Author Archives: Phyl Terry
Charlotte, NC – Ross Gallery @ Central Piedmont Community College
Slow Art Lunch and Learn – Interview with Rika Nelson
Rika Nelson runs Slow Art Day and Lunch and Learn, among other programs, at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and recently agreed to sit down with us and talk about her passion for art and helping the public learn how to look at and love art.
Slow Art Day: Tell us about yourself, Rika.
Rika Nelson: I am the Manager of Public Programs at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. It’s my job to plan and present all of our adult educational programming including concerts, lectures, films, dance, tours and more. We present an average of 8-10 Public Programs for adults each month. The programs range in size from a 10-20 person gallery program like Lunch and Learn, which we’ll talk about in a moment, to an 800 person museum-wide evening event we call Art Mix.
Slow Art Day: It sounds like a great job.
Rika: I love my job. I sometimes tell people that I feel like I hit the job lottery. We have 10 or so exhibitions per year in addition to our permanent collection and I get to work with our curators to pull out the themes and deeper meaning from each exhibition and translate it into programming that is educational, meaningful and entertaining for our visitors. I like when attendees at our programs see an exhibition from a new perspective; I also love it when our programs cause them to connect with each other.
I have wanted to work in museums since I was a kid. I studied History and American Indian Studies at the University of Washington and went on to get an MA in Museum Studies and an MBA in Non-profit Administration from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley. I started at the Crocker three years ago right as I was finishing grad school. It was an exciting time to be working here as we were just months away from opening our new 125,000 sq. ft. Teel Family Pavilion on 10.10.2010.
Slow Art Day: Tell us about the Lunch and Learn program. How did it start?
Rika: Lunch and Learn was started through a collaboration between our museum docents and our education department. The Docents went through a VTS (visual thinking strategies) training as part of their continuing education. There were a particular group of docents who really developed a passion for this touring style and we worked with them to design a monthly tour where visitors would examine one work of art over a 30 minute period and then were invited to have lunch in the café following the program. We started with 3 or 4 visitors that would come on the tour, now we are up to about 20 or 30 per tour!
Slow Art Day: Say more – it’s monthly and has regular attendees? What is the design of the event and how does it work?
Rika: My favorite thing about the Crocker Lunch and Learn are the regular attendees we’ve started to notice. There are even a group of City Employees who come over to the Museum to spend a half hour with a work of art in our collection on their lunch breaks. The regular attendees have gotten to the point where they are familiar with each other and give encouragement to each other during the discussions.
Lunch and Learn starts with about 3-5 minutes of silent looking. We then ask the visitors in the group to talk about specific things they are seeing within the work. Next we ask people to tell us what they think the things they are seeing might mean and we ask them what they wonder. I have seen some incredible meanings pulled out of paintings by our visitors; things that never would have occurred to me. The other fascinating thing is the diverse backgrounds our visitors bring to the discussion and how that gets the whole group to have a broader understanding of the work of art we are seeing.
Slow Art Day: What do you think helps make the program work so well?
Rika: I think the program works well because it is consistent. It happens the first Tuesday of every month and people have made it a routine. I can’t think of a better routine than setting aside 30 minutes on a weekday for Art, can you?
Slow Art Day: No – we couldn’t agree more. What do you see as the relationship between your Slow Art Day event and Lunch & Learn?
Rika: I like to think that Slow Art is a way for us to introduce people to the concept so that they can join in on our ongoing Lunch and Learn series. We get a lot of visitors who hear about the Slow Art Movement and come for Slow Art at the Crocker, but they had no clue that we do a Slow Art style format every month.
Slow Art Day: The Crocker has been hosting Slow Art Day for more than four years. Can you tell us more about why the museum has been a supporter since the beginning?
Rika: I can’t take the credit for that, my predecessor at the Crocker, Christian Adame, who is now at the Phoenix Art Museum, was the early adopter. I think, however, that it is a no-brainer for us to be involved with Slow Art. All art museums should get on board. Slow Art is a way of teaching people how to look at works of art in your galleries, it gives them a tool to get more out of their visit. That kind of engagement is what keeps art museum’s relevant to their communities and that’s why we think it’s important.
Slow Art Day: We agree! Thanks for hosting Slow Art Day and for your time today and for your longtime commitment to helping more people learn how to look at and love art.
Next time you are in Sacramento near a first Tuesday, drop by a Lunch and Learn. You can also sign-up here for Slow Art Day 2013 at the Crocker Art Museum.
Viewing Art, Being Present
From time to time, we post short articles from Slow Art Day hosts. The article below is by veteran Slow Art Day host, Paul Langton.
A rainy day. I am early for an appointment. An opportunity to go to a gallery for forty or fifty minutes, without expectations? I realise don’t actually know what is currently on at the gallery.
Fortunately I listen to my intuitive self, and a few moments later find myself in the Whitechapel Gallery, exploring Mel Bochner’s fascinating work. But, I become aware that his exhibition would need more time than I feel I can allow. I then go into a room with a single sculpture. A tree. Immediately fascinated I walk around the sculpture. I notice the materials used – gold leaf, bronze. I feel at home in the space and decide to spend some time in this room.
Spazio di Luce by Giuseppe Penone at the Whitechapel Gallery (image from the Whitechapel Gallery website – click the image to visit)
A well-placed bench allows for some slow art thinking. Who is this by? What is it doing here? I walk around, I sit down. I walk around again. I go and read the information about the sculpture. I ask the attendant if I can I touch it.
