participated in a project titled Walking In It, developed under the direction of Professor Sharony Green and presented in connection with the Gorgas House Museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The project focused on an experimental video that encouraged people to notice walking and to think about it as something shaped by history and circumstance, not a simple experience that everyone can take for granted.
As part of the project, students enrolled in Professor Green’s Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 history courses contributed 30-second long videos of themselves walking through campus and around Tuscaloosa. These clips were combined into a single “digital quilt” bringing together repeated movement across shared spaces.
The completed video was featured online and projected onto the exterior of the Gorgas House Museum on April 4, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The projection was designed as a come-and-go experience, allowing Slow Art Day participants and passersby to encounter the work throughout the day. The setting of the projection on Gorgas House, the campus’s oldest dwelling constructed in 1829, provided historical context for the project’s focus on movement and access.
Watch the video projection:
Additional components were coordinated by Sonya Harwood-Johnson, Director of the Gorgas House Museum. These included interpretive displays featuring nineteenth-century shoes and an interactive station where members of the campus community could decorate miniature boots produced with a 3D printer, inspired by a Mexican artist’s project.
In addition to the video projection, the Slow Art Day project included a campus-wide scavenger hunt. Participants were invited to move through campus using the scavenger hunt prompts, with a prize offered to those who completed the activity.
Students also created a short video previewing the event, offering viewers a sense of the site and project setup:
The project received coverage in The Crimson White – Gorgas House hosts The University of Alabama’s submission to global Slow Art Day – the University of Alabama’s student newspaper, which reported on the Gorgas House Museum’s participation in the global Slow Art Day initiative. Across digital platforms, the project reached a wide audience, with more than 1,100 views on Instagram and over 1,200 additional views and impressions across other social media channels.
We thank Sharony Green, Sonya Harwood-Johnson, and the participating students for their innovative Slow Art Day events, and look forward to seeing what they come up with for Slow Art Day 2026.
– Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Read more about the project, Walking In It: An Experimental Video, on the Gorgas House Museum website. You can follow the Gorgas House Museum on Facebook and Instagram.
Meditation and Slow Making at Gothenburg Museum of Art
January 21st, 2026The Gothenburg Museum of Art in Gothenburg, Sweden, participated in Slow Art Day 2025 by offering two structured activities for adults and children. The program combined guided meditation, slow looking in the galleries, and hands-on making in the studio.
The group gathered in front of Oracle, a sculpture by Norwegian artist Jone Kvie, on view in the exhibition Apocalypse: From Last Judgement to Climate Threat.
For adult participants, the museum hosted a guided meditation led by Pernilla Ljungkvist, artist and yoga teacher, around the sculpture. Through stillness and focused attention, participants were invited to engage with the sculpture more deliberately.
For children ages 6–12, the museum offered a two-part workshop. The first part took place in the museum’s collection galleries, where participants practiced slow-looking exercises and completed a drawing activity based on careful observation.
The group then moved to the Museum Studio, where a selection of objects was presented. Participants chose one or more objects to reinterpret by painting with watercolors, drawing with colored pens, or shaping forms in clay. The emphasis throughout was on slowing down, observing closely, and working deliberately. Across both activities, the shared goal was to encourage sustained attention and mindful engagement through observation, reflection, and making.
We thank Jonna Kihlsten, Art Educator, and the Gothenburg Museum of Art team for designing inclusive Slow Art Day experiences, as well as Pernilla Ljungkvist for leading the meditation session. We look forward to seeing what Gothenburg comes up with for Slow Art Day 2026.
– Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Follow Gothenburg Museum of Art on Facebook and Instagram
Six Weeks of Slow Looking in Arizona Border Town
January 19th, 2026For their third Slow Art Day, Studio 917 Gallery in Douglas, Arizona, extended their event beyond a single day, transforming it into a six-week slow-looking experience. Located in the small town bordering Sonora where visitors often come to shop before discovering local art, the gallery intentionally selected a range of diverse works designed to appeal to audiences of different ages and backgrounds.
The exhibition opened with a busy first day, welcoming a steady flow of visitors from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. As the weeks progressed, word of mouth expanded the gallery’s reach. Visitors traveled from nearby communities including Tucson, Agua Prieta, Bisbee, and Willcox, while tourists from farther afield stopped in while visiting the U.S.–Mexico border, including guests from Kansas, Minnesota, Texas, and California.
Featured Works:
- Untitled by Gabino Rivera (c. 1930)
- Social by Conrado Massaguer (Havana, 1930)
- Parenthesis by Peter Konsterlie (2017)
- Untitled by Chloe Foster (wood-fired, salt-fired ceramic, 2025)
The selected artworks encouraged visitors to linger and look closely. Gabino Rivera’s early 20th-century work reflects the experience of immigration and labor in Douglas, where Rivera arrived as a young man to work in the local smelter. Conrado Massaguer’s Social, originally a magazine cover from Havana in 1930, offered a contrasting cultural perspective. Contemporary works by Peter Konsterlie and Chloe Foster added further range, from conceptual painting to ceramic practice, reinforcing the gallery’s goal of presenting varied entry points for slow looking.
By extending Slow Art Day across six weeks, Studio 917 Gallery created repeated opportunities for intentional looking and conversation, allowing both local residents and traveling visitors to encounter the artworks at their own pace. The approach reflected the rhythms of a small-town gallery while remaining connected to the global Slow Art Day movement.
We thank the team at Studio 917 Gallery for their continued commitment to slow looking and for sustaining this expanded Slow Art Day format year after year. We look forward to their next Slow Art Day.
– Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Follow Studio 917 Gallery on Instagram and visit their website at https://www.studio917.art.
Multiple Paths To Slow Looking at Wellcome Collection
January 17th, 2026For their fourth year participating in Slow Art Day, Wellcome Collection in London hosted a full day of guided and self-guided slow-looking experiences across the museum. Wellcome Collection is a free museum that explores human health through the intersections of art, medicine, and science. Building on the range of facilitated sessions introduced in previous years, the 2025 program offered visitors multiple ways to engage slowly with artworks, objects, and ideas.
The Wellcome Collection team led five guided slow-looking sessions, each facilitated by a different staff member and focused on a distinct body of work.
Isabelle Gapomo guided participants in close observation of a photograph by Marc Ferrez from the Hard Graft exhibition, titled ‘Escravos em terreiro de uma fazenda de café na região do Vale do Paraíba’ (c.1882), examining how plantation labor was depicted by early photographers and how those images are experienced today.
Griff Davies led a session centered on the dream-inspired paintings of Bryan Charnley, using the imagery to prompt discussion around mental health.
Sana Siddiqui reprised her popular session last year and used vintage food advertisements to evoke memory and sensory response.
In the Reading Room, Isabel Greenslade gathered participants around “Closing Neural Tube Dress,” a sculptural garment that encouraged reflection on abstraction.
Jake Blackavar led a session that moved through multiple floors of the museum, selecting a sculpture, a video work, and a pair of paintings to explore how different media and gallery contexts shape the slow-looking experience.
In addition to the guided sessions, the museum designated a room as a Slow Art Day hub where tours began and visitors could drop in to learn more about the event. In this space, visitors were invited to practice slow looking independently using a rotating screen of images from Wellcome Collection’s holdings, which changed every ten minutes.
What a thoughtful and well-designed program. Wow.
We at Slow Art Day HQ thank Jake Blackavar and the entire Wellcome Collection team for continuing to lead the way in producing meaningful and multi-dimensional experiences.
We eagerly look forward to what they come up with for Slow Art Day 2026.
– Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl
P.S. Follow Wellcome Collection on their Instagram and Facebook