The exhibition is very peaceful. Occasionally people come in and I notice their reactions to the piece, yet I am pre-occupied by my own thoughts. I feel I am in the right place at the right time, as though I was meant to see this piece today. I love the way each time I view the tree it look different and I love the light further illuminating the gold leaf, shining light on this wintry day. I walk alongside it and see it from different angles. I don’t hug but I do touch.
The sculpture, I find out, is Spazio di Luce (Space of Light) by the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone and is a Bloomberg Commission, in the Whitechpael Gallery until September 2013. Space and light, they seem ideal words. It’s good to find out it will be here for a few months, and another visit will be possible. I realise I may have seen some of Penone’s work before as part of Arte Povera at Tate Modern, but I couldn’t be specific.
I have been thinking of trees in the last few weeks and the importance of trees – there was a fascinating discussion on the radio the previous month about trees with James Aldred and Mark Tully – and this sculpture adds an extra dimension to my current feelings and thoughts. I reflect on nature, art, myself, others, and art as part of life.
The light in the title becomes so appropriate as I leave the gallery, literally feeling lightened and uplifted. I then wonder on how something so beautiful and fascinating just appeared in my day without notice. In my head I thank the artist and the gallery, for being presented with and for being present, for some time, with this wonderful sculpture. Please visit if you can.
(If you are not able to visit a video of the artist talking about the work is on line: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-bloomberg-commission-giuseppe-penone-spazio-di-luce).
The Whitechapel Gallery is one of 160+ Slow Art Day venues for 2013. Click here to find out more or register.
– Paul Langton
Note: An earlier version of this piece first appeared in Paul’s blog: http://artsandmoresw4.wordpress.com
Slow Me The Way – Manhattan Magazine Feature Article on Slow Art Day
by Tom Clavin
Published in Manhattan Magazine: December 2012
Don’t race through that museum tour: Take your time, take it easy, and take it all in. At least, that’s what the Slow Art movement would like you to do. Here, Tom Clavin explains the burgeoning campaign…
Read the full feature article on the Manhattan Magazine website
Slow Forest Year
You think looking at an individual painting or sculpture for 10 minutes seems long? How about a year?
James Gorman reviews a new book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature, in the New York Times Science Times today. It turns out the author, David Haskell, spent a year slowly watching a patch of nature.
Haskell, a scientist, “did no experiments and no research…He sat, and watched, and listened” for this yearlong meditative study.
For example, one day he spent an hour slowly observing squirrels. That simple activity helped him realize something obvious and profound. Like a Slow Art Day participant who discovers a color, texture or other seemingly hidden element, Haskell joyfully discovered that “squirrels appear to enjoy the sun, a phenomenon that occurs nowhere in the curriculum of modern biology.”
I’m getting the book today. I recommend you do the same.
– Phil Terry, Slow Art Day Founder
It Takes Multiple Visits To Be A Lady
I liked Thomas Micchelli’s review of To Be A Lady, a new show in Manhattan, for many reasons including that he begins the article by describing something we in the Slow Art Day movement often experience: it takes a few visits to really see an exhibit.
In his opening paragraphs, he takes pains to go into detail about why the review itself is based on his second visit.
I specify my second visit because my first was preoccupied with the show’s startling scale, ambition and quality.
I also often find that the first visit to an exhibit is preoccupying. It’s hard to see the individual pieces of art.
And this is an especially important consideration with a show like this one, which aims to make visible what’s been too-much hidden from public view: the contribution and impact of many women artists.
The review is worth reading – and the show reviewed is certainly worth seeing slowly at least twice.
For more on the show, which is open until January 2013, click here.
– Phil Terry, Slow Art Day Founder
The art of looking at art – Met Director Thomas Campbell
Metropolitan Museum of Art Director, Thomas P. Campbell, talks about the art of asking basic questions and of really looking at art.
Of interest, he refers to an Italian art professor, a passionate teacher, who reminded him that “all art was once contemporary” and implored him not to get caught up in art world jargon but rather to use his eyes, to really look, to ask basic questions and to try to *see* the art.
ARTInfo: Slow Art Day Fights Visual Grazing With a Deep Dive Into Museums
by Kyle Chayka
Published in ARTInfo: August 17, 2012
A 2001 study showed that visitors to the Metropolitan Museum looked at individual works of art for an average of just 17 seconds at a time, a visual habit called “grazing.” Even the most iconic artworks in the world can’t seem to hold our attention: The Louvre discovered that visitors look at the Mona Lisa for just 15 seconds on average. In the age of the moving image and endlessly updated World Wide Web, works of art in more traditional media don’t get the focus they deserve. Slow Art Day, a three-year-old initiative currently ramping up for its 2013 event, is looking to change all that with an orchestrated long art-viewing session at museums around the world.
Slow Art Day is today all over the world!
Slow Art Day 2012 is today, Saturday, April 28.
Events have already occurred in China, India, and all over Australia. As I write this, Slow Art Day events are happening in Rome, Paris, London, Copenhagen and all over Europe.
Slow Art Day events are about to start in North and South America.
Have a good and slow day of looking and loving art.
– Phil
Phil Terry
Founder, Slow Art Day
P.S. If you need anything or have any questions about today’s events, get in touch via e-mail here.